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038 - Think You’re Smart? Not So Much - You Are Not So Smart

Kevin: Hello there. Kevin here, with another episode of the “Feel Good English” Podcast.

I have some bad news for you, unfortunately, and the news is you are not as smart as you think you are. And where did I hear this news? Well, I heard it from the book “You are not so smart. Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook? Why Your Memory Will See Fiction in 46 Other Ways You’re deluding yourself.” by David McRaney, and it’s something with the book.

It’s a pretty long book title whether you’re deciding with a smartphone to purchase or which politician to vote for. You think you are a rational being, whose every decision is based on detached logic.

But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us. That’s okay because being deluded is part of being human.

This book is fun; it shows ways that we delude ourselves that we make decisions based on things that aren’t quite logical. “You are not so smart” will teach you some things that we do so in the future. You could be a little more open–minded, or at least be a little bit more aware of why you do the things that you’re doing.

“You are not so smart” is the book for today.

If you want a transcript for this episode, go to

feelgoodenglish.com/member and do something smart.

Let’s get into the episode: In 2008, there was a study on Amazon customers. You know the website “Amazon”? There was a study on people who bought Barack Obama’s book before he became President. And when they found that people that bought his book were all very strong supporters of his campaign, and this was after they bought the book. People were seeking confirmation in why Barack Obama was great and not information about him.

This is called “confirmation–bias.” We recall events, which support our beliefs inconveniently forget, and which would contradict to them. Our opinions of things are not objective or rational at all because we only pay attention to information that confirms what we already believe in. Through studies, they found that we spend more time reading articles and blog posts and books based on things that we already believe in. So if you go online and you find an article about something that you think is true, you will put more time into reading, then if you find something against your opinion. Interesting, huh? So what it means is we are not even reading things that can open our eyes to the other side of the argument. We just want to find things that confirm what we already believe.

So next time you’re in a meeting at work or maybe you’re in a classroom, pay attention to how you are filtering certain information, on how you’re filtering out information that doesn’t coincide with what you believe. Takes a lot more open – listening and a lot more awareness, and you get a lot of these things sub – conscious.

So, it’s hard to even notice, but just pay a little attention to, when you are having a debate and when you’re talking to somebody to be open to both sides and to take in information from both sides.

Another lesson from this book is how much we try to protect our self – esteem, to protect our self – image, and the different strategies we use to maintain our self – esteem. Without self – esteem, getting through the day would be very difficult to think we’re worthless and weak people, that they would be difficult. So, we naturally try to protect our self – esteem. We use strategies to nurture our self – esteem.

One of the strategies is to give ourselves sole credit for our successes, yet blame external factors for our failures. So something good happens it’s because you did a good job.

Something bad happens because somebody else screwed up. So protecting ourselves by taking credit for good things, but avoiding being to blame for bad factors. Another strategy is to pay close attention to successes and failures of others in order to judge our own worth and boost our self – esteem, especially these days.

How many of you look at Facebook or Instagram or whatever, and you’re just judging what other people are doing, and then connecting your life: they’re doing more than you, they have jobs better than you, they have more money than you, or worse, or their school’s better, they’re getting more tension than you are.

Another strategy to maintain our self – esteem is self – handicapping. In this self – handicapping involves coming up with the excuses for imagined future failure to avoid the risk of feeling bad about ourselves when that failure becomes reality. We imagine conditions in the future that would lead us to failing, and we avoid them.

To give you an example, there was a study, where subjects were given a difficult test, and told afterward that they’ve scored perfectly. Whether it was true or not that they said “Oh! You’ve got a hundred percent on this test.” Then, the subjects in the test were offered the chance to either take a performance – inhibiting drug or a performance – enhancing drug before a second test. Most people chose the drug they thought was performance – inhibiting.

Neither of the drugs actually did anything, but they wanted to take the one that was performance – inhibiting, demonstrating that most people wanted to protect their newly gained self – esteem by creating conditions ahead of time that would excuse a potential failure.

So if they took this performance – enhancing, maybe they would do as good as they did the first time they wanted to protect themselves from making sure that they didn’t lose this self – esteem. They are already seen as somebody who did perfect on a test, so even who had given performance – enhancing drugs, the possibility of not being perfect on the next test was real in their minds. So they tried very hard to avoid this, and they actually wanted to take a drug that would make them do worse that they could blame it on the drug. So, it appears to maintain our self – esteem, we find ways to inflate what we like most about ourselves. And on top of that, we create future conditions for failures so won’t be our own fault if we don’t succeed.

Very interesting that we could do these things naturally without even thinking about at these protective measures to protect ourselves and to make ourselves feel better throughout the day.

One last thing here in the book is the author says “We aren’t as helpful or fair to people as we think we are.” Imagine you see a car broken down on the side of the road. Would you pull over and lend the hand or keep on driving? Telling yourself that someone else will be along soon enough. So somebody’s broken down, but these people everywhere say “I don’t need a help. Somebody else will.” Well, what is this called the “bystander effect”? And in our first to the fact that our inclination to help others diminishes if there are other people around.

