The Things We Don't Say

From childhood, we're taught that honesty is the best policy. Yet in everyday life, we hedge, soften our words, and leave things unsaid. This week, we talk with psychologist Steven Pinker about why indirect speech is such a fundamental part of human relationships.

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

• 0:00Shankar Vedantam?

  Hey there, Shankar here. Do you feel like you've lost your ability to focus? Do you start a task and then quickly find yourself distracted by something else? We explore the research on attention and how you can begin to reclaim your ability to focus in the latest episode on our new YouTube channel. Go to youtube.com/AtHiddenBrain or click the link in the show notes for today's episode. Okay, here's today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When children are very small, their minds are often an open book. They say what they mean.

• 0:42Shankar Vedantam?

  They blurt out things. This can come across as both cruel and charming. The little boy laughs aloud when someone slips on a banana peel and gets hurt. The little girl tells her uncle that his face is ugly. In Hans Christian Andersen's famous folk tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes," a child is the only one who speaks truth to power. The king has been taken in by con men who pretend to clothe him in marvelous robes that are actually nonexistent. The king's courtiers marvel at their majesty's fine garments, even though he is walking around naked.

• 1:26Shankar Vedantam?

  Finally, a small child blurts out what everyone can see, but no one wants to say aloud. The king is a fool. The folk tale has many parallels in real life. Authoritarian leaders throughout history have surrounded themselves with yes-men, who tell them their every action is wise and brave. When we listen to stories like "The Emperor's New Clothes," most of us identify with the child. We think that if we were in that situation, we too would be honest. We too would speak truth to power. Today on the show, we explore the many ways in which we fail to say what we mean and

• 2:10Shankar Vedantam?

  mean what we say. It turns out, most of us are not the kid in the story. We're the courtiers. The power and the peril of coming clean. This week on Hidden Brain.

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• 3:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram teen accounts' automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Southern New Hampshire University. Science consistently tells us, learning starts with motivation. That's why SNHU offers over 200 flexible, affordable, online programs to help you get

• 3:56Shankar Vedantam?

  where you want to go. Take classes that spark your curiosity, shape your skill set, and prepare you for what's next. A degree can help move you forward, no matter what motivates you. Start yours at SNHU.edu/brain. Get to the point. Don't mince your words. Lay it all on me. We have countless expressions about the value of being direct with others. And yet, as we go through life, we often don't just say what we mean. We hedge. We weave. We dodge. At Harvard University, psychologist Steven Pinker studies language, social relations, and the mind.

• 4:40Shankar Vedantam?

  He has thought deeply about what our evasions and euphemisms might reveal about us. Steve Pinker, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 4:50Shankar Vedantam?

  Steve, as an eminent member of the Harvard faculty, you are sometimes called upon to help the university president raise money. Tell me what this is like. Do you have to wine and dine potential donors?

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Well, there was one episode that sticks in memory. That was when the president of the university recruited me to have dinner with, as they say, a high net worth individual. That is a euphemism for filthy rich. This was one of the world's highest net worth individuals, as the fundraising office says, or to use another euphemism, the development office. And I took a train to Manhattan for the event. The goal, of course, was to solicit a very, very, very large donation, or again, another euphemism, a gift to Harvard from this high net worth individual.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  And it was at an expensive, quiet restaurant. We were, me and the university president, were seated at a quiet, remote table, waiting for our partner to join us. We conferred, and the president indicated that we would see how the conversation proceeded. We wouldn't bring up the gift, obviously. In fact, I wouldn't bring it up at all. Establish a warm rapport, a mood of conviviality, of intimacy. And as we were having this conversation in this dark corner of a rather romantic restaurant, it reminded me of something.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Kind of reminded me of when I was single and I was out on a hot date. Because, you know, both parties kind of know what you're there for, or at least what issue is kind of hanging over them. But it would be gauche, to say the least, to just blurt it out, even though both sides know what the evening is ultimately about.

• 7:04Shankar Vedantam?

  So I can imagine that one reason the university president wants you by his side is because the potential donor, this high net worth individual, will feel good about having dinner with a star member of the faculty. So you're not the eye candy, but you're the brain candy?

