Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest
Speaker 1: who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today's episode of the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast is brought to you by the number one
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Speaker 1: slash TPP. And now I'm really excited to be speaking
Speaker 1: with my guest today, Alan Alda Allan has earned international
Speaker 1: recognition as an actor, writer, and director. He has won
Speaker 1: seven Emmy Awards, has received three Tony nominations. Is an
Speaker 1: inductee of the Television Hall Fame and was nominated for
Speaker 1: an Academy Award for his role in The Aviator. Alda
Speaker 1: played Hawkeye Pierce on the classic television series mash and
Speaker 1: as many films include Crimes and Misdemeanors, Everyone Says, I
Speaker 1: Love You, Manhattan, Murder Mystery, and Bridge of Spies. Alda
Speaker 1: is an active member of the science community, having hosted
Speaker 1: the award winning series Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years
Speaker 1: and founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at
Speaker 1: Stonybrook University. His latest book is called If I Understood
Speaker 1: You would I have this look on my face? My
Speaker 1: adventures in the art and science of relating and communicating.
Speaker 1: What an honored is to have Alan Alda on the
Speaker 1: podcast today. Congrats on your new book. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: It's very exciting. I enjoyed reading it very much. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to just jump in here and I want
Speaker 1: to start off by asking how you got into science communication. Well,
Speaker 1: it began because since I was so interested in science
Speaker 1: in general, I really left at the chance to do
Speaker 1: the series on public television called Scientific American Frontiers, and
Speaker 1: I realized while we were doing that that we were
Speaker 1: doing it in a kind of unusual way. It was
Speaker 1: just a conversation between us. It wasn't a list of
Speaker 1: questions that I came in with, because that list of questions,
Speaker 1: if you stick to a list of questions, you're not
Speaker 1: really listening to the answer, and you're not probing the
Speaker 1: answer for more information or more understanding. But a conversation
Speaker 1: goes wherever it goes, and the focuses on the contact
Speaker 1: between the two people, and the information that comes out
Speaker 1: comes out as a function of that contact, which is
Speaker 1: a much more human way to get information in my
Speaker 1: opinion anyway. So I realized it might be possible to
Speaker 1: train scientists to communicate in that personal way, and we
Speaker 1: actually used improvisation exercises to do it, and I've seen
Speaker 1: it work. We've trained over over eight thousand scientists and
Speaker 1: doctors in the past almost eight years, and we've seen
Speaker 1: remarkable results. So it's very exciting for me. At what
Speaker 1: point in your career, like when you made the transition
Speaker 1: from acting and all and getting all these acting awards
Speaker 1: into like being fascinated with science, Like were you always
Speaker 1: fascinated with science? Like as a kid. Oh, even as
Speaker 1: a kid. Although I never studied it in school, I
Speaker 1: did very badly in a chemistry exam once. I never
Speaker 1: went beyond geometry and math, but it all interested me tremendously.
Speaker 1: When in my early twenties, that became pretty much all
Speaker 1: I read. I didn't read novels my friends. I belonged
Speaker 1: to a book club now that only reads novels, so
Speaker 1: I can force myself to read novels. And the people
Speaker 1: in the club say, what do you have against novels?
Speaker 1: And I say, you can just tell they're making it up. Well,
Speaker 1: do you like science fiction? Not too much? Too much?
