Why It's Good to Feel Guilty & How Plagiarism Really Works

There’s a reason hearing your mother’s voice can feel different from hearing anyone else’s — even when it’s just a phone call. This episode opens with the surprising effects researchers have discovered. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-psychology-of-relationships/202104/two-key-reasons-why-you-should-call-your-mom Guilt feels terrible — and that’s exactly what makes it so effective. While we tend to see guilt as something to avoid, it may actually play an essential role in helping us learn, repair relationships, and behave more ethically. Christopher Moore explains why guilt exists, how it evolved, and why feeling guilty can sometimes be a very good thing. Christopher is a professor of psychology and former dean of science at Dalhousie University, whose work has been cited in Psychology Today, Today’s Parent, and The New York Times. He is author of The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal (https://amzn.to/3Nrt051). Plagiarism seems like a clear-cut wrongdoing — but the reality is far more complicated. People plagiarize more often than you might think, sometimes without even realizing it. And in some cases, you can be accused of plagiarism even if you’ve never seen the original work. With only so many ways to tell a story or write a song, where does coincidence end and plagiarism begin? Roger Kreuz joins me to explore this fascinating gray area. He is Associate Dean and professor of psychology at the University of Memphis, a columnist for Psychology Today, and author of Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots. (https://amzn.to/4soVFaS). And finally, there’s a widespread belief that dark roast coffee has more caffeine than light roast — or that espresso packs far more caffeine than a regular cup of coffee. Both ideas sound logical, but they’re not quite right. We wrap up by explaining what actually determines caffeine content and why these myths persist. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/light-vs-dark-roast-coffee 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 0:30Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why the next time you're stressed out, you might want to call your mom. Then, it feels terrible to feel guilty, but there are some real benefits to it.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  And the point about guilt is that it serves to manage our relationships and help to heal our relationships when they've been damaged. And really guilt is the emotion that motivates us to do something about healing our relationships when we've done something to harm them.

• 0:59Mike Carruthers?

  Also, which has more caffeine, light roast or dark roast coffee? And plagiarism, it's a complicated and fascinating topic.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  There are people who claim that plagiarists want to get caught. That's like kleptomania. There's a certain kind of compulsion for taking the work of others. I'm not really convinced by that argument, but at the same time, I don't really have a better explanation.

• 1:24Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:29Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:14Mike Carruthers?

  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?

• 2:29Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:54Speaker 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.

• 3:07Mike Carruthers?

  Have you called your mother lately? I'm about to explain why you probably should as we begin this episode of Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. Research suggests that hearing your mother's voice can be a powerful stress reliever. This is especially true for children and seems to be true for adults as well. In a well-known study, researchers found that after a stressful experience, children who heard their mother's voice even just over the phone showed lower stress levels and a rise in oxytocin, the hormone that's associated with bonding and comfort.

• 3:47Mike Carruthers?

  In fact, hearing mom's voice had a similar calming effect on the brain as receiving a physical hug. Oxytocin is released during childbirth and early caregiving, and it plays a key role in forming the deep emotional bond between parent and child, a bond that often lasts a lifetime. While the strongest evidence comes from studies on children, scientists believe familiar trusted voices continue to have a calming effect well into adulthood. So if you happen to have a voicemail from your mom saved on your phone, you might want to keep it. It could be a small portable dose of comfort, ready whenever you need it. And that is something you should know.

• 4:33Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever felt guilty? I'm sure you have, all of us have. Guilt is one of the most powerful and uncomfortable emotions we experience. Guilt can sit in the back of your mind and just gnaw at you. It can keep you up at night. It's an emotion most of us would do just about anything to avoid. But guilt exists for a reason. So why do we feel it? Where did it come from? And when guilt becomes overwhelming, how do you live with it without letting it eat you up inside? That's something my guest knows a lot about. Chris Moore holds a PhD in developmental psychology and his work has been cited in Psychology

• 5:15Mike Carruthers?

  Today, Today's Parent, and the New York Times. He's the author of a book called The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal. Hi Christopher, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Pleasure to be here, Mike.

• 5:30Mike Carruthers?

  So guilt is something everybody's experienced, everybody knows what it is, everybody knows how horrible it feels. But what is it from your perspective? How do you define what guilt is?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  So I define guilt as obviously an emotion, actually a complex of emotions, but I define it as a good thing. And the point about guilt is that it serves to manage our relationships and help to heal our relationships when they've been damaged. And really guilt is the emotion that motivates us to do something about healing our relationships when we've done something to harm them.

