In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: What Doing a Lot of Chores Says About Your Personality The Weird History of Ketchup You've Never Heard A New Study Shows Just How Damaging Helicopter Parenting Can Be Worried about your own relationship with your kids? Curb the urge to get tangled up with Julie Lythcott-Haims' "How to Raise an Adult," free with your trial membership to Audible. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase through that link, Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018 Learn more about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Worried about your own relationship with your kids? Curb the urge to get tangled up with Julie Lythcott-Haims' "How to Raise an Adult," free with your trial membership to Audible. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase through that link, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018
Learn more about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/helicopter-parenting-damage-what-doing-chores-says-about-you-and-ketchup-history
CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn just how damaging helicopter parenting can be. The weird history of ketchup you've never heard. And what doing a lot of chores says about your personality.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Ashley, how early do you start cleaning after a party.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, man. I am the kind of person who's in the kitchen most of the time.
CODY GOUGH: When I'm hosting a party, and there's a few people left, and there's just cups everywhere, I always, while I'm talking, just start picking up all the cups and everything. And suddenly, every surface is clear.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's nice.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I don't know why I'm like that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, it's hard to wake up from a party feeling the way you usually do after a party and have a house completely full of trash. That is very true. It's nice to just clean up before you go to bed.
CODY GOUGH: Well, according to a new study, I think I know what doing a lot of chores says about my personality and about your personality. First quick refresher, that we're going to be talking about the Big Five personality traits. We've talked about this on the podcast before. You can use the acronym OCEAN to remember them. O for openness, C for conscientiousness, E for extroversion, A for agreeableness, and N for neuroticism.
ASHLEY HAMER: I feel like it's worth mentioning that this is really the only personality test that is backed by science.
CODY GOUGH: Yes. Yes. So this new study was published in the journal, Collabra Psychology, and it looked at the daily activities of 1,300 German volunteers average age 51. The data was self-reported so it wasn't a perfect study, but it had surprising findings. For example, in the big five, conscientiousness, means being considerate of others and neuroticism means low emotional stability and general messiness.
So you would think conscientious people would do more chores, right? Because they're more considerate of others. Well, neurotic participants reported doing more chores and for longer. This might be because the messiness from a neurotic personality might result in a person both causing more messes and feeling more stressed by them than someone else might.
The researchers also found that people with high openness scores were more likely to report socializing than other personality types, which makes sense. But they also reported hanging out with people for shorter periods of time overall. Speculation says that this might be because more open people are also more busy with a packed social schedule, so they don't have time to hang out with friends for quite as long.
ASHLEY HAMER: This might sound like a silly study. Like, of course, neurotic people do chores and nah, nah, nah, nah. But actually, this is the first study that actually has linked personality traits to behaviors. And the fact that there are so many surprising findings, shows that it's not just obvious. That it's really good they did this study.
CODY GOUGH: It's the first study linking these personality traits to behaviors?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Because I mean I'm familiar with the study, is that major company CEOs are psychopath, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure. But that is they take specific people or specific jobs, and they give them personality tests. This is, you give people personality tests, then you watch their activities throughout a week, and you see how they behave.
CODY GOUGH: Oh.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Very cool.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right, Cody. Here's the big test. Do you put ketchup on your hot dogs.
CODY GOUGH: The big Chicago test?
ASHLEY HAMER: Big Chicago test.
CODY GOUGH: I absolutely do.
ASHLEY HAMER: What.
CODY GOUGH: Do you?
ASHLEY HAMER: No. Actually, I never put it on my hot dogs even before I moved here. I was just never a ketchup fan on my hot dogs.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I just grew up, put a little ketchup, put a little mustard. I just dress it like I dress a hamburger. We live in Chicago, and in Chicago, it's like a cardinal sin.
ASHLEY HAMER: Verboten, yes. Absolutely.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. There are signs that people put in their stores, do not put ketchup on hot dogs. There are hot dog vendors that won't stock ketchup.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mm-hmm.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know. I've never gotten that.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, it's a snob thing.
