You Are Not So Smart

In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of judgments and decisions that best maximized the potential of the outcomes under their control. This was especially true in economics at the time. The story of how they generated a paradigm shift so powerful that it reached far outside economics and psychology to change the way all of us see ourselves is a fascinating tale, one that required the invention of something this episode is all about: The Psychology of Single Questions.

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How to manage procrastination according to Margaret Atwood, how to work around your first-instinct fallacy, the upsides of imposter syndrome, the best way to avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, how to avoid thinking like a preacher, prosecutor, or politician so you can think like a scientist instead – and that’s just the beginning of the conversation in this episode with psychologist, podcast host, and author Adam Grant.
In the show, we discuss both his new book – Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know – and his TED Original Podcast, WorkLife, in which he interviewed Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, to learn how she deals with the constant allure of social media and streaming videos in a future where giving in to procrastination is easier than it has ever been.
In the show, you’ll hear portions of that interview followed by a lengthy interview with Grant about his new book in this all-over-the-place, extensive exploration of how to rethink your own thinking.
Link to get a free ticket to the online event we call The Conversation Lab: https://www.mishaglouberman.com/convolab-may3

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It’s February. It’s that time of year when we start to wonder if we might not follow through with our New Year’s resolutions. It’s that time of the year when procrastination becomes a centerpiece of our psychological concerns.

Our guest in this episode is professor, author, therapist, and speaker Britt Frank, a trauma specialist who treats people with a unique and powerful set of techniques and approaches which, taken together, helps clients to get out of the feeling of being STUCK.

Author of The Science of Stuck, she says, “Procrastination is not a character flaw. Nor is it a sign of weakness. Nor is it a sign of laziness.⁣ Procrastination is an indicator that internal consent has not been given. When our inner parts are distressed, afraid, sad, angry, grief-stricken or anxious, it is important to listen to their concerns, not to shame them or coerce them into action.⁣”

In the show you’ll learn about the physiological origins of procrastination – the inner brake pedal and gas pedal – and what to do to escape the two different versions of this universal challenge to getting unstuck and getting things done.

• Britt Frank: https://www.scienceofstuck.com

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Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead.

Confirmation is such a prevalent feature of human cognition, that until recently a second bias has been hidden in plain sight. Recent research suggests that something called desirability bias may be just as prevalent in our thinking. When future desires and past beliefs are incongruent, desire wins out.

Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com
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Deliberation. Debate. Conversation. Though it can feel like that’s what we are doing online as we trade arguments back and forth, most of the places where we currently gather make it much easier to produce arguments in isolation rather than evaluate them together in groups. The latest research suggests we will need much more of the latter if we hope to create a new, modern, functioning marketplace of ideas. In this episode, psychologist Tom Stafford takes us through his research into how to do just that.

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