Gleb Tsipursky || Cognitive Bias in Relationships

Fast Company, CBS, News Time, and elsewhere. He's also a best selling author known for Never Go with Your Gut, How pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters. His new book is The Blind Spots Between Us, How to overcome unconscious cognitive bias and build better relationships. Available Disaster Avoidanceexperts dot com slash blind Spots. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and to avoid disaster in his personal life, he makes sure to spend ample He makes sure to spend ample

time with his wife. Very very smart. That's probably your smartest decision, thank you, well, yes, definitely, My smartest decision was to marry my wife and keep out really long relationship. Gosh, how long has it been already? It's been seventeen years. Wow. So that's that's been something that I value and treasure very much, and it's definitely most important relationship with my wife and in my life and the smartest one, the smartest decision that I made. Yeah, of course, Well that's

really wonderful, and congratulations of both of you. This book, this really cool book. You know when we you hinted at this book idea when we spoke on the podcast a while ago, and I remember, I don't know if you remember, my reaction was, WHOA, Who's I've never seen a book on blind spots research applied in the relationships to demean before, you know, especially kind of with your message,

which is don't always trust your gut. You know a lot of these books in the in the hippie dippy spiritual Realm of Loes and you know, Free Love all that stuff is saying just go with the gut, you know, and you can't go wrong. But what's wrong with that, Well, what's wrong with going with our gut? And what these books really get wrong is that our gut is really not adapted to the modern world. That's a big problem. So thinking about our god, what is that It's our instincts.

It's our intuition, it's our feelings, it's our emotions, and they are built for the savannah environment. And we look in small tribes of fifteen people to one hundred and fifty people. That's what our God is for. I mean, think about that tribalism response, right. We need it in that tribal environment to be very strongly oriented toward other members of our tribe, to like people who look like us, who think like us, who have the same values that we do, and to be hostile to those who aren't.

Because if we weren't sufficiently hostile to other tribes, they conquer our tribes and we die. And if we weren't sufficiently loyal to our tribe, they take us out of our tribe and we die. You notice where the descendants of folks who didn't die. So we are very tribally oriented. That's one example that's really a bad bit to the modern world. I mean, I imagine how the modern world would work if we only went with our gut reactions

on tribalisms. We can't have complex modern organizations. We can't have relationships with people who are different from us, whether romantic relationships or friendship relationships or professional relationships. That takes overcoming our gut intuitions and our desire to go with people who are like us. That's one broad pattern of blind spots, these cognitive biases that we need to addrust. Another one is called the flight or flight response, now

a fighter flight response. You might be familiar with it as the stable to tiger response when we had to jump out one hundred shadows to get away from that one fabre to tiger. And you know the ones who got away from that sabre to tiger faster. They're the ones who respond, who survived and thrived, and we're their descendants. So right now, we still have a very strong stress response when we have any stimulus, any external stimulus that

we perceive a streatning. That's great for when we need to get ourselves out of the way of a moving bus. That's wonderful. That's a perfect response for that situation. But when our loved one does something that is hurtful or upsetting to us, the temptation is to either withdraw that's a slight response, or attack that's aggressive response. Neither of those are the right response. Now, some folks are more of the withdraw type. Some folks are more of the

aggressive type. I'm definitely more of the aggressive type, and I know I have to restrain that within myself. And you need to know what your blind spots are and how to address them, because so many people just respond with their guts to what their loved one says, or what their colleagues says, or what their friends says, and that gets them into a whole heap of trouble. So we can talk about that, but that's the kind of tendencies that come with going with our guts, and they're

really bad for relationships in the modern world. So all of those books, they're doing a huge, huge disservice to everyone by telling people to go with their God, all their hard trust, their intuition, because it gets them into a whole heap of trouble when they do. Yeah, i've heard the the fore a fs. I don't know if you've heard about the four ass fight, uh flight fight, flight freeze and beep a four letter word. So it seems like that foreletter word, that's that's a good one.

We're okay with that right as a response, which it can be, but sometimes it's not always the right response. No, of course, that's very true. Out of the four if you gave me the four options and you said pick one, you know, that's that's definitely a good response. And people put notice that. People who did that, you know, they're the ones who fried produced right. Yes, why we're here in the modern environment, not the right response, that's true,

that's true. Context matters for sure, and our gut does not respond well to context. Oh and that's the thing, it just doesn't are when we look at the world, we very much go with our intuition, our feeling, and we're not really focusing on the context of the nuance, the subtleties we fall into these dangerous judgment or called cognitive biases. That's a huge problem for us. Yeah, a huge cause of a lot of strife and even the most extreme homicide you know, and all over the world.

