Learn about new research into whether you can change your personality; why historians are stumped over the history of the Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people; and why you jerk awake while you’re falling asleep. 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: Can You Change Your Personality? — https://curiosity.im/2Mu9eCk The Ainu Are Japan's Indigenous People — https://curiosity.im/2MsSXxz Why Do You Jerk Awake Right as You're Falling Asleep? — https://curiosity.im/2MqRvMc If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about new research into whether you can change your personality; why historians are stumped over the history of the Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people; and why you jerk awake while you’re falling asleep.
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:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-to-change-your-personality-why-you-jerk-awake-while-falling-asleep-and-ainu-history
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about new research into whether you can change your personality; and, why historians are stumped over the history of Japan’s indigenous people. We’ll also answer a listener question about why you jerk awake while you’re falling asleep.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
Can You Change Your Personality? — https://curiosity.im/2Mu9eCk (Ashley)
New research suggests that you can change your personality… kind of. Probably. Maybe. Depending on the situation. [ad lib about how science doesn’t have all the answers]
ASHLEY: According to most psychologists, our personalities are sort of like teeth: they're stable from day to day, but can shift over time. So this study looked at how we might shift them on purpose. Researchers had 377 psychology students take a personality test to measure their “Big Five” personality traits. Long-time listeners will know the acronym “OCEAN,” which stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Scientists use the Big Five a lot, so it’s a pretty legit way to measure your personality. Anyway, the researchers in this study asked participants if there were any traits they wanted to work on changing. The most popular goal was reducing neuroticism. So every week for the next 15 weeks, participants accepted up to four challenges designed to push them towards their goals. These were designed to be small, reasonable and measurable ways to change thought patterns and habits — the type of stuff you might see in a self-help book. So for instance, if you wanted to work on neuroticism, a challenge might be to spend two minutes visualizing the best-case scenario whenever you feel worried about the future. If you were working on extraversion, you might tackle challenges like introducing yourself to someone new. And people's suggested challenges got harder over time, ramping up kinda like a workout regimen.
By the end of the study, a lot of them had made progress towards their goals of changing their personalities. Hooray! You can change your personality! Well… not so fast — there was a catch. For the most part, researchers found that the more "challenges" a person completed in those 15 weeks, the more progress they made. Aspiring extroverts got more extroverted if they completed 30 challenges than they did if they completed 20. The same was true for people working on their conscientiousness and neuroticism. Openness and agreeableness were more stubborn and relatively unaffected by challenges. But get this: people who signed up for a challenge and couldn’t complete it experienced the opposite effect. So like, if you were trying to be more extroverted, and you failed at the challenge to make yourself more extroverted, then you would actually become LESS extroverted. You’d backslide. Researchers aren't exactly sure why this is. Since the study relied on participant-reported personality data, it may have just been a sign that failing a challenge made people see their personality "issue" as bigger than before. Then again, maybe the very act of accepting a challenge felt like progress and made them relax more deeply into the trait they wanted to fix — kinda like how you might over-eat after a week of successful dieting. Overall, the study seems to suggest you can change your personality, but you can’t just WANT to change it. You have to work on it steadily and concretely. So before you take on a project like becoming more extroverted, make sure you're seriously committed to it — or you could end up more introverted instead.
The Ainu Are Japan's Indigenous People — https://curiosity.im/2MsSXxz (Cody)
Everyone came from somewhere. You probably know about Native Americans here in the U.S. and Aboriginal Australians, but have you heard of the Ainu [EYE-new]? They’re the indigenous people of Japan. And they were already around when the people who would eventually become the Japanese showed up on the island about 23-hundred years ago. One reason why they’re a bit less well-known is because they weren’t even recognized by the Japanese government until 2008. That’s despite the fact that their distinct language, culture, and religious practices have been around for millennia. The Ainu language is unrelated to any other known language on the planet, and their religious and cultural traditions don't have much to do with any of their closest neighbors'. They also look different from the greater population of Japan. They have thick, curly hair that often grows blond or red, their eyes range from brown to blue, and their skin is more pale than their Japanese neighbors. What’s really interesting from a historical perspective is what went on before all this — as in, around the 14th millennium B.C.E. That’s what historians call the JOE-mawn period, or “cord-marked,” named after the particular patterns of pottery from the time. See, there were people on Japan’s central island of Honshu as early as during this time. But they can’t tell if the Ainu and the JOE-mawn people from that time are one and the same. On one hand, both cultures were hunter-gatherers, and historians don’t think either of them practiced much agriculture. Modern Ainu culture doesn’t suggest the affinity for pottery that the JOE-mawn had mastered, and the Ainu DID use metal tools and build permanent aboveground dwellings. And archaeologists discovered a seed repository in southern Hokkaido, which suggests the Ainu and their ancestors actually WERE practicing agriculture several thousand years ago. These days, most Japanese historians think the JOE-mawn people could have been two or three distinct groups. If the Ainu was one group, then what happened to the rest? The history of the Ainu just goes to show how learning just a few things about history can lead to so. Many. Questions. There’s always more to learn!
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LISTENER QUESTION: Why Do You Jerk Awake Right as You're Falling Asleep? — https://curiosity.im/2MqRvMc (Ashley)
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Angela, who asks, “Sometimes right after I've fallen asleep (you know.. The "window" when you're not quite asleep but you're not quite awake either), I'll have a muscle spasm somewhere on my body (it's random) that will make me jerk semi-violently, which wakes me up. I'm wondering what causes those spasms and why are they always worse when you're over-tired?” Great question, Angela!
It turns out that this is such a common phenomenon that it has an official name: the “hypnic jerk.” According to the National Sleep Foundation, as many as 70 percent of people have experienced this at some point. Unfortunately, we don’t actually know exactly what causes a hypnic jerk. It’s possible that as your muscles relax and your brain nods off and loses track of its surroundings, the occasional nerve misfires, resulting in a twitch. Another theory goes the evolutionary route: maybe when our ancestors lived in trees, drifting off to sleep signaled the imminent danger of falling to the ground, so that violent jerk helped keep them safe. A third theory says it’s a conflict between the part of your brain that’s falling asleep and the part of your brain that’s still awake. You don’t fall asleep all at once, and sometimes wakefulness can put up a fight by overreacting and giving your muscles a sudden jerk. Whatever the cause, there are ways to keep hypnic jerks at bay if they’re causing you trouble. Stimulants like caffeine, alcohol, and adderall have been linked to a higher frequency of hypnic jerks, and stress and anxiety don’t help either. So really, the best way to fight them is also the best way to get better sleep: work to reduce your stress, cut down on stimulants, and maybe keep your phone out of your bedroom for good measure. Thanks for your question, Angela! If you have a question, send it in to podcast at curiosity dot com.
CODY: Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout-out to Dr. Mary Yancy, who gets an executive producer credit today for her generous support on Patreon. Thank you SO. MUCH.
ASHLEY: If you’re listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out. We’re producing special podcast episodes and offering other exclusive perks to show our appreciation for your support. One more time, you can learn more at Patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!