Speaker 1: You know this idea of being able to transport your
Speaker 1: mind to the minds of others. You know the research
Speaker 1: shows about reading fiction action increases those capacities. Well, I
Speaker 1: know that's why I'm trying my damns. So you have
Speaker 1: this quote in your book. You say people are dying
Speaker 1: because we can't communicate in ways that allow us to
Speaker 1: understand one another. Can you elaborate on that, like, how
Speaker 1: are people dying? I think people are dying in a
Speaker 1: number of ways. It sounds like an exaggeration, I know,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it is. Certainly, when One study
Speaker 1: showed that when patients rated their doctors as empathic, they
Speaker 1: were nineteen percent more likely to follow their doctor's recommendations
Speaker 1: and to take their prescriptions and do the regimens and
Speaker 1: all of that. That sounds like that's a high number
Speaker 1: to me. It's high percentage, and it sounds to me
Speaker 1: like that must certainly include people who are in danger
Speaker 1: of their lives by not following their doctor's advice. That's
Speaker 1: one way. Another way is people don't communicate and then
Speaker 1: they start shooting each other. That happens from the bedroom
Speaker 1: to the boardroom, to theah to the world table where
Speaker 1: the peace conferences are supposed to take place. That's a
Speaker 1: really good point. There's a deeper, richer, more inclusive way
Speaker 1: that people could be dying by virtue of a lack
Speaker 1: of good communication. We're getting more and more scientific breakthroughs
Speaker 1: because of collaboration. Collaboration is boosted so much by good communication.
Speaker 1: And if we're having less collaboration than we could have
Speaker 1: with better communication, some of that collaboration will be over
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals or over other advances that will clean the water,
Speaker 1: clean the air, and all of that has an effect
Speaker 1: on mortality. Don't think it's an exaggeration to say lives
Speaker 1: can be saved. No, I agree. And you had the
Speaker 1: scary situation with a dentist right where the communication really
Speaker 1: did matter. It mattered an awful lot to my face.
Speaker 1: The dentist was poised to put the scalpel in my
Speaker 1: mouth and cut my gum because he had an invention
Speaker 1: of his procedure to get a blood supply to a
Speaker 1: socket of my front tooth. And he didn't explain what
Speaker 1: he was doing, you say. All he said was now
Speaker 1: there will be some tethering. And I didn't know what
Speaker 1: tethering was, and I said, what do you mean? What
Speaker 1: do you mean tethering? His answer was really really communicative.
Speaker 1: He said, tethering, tethering. You started screaming at me like
Speaker 1: I should know what he meant. It's a common it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting example of a common word, not a
Speaker 1: piece of jargon, but a common word used in a
Speaker 1: special way can be totally excommunicating. Yeah, so he cut
Speaker 1: the freedom on my uppier, you know, under your lip,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't smile properly and I had to make
Speaker 1: a movie where my lip was right down't like that,
Speaker 1: you know, I sneered instead of smiled. I told him
Speaker 1: that I had a problem with it, hoping he'd know
Speaker 1: what to do about it and be careful to warn
Speaker 1: other people. And instead of any kind of empathic reaction,
Speaker 1: he sent me a letter protecting himself against the lawsuits.
Speaker 1: And I had no intention of suing him. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to help other people's lips. He gave me
Speaker 1: a smile ectomy and didn't seem to care. And then
Speaker 1: he said there was like a second part. So did
Speaker 1: he fix this? Yeah, he said, you good. Second part
Speaker 1: to the operation, He said, I told you there was
Speaker 1: a second part. Well, I didn't remember that. And anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if I went back to him,
Speaker 1: because maybe I did. But I don't think I have
Speaker 1: much of a freedom anymore. No, I don't see a
Speaker 1: friendom Is that good or bad to not have much
Speaker 1: of a freedom anymore? Well, freedom is kind of important.
Speaker 1: That holds your lip or I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: that's the main purpose to hold your lip? Does other things?
Speaker 1: Strange little tissue up there? You don't need one, you know,
Speaker 1: if I had to get something removed, it'd be that. Well,
Speaker 1: I choose. Yeah, I noticed when I see pictures of myself.
Speaker 1: If I don't concentrate on the smile, it comes out
Speaker 1: like this. So I'd say, right, it's okay. Well, you
Speaker 1: know that actually is an interesting transition. I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, how different can be cool. And
Speaker 1: you did some work with my colleague Matt Lerner on
Speaker 1: improvisation and children with autism, and you know a lot
Speaker 1: of them, you know, are treated as though they're socially
Speaker 1: awkward in their daily lives. But what did you learn
Speaker 1: about communication from working with Matt Well, I had a
Speaker 1: wonderful experience with him. I didn't work directly with him
Speaker 1: in any autistic population, but while we were talking when
Speaker 1: I was interviewing him for the book, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: I had this sort of personal empathy workout that I
Speaker 1: had tried to develop for myself. Because the funny thing is,
Speaker 1: we almost all of us have this innate capacity for empathy,
Speaker 1: but it goes away rapidly if we don't practice it.