Or you look at all these kinds of consequences of these sorts of things and relationships, and if you can crack this this code, you know you can, you can really help save a lot of lives. I would say it's true, it's true. It's lines, it's relationships everything, because when when you look at tribalism, it's a cause for

so much conflict, so much discord, so much strife. That's really unnecessary, I mean, certainly in America right now, looking at the kind of politization that we have, the tribalism where people focus on those differences that divide us instead of what unites us. I mean, look at what unites us. We all care about our families, we all want to safe life, we all want help, we all want to

have reasonable material things. Right, we share ninety five percent, even though with the people who you disagree the most, you share ninety five percent of what makes us your life. You disagree even with the most extreme people on five percent. And why do we focus on those five percent where we disagree instead of ninety five percent where we agree. Well, that's tribalism. That's what it drives us to do, and that's a big problem. And we don't realize how dangerous

it is in modern society. And it's only the United States, of course, in other countries tribalism can get into much more dangerous situations. Well, right now, we're having some conflicts and protesters that do kill people, but that's less frequent in the US than outside the US. As you rightly point out scott where people are actually killed daily because of this tribalism eefinite conflicts of religious conflicts so deadly

and so dangerous and so unnecessary. I think what you're saying is quite right, But is a tribalism the only explanation, you know, you think about the phenomenon that you have fraternal twins or like firstborn, second borns, third borns, they're all competing for their mother's attention. You know, like, I don't think that tribalism necessarily makes sense is the answer to that. But you know, you said, why do we when we agree on so much, why do we disagree?

Why do we focus on the five percent we disagree with it? It It could also just be we're trying to be an individual, you know, we're trying to like show that we, you know, stand out in some way in our beliefs. You know, we can kind of kind of get caught up in talking about our own belief system because it makes us feel unique. And it's definitely important for us to be able to feel unique and make sure that we have our sense of fulfillment. But that

doesn't need to involve by with other groups. And so here's one of the cognitive bias is called the in group outgroup bias, where when we look at people who are part of our groups, usually within families. You look at families and they're part of your group, right, so you stand up for your brother, and you stand up for your sister, even when they did some pretty bad things, and that may not be a really good thing for our society. You know, do you want people to stand

for your brother? I mean, there are a number of cases of you know, let's say judges, politicians who have corrupt brothers, corrupt sisters, I mean, and all, and they protect them in a corrupt way that really harms our society. And that's the same thing happens with with business leaders who get their cousins to work for them, and that really hardens the morale arms, teamwork and everything else like that. And that's family, just of course one group you also have.

I mean, this is a good example. I was giving a presentation to HR leaders here in Columbus, Ohio. So this is where I look, Columbus, Ohio, and this is the home of the highest state buck eyes. So that's what we're famous for. And they have big, big footballs for glad Zuperski. They are, But besides that, they're famous for the University of for the football rivalry with the University of Michigan Wolverines. Unfortunately, this year the game was

canceled because of COVID. You know, those Wolverines got COVID and we couldn't lead them this year unfortunately. So that's unfortunately for Fortunately for them, they missed out on a dropping. So what happened was that this was twenty eighteen, so long before the pandemic, and I was speaking here in Columbus to Hire two a diversity inclusion conference of HR leaders,

over one hundred HR leaders. This mine was the closing keynote, and I asked these over one hundred HR leaders in Columbus, Ohio, how many of you would hire a University of Michigan, how many of you would hire Wolverine spans. So out of those over one hundred people, only three of them raised their hands. Only three would hire a University of Michigan fan. Now, and the thing is I that was being recorded, so I have it on video, only three

people raising their hands. It's silly, but the sense of travelism around teams, people are passionate and it's all about our emotions, their feelings are in tuition, people get really into teams, into that spirit, and they feel a strong sense of antipathy, a dislike that's the outgroup. The University of Michigan that Wolverines are the outgroup. Of course, it doesn't matter for your ability to perform on the job whether you're a fan of the Buckeyes or the Wolverines, right,

but that sense of antipathy teamwork is really harmful. That's kind of example in the workplace. Of course, so many other examples are that in group, outgroup, biased arms. Arms of society in many ways call those folks make really bad decisions. Yeah, are you do you think they were serious? Though? I think they were, of course yes, I mean I asked to fluence follow ups. Yes, so there were when I do this, and that was a keynote of one

hundred people. Right. When I do intimate training, and I do those for HR leaders, for executives, I ask them, Columbus of Hio elsewhere, I look up you know what these local football rivalry is, and I ask them, and I generally get similar responses. You know, ages ninety percent of them won't hire somebody, And I ask them. You know why they're like, well, I just feel uncomfortable working with this person, you know, just having a negative feelings

towards this person. That's that's what causes these negative feelings, these got reactions. They trust their God. You know what the essence trusting our God means is that if you feel something that is true, then you believe it's true. If you feel a certain course of actions right, then you believe it's right. If you feel that your heart is, you know, to pursue this person even though that might be a very very bad fit for you, then you