• 6:06Mike Carruthers?

  Well, based on what you've said so far, the purpose of guilt, the reason we have it, is to manage relationships. And we do that because if we screw up our relationships and feel guilty, we want to fix that and that feeling feels so horrible that then we want to avoid feeling that again in the future.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  You know, humans are the most social of all species, right? We, we, we live continually in a highly, highly complex social world. And our relationships are an extremely important aspect of, of our worlds. And the problem is that if we, you know, we continually do things all the time, uh, to greater or lesser extent, that's, that's gonna hurt our relationships, right? Sometimes we act selfishly and so on. And so we need to have a way of, of, uh, you know, of healing the relationships when they become damaged. And so really that is what guilt does. It motivates us to heal those relationships and keep those relationships strong.

• 7:09Mike Carruthers?

  I would imagine that most people think of guilt as not a real positive emotion. It doesn't feel good when you feel guilty. But yet it is very useful to have, have it. Cause imagine if we didn't have it, if we didn't feel guilty, then we would do whatever we want, I guess.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Exactly, and there are people like that, of course. Uh, so one of the characteristics of psychopaths is that they don't feel any guilt. They don't feel remorse for things that they do. And of course, the relationships the psychopaths have are severely disrupted. And so you're right, the guilt is a very, uh, it's a functional, uh, form of emotion, uh, that keeps the relationships that we have strong.

• 7:50Mike Carruthers?

  And are there people on the other end of the spectrum who guilt is just like debilitating? Like they, they feel guilty about everything or too much of everything?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there is this phenomenon that we call guilt-proneness. Um, so guilt-proneness means that you tend to feel a lot of guilt. You're very sensitive to where, uh, to, to other people's feelings. Uh, it tends to be in people who are very empathic, for example, who are very sensitive to other people being upset about things. And so people who feel who are guilt prone tend to feel guilt in a lot of circumstances and a lot of relationships that they have. The other way in which guilt goes wrong is is when sometimes it fails to achieve its its purpose, if you like. So we may feel guilt, but we we do not successfully resolve the guilt through, you know, making

• 8:46Speaker 02

  up with the person that we might have hurt. And then the guilt festers and becomes debilitating. And and you see that in a variety of mental health disorders, including things like depression to some extent in PTSD and so on.

• 9:00Mike Carruthers?

  So does guilt cause depression or does depression worsen the guilt? Which is the cart and which is the horse?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Guilt tends to exacerbate or make make depression worse and it tends to prolong it. So if you're constantly feeling bad about yourself, then, you know, the depression can can just continue. So I wouldn't say that guilt causes depression, but it's certainly a factor in how how depressed you feel and perhaps for how long the depression can go on.

• 9:32Mike Carruthers?

  So when you feel guilty, if you've done something that gee, you really wish you hadn't done it and it's hurt a relationship and you do your best to, you know, apologize, but you still feel guilty. I mean, you still did what you did and you still feel guilty that you did what you did. So what makes guilt go away? Does it just kind of fade away or what happens to it?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  So I think the the way to understand that is that there are different levels or layers to guilt. So so part of guilt is stimulated by doing something. It's let's say you've done something to hurt somebody that you care about and you may feel guilty because of that. Now, if that person, let's say you apologize to that person, that person forgives you, then guilt that your guilt does tend to dissipate. Okay, so so at the sort of most basic layer, guilt is dissipated by forgiveness from the person that you care about. But then there is another layer of guilt which we which we connect to this this idea

• 10:38Speaker 02

  of conscience. So conscience is the set of standards or norms that we hold for ourself, which we think means that we're a good person, or that we we behave well. And sometimes we hold ourselves to a higher standard, perhaps than even other people would. And so sometimes guilt can can arise from us doing something that that contravenes the the norms or standards of our conscience, and we may feel guilty about that. And sometimes, you know, then then the most important thing is to be able to to recognize that perhaps you're holding yourself to too high a standard and, you know, cut yourself some slack and give yourself a break. And and, you know, to some extent, we call that self forgiveness.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  You know, that's why guilt can go on, even if you've been forgiven by other people.

• 11:26Mike Carruthers?

  But boy, being forgiven by other people certainly helps, doesn't it?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Very much so. I think that is the the fundamental dynamic in human relationships. You know, we relationships are important to us, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to mess up. And we mess up quite frequently, when even with the people that we love. But if we apologize and do that honestly, and are forgiven by the person that we love, then the guilt does tend to dissipate.