Speaker 1: That's the impression I get. Anyway, I'd be interested to
Speaker 1: know what your impression is, so tell me in a second.
Speaker 1: So I was practicing noticing people on the street and
Speaker 1: in restaurants or friends while we're talking and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what they were feeling and naming the feeling.
Speaker 1: It seemed to me that naming the feeling would be important,
Speaker 1: so he did. He said, I'd like to study this.
Speaker 1: So he did a research project and he sent people
Speaker 1: out with an app on their cell phones. He gave
Speaker 1: them a standardized empathy test at the beginning of the project,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of a week of their
Speaker 1: recording their interactions with people, he gave them another empathy test,
Speaker 1: and he was going to compare the two. One of
Speaker 1: the variables was just observe them, don't try to name
Speaker 1: their emotion, just see what what color their hair is.
Speaker 1: And then another one another variable was don't do anything,
Speaker 1: just tell us that you had an interaction that lasted
Speaker 1: more than five seconds. And the interesting thing is when
Speaker 1: he combined the two what do you call him two
Speaker 1: conditions that's just sorry. Combine the two conditions of trying
Speaker 1: to read their feelings and combine that with just noticing them,
Speaker 1: there was a really clear increase in their empathy and
Speaker 1: their ability at empathy by the end of the week.
Speaker 1: If they had done it a lot of times, there
Speaker 1: was a more noticeable difference. The more times they did it.
Speaker 1: Doct right, Yes, a dose effect. Yeah. So now that's
Speaker 1: only one study and it's only with a limited population,
Speaker 1: but it seems to suggest that it's not a bad
Speaker 1: idea to notice people. So in workshops, when we have
Speaker 1: people role playing doing trying to communicate to another person,
Speaker 1: if it's not going real, well, we stop and we
Speaker 1: have them put their chairs back to back so they
Speaker 1: can't see each other, and then I ask them what
Speaker 1: color is her hair, what color is her eyes, or
Speaker 1: what color is what she's wearing, And like four out
Speaker 1: of five times they don't know they haven't been observing.
Speaker 1: When they turn back and start observing, the communication seems
Speaker 1: to change radically. So this sounds to me like it
Speaker 1: puts us in more personal contact with the other person. Now,
Speaker 1: what I've noticed is when I do that, I think
Speaker 1: I hear my voice getting more personal, less like I'm
Speaker 1: speaking at somebody, but more communicating in an intimate way.
Speaker 1: And I think my face changes because I see changes
Speaker 1: in the other person as they sort of involuntarily respond
Speaker 1: to me. Well, how does that all sound to you?
Speaker 1: Does it sound cock eyed? It does sound a little. No, No,
Speaker 1: it sounds good. Well, I gotta go, I'm make it sense. No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's great. It leased to so much stuff. So you
Speaker 1: have your Red Bruber's like I now relationship, his ideas
Speaker 1: and a long time ago. Yeah it was a long
Speaker 1: time ago, but you know he has these beautiful stories
Speaker 1: in there about how you know. In this one instance,
Speaker 1: he was interacting with a horse and he goes in
Speaker 1: completely just focusing on the horse and its own needs,
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful moment. And then there's a split second,
Speaker 1: just a hair where he starts to get self conscious,
Speaker 1: Like he looks his hand and sees it shaking a
Speaker 1: little bit, and he says it that split second, the
Speaker 1: entire magic broke and the horse like suddenly ran away,
Speaker 1: you know, got angry. But it was so interesting. I
Speaker 1: never tried talking to a horse. But scaling up you
Speaker 1: remind me of those studies that show if the owner
Speaker 1: and his or her dog stares into each other's eyes
Speaker 1: for a while there oxytocin increases in both the dog
Speaker 1: and the owner. Oh absolutely, so building up from the
Speaker 1: animal model to human model, it's as rapidly as possible.