• 7:20Speaker 04

  I was the brain candy. You know, on any date, or many dates, there's entertainment. You go out to a concert, you go out to a movie. So that's kind of the entertainment. But also, I was part of the deal insofar as a lot of tech entrepreneurs are very, very smart people, who forwent a career in writing, or academia, or intellectual activities in order to pursue their goal of founding a successful company. But they're very smart, they're very curious, they kind of miss the banter, the repartee, the intellectual discussion, being close to the cutting edge of ideas.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  You know, they genuinely are intellectually curious and smart. And forging a connection with a university is a way for them to be a member of a community that they long to be part of. And so, what are we, to put it crudely, and again, this is exactly what you cannot do, but what that evening was all about was, give us hundreds of millions of dollars, we'll name something after you, and you'll get to hang out with interesting people. That's the quid pro quo. But if, when this gentleman sat down, the president said, hey, if you give us $150 million, then we'll name the program after you, and you can speak to Pinker and Michael

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Sandel and other Harvard faculty as often as you want, that would put a kind of pall over the evening. It would be, even though it would have cut out a lot of time, these are busy individuals. But somehow, offering to save that time would be like on a date, saying, okay, so are we going to have sex at the end of this or not? You know, there's a sense in which that would have been a shocking thing to say, and a not shocking thing to say at the same time, because both parties know it. They kind of know that the other one knows it, but they may not know that the other one knows that they know that the other one knows they know it.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Language has to do two things at once. It's a channel of communication. Bits and bytes are exchanged for particular purposes, sharing information, negotiating agreements. At the same time, it establishes a particular kind of social relationship. Are we just transactional partners, pure quid pro quo? Are we friends? Do we have like a communal, warm, intimate relationship? Is it a relationship of dominance, that is, is one person clearly the dominant and the other the subordinate? People care a lot about which of those relationships they have.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  And the way you often cement them is with explicit verbal declarations. In the case of a romantic couple, it's like, I love you, and then they reciprocate with I love you. Or it can be non-verbal cues, having a nice dinner together. That's often the way a friendship is cemented.

• 10:44Shankar Vedantam?

  In the course of this dinner that you were having with this high net worth individual, how did the conversation go? I'm assuming you didn't start by talking about money, or perhaps money didn't come up at all through most of that conversation?

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Money never came up. It was a lively conversation. This was a very smart person, intellectually curious. He talked about the Human Genome Project, the development of the brain, issues facing the university, economics. The actual cold, hard financial transaction was, I think, relegated to the "my people will call your people" stage. And some of that was out of earshot of me being the, nearly the entertainment, not one of the partners. But the idea, both on a date and in a solicitation for funds, is to avoid the impression that the relationship is transactional.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  The idea is that we are in a relationship of sharing, of warmth, of intimacy, of mutual concern. And so, all the signals have to indicate that. Now, in the case of solicitation of a donation, as of course with sex and romance, there actually often is a genuine relationship, together with the actual exchange of favors. But still, it's a lot of emotional capital goes into preventing any impression that this is a transactional relationship.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Those do occur, but I suspect that probably the most univiscent gifts tend to occur when they are considered to be, as they say, a gift, something that is layered on top of a communal relationship.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  And this is, in the case of the university, the intellectual stimulation and exchange, together with the prestige of not being merely a capitalist profit maximizer, but also a philanthropist for cultural and educational institutions. Those are the ultimate incentives.

• 13:09Shankar Vedantam?

  So I'm wondering, at a dinner like this, and the analogy to sexual courtship is apt, there might come a point in the dinner where, in some ways, something actually has to be communicated, that this is not just a dinner. So in other words, what happens if the high net worth individual says, "This was a delightful conversation, I really enjoyed meeting Steve Pinker," and then goes back to his hedge fund or his tech company to continue to make money and has no interest in Harvard going forward? That would not be a successful dinner.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  Exactly. And this is where a lot of what informally we call "social skills," "social acumen," jargon of psychology, sometimes called "theory of mind," that is, your theory of what's going on in the other person's mind. As you say, you don't let the moment slip. On the other hand, if you make it too overt, too early, then it feels like a transactional relationship, as opposed to one of mutual generosity.

• 14:06Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering, did the donor come through? Did you get the big gift?