• 11:56Mike Carruthers?

  And so what is it that's going on? And maybe the kind of stereotypical example of this is say, somebody has an affair, and they get caught, and they feel guilty, and they feel terrible, and they're forgiven. But then they do it again. Well, well, what's that?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Well, I think I think that's just, you know, the relationships are a continual challenge, right? They're there. There's there's always another opportunity for you to mess up. And the problem is that you can't, if you keep messing up in the same way, and, you know, continually continuing to apologize, it's not necessarily going to work with the other person, because a good apology requires a commitment not to do it again. And so if you do do it again, then in a sense that invalidates the apology and the forgiveness can be withdrawn.

• 12:48Mike Carruthers?

  Well, right, yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way. But that's interesting what you said that, you know, relationships, you know, are opportunities to mess up and not just romantic relationships, but you know, you can screw up any relationship if you put your mind to it.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. All relationships need constant, are constant challenge. They need constant monitoring. Now, we, we, we exist with relationships because they're also extremely important to us, extremely beneficial and extremely rewarding. But that doesn't mean they're going to be perfect all the time.

• 13:23Mike Carruthers?

  So here's the thing about guilt that I find so interesting. People feel guilt, it seems, when they get caught. So are they feeling guilty for what they did? Or are they feeling guilty because they got caught?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  So interesting. So I think when you get caught, in a sense, that's proof that the relationship is under threat. Because now the other person knows what you did. And so that means that relationship, the relationship is, is under threat. If you do something that you think has hurt another person, or could, let's say, could have hurt another person, but they don't find out, then in a sense, the relationship isn't under threat. And so you may not feel guilty about it. Right? But the guilt comes when you know that the relationship is under threat. And that, and so if somebody else finds out what you've done, then that's proof that the relationship is under threat. And there comes the guilt.

• 14:18Mike Carruthers?

  I want to dig a little deeper into this in just a moment. I'm talking with Chris Moore. He's author of the book, The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 15:23Mike Carruthers?

  So Chris, you sometimes see on TV some courtroom show or some true crime Dateline thing where the guy's in the courtroom and he's very sorry for the grisly murder he committed. But again, I wonder, is he sorry that he committed the murder? Or is he sorry that he's standing here in a court of law and he's been found guilty?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Well, the way that I would put it is that, yes, he's sorry that he's got caught because clearly there are going to be consequences. But in many cases of relationships, it's really sorrow, as I said before, that sorry that the relationship is now under threat, that you may be losing somebody that ultimately you care about. Okay? I mean, the courtroom situation is, I think, a little bit different because there, of course, the sorrow may not actually be guilt. It may just be fear of the consequences, that you're now going to have to suffer the consequences of the crime. And that's a little bit different from guilt.

• 16:29Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, but oftentimes in those situations, in a courtroom, the defendant is confronted with victims, family members, where now they really get to see the damage that they've done. So maybe they do start to feel guilty, obviously way too late, but maybe that is a little guilt because they're seeing the devastation that they caused, that they hadn't maybe thought about before.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think this is an opportunity maybe to say a little bit more about how guilt is constituted emotionally. So, in my view, guilt is not a simple emotion. It's actually a complex of different emotions. And one of the most important ones is empathy or sadness for the other person. So when you see that the other person is really hurt, as in the case that you just articulated, that starts to stimulate empathy for the other person. And that empathy is an important component of the guilt that you feel, because you feel sorrow or compassion for the other person. Okay? So guilt has these other emotional pieces to it.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  There's the compassion for the other person. There's, to some extent, self-directed anger as well. So you feel angry at yourself for what you did. Right? So you have this self-directed anger, you have compassion for the other person, and then you have some fear as well. Fear that either the relationship that you had with that person is now damaged or harmed, or fear for yourself for other reasons.

• 18:04Mike Carruthers?

  I want to talk about forgiveness. You know, you sometimes hear people say they can forgive, but they can't forget that what you did, you can't make it go away, you can't un-remember it. So it seems like, you know, depending on the severity of whatever you did, forgiveness is good, but what you did is what you did and that it never really goes away.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that's true. But I think the important thing about relationships is that, firstly, a number of important things. Firstly, that there's two sides to a relationship, okay? It's typically not the case that one person is doing the harm, but you know, quite often in relationships, you know, guilt goes both ways. And the important thing about relationships is if they're going to survive, then both have to be willing to bend towards the other. Right? To recognize when they've done harm to the other, apologize for it, but also be willing to forgive the other when they do something to harm you. Okay? So it's important to think of relationships as a two-way street.