Speaker 1: Let's switch the humans. I think that's an interesting case
Speaker 1: of a completely nonverbal you know, but building up to
Speaker 1: other you know, because we all wear animals too, building
Speaker 1: up to children autism who can appear to have social deficits.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Matt has done this cool research with improv
Speaker 1: and showing that it's a matter of bias. It's a
Speaker 1: matter of attentional bias. There's so much wealth of information
Speaker 1: in the eyes and if you're not paying attention to it,
Speaker 1: you know, you miss out on it. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: this model is what you're talking about. And that's the
Speaker 1: same thing that I've been you know, might I might
Speaker 1: have missed that in talking to him. That is he
Speaker 1: showing that in his studies with autistic people. Uh huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you do you write about in your book a
Speaker 1: little bit about the work. I haven't read the book yet.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a guy who actually said that. A
Speaker 1: basketball player said, why did you say that in your
Speaker 1: books that I haven't read that. No, maybe maybe I
Speaker 1: forgot that sentence. I'm sorry. No, No, you talk about
Speaker 1: the improv because you put in the context you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the important to improv the Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem to be a real phenomenon that as
Speaker 1: you get in. I mean, what you said is very
Speaker 1: interesting did you get so much information through your eyes?
Speaker 1: You do, not just the eyes I'm building up here,
Speaker 1: from horses to human eye contact too, you know. And
Speaker 1: then you look it up, you think about other cues,
Speaker 1: nonverbal cues, and if you just simply not pay attention
Speaker 1: to those cues, and you're being biased by your own
Speaker 1: internal drama and distractions and you're not mindful of it,
Speaker 1: then of course interactions are going to be awkward or
Speaker 1: not relatable. So yeah, it makes so much sense. It's
Speaker 1: so interesting to me to think about how when you
Speaker 1: go into a moment of communication with something that you
Speaker 1: are prepared to talk about, that sort of floods your
Speaker 1: consciousness and yours have to put it in personal terms.
Speaker 1: In the past, it was almost always true for me
Speaker 1: that if I was trying to sell somebody an idea
Speaker 1: or convince them that we should see one movie instead
Speaker 1: of another, you know, I would only be thinking about
Speaker 1: what I had in mind, and I wouldn't be noticing
Speaker 1: how it was landing on the other person, where I
Speaker 1: might have missed openings that were perfect, you know, or
Speaker 1: just realize that it's a lost cause and do something
Speaker 1: more collaborative. When you're in like an acting situation. I'm
Speaker 1: just so fascinated to hear what that's like. I imagine
Speaker 1: the best thing is to internalize the lines so much
Speaker 1: that you can be spontaneous even though it's scripted. Isn't
Speaker 1: there still a great deal of Spontaneitian nonverbal communication for
Speaker 1: my taste, to the extent that spontaneity is lacking, I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in the performance, whether it's my own or
Speaker 1: somebody else's. And the interesting thing is, here's how I
Speaker 1: would describe an ideal moment on the stage. I have
Speaker 1: a line coming up. I don't say that line because
Speaker 1: it's in the script, and I don't say it a
Speaker 1: certain way because I've decided that's how to say it.
Speaker 1: I say it because the other actor does something or
Speaker 1: says something that makes me say the line, and that
Speaker 1: makes me say it in a certain way. And that
Speaker 1: can change from night to night, you know, in each performance.
Speaker 1: And that means I'm not responding to the words in
Speaker 1: the script. I'm responding to what's coming out of the
Speaker 1: other person as a person. So I have to be
Speaker 1: totally engaged with that person. I have to be observing them,
Speaker 1: and I don't have to be staring them in the
Speaker 1: eye to do it. They can be on the other
Speaker 1: side of the stage with their back to me, and
Speaker 1: I can be observing the way they're occupying space and
Speaker 1: what that means to me. But I got to be
Speaker 1: like a leaf in the wind, responding in the subtlest
Speaker 1: way to the subtlest signals I'm getting from the other person.