[LAUGHS]
[COUGHS] It's part of living in the city. It's like, oh, are you are you in or are you out.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'll eat a Chicago style hot dog which has pickles and
ASHLEY HAMER: Onions. Everything on it. It's basically like you take all of the things you put on a hamburger and you put it on top of a hot dog.
CODY GOUGH: Except for ketchup.
ASHLEY HAMER: Except for ketchup. I don't put ketchup on my burgers either.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, yeah. No. No, we can't go to the same cookouts.
[LAUGHS] You can have all the ketchup.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, that's fine. Does your ketchup have fish sauce in it, though?
CODY GOUGH: That's gross. No.
ASHLEY HAMER: Why would you ask me that?
CODY GOUGH: Well, because the first ketchup had fish sauce in it. So here's a fun story for your next backyard cookout. The first ketchup had nothing to do with tomatoes. In the late 17th Century, Asia was full of European merchants, sailors, and military forces. And when they got back home, they missed some of that Asian cuisine. I would. At the time, there was a Cantonese sauce with a name that sounded like ketchup, but it meant eggplant juice.
There was also a Malaysian fermented fish sauce, like nam pla, if you're familiar with that. British invaders, in particular, really wanted these sauces, but they had no idea how to actually make them. So they butchered the name calling it ketchup, and they started testing random recipes. Some varieties tried fishy ingredients like oysters and anchovies. And other recipes called for walnuts, mushrooms, and other vegetables that have nothing to do with tomatoes.
The first known recipe to actually include tomatoes was published in 1812 by horticulturist James Mease. He called tomatoes love apples, and his recipe featured a multitude of spices, a splash of brandy, and no vinegar, or sugar. And it was meant to be put in soups and other sauces, and to use on fish, not burgers. But remember, there were still a ton of different recipes out there. So you might walk into a store and see a bunch of ketchup bottles and you were basically playing Russian dressing roulette.
You could end up with anything from Indonesian soy sauce, to a tamarind chutney, to a vinegary pastes of unripe nuts. Ketchup didn't become what it is today until 1905, when Henry J Heinz used full ripe tomatoes and pumped up the vinegar. The rest is basically history. You can read more details about the early days of the Heinz company today on Curiosity.com, and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
But let's just say that health conscious Americans were happier with vinegar than they were with the preservatives that other ketchup makers were using. Coal tar, anyone? Gross.
CODY GOUGH: That's gross. Actually do you have any outrageous helicopter parenting stories?
ASHLEY HAMER: No. But I am bitter at them, just because they were always doing their kids science fair projects, and I did mine myself like you're supposed to. And then those kids would always win the science fair.
CODY GOUGH: You sure are supposed to. They may have won the science fair, but they may have lost the war.
ASHLEY HAMER: They lost the war for sure.
CODY GOUGH: Because, new research shows that children with hovering parents often have a hard time with some really important life skills.
ASHLEY HAMER: I bet. This new study shows just how damaging helicopter parenting can be. Researchers from the University of Zurich, Minnesota Twin Cities, and North Carolina and Greensboro, invited 422 toddlers and their moms to play in a laboratory. The psychologist watched to see how often the moms tried to take over the task they had given the children and just do it for them, like you were talking about.
Three years later, they had participants come back, and it turned out that the children whose mothers displayed controlling behavior at age two, they were less in control of their own emotions at a later age. Poor control over emotions and behavior at age five, was linked with both poor social skills and poor academic performance at age 10.
Study co-author, Dr. Nicole Perry told The Guardian, quote, "To foster emotional and behavioral skills, parents should allow children to experience a range of emotions and give them space to practice and try managing these emotions independently, and then guide and assist children when or if the task becomes too great." Unquote.
Now, the researchers admit the study only recorded one parent's interaction at one point in the child's life, but it's still a start. At Indiana University, psychologist Chris Meno says children don't learn to problem solve very well when they don't have the space to struggle through things on their own.
And they can lack self-confidence needed to face challenges and develop a fear of failure, since they were never allowed to fail in the first place. She's also linked post graduate job search struggles with that type of behavior. Post graduate. That's like way later in life. Shielding your kids might make their lives harder in the long run. Beware.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can read about today's stories and more on Curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow, for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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