• 14:10Speaker 04

  I think not as big as had been hoped. Yes, of course. So maybe I was not charming enough.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Also, donors, actually, no, there was a donor, now that I think of it. The donor did not have the entity named after himself. So there was a donation, but he chose having something named after him at Harvard came second to the various buildings with his own name plastered on them.

• 14:47Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to talk about an example of indirect speech in the political arena. In 2016, then presidential candidate Donald Trump insulted Nikki Haley, who was the governor of South Carolina. Here's how a TV station in South Carolina described the exchange.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  A Twitter battle tonight between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, of all people. The Republican presidential frontrunner tweeted this message earlier today, and it said, quote, "The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley." Well, the South Carolina governor responded simply, "Bless your heart."

• 15:22Shankar Vedantam?

  So Steve, when used by Americans from southern states, does "bless your heart" mean "bless your heart"?

• 15:29Speaker 04

  It does not mean "bless your heart." And it was rather clever on her part, because he was, obviously, they were in a contest for dominance.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  One way to play it is with in-your-face insults, that's the kind of playground trash talk. Haley, rather than taking the bait and meeting him in the same arena, tries to step above it with the non sequitur. "Bless your heart" doesn't make sense in context, because that's not what you say to someone who just insulted you. So listeners have to then puzzle, well, geez, she's not just saying things at random, she had a reason to say that. Why did she say that? And to read between the lines, it's, "This kind of trash talk does not wound me. I consider myself to have a strong enough reputation, and I have enough confidence

• 16:26Speaker 04

  that I can, I believe that I will not be lowered in status because of the content of your insult by not playing that game."

• 16:36Shankar Vedantam?

  It is the case also that I think, especially in the American South, "bless your heart" is not just a wish for your continued good health. It could also be another two or three word phrase that might be unprintable, but is couched in much more diplomatic language.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Indeed. And the language of diplomacy, as with all of our speech that is not meant to be taken literally, and that's a lot of it, there's a lot of interpreting in context. And the way that humans do it is by adhering to a principle of relevance and of cooperation. That is, the ground rules are, the listener thinks to himself or to herself, what did they mean that would explain what they just said? And so, any socially competent listener can say, "She is signaling, you have not wounded me, I'm not playing that game, I am confident enough that I don't feel the need to reply to that insult."

• 17:42Shankar Vedantam?

  So often, what we say aloud doesn't represent what we're thinking. When we come back, the many roles that indirect speech plays in our lives. Also, when to say what we mean, and when this can be a mistake. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 18:10Shankar Vedantam?

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• 18:41Shankar Vedantam?

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• 19:26Shankar Vedantam?

  Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Hidden Brain.

• 19:37Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Steve Pinker is a psychologist at Harvard University, who studies the nuances of language and social relations. Steve, if we were to sketch something of a taxonomy of indirect speech, one of the first on the list might be the lies that we tell in order to protect the feelings of the people we love. Can you talk about this idea, perhaps with some examples, Steve?

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Sure. Someone shows up in an outfit, you know, they've taken a lot of effort to beautify themselves, and even if you think that it might be in ghastly taste, you might say, "Oh, that's beautiful, you look great." Or even more fraught is often if someone is an artist, and they show you their objet d'art, and you have to comment on it.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  There's so many ways for that to go wrong. It could be if it's a painting of a red barn, it could be kitsch, if it's too abstract, it could be incomprehensible. So you have to say, "Beautiful, striking, powerful, strong," even if you may think privately that it's hideous. Again, the goal there, again, let's tie it back to the underlying explanation, is that there is a relationship to be cemented, and each one wishes the best for the other. Neither one is superior to the other. Each would do anything for the other.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  Those are the fictions that underlie a relationship of friendship. I call them fictions because they can't always be true, but that's the background assumption that makes friends friends, that makes lovers lovers. What that means is you don't want to say, blurt out anything that would directly contradict that tacit assumption.

• 21:45Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm thinking of how this is also true at the level of international relationships. You know, there is a hierarchy between countries. There are countries that are richer and more powerful, and there are countries that are poorer and weaker. But very often, in international settings, when diplomats sit down or the leaders of countries sit down, you know, they're very complimentary to one another. They say nice things about one another. So even though, you know, there is some hierarchy between the countries, everyone agrees that in this public forum, we have to pretend like we are equals or we have to pretend like we deeply care about one another. Can you talk about the idea that this doesn't just happen at the level of interpersonal relationships? It happens at the level of diplomacy and nations?