Speaker 1: And that's where the spontaneity comes from. You can't decide
Speaker 1: to be spontaneous nearly as well as you can be
Speaker 1: spontaneous in reaction to another person. I love that. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's this research showing that there's no glow
Speaker 1: co orla between social knowledge and social spontaneity. So you
Speaker 1: can means yeah, yeah, absolutely well. So they have these
Speaker 1: tests of like what is the right thing to say
Speaker 1: in this situation? So if you want to make friends,
Speaker 1: if someone says, hi, how are you, you would score
Speaker 1: very high if you respond I'm fine, thank you, and
Speaker 1: how are you. But actually, there are these tests of
Speaker 1: social creativity that say, come up with as many possible
Speaker 1: responses as you can to this certain situation, and some
Speaker 1: of the responses can be so creative, like you know,
Speaker 1: I want to play with a friend, I would you know,
Speaker 1: have an alien come from outer space and do a
Speaker 1: mind meld too. I don't know. You could be very
Speaker 1: that would score very low in social knowledge, right, But
Speaker 1: it turns out that even though those two things are
Speaker 1: not related to each other, so you can score very high.
Speaker 1: You could know what to do but not actually be
Speaker 1: socially skilled at all. You can know the right things
Speaker 1: to do but not actually be social skilled, or you
Speaker 1: could be social skilled and not know the right answer.
Speaker 1: It turns out it's the spontaneity, the social creativity, that
Speaker 1: predicts autistic symptoms. It's the social creativity that predicts actual
Speaker 1: social interactions. Like most of us don't want to be
Speaker 1: friends with someone who's just a robot who just is like,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm fine, thank you, how are you?
Speaker 1: Most people don't want that in their social interactions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something that I've independently found just through experience, and
Speaker 1: that's why when we teach communication, we strenuously avoid giving tips.
Speaker 1: Here's what remember to do this when you're communicating. Whatever
Speaker 1: that is. That would be a tip. But it's an intellectualization.
Speaker 1: It's a mechanization of an encounter, which is dynamic. A
Speaker 1: real communication encounter is dynamic. It goes back and forth
Speaker 1: rapidly between two people, even what you imagine the other
Speaker 1: person is thinking, if the person's not even there. If
Speaker 1: you're writing for a person, you're writing for a large audience,
Speaker 1: and you sort of can figure out roughly what the
Speaker 1: audience is as you write for them. If you're thinking
Speaker 1: about this is all my opinion. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about how they're getting it, sentence by sentence,
Speaker 1: I think you have a greater chance of being clear
Speaker 1: to them instead of just formulating in your mind the
Speaker 1: perfect way to say it, which is a good idea.
Speaker 1: You have to think about what you're going to say,
Speaker 1: but as you put it out with each sentence, you're
Speaker 1: changing their brain in a certain way. You're making them
Speaker 1: expect something that's coming next, fulfill that expectation, carry on,
Speaker 1: pick up where you left off, and carry them through
Speaker 1: the thought. Because you're responsible for how they're understanding it.
Speaker 1: It's not their job to take your dense prose and
Speaker 1: decode it. If they have to go back in a
Speaker 1: sentence to figure out what the sentence is really about,
Speaker 1: it's not their failure. Yeah, that relates so much to
Speaker 1: the psychology of writing, Like writer, do there should be
Speaker 1: courses in creative writing programs that teach you theory of mind?
Speaker 1: I think I think so too. I think it's really
Speaker 1: that's short of the It's the key, because what are
Speaker 1: you writing for? What's the real goal of writing? Is
Speaker 1: it just to leave your mark on a tree, regardless
Speaker 1: if anybody can understand it or not, or is the
Speaker 1: goal to get something from inside my head inside your head?