will pursue this person. And if you feel you know your friend it is something to betray you, even though that might be completely untrue, you will still feel angry with your friend. And then so that's kind of the difference between feelings and what is actually the reality. And we let our feelings guide we trust that that reaction, the tribalism, the fighter flight response over what actually benefits us and what benefits our relationships and can have some

pretty terrible consequences. Oh yeah, absolutely, that also can stunt possibility for a beautiful relationship, yes, you know, absolutely, or a chance your absolutely writes that or it can lead into really bad relationships. There's a reason about forty percent of plus of marriages in the US and then divorce. Right, then, that's because people choose others based on tribalists responses, based on and fight or flight things. We'll talk about tribalism.

We talked about in group and ALGROUPBIS. There's another related cognitive bias pattern called the Halo effect and the Horns effect. So the Halo effect is, if you like one characteristic of someone, you will tend to like all of their other culptures. And the horns effect is if you dislike one characteristic or someone, you will tend to dislike all of their other cultures. Now, folks listening to this, watching this might hear that I have an act, right I

clearly I'm not from around here, right. My parents came from a country called Moldova in the Soviet Union that part of the territory when I was ten. This was an international podcast, by the way, So I may be the one with the accent. This is the case that people still here, I have an access, right, I don't have a mainstream American actor, and this is what this is what I'm talking about. So I don't have that

mainstream American accent. And when I came to the United States, I grew up in New York City that was a cultural melting pot, and I decided that, Hey, my parents taught me to be proud of my cultural heritage, so I decided to keep my acts. Many immigrants chose to, especially those who didn't live in a cultural melting plot,

decided to get rid of it. Well, when I was getting my PhD at UNC Chapel, I learned that was kind of a dumb decision because of noumenam called accent discrimination, where people who don't have that mainstream American accent are perceived to be less trustworthy, less credible. They are perceived to be worse than others who do have that main share American accent. And this applies not simply to foreign accent. This applies to regional accents in the US as well.

So let's say someone with a Southern accent would be perceived as less trustworthy, less credible than someone with the mainstream American accent or someone with a New York accent or something like that. So that is a really problematic dynamic, and that comes because of the horn defect where you hear an accent, that somebody has an accent, and that's another the mainstream American accent, and the immediate gut reaction is, oh, that's a weird person, that's different, not from my tribe.

That's the kind of immediate reaction. And that works for a number of other dynamics. So for example, people who obviously this is the part of racism and religious based discrimination, all of these isms, all of these discriminations come in terms of the Horns effect going on. There are other aspects of the Horns effects that are really interesting to examine.

So for example, one thing is obesity. People who are perceived as a beast gets much less ahead in life than people who aren't perceived as a best And that's because you don't like that characteristic of someone, because that's perceived as a negative thing in our society to be obese people. The Hall effect is the opposite. When you like that characteristic, you will tend to hire a person.

So if you're a black eyes span and you are interviewing a buck eye span, you will tend to hire that person even though they might not deserve to be hired, against somebody who is a mutual, you know, in front of a neutral Teamore doesn't care about college foot all at all. And if somebody has an attractive appearance compared to men women, compared to the mainstream of appearance what we consider to be attractive, they tend to be hired at a greater rate, They tend to be in relationships,

they tend to get further ahead in life. Same thing applies, by the way to taller men. So I got lucky in that I'm six to one. So men who are you know, the average height of for a man is something like five eight five seven five eight United States, and people who are above significantly above that height get further ahead in life. People who are below that height don't get further ahead in life. Because there's an association

with tribalism and leadership. In a tribal environment, people who are taller were physically more fit, and they were seen as leaders. They were seen as kind of, oh, these are the people who I want to have relationships with,

who I want to lead me. And those other people who tend to get ahead in life because of that tale of So those are some other patterns of dynamics that relate back to our evolutionary psychology that have some pretty negative consequences in the modern world, where people who have otherwise great characteristics either don't get ahead when they should and people who don't have very good characteristics get

ahead even if they shouldn't. They just talking to a coaching client who was saying that she was one of the few women executives in GE who about thirty years ago, when she was one of the lowest under one percent of female executives in GE at that time, and she was telling me that the first time she came to a meeting of major executives executives from g she was shot that the room was full of super tall white men.

