Learn about the harmful effects of the “mass hysteria” label; why you say “like”; and the link between beauty and moral worth. Additional resources from neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan and further reading about the 2011 "mass hysteria" at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School: Pick up "The Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories of Mystery Illness" here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/606597/the-sleeping-beauties-by-suzanne-osullivan/ NHS page: https://www.uclh.nhs.uk/our-services/find-consultant/dr-suzanne-osullivan Follow @Suz_OSullivan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Suz_OSullivan Neale Gulley. (2012, June 23). School’s end clears up New York students’ mystery twitching. U.S. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-students-twitcnew-york-h/schools-end-clears-up-new-york-students-mystery-twitching-idUSBRE85M0DF20120623 Verbal tics and filler words by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Kitty in San Francisco) So, Um, How Do You, Like, Stop Using Filler Words? (Published 2017). (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/verbal-ticks-like-um.html Enfield, N. (2018, January 9). A linguist explains why it’s okay to say “um” and “uh.” Quartz; Quartz. https://qz.com/work/1175505/a-linguist-explains-why-its-okay-to-say-um-and-uh/ Liberman, M. (2014). Language Log» More on UM and UH. Upenn.edu. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=13713 Dr. Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein. (2017, March). A linguistic anthropologist explains why Christopher Mele’s New York Times article on filler words is wrong and banning phrases like “like” and “um” could be sexist. Quartz; Quartz. https://qz.com/921004/lets-stop-demonizing-filler-words/ We see beautiful things as having more moral worth by Cameron Duke Moral standing | ethics | Britannica. (2021). In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/moral-standing Klebl, C., Luo, Y., & Bastian, B. (2021). Beyond Aesthetic Judgment: Beauty Increases Moral Standing Through Perceptions of Purity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 014616722110236. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211023648 Williams, P. H., Burgess, N. D., & Rahbek, C. (2000). Flagship species, ecological complementarity and conserving the diversity of mammals and birds in sub-Saharan Africa. Animal Conservation, 3(3), 249–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2000.tb00110.x Young, E. (2021, August 11). Here’s Why We Believe That Beautiful Animals Are More Deserving Of Our Protection. Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/08/11/heres-why-we-believe-that-beautiful-animals-are-more-deserving-of-our-protection/ Episode about funny memes to protect ugly species: https://www.curiositydaily.com/rub-some-dirt-on-it-to-heal-wounds-funny-memes-can-save-endangered-species-and-space-changes-the-shape-of-astronauts-hearts/ Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about the harmful effects of the “mass hysteria” label; why you say “like”; and the link between beauty and moral worth.
Additional resources from neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan and further reading about the 2011 "mass hysteria" at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School:
Neale Gulley. (2012, June 23). School’s end clears up New York students’ mystery twitching. U.S. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-students-twitcnew-york-h/schools-end-clears-up-new-york-students-mystery-twitching-idUSBRE85M0DF20120623
Verbal tics and filler words by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Kitty in San Francisco)
We see beautiful things as having more moral worth by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/mass-hysteria-why-you-say-like-beautys-moral-value
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn why a psychosomatic illness in New York got worse after it was labeled as “mass hysteria,” with neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan. Then, we’ll, like, answer a listener question about why we say “like”; and you’ll learn why we see beautiful things as having more moral worth.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
About a decade ago, girls at a high school in New York began suffering from mysterious symptoms. No one could figure out why, but the symptoms were spreading. There was a media frenzy, but just as quickly, all that attention died down. So what actually happened to those girls? Well, Suzanne O'Sullivan is back to tell us all about it. Suzanne O'Sullivan is a neurologist and science writer who has just published her latest book: "The Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories of Mystery Illness." And here's what she had to say about this bout of so-called "mass hysteria."
[CLIP 3:05]
It's amazing what massive effects our brains can have on our bodies! Again, that was Suzanne O'Sullivan, a neurologist and science writer who has just published her latest book: "The Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories of Mystery Illness." You can find a link to pick it up in the show notes.
We got a listener question from Kitty in San Francisco, who writes, “I'm wondering if you like could like talk about why like we adopt these like verbal tics? And like if we could like train ourselves to like NOT like do that??!!!??” Great question, Kitty!