Speaker 1: That seems to me what communication is about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess if you leave your mark on a tree,
Speaker 1: you may not be trying to communicate. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're trying to do. There exactly a lot
Speaker 1: of things potentially, but not communication. You know. I was
Speaker 1: thinking when I was reading your book about this research
Speaker 1: that comes out recently. I just I'm trying to link
Speaker 1: some things that I see in my own field with
Speaker 1: what I was reading your book. And there's interesting study
Speaker 1: on how contagious the state of mind of inspiration is.
Speaker 1: Todd Thrash has done this research showing that people tend
Speaker 1: to like parts of stories better when but they don't
Speaker 1: know this, but when the actual writer that themselves was
Speaker 1: more inspired and feeling like an all state of awe
Speaker 1: like some of these positive emotions while they were writing it.
Speaker 1: While they were writing it, Oh, that's interesting. That's very
Speaker 1: interesting because that relates to a real experience I had,
Speaker 1: So it's hitting me in a special way. I was
Speaker 1: writing an episode of Mash and I was in my
Speaker 1: home in New Jersey at the time, and in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, we heard a noise. Somebody had
Speaker 1: broken into the house, stolen the keys to the car.
Speaker 1: They drove away with the car and took a big
Speaker 1: television set, and it was frightening that people had been
Speaker 1: in the house, and at four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep. So I've worked on the scene for Mash,
Speaker 1: a very very emotional scene where a soldier had died
Speaker 1: and the character Radar was writing a letter to the
Speaker 1: soldier's parents. That turned out to be an especially effective
Speaker 1: scene because I was in such a state of agitation
Speaker 1: and I wasn't moved by the soldier's story. I was
Speaker 1: moved by having been burgled, but I was in a
Speaker 1: state of rapport with my own inspiration, and it turned
Speaker 1: the scene into one of the more affecting scenes that
Speaker 1: we've ever shown. That's what came to mind I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if it's an example of what you're talking about, how
Speaker 1: were these pieces of writing rated as being inspiration or
Speaker 1: deriving from inspiration? Well, there were poems, and people simply
Speaker 1: read various passages from the poems and just rated from
Speaker 1: a scale one to ten. How inspired were they by
Speaker 1: the writing? What sort of feelings did they feel while
Speaker 1: they were reading it? And there's a whole list of
Speaker 1: pause emotions. Elation was one of them. You know, how
Speaker 1: much do you feel elated? What I want to make
Speaker 1: sure I understand in that story is, so are you
Speaker 1: saying that there was a burglar came and that inspired you. Well,
Speaker 1: it's probably different from what you were describing. Somehow I
Speaker 1: seem to be inspired to get into the minds of
Speaker 1: the people in the scene. I see the agitated position
Speaker 1: I was in emotionally, that makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: totally unrelated to the subject of the scene. It was
Speaker 1: just that my emotions were churned by having my house
Speaker 1: broken into, and that somehow that seemed to help me
Speaker 1: to write this very deeply emotional scene. Look, I have
Speaker 1: to say, you just proposed a new theory that I
Speaker 1: want to test. Now. The idea there is that if
Speaker 1: you can induce a mood that is in line with
Speaker 1: what you're trying to get at in your writing, Like,
Speaker 1: if you can induce that mood in some way that
Speaker 1: you know is a good match to the content of
Speaker 1: the story, does the reader respond better to it? That's
Speaker 1: a great idea. And there's also this other weird thing
Speaker 1: about my experience, which was that the feeling I had
Speaker 1: of being violated by the burglar didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with the writing of the story. And the script
Speaker 1: write where the characters writing a letter to the parents
Speaker 1: of the dead kid, they're unrelated. So I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's interesting to explore, does any kind of emotional turbulence
Speaker 1: or emotional strong emotional affect Does that enable you to
Speaker 1: write any kind of emotional thing or affecting thing That
Speaker 1: would be kind of interesting to know too. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like there's almost like emotional the complexity there, mixing
Speaker 1: a blending of things. And yes, I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: that you open a channel you get more Vulnerability seems
Speaker 1: to be really important to communication as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell. When I come out on stage to talk
Speaker 1: to sometimes two thousand people ever stand behind the podium
Speaker 1: I expose myself in a vulnerable way out in front
Speaker 1: of them, and I looked them in the face. I
Speaker 1: don't have notes or anything, and that I think that
Speaker 1: vulnerability has an effect on me and it has an
Speaker 1: effect on them. Yeah. I've started to go completely naked
Speaker 1: in some of my talks, and I find great. I
Speaker 1: find it really leaves me vulnerable, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I can handle any Now I'm choking. Can bring your
Speaker 1: notes out and hold them in front of you. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've started having to do that because I would get arrested.