• 22:25Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely. And the perhaps most conspicuous fiction is simply the iconography of the United Nations, where, you know, Vanuatu, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific, and, you know, China or Russia are, at least in the general assembly, are treated identically. They have the same-sized desk and the same-sized flag and the same privileges. In fact, the word diplomacy, which we sometimes use to refer to our everyday interactions, but technically refers to the relationship between nation-states, reminds us that there is a lot in international relations that does not consist of actual brawn or brute force

• 23:08Speaker 04

  nor wealth, GDP, but relationships of respect, status, power, dignity, and to make things happen and to establish stable relationships. There's an awful lot of posturing, symbolization that goes into international relations. There's a famous book by Barry O'Neill that shows that every year there are probably 100 acts between countries that are purely symbolic. That is, two leaders have dinner together or one sends a vice president to the funeral of an ex-head of state of the other.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Or they exchange students or zoo animals. Or they attend a ceremony on which they, you know, raise a flag or formally apologize. There's an awful lot of just social relationships that go on between heads of state.

• 24:19Shankar Vedantam?

  So in 2011, then-President Barack Obama had a hot-mic moment where he expressed his sentiments about dealing with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What happened, Steve? Describe this incident, because in some ways, it peeled the curtain back on what's actually happening behind all of this diplomacy.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Yes, it was a hot-mic moment. I discovered it when I clicked on some bait at the bottom of a webpage, the 10 most embarrassing hot-mic moments. And one of them is when Barack Obama confided to Nicolas Sarkozy that, you know, what both of them knew, namely that Bibi Netanyahu was a pain in the neck. I don't think they used that euphemism. Now, that was almost an international incident, even though, you know, everyone knew that. It's, there's an old saying from the journalist Michael Kinsley that the definition of a gaffe in Washington is when a politician says something that's true.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Now, by the way, that has been made somewhat obsolete by Donald Trump, who has blurted out what in earlier times would have been considered gaffes. That's a whole other story of different rules that he plays by. But the default rules are that leaders of parties within a country, leaders of countries in international relations, have a relationship of mutual admiration and respect.

• 25:53Shankar Vedantam?

  So in this hot-mic moment, Sarkozy apparently told Obama, "I cannot bear Netanyahu. He's a liar." And Obama says, "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day." And it's the kind of thing that people might talk about it like, you know, dinner parties. But to realize the same thing is happening probably at the level of international relationships is really striking, because you hear so little of it when you see the polite diplomacy that happens in these international forums.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  And the tension is that for agreements to be negotiated, it helps when two parties consider themselves to be in a communal relationship. That lubricates getting to yes. But the paradox being that, especially at the level of leaders, things that they say in private can then float some norm that characterizes their public relationship.

• 26:47Shankar Vedantam?

  So in interpersonal settings, it can be a tricky balance to communicate what you mean while also trying to hide what you're saying. I want to play you a clip from the 1989 comedy, When Harry Met Sally. Harry has complimented Sally's looks a bit too insistently, and she accuses him of coming on to her.

• 27:06Speaker 06

  All right, all right. Let's just say, just for the sake of argument, that it was a come-on. What do you want me to do about it? I take it back, okay? I take it back.

• 27:17Speaker 07

  You can't take it back.

• 27:18Speaker 06

  Why not?

• 27:19Speaker 07

  Because it's already out there.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Oh, jeez, what are we supposed to do? Call the cops? It's already out there.

• 27:26Shankar Vedantam?

  So Steve, there's something very interesting here. Once something is out of the box, Sally is saying it can't be put back into the box?

• 27:34Speaker 04

  In that scene in the movie, they had just met. They're sharing a ride across country. That's why there was some motor noise in that audio clip.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  And they were not in a romantic or sexual relationship, even though, as with my fundraising dinner, it was in the back, it had to be in the back of their minds. But there's a big difference between something being common knowledge, as Sally put it, "out there", and something being known privately by each of them. You know, they're grownups. They're, you know, two sexually mature heterosexual individuals. Each one has to know that the possibility of a sexual relationship has crossed their minds. But each one could think about the other, "Well, she doesn't know exactly what's running through my mind. Maybe she thinks I'm dense." Or she could think, "Maybe he thinks I'm naive."