Super tall white men, not simply white men, that's understandable for that time period, right, but people who are all pretty uniformly about six feet And that is an example of how these people get ahead. Do you know there's a big push to have more diversity in the workplace. Do you think we should push to have more five foot six people in the workplace and five foot four people? And should we have more diversity of height? I think we should definitely have look at whatever factors research shows

are discriminated against and address those discriminations. We know that research shows that there's discrimination against type, and that's what you're saying, Yeah, yes, of course, yes, So that's what the pure viewer is. We definitely know there's the discrimination against people who are beasts, and I definitely think that

that should be addressed as well. I think there should be more effort put on addressing issues of ethnicity because of the cultural problems around ethnicity in this country, with discrimination against African Americans, the Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and so on. Because of that more because of that focus, because of that cultural heritage, because of that history, there should be especially with African Americans, there should be more

focused place than that. But I think all sorts of discriminatory impulses and tendencies, I think there should be a way to address the discrimination against wolverine spans and black eyes, because these are all problematic tendents. People need to know this. People need to understand that our gut reactions cause us to make really bad decisions about other people. And that's what the that's why I wrote the book about relationships.

Like what you said in the beginning, why do we the wise that book important because we make really bad

mistakes about other people and that hurts us. And we're talking about only one aspect of these mistakes about the tribalism, and there's so many other aspects of the book we can dive into, but we just want to be highlighted that this is a problem, and this is something that really needs to be addressed, and it's something that the way it's addressed right now, I get really frustrated because the way that the large majority of diversity inclusion programs

work is they talk about ways of shaming and guilty white majority males into accepting minorities, women, and so on. That's a really bad tendency. That's a very bad approach to diversity inclusion. When you look at the research, it's just like fat shaming. You're gonna know what you're going to think, but just by fat shaming a fat person, you'll get that fat person to lose weight. Now that's not what the research shows. It's intuitive to us. You

know why is fat shaving a thing? Because you know, your mother intuitively feels that fat shaming you will work. That's what her gut reaction tells her is the right thing to do. To criticize the negative comments about wait and so on, and that's what your friends feel is the right thing to do, and your relatives and so on. And that's why fat shaming and all other sorts of shaming are self prevalent in our society, and including discrimination shaming,

where it's people who are discriminated are shamed. That's not a good approach. When you look at the research on how do you actually address diversity inclusion, You need to show people that this is part of the revolutionary heritage. Tribalism is natural. Everyone falls into it. This is the hall effect, horns effect, the in group bias, out group bias. This is natural. It's a natural tendence. So how do you actually address let's say, eating us by shaming people?

You say, it's natural for us to be triggered by sugar. You know, in the savanna environment, it was very important for us to be triggered by when we came across a source of honey or something like that. It was very important for us to eat as much of it as possible, or to survive and thrive with the descendants of those who succeeded in doing so, and then reproduce

themselves well. In the modern environment, that's very bad. If you come across, you know, a box of donuts in the workplace, that's a graceful vendor censure and it's kind of sitting there open for everyone. It's very tempting to maybe, you know, take half a dollar and then once you take half of donut, I mean, it's pretty tempting to take the other half and then you know, before you know it, you say you're taking you have the box of God. Right, So that's a tendency that makes it

not because they're feathered by sugar. It's very tempting. So you need to instead of that choose a different set of pats, like for example, passing by that donuts and going for the bowl of fruit or another vendors much less tasty, much less you know, desirable. That's put untroso food, but it's much healthier. The folks hopefully who are checking out this podcast that hopefully developed habits that helped them make the right decisions in those challenging situations in order

to have a healthy eating habit. So that's physical health. The same thing for fitness. Not intuitive for us to go to the gym or not to go to the gym in the middle of the pandemic. But let's say exercise at home, right the yog or something like that. Ideayo, But it's not something intuitive for me. It's not comfortable, but it's something I learned to do, just like I learned to eat in a better manner that might God

reaction tells me to do. And in the same way, we need to address discrimination in the workplace and in personal relationships. These halo effects and horns effects in group and outgrow biases tribalism. There are specific strategies to habits that you can use that I talk about my consulting coaching practice and I talk about, of course in the book, that you can use to address these negative, harmful patterns in our minds that pauses to have the make these

bad decisions about other people. But you can't come from it from a shaving perspective. You have to say, this is a pattern that you need to address for developing better habits, and that's the better mental habits, that's the key to address these dangerous judgment errors. Nice, I don't think you took a breath at all. Thank you. I'm

passionate about this is as it can tell. I can tell absolutely Can you describe one of the more interesting cogniases that I read in your book, the illusion of transparency? Can you talk a bit about that on how do we work to avoid this error in judgment? How can we happy to solution of transparency has to do with communication. You know, right now this podcast we're communicating and trying to convey some ideas well. The intuitive thing to feel for me and are you and for everyone else is

that's what great communicates. We feel in an illusionary manner, that our thoughts and our feelings and our message is fully transpar earned to other people. That whatever we convated people is one hundred percent received, integrated, accepted, and celebrated. Well maybe not the last, but that is fully received.