Speaker 1: I want to ask out of concern. Though for a second,
Speaker 1: are you like the burglar situation? Were you okay? Like,
Speaker 1: was it actually a burglar? Thank you? Yeah, well, we
Speaker 1: never came in contact with him. We were oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: let's sleep. Well it happened, which made us feel even
Speaker 1: more vulnerable. Oh my gosh. Okay, Well, I'm very sorry
Speaker 1: to hear about that. I mean that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to like closs over that. That sounds horrible. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So I want to be respectful of your time here.
Speaker 1: Just I guess just a couple more minutes because I
Speaker 1: know you had to go soon. Let's just talk about
Speaker 1: this idea which I think kind of together so much
Speaker 1: of your book. I'm quickly in my head. You see
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I'm trying to say, well, can I
Speaker 1: ask a grand question that can get seven questions in
Speaker 1: one year? Right? Okay, here's here's the one that'll get
Speaker 1: in seven at one The improvisation of daily life, that notion, right,
Speaker 1: whether it's like you said, the boardroom or the workplace,
Speaker 1: or being a medical doctor, et cetera, et cetera, personal relations,
Speaker 1: just just everyday personal relations. Right. So what has your
Speaker 1: wealth of experience and science communication as well as theater
Speaker 1: and acting taught you about, you know, any tips for
Speaker 1: anyone on how to you know, kind of treat your
Speaker 1: life as a social improv Well. The funny thing is
Speaker 1: that working on this book for the last couple of
Speaker 1: years has changed me a little bit, maybe a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm much more tuned into other people, and I'm much
Speaker 1: more able to find out what's under the surface, or
Speaker 1: to sort of figure out what's under the surface. And
Speaker 1: the amazing thing is I find people less annoying they
Speaker 1: you know, a sharp tone from somebody or forgetting something
Speaker 1: or being slightly rude, and I think what's that coming from?
Speaker 1: I think I see clues on their face or in
Speaker 1: their voice about where it's coming from, And that little
Speaker 1: spurt of empathy probably puts me in a position that
Speaker 1: I think some studies have shown that with more empathy
Speaker 1: you have more patience. And I don't know why that
Speaker 1: is exactly, but knowing the source of behavior may dilute
Speaker 1: some of the response you have to it in a
Speaker 1: defensive way or an aggressive way. You know, when a
Speaker 1: baby is crying, you could say I can't stand that noise,
Speaker 1: or you can say is the baby hungry? What's going
Speaker 1: on there? And then that if you have any response
Speaker 1: to babies at all, I think it diminishes your annoyance
Speaker 1: at the sound of the cry. But I find it
Speaker 1: easier to relate to people. And at one big point
Speaker 1: that it would be fun to get into is that
Speaker 1: empathy I don't think makes you a good person automatically.
Speaker 1: The definition I like of empathy is that it's just
Speaker 1: being aware of what the other person is feeling. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you have compassion for the person. It
Speaker 1: might give you more patience, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you're not sinking into the quicksand of the emotion that
Speaker 1: you're feeling. I mean, the notion about empathy, apparently accepted
Speaker 1: by most people is that, and you can check me
Speaker 1: out on this, is that I'm aware of what you're
Speaker 1: feeling because I experience that feeling myself, and the trick
Speaker 1: is not to drown in that feeling, but to control it.