• 19:11Mike Carruthers?

  So what do we do with this? I mean, knowing what you know, how do we, do we do anything different? Or is this just something to observe and notice and say, that's interesting?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  My message, I think, is to recognize that guilt is actually a positive emotion. It may feel horrible, it may feel bad, but it actually is good for us, right? And what it does is it helps to strengthen our relationships, as I've said. So that's the, that's the message, right? So when we feel guilty, we shouldn't think, oh, we're a bad person, okay? We don't deserve anything, you know? I think what it, what it means is that we're actually a sympathetic or an empathetic person, that we, when we feel guilt, it means that we care about other people. And then we should act on that guilt. We should, we should do whatever is needed in order to, to restore the relationship that we have. So I think the message is, is primarily a positive message.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  It's, it's one that says that guilt is a, is a good thing, and it's good for us, good for our relationships.

• 20:10Mike Carruthers?

  Sometimes people feel guilty when it seems like objectively, they shouldn't. Here's my example. So you're driving your car and somebody hits your car, and then your car slides into somebody else's car. And there's that sense of maybe that you feel guilty, that you hit that other car, but you didn't do it. You, it wasn't anything you did, but you still feel guilty. And it seems like that guilt is misplaced.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and guilt can be misplaced, there's no question about that. And I think in part, you know, what we have to understand is, well, first of all, the guilt is an emotional reaction, it's more like a gut reaction. It's not a rational process of thought, right? We don't, we don't figure out, do we have responsibility? And then if we do, feel guilty about it. We just feel guilty when, when bad things happen. And in part, that's because of the, the complex of emotions that I talked about. In part, it's, it's the fear of there being repercussions. In part, it's the empathy for the person who was harmed. So those are all the ingredients, if you like, that can, that can lead to guilt.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  But the important point is that the guilt is not a rational psychological process, right? It's a gut reaction. And you know, there are lots of cases of people who feel guilt when it really wasn't their fault. Um, but if the relationship was damaged anyway, there still is a tendency to feel guilt. And this can happen in everyday situations. Let's say, you know, just to give you an example, you, you were working in an office and you had a friend in the office and you got a promotion and they didn't get a promotion. Right? That's nothing to do with you. You didn't cause that. You may still feel guilty. Right? Because in some way, your relationship with them may be impacted by the fact that, um, that you did well and they didn't.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Um, or, you know, to, to take a case of, which is a little bit, bit, uh, you know, an unfortunate situation, um, in things like intimate partner violence, right? It's quite often the person who's been violated may feel guilty. Right? Even though, of course, they did not do anything, you know, they were the one that was harmed or violated. Um, but they may still feel guilty because the relationship that they had was harmed and they may feel like, well, what if I did do something? What if it is my fault somehow? Right? And my point is that, that the guilt is a, is a gut reaction to the relationship being harmed, not necessarily because you had any responsibility for it.

• 22:47Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's interesting because that example you just gave of, you know, you're, you get a promotion and your, your friend didn't get one. I don't know that I would feel guilty. I would feel bad and maybe that's guilt, but I wouldn't categorize it as guilt. I would, because I had nothing to do with it.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think what you're taking there is a, is a sort of a, um, in a sense, analyzing the responsibility. But in the moment, what we find is that, that when that happens, people do get a twinge of guilt under those circumstances. Right? Um, now if they, they might then analyze the situation and say, well, you know, it's nothing to do with me. I have no responsibility. Um, but often guilt doesn't work that way. Guilt works, as I said, as an emotional reaction to circumstances where quite often it's not our fault at all.

• 23:37Mike Carruthers?

  What about the many times that people do something and feel guilty? And there is no forgiveness. If, for any number of reasons, there's no forgiveness to be had.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  No, it's it's true and it can be devastating and that that's the kind of guilt that can go on forever, can confess to forever. Uh, and and under those circumstances, it is important to be able to find ways to resolve the guilt oneself, even without forgiveness. Um, you know, one of the things that that I think is very important here is to recognize that self forgiveness can play a role. And what I mean by self forgiveness is is the ability to to recognize that uh you did something wrong. You feel bad about it. You've done everything you can to um, you you know, to to repair any relationship that was harmed or damaged.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Uh, and and even if uh forgiveness was not forthcoming, there's nothing more you can do. And therefore, you you can forgive yourself. And it's almost like saying, you know, if somebody did that to me and they did everything that they could in their power to make things right, would I forgive them? Right? So in in effect, turn the tables. And if you if you can say to yourself, yes, I would forgive them under those circumstances, then it's only natural that you should forgive yourself for what you've done.