Not how actually reality work. What you need to understand is that, first of all, there might be a lot of technical issues in communicating in the modern age of zoom right, with a pandemic, a lot of technical issues. Glitchous people might not be hearing you so on, stuff might be going on in their home that you might not be aware that might be distracting them, could not right, That's kind of one yeah, exactly, So that's kind of one area. Then they might be hearing you, but they

might be not paying sufficiently good attention. They might be distracted. They might be you know, looking at their phone or thinking about what they're doing it for dinner or that meeting they're going to have with their boss, right, something that's reoccupying them. Their attention is not also stand you, and they're missing a part of the message that you're conveying. So there is an attention issue. Then it's an interpretation if they might have different ways of thinking about the

terms that you're using, you know, different people. Let's say you use the term several. What does several mean? What does a few mean? What does a couple mean? And those are just the sum of the terms that we have different interpretations around, and people feel that their interpretation is the rightful and they don't even check to confirm that the other person has the right interpretation of the term.

And of course then there's a lot of talkingitive biases that cause them to have filters around what they're hearing from you. It's another talking to bias that I talk about in the book is called the confirmation bias, where we look for information that confirms our beliefs and we ignore information that doesn't confirm to our beliefs. So let's

say you're hearing information from somebody. Let's say your loved one is telling you, you know, to clean up yourself and they're telling you, you know, this is the fifth time that you didn't clean up yourselves, and you're kind of what you're hearing from is, Oh, they they're just they're just you know, nagging me again. You're not hearing kind of their frustration, their concerns, they're underlying anxiety and their urges that caused them to talk about this topic

to you. You're just kind of ignoring them as noise. And that's what happens to people, or the same thing happens in the workplace. You know, when somebody is getting constructive critical feedback and they have a defensive response and they shut down and they're ignoring what the other person is saying. That happens all the time. You know, so many leaders don't know how to give good, constructive critical feedback because they're not aware of the flight response and

the freeze response. So when we're talking about the five flight or freeze response. By the way, the freeze response is kind of an internal flight where you're fleeing within yourself, so that either the flight response or the freeze response would cause people who are getting constructive critical feedback to withdraw from the situation, ignore whether they're being told, and not focused on it. And leaders just assume that whenever they give constructive but because the other person will just

do what they say. That's not how the world works. And so the illusion of transparency has to do And of course we can talk about how to fix that, but the illusion of transparency has to do with this tendency to fail to understand that our message is far from one hundred percent getting through to the other people. Yeah, so we often have that, we operate under that illusion, and it's I mean, how in the world do we

see reality more clearly? I mean, do you have any advice on listening skills or so with ilution of transparency. Let's talk about this at first. What you want to do is, first of all, understand where the other persons coming from. If they have if they're likely to have some kind of emotional reaction to what you're talking about, then you need to understand. Okay, I assume that they will have some kind of emotional reaction model, what kind

of emotional reaction they will have. Maybe they'll have a defensive response, aggressive response. Maybe they'll feel like ignoring you because this is kind of a time time you've been repeating the same thing, and by the way, you shouldn't be repeating the same thing time time. That seems that the way you're doing doesn't work. So whatever is happening, you want to anticipate their emotional response, and you want to understand what their emotional responses are. They can address

the emotions under the content of what you're saying. So you don't want to simply think about, you know, I'm going to target their head, but you want to think about targeting their gots, because they are interpreting your words to their gods, not their head overwhelmingly seeking. When we're talking about an emotional response, do you want to speak to their emotions. You want to address their emotions. You

want to calm them down. You want to make sure that they're hearing what you're saying and their emotions are hearing what you're saying. Then you want to check or understanding. So you don't want to simply say, you know, here's the thing, and I assume that you understood it. You want to check or understanding by saying something like, oh, hey, so can you clarify what you think of what I'm saying?

And you want to make sure that the person in response actually gives you a clarific ate or gives you an indication of what they think that you're saying, and you and that what they think you're saying is actually what you're saying, because that sort of checking for understanding gets you to have a discussion about okay, not what I meant. And you want to always make sure that

you take this on yourself. Don't blame the other first for misunderstanding, which is self and what happens in communication. Very bad tendency, really not something you want to do. Don't say you know you're dumb, you misunderstood me. Say something like that, I apologize that I am mist communicated. What I meant to say was next not why, so let's talk about why. Well, let's let's talk about this issue. So that's something that you want to make sure to do.