Speaker 1: Because I think empathy is just a tool. And while
Speaker 1: it doesn't automatically make you a good person, because bullies
Speaker 1: use empathy really well, I think they have plenty of them, right,
Speaker 1: Torturers use empathy interrogators taking your feelings and putting you
Speaker 1: in a position where you feel helpless. They deliberately do that,
Speaker 1: so they're monitoring your feelings. So that doesn't make you
Speaker 1: a good person, but it's a terrific tool if you
Speaker 1: want to do something positive with another person, like communicate.
Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you for bringing up the most interesting
Speaker 1: topic in the last two seconds, because I could talk
Speaker 1: to you all day about this. It's such a cool topic.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like the difference between cognitive empathy and effective empathy.
Speaker 1: You know that, Like psychopaths are really good at cognitive empathy,
Speaker 1: but they don't actually value it's a value system as well.
Speaker 1: They don't value emotions, so they in others or it
Speaker 1: turns out even in themselves as well, so they don't
Speaker 1: listen to their own emotional information as much. You know.
Speaker 1: But effective empathy actually feeling what other people feel. And
Speaker 1: then that's different than capassion, like you said, which is
Speaker 1: actually a feeling of love, like you want to reduce
Speaker 1: someone suffering. So when someone is in pain, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people have empathy burnout because effective empathy
Speaker 1: burnout that we're in the helping professions because they're feeling.
Speaker 1: I think empathy gives you a position from which you
Speaker 1: can make a decision about your actions, yes, assuming you're
Speaker 1: not psychopathic, where you're going to make the decision regardless
Speaker 1: of what they're feeling. If you want to do something positive,
Speaker 1: something compassionate, the empathy can help you do it. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I love that way of framing it. So empathy and
Speaker 1: even the emotional empathy gives you that information to then
Speaker 1: reflect on. But then maybe compassion is this more higher
Speaker 1: level thing where you know, some of these people, like
Speaker 1: these Buddhists like Matu Ricard who practices loving. He's considered
Speaker 1: the happiest man alive. If you google, if you google
Speaker 1: have you heard of mat too ricard? Like other people
Speaker 1: call him that other people because they scan his braid
Speaker 1: and they find it it approximates, you know, everything, all
Speaker 1: the happy correlated brain areas. But he says that when
Speaker 1: he sees someone suffering, he doesn't feel like what they're feeling.
Speaker 1: He feels just a warm sense of love of wanting
Speaker 1: to help. So maybe the empathy is like having that information,
Speaker 1: But then the capassion is actually the action of being
Speaker 1: able to really help and not be hindered by your
Speaker 1: overwhelming emotions of what they're feeling. If that makes sense, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a sort of a thought experiment in the
Speaker 1: book that kind of deals with exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's after midnight, a man's wife is already asleep, and
Speaker 1: he passes the kitchen sink and he sees it's full
Speaker 1: of dishes, and he thinks, I ought to do something
Speaker 1: about that, I guess, and maybe he does something about it,
Speaker 1: and maybe he doesn't, But the chances of his doing
Speaker 1: something about cleaning up the dishes probably on my mind
Speaker 1: lower unless he has a little glimmer of empathy and thinks,
Speaker 1: what will she feel when she sees this tomorrow? Morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he has already the impulse to do something, but
Speaker 1: maybe that little glimmer of empathy can help kick him
Speaker 1: over into making the decision to actually do it. Well,
Speaker 1: that advice just helped millions of my Psychology podcast listeners
Speaker 1: help them in the bedroom so that this man finds
Speaker 1: out that doing the dishes is for play, oh right,
Speaker 1: for play, for doing like more complex things like watching
Speaker 1: like the stove, or for play for second into the
Speaker 1: next room. I know, I'm I'm just being lacky. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for being so gracious
Speaker 1: to chat and come on the podcast today. You know,
Speaker 1: as someone who deeply respects public science communication, thanks for
Speaker 1: the amazing work you've done for our field. It has
Speaker 1: certainly not gone unnoticed and it's been much appreciated. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that very much. It's really fun talking. I'm talking
Speaker 1: you to all the best to you and with the book.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barrik Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to read the show notes for this episode or
Speaker 1: here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology podcast dot
Speaker 1: com