• 28:28Speaker 04

  However, when it is, as she said, "out there", that is, when it is said in plain language, then the other person knows that you know. The common knowledge is no longer deniable.

• 28:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Another kind of indirect speech is the humble brag. Describe what this is, Steve. Can you think of some examples that you've come by humble bragging in your own life?

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. I once saw a documentary with an eminent British evolutionary biologist, John Maynard Smith, be recognizable to any evolutionary biologist. And the British are champions, ninjas at humble bragging. And he was being interviewed, and I asked him why he went into the field that he did. And he said, "Well, originally, I was interested in physics, but I realized I wasn't smart enough to do physics. Any idiot can do biology."

• 29:28Speaker 04

  This is a truly brilliant man. He invented the entire field of evolutionary game theory, a powerful idea. And he laughed when he said it. In it, he was doing kind of two things. And this was the genius of the expert humble brag. He was not saying that he was so coarse as to have a boast, like, "I'm, you know, I realize that I was a smart person and I could make a contribution to biology, because I was so smart. I was smarter than other biologists." But by saying, "Any idiot can do biology", both saying, "I don't have to worry about people thinking that I'm an idiot.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  If I call myself an idiot or compare myself to idiots, people will know to blow that off. I have the confidence to do that, because my status is not in doubt." You know, by my lights, biology is hard. If he's saying, "Any idiot can do biology", and I'm an idiot, the kind of idiot who can do biology, I'm thinking, well, gee, I find biology kind of hard. Does that mean that I am, you know, unlike Sir John Maynard Smith, I am not of the caliber that would find it easy? I find it hard, and therefore, I'm even lower than him in intelligence than if he were to say it outright. So it works at multiple levels,

• 30:52Speaker 04

  as in general, wit, charm, tact, social skill often refer to cases where the desired message comes not from the literal content, but from several layers of thinking about what the other person thinks about what you think about what they think. That kind of chess game of thinking several moves ahead, except instead of on the chessboard, it's in the brains of two people.

• 31:31Shankar Vedantam?

  There's a related idea that is beautifully captured in the comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David, playing himself, has donated money for a wing of a nonprofit building which is named after him. The other wing displays only the inscription "donated by anonymous." At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Larry is talking to his soon-to-be ex-wife Cheryl when he discovers who the anonymous donor is. It's his rival, Ted Danson.

• 31:58Speaker 07

  He donated the whole wing. Didn't want anybody to know.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Well, he told you. So he apparently wanted somebody to know.

• 32:04Speaker 07

  He told me, okay?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Who else did he tell? How do you know he just told you?

• 32:08Speaker 07

  I don't know. The point is, he didn't need all the fanfare and didn't need a--

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Fanfare? What fanfare? I don't like the fanfare. Are you saying I like fanfare?

• 32:15Speaker 07

  You can tell a few people. He just doesn't need the whole world to know that he donated all this money.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  You know what? I didn't need the world to know either. Nobody told me that I could be anonymous and tell people. I would have taken that option.

• 32:29Shankar Vedantam?

  So that's a great line, Steve. "Nobody told me I could be anonymous and tell people."

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Oh, it is brilliant. And it-- because it strikes to the heart of a very deep paradox about altruism. Going back to the medieval Jewish philosopher Bimonaides, who had a ladder of righteousness where the size of the gift doesn't determine how righteous it is, according to Bimonaides. If you do it for the glory, for the recognition, that's considered less indicative of an underlying trait of charitability or generosity than if you do it anonymously. For the obvious reason that if you do it anonymously, there's no ulterior motive of reputation,

• 33:16Speaker 04

  nor can you call in the favor and expect some special treatment or quid pro quo. In experiments that I've done in collaboration with some postdocs and grad students, we found that people will actually give more moral credit to someone who gives less money anonymously than more money publicly, which Larry David used to great comic effect.

• 33:43Shankar Vedantam?

  So in some ways, in that clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ted Danson is trying to have it both ways. He's getting the moral benefit of being seen as an anonymous giver while also telling people that he was the anonymous giver. He's really getting it both ways, and that's what gets Larry so upset.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  Indeed, yes. It underscores the paradox of reputation in altruism, that ultimately, reputation is a motive for altruism. You want other people to think that you're kind, you're generous, you're beneficent. On the other hand, if other people perceive that that is the motive, they give you less credit as a genuinely altruistic person because maybe you're in it for the long-term benefits.