So speak to other people's emotions and check for understanding, apologize, take the blame for yourself for a humous communication, and then make sure that you can whatever misunderstanding and suxist. It's great, great advice. So let me make sure that I understood your point correctly about intuition. I'm going to apply your principle to something I was thinking. You said,

trusting your intuition's bad advice. Could it be that there are individual differences though, in how naturally some of these principles come to people versus don't, Like, there are some people and I'm not saying you, but because I don't know you that well, but there's some people who they're so rational people that they don't they don't you know a lot of people in the autism spectrum, for instance, these a lot of these they need rules, and they

need to cognitively understand all the cognitive biases, and they want to break it all down and systematize it. But then there are other people who just intuitively get these things. And it's like, yeah, obviously, now, so don't you think that, like, there are some people that are just naturals at relationships that that are more likely not to fall prey to the illusion transparency because of their intouition is so well developed. I just wanted to discuss this with you. Oh yeah,

I think it's a very important topic. There are some people who are naturally more empathetic than others, so it's not that their intuition is developed. There's a specific Let me make sure to clarify what intuition is. So when we talk about intuition, there can be something called expert intuition. Expert intuition is when you've probably heard the phrase you need ten thousand hours of practice and something for mastery, right, and you actually don't need ten thousand hours, I mean,

depends on the skills. That's kind of like an exaggeration painting with a broadcash. But expert intuition, where you can trust your intuition, comes from repeatedly many times performing the same task, getting quick feedback, and having over time developed a sense that you're absolutely getting the right answer, you know, whatever you're doing with this task. So, for example, probably most folks listen to podcasts have expert intuition about checking

their email, going through it and seeing okay. They can very quickly tell whether this is an important email or this is stam right. That's something you probably have most expert intuition. I mean, there are some people who just ignore their email that you probably don't have expert intuition, but most of you have hopefully expert intuition. So that's something good that you have expert intuition in because you

can quickly tell them. Or when you're driving a car, you can probably if you have a lot of experience in that you can probably quickly tell how to drive the car effectively, inaccurately. So there are a number of

areas where we have expert intuition. Of course, it depends on your So if you're an executive, for example, you have expert intuition in looking at a craft and law statement and quickly telling how division is doing, then that of course you know, or your plumbering can quickly look at you know, toilet backed up and see you know, this is most likely the cost because you have a

lot of experience. However, we tend to greatly exaggerate what our understanding of what we have expert intuition in, and so we feel that whatever area we're engaging with we are experts in, where as we are in no way experts in those areas. There's, for example, really interesting studies on doctors performing lab exams and they assume that they know what the right answer is to kind of a diagnosis, treatment, and overwhelmingly they tend to be way too confident about

their knowledge. They tend to feel like they know what the right diagnosis is and they don't, and they way too confident about it. So even doctors, you know, get into this head space where they tend to be way over confident about their ability to sell something. Or let's

say just in terms of over confidence. When you when you look at let's say lawyers and you ask them, you know, are you an above average lawyer, below average lawyer, or an average lawyer, you'll find that about ninety seven percent of them raise themselves above average lawyers, which I know another average effect. Yeah, that's right, exactly exactly one because of the biacest. So this is something that's a bad problem now in terms of there's a separate dynamic.

So that's expert intuition practice. When we talk about empathy, there are some people who are naturally empathetic and good at reading others' emotions. At empathy, not intuitively, it's something you have to develop exactly. Yeah, it's something I learned. It's a skill set that I developed to read other people's emotions. And so looking at Paul Ecker's work at micro expressions, so looking at people being able to read them.

That's something that I developed. That there are other things that I have intuitively better skills in just because of my abilities, but that's not one of them. That's something I developed. So there are some people who will be empathetic and they can quickly respond to others, and so they can see all what's going on. They care about other people's emotions, they respond to them. They're good at

that emotional connection with others. But unfortunately, overwhelmingly what tends to happen to these empathetic people is that they tend to get too empathetic and they get themselves into relationships where people they get themselves into relationships that they find

to be unhealthy. So, for example, if they're too empathetic or someone, they will tend to attract people who are needy and tend to want to support those people and help those people too much, and because they can't get away from the desire to help those people, and so they end up in relationships that are not helpful where they tend to do much more of the emotional labor than they should. Emotional labor for folks who don't know

that concept. You want to think about your activities, your emotions, how straining those are. We don't realize how much effort we put into engaging emotionally with things, and lots of people don't realize. But emotional engagement is a lot labor is work, and that's something that's really important to realize. And it's not nearly values enough in our society, not nearly as much as it should be. That's separate issue.

