Learn about the Johari window, a method to get to know yourself better; why sibling rivalry can actually be a good thing; and why there’s no center of the universe. 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: Get to Know Yourself Better With the Johari Window — https://curiosity.im/31XwLT4 Strong Sibling Relationships Can Counteract Family Conflict — https://curiosity.im/31UAPmM 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 the Johari window, a method to get to know yourself better; why sibling rivalry can actually be a good thing; and why there’s no center of the universe.
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:
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/sibling-rivalry-benefits-why-the-universe-has-no-center-and-how-to-know-yourself-better
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 a method to get to know yourself better; and, why sibling rivalry can actually be a good thing. We’ll also answer a listener question about how the Big Bang happened if there’s no center of the universe.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Get to Know Yourself Better With the Johari Window — https://curiosity.im/31XwLT4 (Ashley)
Research suggests self-awareness has many benefits. And psychologists have developed a way you can get to know yourself better, called the Johari window.
It was developed in 1955, and the Johari window is a group exercise that claims to reveal previously hidden aspects of your character. It’s relatively simple: everyone in your group gets a list of 56 adjectives, like bold, nervous and silly. You pick the ones you feel describe your own personality, while others in the group pick the ones they think describe you.
Then, the words are allocated into four sections or panes of the Johari window. The first section contains words that were on both lists and represent those qualities of your character that you openly display to the world. Words that you chose but others didn’t are those qualities you hide behind a façade. Words picked by others but not by you are characteristics in your blind spot, things that you don’t see in yourself, but others do. And finally, there are the adjectives that neither the group nor you felt applied to you and these represent characteristics that are unknown.
While the activity itself pushes you to greater self-awareness, the results reveal even more. If there are more adjectives in the open section, then you’re probably an open book, someone who both knows yourself and lets other see most of the real you.
On the other hand, people with an oversized "blind spot" section are likely naive about their own character. Those with a lot of words in the “façade” section may come across as secretive and closed. And finally, those with lots of adjectives in the unknown section might be mysteries to themselves and to others.
So, take a peek through Johari’s window. Just doing the exercise with a trusted group might help clear up some blind spots and help you get to know yourself better. [ad lib]
Strong Sibling Relationships Can Counteract Family Conflict — https://curiosity.im/31UAPmM (from Sunday 9/8) (Cody)
Sibling rivalry may have some unexpected benefits. Researchers have shown that sibling relationships, even those defined by rivalry, can protect children from the negative effects of other family conflict.
This idea comes from a 2018 study led by University of Rochester psychology professor Patrick T. Davies. His team recruited 236 kids with an average age of 12 and a half, along with their parents, to measure the effects various family relationships had on their psychology in the long run.
In the study, the researchers had to be a little cruel: they got the whole family together, then encouraged parents to talk about a subject that they disagreed about. While the argument unfolded, the researchers noted two factors. First of all, how angry and bitter did the fight become? That could give them a sense of what life at that particular home might be like, or at least show how the parents modeled disagreements for their kids. Second, they gauged how the children reacted to seeing their parents have a fight.
They then asked the kids' teachers and other authority figures about what kinds of behavioral issues they'd demonstrated, if any, and also asked the mothers about the kids' relationships with their siblings. Finally, they spoke to the kids themselves to get a sense of how they experienced distress at moments of intense family conflict.
When they checked in on the kids and their families about a year later, the researchers found that those that had witnessed particularly contentious arguments between their parents were more likely to have a more stressed response to a conflict. And that was associated with more mental health issues in later years, just in case you needed any more proof that a conflict-filled home life isn't good for kids.
But they also found that when it came to the kids who had a strong relationship with their siblings, the negative effects of combative parents were almost entirely wiped out. This remained true regardless of the kids' gender, age, and other factors — and even if their relationship was itself largely defined by competitive rivalry. As long as the two siblings felt a close bond to each other, both were able to weather distressing fights among family members.
Certainly, throws a more positive light on sibling rivalry.
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Listener Question (Ashley)
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Brescia on Twitter, who asks, “How did the Big Bang happen if there is no center to the universe?” Great question, Brescia!
For me, the most difficult scientific concepts to understand are the ones that don’t really correspond to our experience of reality — stuff like quantum particles existing as two things at once and singularities where density reaches infinity. The Big Bang is absolutely one of those concepts. Often the way we think about the Big Bang is as an explosion in space. When something explodes, it shoots matter out in all directions from a single point. But that’s not how the Big Bang happened. We’re actually going to dig deep into this in an episode next week, but suffice it to say, the Big Bang did not originate from a single central location. Instead, it was an expansion of SPACE — everywhere, all at once. You can sort of think of it like blowing up a balloon covered in dots, with the balloon latex representing a 2-dimensional version of 3-dimensional space and the dots standing in for the galaxies. There’s no center to the surface of the balloon, and all of the dots move away from each other at the same rate. Likewise, the fabric of the universe itself is expanding in all directions at once, not out from a central point. The other thing you’d see from an actual explosion is heat: that is, there’d be more heat near the center of the explosion than there would be further out. We can see the leftover heat from the Big Bang in what’s known as the cosmic microwave background, and that, too, is pretty much the same everywhere — there’s no central point where everything was once hotter than the stuff around it. So to answer your question, the Big Bang happened without a center of the universe because the Big Bang happened at every point in the universe, all at once. Wild, right?
Thanks for your question, Brescia!
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you can catch this weekend on curiosity-dot-com.
ASHLEY: This weekend, you’ll learn about how scientists got a glimpse inside a neutron star when it “glitched”;
Why some airport codes don’t match the cities where they’re located;
Non-English words for very specific emotions;
The island where you’ll find the last uncontacted people on Earth;
And more!
CODY: And quick shout-out to itunes (read)
ASHLEY: Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
CODY: Today we learned that you can get to know yourself better by rounding up a trusted group of friends and seeing what adjectives everyone uses to describe you.
ASHLEY: And that strong relationships with your siblings can ease the impact of family conflict — even if those relationships are rivalries
CODY: And that [listener question]
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes. And have a great weekend! I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!