• 25:06Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you know, oftentimes when people, you know, do something horrible and they go to jail or whatever, you know, and the the victims will say something like, well, he has to live with that for the rest of his life. That's what this is all about, right? I mean, that's that. That's what keeps the guardrails up is that feeling of feeling terrible uh and feeling guilty, which keeps us on the straight and narrow.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Uh, we we need to have those those kind of psychological mechanisms, those guardrails, as you put it, the the the emotions um that do keep us on the straight and narrow.

• 25:43Mike Carruthers?

  Otherwise, it's chaos.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  You know, a world, a world that had only psychopaths and it would be complete chaos.

• 25:51Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is really enlightening because I mean guilt is something we all feel. We all hate feeling it. But to hear your perspective on it, it's not necessarily all a bad thing. In fact, it has some real benefits. I've been speaking with Chris Moore. He is author of the book, The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Chris, thank you for coming on and explaining this.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Mike.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 27:21Mike Carruthers?

  When you hear the word plagiarism, it's almost never in a positive light. It's lumped in there with cheating and dishonesty. It's taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own. We've all seen the headlines, songwriters accused of stealing from other songs, politicians and celebrities caught copying speeches or passages they claim they wrote. But plagiarism turns out to be a lot more complicated than it first appears. Sometimes two songs sound strikingly similar, and it might just really be coincidence. After all, there's only so many musical notes and chord progressions.

• 28:03Mike Carruthers?

  In other cases, people may copy without realizing it, influenced by ideas they've absorbed through the years but forgotten where they came from. And now, with AI creating content that draws on massive amounts of existing work, the line between inspiration, borrowing, and outright plagiarism is blurrier than ever.

• 28:26Mike Carruthers?

  So what actually counts as plagiarism? When is similarity suspicious? And when is it inevitable? And how do our brains, our culture, and our technology all factor into this? That's what we're about to explore with Roger Cruz. He's Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology at the University of Memphis, and a monthly columnist for Psychology Today. He's author of a book called "Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation From Chaucer to Chatbots." Hey Roger, welcome, well, welcome back. Good to have you back on Something You Should Know.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Well, thank you so much.

• 29:04Mike Carruthers?

  So what is plagiarism exactly? I think people have a notion, an idea of what it is and when it happens. But for the purposes of our discussion, what is plagiarism?

• 29:16Speaker 03

  I think it can be defined as the appropriation of someone else's words or ideas without acknowledgement or compensation.

• 29:25Mike Carruthers?

  And must it be intentional and willful? Or can plagiarism exist in "oops, I don't know how that happened"?

• 29:33Speaker 03

  That's the real issue. A lot of people who are caught plagiarizing will say that it was unintentional. And probably in many cases, it was. But that's the real issue, is that we have a very broad term that runs the gamut from simple inadvertent failure to seducation to wholesale copying. We have this one term that refers to a very wide variety of behaviors and motivations. And I think that's part of where the problem lies with regards to thinking about what this term refers to.

• 30:03Mike Carruthers?

  And so when I think of plagiarism, I think of like, you know, college term papers, or songs, or books, or things. But does plagiarism exist elsewhere?

• 30:14Speaker 03

  In virtually every sphere of life, you can think about this as being a possible issue. It's an issue for people who create encyclopedias, for people who create maps, for people who are engaged in a whole variety of activities. There are always people who are going assup forward and say, "Well, that was my idea." Or "that was my song." Or "that was my, you know, line in a poem." So it really is the case that it's quite broad in terms of the kinds of activities that are involved with this.

• 30:48Mike Carruthers?

  But where, and I guess it's often up to a judge if it goes to court, but where's the line? Like, I mean, there's only so many words you can put in so many orders to make a point, or there's only so many notes that you can make a song with. At what point is it just, that's the way it works? And when is it plagiarism?