• 34:28Shankar Vedantam?

  Another kind of indirect speech is the innuendo. I want to play you a clip that captures this from the TV show The Sopranos. In this scene, a member of the soprano mob family accosts an old acquaintance in a store and pays for his candy bar.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  Hey, how you doing?

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Hey.

• 34:47Speaker 06

  Listen, Danny, we just want you to know how glad we are. A guy like you was on that jury, that mob thing, that Junior Soprano trial. Hard-working guy, wife and two kids, performing a civic duty we should all take part in. We know you do the right thing.

• 35:06Shankar Vedantam?

  So what do you hear that's being said and not said, Steve?

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Well, that is an excellent example of a veiled threat. What's being veiled is if you vote to convict Junior Soprano, we will harm your family. And it can be effective by striking fear into the heart of the target without literally exposing themselves to the crime of extortion.

• 35:34Shankar Vedantam?

  So what the mobster was doing in that clip from The Sopranos was basically offering something that had plausible deniability. If someone came up and said, "Is this what you really meant?" the mobster could say, "No, I'm just wishing this old acquaintance well."

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Exactly. And the question is, how plausible is the deniability? And crucially, the level of plausibility for the speaker and the hearer have to be different for it to work. So you want it to be not so subtle that it'll fly over the head of the hearer--

• 36:06Shankar Vedantam?

  Right.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  --but subtle enough that it, by higher standards of proof, such as in a court of law, it would not meet that higher standard.

• 36:16Shankar Vedantam?

  So if a motorists gets pulled over by a cop, telling the cop, you know, "Here's $100. Let's make this go away right now," you know, that could get you in trouble because you're bribing the police officer. But if you say, you know, "Is there some way we can get this resolved without, you know, having to do a lot of paperwork?" That might send the message of what you're trying to say, but give you some plausible deniability if the cop turns out to be an honest cop.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Yes. Enough deniability that it couldn't be the basis of conviction by the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a very high threshold. But in everyday conversation, we don't need that higher threshold. We can take our chances that, you know, "Oh, come on. It's pretty obvious already said." So in that case, plausible deniability. In the case of a court case, it's near-- it's deniability beyond a reasonable doubt, a much higher standard.

• 37:17Shankar Vedantam?

  A few years ago, the writer Bruce Feiler was given an assignment by a magazine. He was to try and bribe a series of maître d's at popular New York City restaurants in order to get a good table. What did he imagine would happen when he did this, Steve?

• 37:32Speaker 04

  So the assignment filled him with dread. He kept imagining the incensed retorts of some outraged maître d, like, "How dare you insult me?" Or, "What kind of establishment do you think this is? Or do you think you could get in with that?" As it happened, he instinctively couched the bribe in innuendo, in direct terms. He would-- instead of saying, "If I give you 20 bucks, would you seat me right away? Would you let me jump the queue?" He would hold the $20 bill in peripheral vision, not look at it, look the maître d in the eye, and say something like, "I was wondering if you had a cancellation."

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Or, "I was hoping maybe you could fit us in." Or, "This is a really important night for me." The interesting thing is, it worked every time.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  Despite all our fears, all maître d's in Manhattan are bribable, or at least they were at the time they wrote this article. Which leads to the question, what was he-- and by extension, all of us are so afraid of-- that is, what would be so terrible if the maître d rebuffed the bribe? I think the answer is that, going back to our different kinds of social relationships, breaching the tacit assumptions of a social relationship, the common knowledge that cements the relationship, has emotional costs, which we experience as embarrassment, awkwardness, if they are accidental, if they're one-time,

• 39:17Speaker 04

  or as disbelief, outrage, shock, if they are intentional or repeated.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  In the case of a maître d, you know, maître d, they're dressed in finery. They're wearing a tux or a nice dress. And they carry themselves with the authority that this is their kingdom. They get to seat people when and where they choose. That's part of the dignity of being a maître d. If you're tendering an outright quid pro quo bribe, you're kind of treating them like a sales clerk, like a transactional partner, undermining that aura of authority that they have. And doing it in cases where you don't know whether they will agree leads to that emotion of-- on the part of the speaker, it would be awkwardness.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  On the part of the recipient of the bribe, it would be outrage, at least in the imagination of the writer. And even in the case where it did succeed, which it did in every time, it may not have succeeded had he tendered the bribe as a naked quid pro quo. He did do it indirectly, and it worked.