So people who are empathetic tend to get into these serious problems and they need to learn about these cognitive biases. They need to learn about them in order to notice when they're getting two pulled in to their relationships with others, when they're responding too much to those folks, and when they are with whom they're in relationships with, and when they're giving too much of themselves. That's a cognitive device as well, when you're really not serving your own goals

and your own needs, when you're just giving to others. Yeah, this is really good stuff. You know what, if you're in a relationship and the other cognitive biases that you can have that can actually make you fall in love with someone, But it's actually an illusion like you actually they're not really good for you, but you're blinded to all the reasons why they're not good for you because you feel love for them. Yes, so you feel that

you should love them. You feel that they are the right pit for you because society tells you, or your parents tell you, or those around you tell you what. Yeah, right, So you feel I've got the reaction of course, so that from the halo effect all of these other dynamics, you feel that they're the right thing to fit for you. And that's the key. You feel that you feel the feeling is always the case. You feel certain information is true and you believe it. You feel a certain course

of action is the right action. You feel when you're driving, it's the right thing to do to to you know, cut off that jerk, which just cuts you off, and then you get into a competition of cutting off each other. Is that the right course of action? Of course? You

know that aggressive driving. But people who have the fight response, you know I used to do, have this strong desire to do that, and because I have much more of the fight response than the flight response, and I to learn to avoid being aggressive in response to people who are aggressive to me on the road. Right, it felt right, It felt like the right thing to do, and so does feeling that you know, whoever your love is the right person to love. So whoever you feel you targeted

with your emotions the right person to target. But there's a reason we have a forty plus percent divorce raight in this country. There's a reason for that, and it's because these feelings are lying to you. They're light to us all the time because we're not in a savannah environment. That person might have been a great fit for you. If you are living in a tribe of fifteen people to one hundred and fifty people in a savanna environment and you are hunters for years and gathers, that would

be a bit made for you. That's perfect in that time. But in the modern world they might not be a very good made for you at all. And our emotions light to us all the time about whether they're a good fits for you. That's why I talk in the blind spot between us about how you should not trust your gut. You should not trust your heart, you should not trust your intuition. You should always check with your head before going with your gut. Sometimes your gut will

get right. Times will be wrong, but you can't simply trust it. In the modern world, you will make way too many mistakes about your relationships, whether in your love relationships, whether in your friendships, whether in your professional relationships, in anything, even in your own relationship with yourself. How how often do we like to ourselves right? How often do we say I'm going to lose that weight, and I'm going to do the go to the exercises, I'm going to

be you know, getting to work on time, and we don't. Well, that's because we really don't see ourselves clearly and we fall in these same magnifiases, these mental blind spots around ourselves too. To how we relate to ourselves, well, under what conditions? Do you see any conditions in which we can trust our in our experience or in our emotions and feelings about things? Can you? Can you think of anything? Sure?

I mentioned before? When you want to get yourself out of the way of a moving bus, that's a great time to trust relationships. I'm saying. Within relationship you should always check with your head because sometimes again your bet will be right, sometimes it will be wrong. But you should never simply trust because of all of these cognitivices. They should never simply trust. It's just, you know, just

going with their gut is very dangerous in relationships. It will lead you into many, many, many, many mistakes may damage damaging relationships. What doesn't mean but what about the analogous to the bus coming at you? What if you have, like, you know, like a psychopath partner and your your guts telling you something's just off, Like, can't that be really valuable information? Of course? Yeah, so sometimes you got is going to be right, and it doesn't mean So that's

what I'm saying. Your guts will be right sometimes and sometimes it will be wrong. And you can't know intuitively when you can't know internally when it's going to be right and wrong because internally it always feels right. That is the key. Internally, your gut always feels right, and sometimes it will actually be right, and sometimes it will actually be wrong. That's why you can't certainly feel that. How many people come to a therapist and have couple's

relationship and say, oh, my partner is a psychopath? And when as a therapist in an objective position looking from the outside in says you know is saying no, you're a psychopath, you know, Well, that happens a lot with narcissism a partner. A partner will say, my husband is so narcissistic because he never pays attention to my needs all the time. He doesn't pay attention to my needs all the time. So he's narcissistic, or she's narcissistic, you know,

whatever the case may be. But that's funny, right, It's funny exactly. So that's that's and that's what I'm that's what I'm talking about. Our gut reactions. You can never simply trust them in relationships. That's why you need to always check with your head. And one of the strategies I talk about in the book, so there are a number of strategies I talk about to fix these is

to get an external perspective. Then doesn't mean you need to get a CREC, but that means you need to give an objective external perspective somebody who you trust and

somebody who your partner trust. Well, if you're just getting the objective perspective of yourself, somebody who you trust, and somebody who's going to give it to you straight, no, it's not going to be you know, just a drinking buddy and supporting you and saying, yes, absolutely, you know that guy is terrible, or yes, absolutely you know that

girl's a jerk. You know you don't want You want somebody who will be honest, and that is one of the many strategies that you can use to address these copp device Do you recommend that you limit your alcohol intake at dance clubs because you're not going to cognitively make too many decisions about who you're going to approach on that dance floor and who you talk to and who you go home with if you have too much alcohol in your system. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah,