• 31:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, ultimately, it comes down to an issue of copyright infringement. Plagiarism itself is not illegal, but copyright infringement is. And so when plagiarism cases go to trial, that's the actual charge, copyright infringement. And it really comes down to what you can convince a judge or a jury to believe. And the problem is that the judges and juries have different ideas about what this term means, and whether it's applicable to, for example, you know, five notes repeated in a song, or even just a bassline in a song. It's harder with music because, of course, the vocabulary is smaller. But it's the same problem that we see in written words as well.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  To what, how much copying must there be before one believes that there is intent behind it? And that's the issue that's difficult to resolve because it's quite often quite subjective.

• 32:01Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I know there have been cases. One case that comes to mind is George Harrison of the Beatles was sued over his song "My Sweet Lord." I think the claim was that it sounded too much like "He's So Fine" by the Chiffons. Well, there's a case where I have to believe George Harrison was a pretty good songwriter. He's one of the Beatles. He probably didn't need to intentionally go rip off "He's So Fine" to create "My Sweet Lord." It seems if it's similar, that it wasn't intentional.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Harrison case is quite complex, and the claim was made that even if it's unconscious, that's still infringement. That even if you aren't intending to copy, if it can be proven to a reasonable doubt that you were copying, then it doesn't matter, according to some judges, whether it's conscious or unconscious, that the end result is the same. But trying to prove unconscious intent, that gets very slippery and very psychological.

• 33:04Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it just seems so subjective and random. And just, here's a perfect example, I guess. A song has notes in it. And there are probably a million songs with the same two notes right next to each other. Well, is two notes plagiarism, or does it need to be three notes, or four, or five, or six, or seven notes? I mean, there's no objective standard. So, and it seems so common for notes to be next to each other. At what point do you call it plagiarism? And with words, I mean, how many words have to be the same words in the same order before it's plagiarism? Two, three, four, five?

• 33:45Speaker 03

  There are some phrases that are so commonly used. One example is the bloody three-day battle of Gettysburg. And if you Google that, that, those, those words, you'll find lots of examples online of that phrase. But it's not necessarily infringement. It simply exists as a, one way to describe an event. And what has to happen in the courtroom is that, once again, intent isn't really the point. The issue is output. If a judge or a jury believes that there is a substantial similarity between the work of one person and the work of somebody else, then they can be awarded damages.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  And the problem is, it could be conscious, it could be unconscious, intentional, unintentional. In the eyes of the law, if you can convince the judge or jury, then, then it is that thing.

• 34:42Mike Carruthers?

  Copyright infringement only occurs if someone complains, right? If you use somebody else's music and they don't mind, well, then there's no problem.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  And unfortunately, the problem becomes when you could profit from basically saying that somebody else's work is like your work. So, if an artist writes a song that's an homage to a different artist, the artist might be flattered, or they might say, "That's too similar to my work. You're actually capitalizing on my notoriety, and therefore, I'm going to sue you." So even in some cases, trying to show respect or admiration for a previous person's work, and trying to imitate that work can cross a line that, that some artists might find very problematic.

• 35:32Mike Carruthers?

  But somebody has to sue.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Right, the original artist has to sue. A really interesting case is fanfiction. This is when somebody takes the characters and world building of somebody else and uses that for their own purposes. It actually began with a Star Trek fanfiction. When the series was canceled in the late 60s, a bunch of people began to write new stories based upon the same characters, the same ship, the same kinds of adventures. And you can't publish that work. It's, uh, would be a violation of the copyright of the people who created the series originally. But a lot of it circulated online, and now there's a huge amount of fanfiction, literally

• 36:13Speaker 03

  millions of stories that exist online of the Harry Potter universe, almost any work of fiction or any movie, you can, uh, read people writing stories about that. And some authors hate that. They, they regard their characters as their children. Uh, Anne Rice, the woman who wrote Interview with a Vampire, was famous for sending out these, um, cease and desist letters to people who are trying to develop the characters in their own stories. Whereas other authors are actually quite, don't have any, don't have a real problem with it. C.S. Lewis thought it was perfectly fine for people to write new, new Narnia stories.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  And so you can see how the, um, perspective of the creator, it runs the gamut of this is fine to this is terrible, I'm going to sue you. So that adds more complications to the story of what's going on here in terms of intent and in terms of whether people would, you know, want to litigate against that.

• 37:12Mike Carruthers?

  So we hear about what you just described of there are things you're not supposed to do, you're not supposed to use other people's music, you're not supposed to use other people's art, but people do, and they could be sued, but how often do they get sued? Is it common or is it uncommon?