• 40:38Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, it's interesting. We talked earlier about the challenge of sexual courtship. In the clip that I played you from When Harry Met Sally, you know, if Harry had shown his hand, but it turns out that Sally was completely not interested, maybe Sally was married already, and maybe Sally has no interest in Harry, that would be a slap in the face. And so it's helpful in those cases to put forward a very tentative proposal that perhaps the other party can reject, also, you know, fairly subtly, so that there's no face that's lost, there's no humiliation that is meted out, even as both parties make clear where they stand.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  Indeed. And in fact, in the studies that I have done, that is one of the motives for using indirect speech, that it avoids the change in relationship from one in which one person has the authority, the superiority of striking down another's offer. That changes the relationship. It then introduces awkwardness if the basis of the relationship had been one of egalitarian warmth and communal sharing. So you don't want to spoil the relationship with one person kind of holds the prerogative of sexual consent

• 41:55Speaker 04

  and can blatantly imply that the other is not worthy of it. Obviously, the time comes when there's no choice. We're just going to say no. And what part of "no" don't you understand? If that stage can be avoided, they can maintain the fiction of a completely platonic friendship. Or in more dangerous and fraught circumstances, such as a supervisor and an employee, or a professor and a student, it would be not just breaching a norm, but breaching a law or a rule. And they may not want to go through the trouble of making a court case out of it.

• 42:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Indirect speech can be a useful lubricant, greasing the wheels of social interaction. But it's not always what is called for. When we come back, when it's good to be coy and when it's necessary to be blunt. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 43:11Shankar Vedantam?

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• 44:39Shankar Vedantam?

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• 44:49Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 44:53Shankar Vedantam?

  Steven Pinker is a psychologist at Harvard University. He's the author, most recently, of the book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

• 45:07Shankar Vedantam?

  Steve, there are many vivid examples of the importance of using direct speech. You talk about the crash of Korean Air 801 in 1997. What happened in that tragedy?

• 45:19Speaker 04

  This is a case in which the pilot, in a social setting in which there was a clear hierarchy, and he was the authority, and the other pilots and technicians had to defer to him. In this case, it was clear to the second and third-in-command that a disaster was possible, that the plane was losing altitude, it was on a collision course. But they indicated there was a problem, but they didn't just blurt it out and say, hey, we're going to crash. Wake up, do something, or let us take over the controls, resulting in tragedy. It's one of the cases where, for all the socially lubricating benefits

• 46:02Speaker 04

  of indirectness and innuendo, there are times when it becomes cruel, tragic, unjust to persist in failing to describe something in so many words.

• 46:17Shankar Vedantam?

  So there's a trend out there known as radical honesty, which holds that we should all be saying exactly what's on our minds without any indirection or euphemism. One of the leading proponents of radical honesty is a psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. Here's how he makes the case for it.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  So the idea is being able to be happy and be related to people, and not be guarded and careful and protected and afraid of being found out. That's a lousy way to live. It's a better way to live, to live out loud, let the chips fall where they may, have a few hard times now and then, but still, they get all cleaned up because everybody tells the truth.

• 46:55Shankar Vedantam?

  That does sound appealing, Steve. Do you think it always works in practice?

• 47:01Speaker 04

  To put it mildly, no. But it is often a hellscape when everyone is honest with everyone else. And there are some comedies and science fiction plots that actually play that out for the amusement and sometimes the horror of an audience. But the reason that it doesn't is that this is a world in which there are no social relationships. Everything is transactional. There's no warmth, there's no friendship. Because all of us constantly have compromising thoughts about even our closest friends. Oh, that was a stupid comment. But blurting those things out just corrodes the tacit assumptions that make a friendship, or a romantic relationship,

• 47:44Speaker 04

  or even a stable relationship of respect, of a supervisor and a supervisee stable and sustainable. If every thought was blurted out, then there would be no long-term, stable relationships of cooperation.

• 48:12Shankar Vedantam?