There was a tragic story of a woman, who was stabbed for thirty minutes in public. This happened in New York. For thirty minutes, she was getting stabbed, and there are people all around, but nobody came to help her. So she’s yelling for help and, but everybody kept on looking at each other and not one person went up there and helped her. So, a very tragic example of this “bystander effect.”

A possibly life – saving tip is if you’re in trouble, and there’s a group of people around you, simply point to one person, and ask that person for help because if that person feels obligated to come help you. You’re in the street, something comes up with a baseball bat and starts hitting you, hopefully, that doesn’t happen. But instead of yourself yelling “Help! Help! Help,” look for one person in the crowd and say “Hey, you! Help! Help! Help!” and now, they feel obligated to help you and stop the guy from hitting you with a baseball bat. And going over the vocabulary from today’s episode, first one I used, now we’re talking about, is “deluded” or “deluded yourself.”

To delude is to trick or to fool, to deceive. So you’re not being honest, or you’re trying to trick someone, or in this case, you’re trying to trick yourselves, you’re actually trying to trick yourself, you’re deluding yourself. You’re not getting the real information, the facts.

Detached logic. So, detached means disconnected. So there’s logic, but you’re detached from the logic. So at forty – eight seconds, when I say detached logic, it means you’re not connected to logic. Two minutes, ten seconds, confirmation – bias.

Confirmation – bias is a psychological term, meaning, we find information where we only see information that confirms our beliefs.

If you are biased, B I A S E D, it means you are one – sided on a certain topic or your opinions are not balanced. You say your child is the best. Of course, because that’s your child. So, you are biased.

You are not getting a fair opinion. Confirmation – bias is we only look to find or we only pay attention to information that confirms what we already believe, which can distort reality, which can delude us. Right? Three minutes and ten seconds, filtering information. To filter something means to take out things that you don’t want. Like in coffee, you use a filter. You put the coffee grounds, the broken up coffee into a filter. You pour water on top, and a coffee goes through the filter, and the coffee grounds stay in the filter. So you’re filtering out information. You’re taking out information that you don’t want.

Three minutes thirty – eight seconds, a very big topic here at the “Feel Good English” podcast. Self – esteem. Self – esteem is how you feel about yourself. If you have a high self – esteem, it means you feel good. You think you are a valuable person. If your self – esteem is low, you think you’re not very valuable. You think you are weak. You think you have a lot of problems. So in the book, we are talking about how to protect our self – esteem, how we want to protect our feelings about ourselves. Four minutes fifty – four seconds, self – handicapping.

Handicap means you have a deficiency, or you have a

disadvantage. If you are somebody that has a physical handicap, it means you might not be able to walk or whatever it is about your body you have a disadvantage compared to other people. So in the book, it talks about handicapping how we give ourselves disadvantages for future circumstances so we can avoid seeming like we are a failure. So, other people can blame it on our handicap, and we can blame it on our handicap and not ourselves. Makes sense?

Five minutes thirty seconds, performance – inhibiting. To inhibit means to prevent or to get in the way of, to obstruct. So a performance – inhibiting drug means it inhibits, it obstructs it, gets in the way out of you performing at your best. If you drink alcohol, that inhibits your ability to drive. You put it on your disadvantage.

You’re not as aware, you’re not as alert. Speaking of awareness, I used the word “aware” a lot in this episode. Aware. A W A R E is to notice, to be conscious of something. “I am aware that you are upset. However, we need to figure out this problem.” Or “Yesterday, I was aware of the fact that the building that I live in was having some electrical issues.” I was aware of that. I was conscious of that. Six minutes fifty – five seconds, to lend a hand.

That’s an expression, to lend the hand. The word “lend” is the opposite of “borrow.” To lend something is to give something to somebody. To borrow is to take something from somebody. By the way, that’s a very commonly misused couple of words. To lend, give. To borrow, take.

So, to lend a hand is to give somebody help. You don’t actually give them your hand. Well, you can kind of, if you need to help them with your hand, then yes, but then you’re giving them help.

So “Yeah. I will lend you a hand. I will help you.” Six minutes fifty seconds, broke down. It’s phrasal verb “to break down.” We use this for a machine or a car, usually some type of electronic or something that uses power to function, and when this breaks, we say “break down.” Often, we use it for cars. “The car broke down. It is on the side of the road.” Seven minutes seven seconds, “bystander effect.” bystander, B Y S T A N D E R. A bystander is somebody who witnesses something happening, could be a crime or an accident, but doesn’t do anything about it. They just watch.

So this book is a fun read. “You are Not So Smart” opens your mind up to some things that you do, that you’re not even aware of. Are these things that you really need to change a lot? Not necessarily, but it is interesting to see how we aren’t as logical and rational as we think we are. Then, this could help you in business and school and decision – making in general.

Open your eyes a little bit to why you might be doing what you’re doing in, maybe give you some alternative viewpoints on certain situations. “You Are Not So Smart” by David McRaney, a cool fun – read.

If you want a transcript, go to feelgoodenglish.com/member. Get the transcripts to this. You can read what I mentioned here and learn more deeply.

And until then, have a wonderful day, keep learning, keep growing, keep opening your minds. And how about an English joke for the day? When I was a kid, my English teacher looked my way and said, “Hey! Name two pronouns,” and I said, “Who? Me?” See you in the next lesson.