• 37:33Speaker 03

  I originally believed that it was relatively uncommon, but the more research that I conducted, the more I found that cases had been litigated, or more commonly, it's resolved through out-of-court process where a lawyer representing one artist might send a letter saying, gee, you know, you ripped us off, and there might be an out-of-court settlement. In fact, that's often what happens because people want to keep out of the news. And so you have these allegations of plagiarism, and you'd never hear anything more about it because the party is settled privately out of court. That seems to be very common, especially in the music world, where charges of appropriation and plagiarism can affect reputations in a fairly major sort of way. So a lot of it's handled in a private way,

• 38:18Speaker 03

  and that makes it even harder to know exactly how much of it's going on.

• 38:22Mike Carruthers?

  But is it your sense that there are thousands of cases, or there's a couple dozen cases, or in a year, or, I mean, is this rampant, or is this infrequent?

• 38:32Speaker 03

  I naively assumed it was fairly infrequent, and then the more research I did, the more I was just astonished at how much there is. There's a mention of plagiarism about once a week in the New York Times, for example, and that has increased dramatically over the last couple of decades. There are periods of time when it's not been talked about very much at all, and therefore it probably was not as big of a problem, but today it seems to be a major issue. And that may be a reflection of our more litigious society, that people are more likely to sue other people, or that the ideas about ownership have changed over time. When Shakespeare was writing his plays, there was no real idea of ownership. Shakespeare

• 39:11Speaker 03

  ripped off lots of people. Almost all of the great writers from the early modern period were borrowing each other's plots, in some cases, each other's characters, and that was considered to be fine.

• 39:23Mike Carruthers?

  How does the term intellectual property weave its way into this discussion? Is this all intellectual property that we're talking about?

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, intellectual property, or just IP, as people call it, that's a relatively recent phenomenon as well. It really goes hand in hand with the discussion of copyright. And for our purposes today, they're pretty much identical. The idea being that when you create some work, maybe it's a song, maybe it's a short story, that there is implicit copyright, and that that work is your intellectual property. But it even extends further than that. You know, if you create a character, like Harry Potter, that character is intellectual property. It might be copyrighted, certain books that were written by the author, but the actual idea of Harry Potter can be thought of as intellectual property.

• 40:15Mike Carruthers?

  But is the claim, "I didn't know, I had no idea, I've never heard of that, I've never seen that, I have no idea," is that a valid legal claim?

• 40:28Speaker 03

  No, the US case law is pretty clear. The defense "I didn't know," or "I wasn't aware," is problematic. There was a case a number of years ago where the claim was that it was possible that an artist heard an earlier song, maybe 20 years before they wrote their own. And yet a jury believed that, yeah, that's good enough for me. I believe that that could have lodged a certain musical idea in that person's mind. And therefore, even though they didn't intend to, you know, consciously plagiarize, that this idea was then the last expressed in work that owed something to the original. And if you convince a judge and jury that that's a good story,

• 41:11Speaker 03

  that will actually get you some money in the court of law.

• 41:15Mike Carruthers?

  How much money? I mean, is this a punitive thing? Or is this, you know, if I say, "Well, because of what you did, I can prove that there are damages to me, and then so you give me that money." Or if there are no damages, it's just, you know, "You copied my thing, but I didn't lose anything because of it," then you don't get anything.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  A very common way that's hounded in the music world is that somebody who perhaps inadvertently copied something might get added as a co-writer for that song and therefore get the royalties from that work. That's a relatively common way in which this is done. A lot of artists don't have deep pockets and so suing them wouldn't necessarily lead to a big windfall, although it can in some cases. But being added as a co-writer would ensure you some sort of compensation in the future as the royalties accrue for that work.

• 42:14Mike Carruthers?

  I'm fascinated by people, and I can think of several cases, where people have been outed as truly copying. Like, in their book, word for word, they have copied from some other place. And I wonder, well, why would you do that? Why would you at least not rework it a little bit to hide the fact that you're using somebody else's work? But there are cases of people, you know, word for word copying, and I don't get the thinking there.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, even having thought about this now for several years, I'm still mystified by this. Because in some respects, it's not all that hard to even paraphrase somebody else. So why on earth would you do something that might lead to serious issues for you down the line by copying page after page of somebody else's work? There are people who claim that plagiarists want to get caught. That's like kleptomania. There's a certain kind of compulsion that people have for taking the work of others. I'm not really convinced by that argument, but at the same time, I don't really have a better explanation.

• 43:24Mike Carruthers?