  You cite a French essayist and philosopher from the 17th century who wrote about what would happen if we were all open books. What does Blaise Pascal say?

• 48:23Speaker 04

  He said that if everyone said what was on their minds, there would not be four friends in the world. And indeed, if there was a hidden microphone in my dining room in the unbuttoned conversations that I have with my wife, my family, my close friends, and that was published tomorrow in New York Times, I would be in deep trouble, even though I don't really have anything to be ashamed of. I haven't committed a murder or haven't broken any laws. But just the unguarded, honest comments that you make about other people, if voiced, would negate the assumption of infinite mutual respect and generosity

• 49:06Speaker 04

  that are the basis of friendships and of other relationships, relationships of decorum and cooperation. My favorite example, I don't know if you have a clip from this, was in the romantic comedy movie Tootsie, where in a scene in which the disguised Dustin Hoffman, portraying an actress, becomes intimate with a fellow actress on a soap opera, played by Jessica Lange, and she confesses to the disguised Dustin Hoffman.

• 49:38Speaker 07

  You and I wish just once. What?

• 49:42Speaker 07

  That a guy could be honest enough just to walk right up to me and say, hey, listen, you know, I'm confused about this, too. I could lay a big line on you. We could do a lot of role-playing. But the simple truth is, I find you very interesting, and I'd really like to make love with you.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  And then, in a clever twist of fate, later in the movie, an undisguised and unrecognized Dustin Hoffman does meet Jessica Lange at a cocktail party, goes up to her and says,

• 50:11Speaker 06

  I could lay a big line on you, and we could do a lot of role-playing. But the simple truth is, is that I find you very interesting, and I'd really like to make love to you. You know? It's a simple truth.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  And of course, she throws him a glass of wine in his face, showing our hypocrisy about our hypocrisy. Namely, we long for honesty, candor, not role-playing and beating around the bush, just saying what we mean. But really, we would not tolerate it.

• 50:59Shankar Vedantam?

  So you've thought deeply about the costs and the benefits of indirect speech. I understand your wife recently challenged you to act on your own theories, and she took a leaf out of that story you told me about the magazine writer who managed to score great restaurant tables with a $50 bribe. But what was the challenge she laid down on the table, Steve?

• 51:20Speaker 04

  So we were having a lovely stroll on the Brooklyn waterfront, late summer night, and there was the River Cafe, a lovely restaurant with a gorgeous view of Manhattan. And we hadn't made a reservation, and we were getting hungry. And I had a $50 bill in my pocket, which is a rare occasion. And so she's saying, well, look, you've explained how it works. It would be really good if we could get in there. You're the guy with a theory? Let's see if your theory works.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  And like the writer for Gourmet Magazine, I got to say, it was terrifying. I don't know what I was afraid of, but it did require screwing up a lot of gumption.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  But I did. And I said, if I have the courage of my convictions, I got to do it. And so I went in, but I was defeated by the sight that greeted me at the hostess station. There were two maître-d's, two elegantly attired, attractive women, both of whom smiled at me. And I realized that any innuendo that I tried with one would be immediately spotted by the other. Perhaps that's why they hired maître-d's in Paris. One of the revelations of this article in Gourmet Magazine is that bribing maître-d's is eminently possible. Now, of course, restaurants, the owner of the restaurant

• 52:50Speaker 04

  has an incentive that his or her maître-d's not be bribable, because then people would be loath to make reservations if they could just be delayed and delayed and delayed by people jumping the queue with $50 bills. So there's some conflict there between the interests of the maître-d, which is to accept a little tip on the side, allow their palms to be greased, and the interests of the owner. And I'm wondering whether the owner had a pair of maître-d's there just for that reason.

• 53:19Shankar Vedantam?

  So what happened? You had the $50 bill in your hand, and you just put it back in your pocket? What did you do?

• 53:24Speaker 04

  I skulked away, yes. And we had a long walk to find a restaurant with a table.

• 53:44Shankar Vedantam?

  Steven Pinker is a psychologist at Harvard University. He is the author of the book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Steve, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

• 54:04Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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• 56:10Speaker 04

  The Perception Box.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a Perception Box? You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us, yet we often don't even recognize it's there. Your face is a mask, and you're behind this mask. Science of Perception Box. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.