I know. Interesting. I'd say that that really depends on your value set and what you care about. If you just care about having a better there, and you're okay with, you know, ending up at home with whoever and know that she's not going to be in a one night stand with no strings attached, that's fine, sounds very nice. There you go, There you go. I don't judge, you know whatever. If that's your goal, that's great and there's

no cognitive biases in there if that's your goal. But if your goal is to find somebody in the dance club, we can have a long term relationship with you. Definitely want to limit your intake if you're not going to be making you a very smart decision and you don't one to want Yeah, if you just want to as well, Yeah exactly. But the one night stand, you know, that's fine. Cool man. So you bring up this interesting phrase you book mental fitness. What is mental fitness and what kind

of techniques help us develop it? I'll talk a little bit about physical fitness. Right with a diet where you want to have good physical well, we think about our diet, we think about our physical health, but we don't think nearly enough about mental fitness out getting the same sort of fitness in terms of our mental strength, our mental ability. And that's what mental fitness is about. You want to improve your ability to make good decisions to address these

blind spots. So it's not simply about kind of you know, it's not about having dealing with challenges. Mental challenges like anxiety, like depression, which are very important to deal with, But that's about trauma. That's about problems that you're having. Mental fitness is about strength. It's about going to the gym and exercising that's what mental fitness is about. It's about

eating your salad. That's what mental fitness is about. So that's kind of just like the physical fitness, there's mental fitness, and we talked about some of them already. So some of them, for example, is getting that external perspective. One of the ways that you make sure that you address problems and relationships is you can get an external perspective on what's going on in your relationships. That's one strategy that's really useful. Then another strategy that's really useful is

delaying your decision needs are emotional systems. We have two systems of thinking, broadly speaking, the autopilot system and the intentional system, also known as system one and system two.

So the autopilot system is our older brain. The emotional brain, those intuitions, those reactions, they take million seconds to turn on, which is great to get us out of the way of moving bus, or to flee a saber to tiger that's great for that environment, or to be sufficiently hostile to an opposing tribal member so from someone from another tribe,

but not good in the mother world. So you want to turn on your intentional system, your system too the more rational part of our brain that takes a couple of seconds to turn on. And that's why when your mom said count to ten before making a decision, that's actually pretty good advice, something that researches back as quite effective in terms of addressing these cognitibiases. So making sure to count to ten, that's one strategy that's you know,

in that moment. But when you are strongly you want to give your rousal around twenty minutes or so to stay and that's the sympathetic and pair sympathetic nervous system. So we have those two nervous systems, and the sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight system. The pattern sympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest system. It

takes about twenty minutes to switch. So when you're strongly routed, you want to take a break from Let's say you're talking to your partner and you have a strong emotional arousal. You want to take a twenty minute break and say, let's put on post you know, I'll go to the restroom, you know, get a break, and then resuming about twenty minutes. The same thing for if you're talking to a colleague in the workplace and gets into a really cute place.

You want to stop that for twenty minutes. So that's kind of another strategy that you can use. Another strategy that I struggle recommend folks to use is to consider your past experiences we go into the future. I talked about, you know, to telling your husband, you know, for the tenth time to put up his thoughts right, not a good strategy because if obviously hasn't worked, or fat shaming someone or something like that that clearly has not worked

in the past. But we keep repeating the same patterns, keep repeating and doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes. It's terrible, it's really but that's just how our mind works. So you want your past experiences and decide do you really want to do the same things that work that did not work before in this new situation. That's one another thing that I talk about, and then I really recxpend the folks looking

at a situation, consider alternative explanations and options. That's a very good strategy and has been shown to address a number of club into biases. When you look at a situation, whether do the helo effect or the horns effect, whether this is the fighter or fight response, anything. We feel that there's only one right way to go. We feel that there's only one right way to look at a situation.

But developing that mental habit of immediately considering alternatives, maybe there are other options that you can pursue, other courses that you can follow. Maybe there are other ways of explaining the situation. Maybe the person will crush you off it's not actually a jerk, but just doesn't see you. Or they're driving their wife to the hospital because she's about to have a baby. Right, So there's other explanations and options to pursue. Other options being courses of action,

other explanations being interpretations to what's going on. If you have that immediate habit of looking at those in your relationships, you'll be much better off. And I talk about eight other strategies which you let's take a look at the book to know about you got ready. You can't give it all away, my friend, You can't give it all away. Well, I just really appreciate you chatting with me today. You know, I want to leave with a quote. You say, we

are biased, but we don't know it. So keep that in mind before you make a decision that will lead to debt, regret, and stomach upset. I like that quote, Glen. Thanks so much for coming on, being a repeat a guest on the Psychology Podcast and dropping your wisdom to us. Thank you so much, Beth. I really appreciate you advice. Appreciate you too. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join

in the discussion at the Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.