  Is plagiarism, copyright infringement, is it on the rise? Is it just a constant that's always here and it's always about the same? Or is it on the decline, or what?

• 43:36Speaker 03

  From what I can tell, it's never been easier to get away with plagiarism, simply because so much material is being produced every year. Think about the number of books, the number of songs, the number of stories that are published each year. It's a vast amount. And people aren't out there checking. In many cases, the plagiarism that does exist was discovered by accident. It's very common, for example, for a fan of a certain artist to say, gee, that sounds just like my favorite song. I'm gonna write to the original artist and ask them if they're aware of this. And that's how it comes to the attention, for example, of somebody who has been infringed upon.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  So because there aren't people out there really checking for it, and so much information is being produced, so many texts, so many songs are being produced, it really makes it relatively easy to escape detection. It really is the case that unless people are looking, they're gonna get away with it. On the other side, our tools for finding it are better than ever. So many students who have gone through college in the last 20 years or so have had to deal with a program called Turnitin, where an instructor can actually upload a paper written by a student, and then the service compares that paper to a vast warehouse of documents

• 45:01Speaker 03

  that already exist, and can then create a similarity score. And then it's up to the instructor to decide, is this amount of copying inadvertent, or was it deliberate? It gets very tricky for a lot of instructors, and they find themselves really conflicted about making accusations of plagiarism when in some cases that may not be appropriate.

• 45:20Mike Carruthers?

  Well, in a case of, you know, take a subject like history. I mean, there's only so many ways to describe an historical event, and many of those historical events have been written about by many, many people. And so it seems likely that you would write about it in a way that someone else would write about it, but that doesn't seem fair to call it plagiarism.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  There's only so many ways to tell about the childhood of Abraham Lincoln. There's only so many stories you can tell there, and they're going to be similar because they're based upon the same historical facts. But whether or not people were actually cribbing from other people's books, that's the issue.

• 45:58Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 46:00Mike Carruthers?

  Wow. Well, and the song thing always gets me because of the fact that there's only, you know, so many combinations of notes you can put that, you know, it just, it seems like you're gonna run into repetition because you're so limited by what a song can be.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  And that is a defense that many people have used to have been litigated against. You know, the envelope of pleasing sounds to Western ears is actually quite small. Think about all the possible combinations you could have. Many of them are very dissonant. There's only gonna be a relatively small number of combinations that are going to be considered aesthetically pleasing, in our culture at least, and therefore really is a very limited vocabulary that these artists are working with. And so you might have one song and have like four or five different people say, gee, that sounds like my song. And in a way, they're right. But in a way, they're wrong as well because it

• 47:06Speaker 03

  probably really is just an artist working by themselves, but with this very limited palette of notes that they can make use of.

• 47:14Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is something everybody needs to be aware of because I think there's this belief that, you know, I'm fine, I'm safe from being accused of plagiarizing something because I would never deliberately do that. But deliberately isn't a defense. I've been talking with Roger Cruz. He's associate dean and professor of psychology at the University of Memphis, and he has a monthly column in Psychology Today, and he's author of a book called Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Roger, this was great. Thank you.

• 47:57Mike Carruthers?

  Contrary to what many people believe, dark roast coffee does not contain more caffeine than light roast coffee, just because it's darker and tastes stronger. In fact, studies show that light and dark roasted beans contain very similar amounts of caffeine overall. And any small difference comes from how the beans are measured. Lighter roasted beans are denser, so a scoop can contain slightly more caffeine than the same scoop of darker beans. Now, a lot of people believe espresso has more caffeine than regular coffee, because espresso is brewed by forcing hot water through finely ground coffee in a short amount of time.

• 48:39Mike Carruthers?

  And that does create a higher concentration of caffeine per ounce. But because a single shot of espresso is so much smaller than a full cup of drip coffee, a regular cup of coffee ends up with more total caffeine. So the bottom line is, the difference in caffeine between light and dark roast coffee is minimal. It's the brewing method and serving size that has much more to do with how much caffeine you actually consume. And that is something you should know. You know, it's kind of hard to explain, and I'm not sure I completely understand it anyway, but when you share this podcast with other people, it is that power of word-of-mouth marketing that, boy, it really does make a difference.

• 49:24Mike Carruthers?

  It helps us grow our audience. It helps us become more visible. So please, if you can, share this podcast with someone you know. It's a great way to support the show. I'm Mike Herrothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 50:07Speaker 05

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