So like, what you call verbal tics, linguists call “filler words.” And it’s not just you who use them: in 2014, the linguist Mark Liberman analyzed a huge database of spoken language and found that the words “um” or “uh” make up one in every 60 words we say. That’s basically two to three “ums” a minute. But here’s the thing: “fillers” like um, uh, like, so, I mean, and you know? They actually serve a purpose. A lot of purposes, in fact.
The biggest thing they do is kill time before you come up with your next thought. Conversations are completely improvised — you don’t know how long each person will talk or what you’ll talk about. So you need traffic signals to keep everyone aware of who has the floor. Words like “um” and “like” let people know that you haven’t finished your thought and you’re just thinking about what you’ll say next.
But these words also do a lot of other things. They can soften criticism, like this:
CODY: “You’ve got, uh, something in your teeth.”
ASHLEY: They can ease into delicate topics, like this:
CODY: “Did you, you know, talk to your boss?”
ASHLEY: They let you signal how certain you are about something, like this:
CODY: “He must have been going, like, a hundred miles an hour.”
ASHLEY: And they help you to emphasize what you’re about to say, like this:
CODY: “It was, like, the greatest sandwich I have ever had in my life.”
But yes, some people think that filler words can make you sound less intelligent or credible. So while they do serve a purpose, it’s still a good idea to keep them to a minimum in scenarios when you want to put your best foot forward, like when public speaking or giving an interview. Luckily, these are circumstances when you won’t be interrupted, so you can use silence, and you can often plan what you’ll say, so you can find other ways to soften and emphasize your words.
One way to reduce these fillers is to slow down your speaking to give yourself time to think and give the audience time to comprehend your words. It may also help to record yourself talking and listen back to it regularly so you can really know what kind of habits you need to break. Good luck, and thanks for your question! If you have a question, send it in to curiosity at discovery dot com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
The perception of beauty is more than just aesthetic. In a recent series of studies, researchers found that we tend to see beautiful things as having greater moral standing, and that makes us more likely to protect them.
By moral standing, the researchers mean how much we see something as mattering to the world for its own sake. Previous research has shown that people tend to judge things with a mind and emotions as having greater moral standing. Studies have also found that beauty plays a part in these judgments, at least with animals and people. But these scientists wanted to find out if beauty affected our judgments of not only sentient beings, but also inanimate objects — after all, they don’t have a mind or emotions, but they do have beauty.
So the team performed a series of studies that peered into the minds of 1,600 people. They asked the participants to rate animals, buildings, and natural environments by how beautiful or ugly the thing was, how much it made them think of something “pure,” and how much they wanted to protect it. Unsurprisingly, the participants were more likely to protect what’s pretty — regardless of whether it was a sentient creature like a butterfly or an inanimate object like a building.
But the beauty ratings weren’t directly tied to this desire to protect. Instead, participants rated prettier things as being more pure than ugly things, and that gave them more moral standing — and more reason for protection.
When it comes to endangered species, it’s no wonder organizations like the World Wildlife Fund lean into aesthetically pleasing species like polar bears and Monarch butterflies, and not the Northern Bald Ibis, which is a bird that looks like the baby of a turkey vulture and a flamingo. Protecting the territories of charismatic species is often assumed to have the trickle-down effect of protecting less charismatic species. But a study in 2000 found otherwise. That study focused on Africa’s “big five” charismatic megafauna — that is, lions, leopards, buffalo, elephants, and rhinos. And it found that the areas set aside to protect those species? Yyyyeah, they failed to protect African biodiversity any better than if you protected the same amount of space at random.
While focusing on a species’ beauty can be a valuable conservation strategy, it’s important to remember that something doesn’t need to be beautiful to have value.
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about how likes and shares push people to express “moral outrage”;
The mystery of the Milky Way’s “broken arm”;
How placebo buttons give us the illusions of control that we crave;
Why the brain in your gut may have evolved before the brain in your head;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
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ASHLEY: The writer for today’s last story was Cameron Duke.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer and audio editor on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and lead audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend! [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Then, join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!