Learn about the best time of day to break bad news; how to get over your brain’s habit of loss aversion; and why a coin toss is not as random or fair as it seems. Please support our sponsors! Visit https://www.capterra.com/curiosity for free, today, to find the best software solution for your business. 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: There Is a Right Time of Day to Break Bad News — https://curiosity.im/2Mpxgyq Loss Aversion Says That the Pain of Loss Is Stronger Than the Joy of Gain — https://curiosity.im/2Ms6s0F A Coin Toss Is Not as Random or Fair as It Seems — https://curiosity.im/2MqYPr5 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 the best time of day to break bad news; how to get over your brain’s habit of loss aversion; and why a coin toss is not as random or fair as it seems.
Please support our sponsors! Visit https://www.capterra.com/curiosity for free, today, to find the best software solution for your business.
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/the-best-time-to-break-bad-news-overcome-loss-aversion-and-coin-tosses-arent-random
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 the best time of day to break bad news; how to get over your brain’s habit of loss aversion; and why a coin toss is not as random or fair as it seems.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
There Is a Right Time of Day to Break Bad News — https://curiosity.im/2Mpxgyq (Cody)
CODY: According to a new study, there is a right time of day to break bad news. And it’s based on physiology, not just questionnaires or surveys. Hold off on that epic breakup until you’ve heard the whole scoop. [ad lib ASHLEY: Is now a bad time to tell you we just ran out of coffee beans?]
CODY: Before I get into the study specifics, let’s talk about how your body deals with stress. When you hear bad news, you might get upset. And when you get upset, your fight-or-flight response kicks in. That’s also known as your acute stress response. When this response kicks in, your body produces emergency cortisol. That’s a hormone that triggers a surge of glucose in your bloodstream, and that glucose — or sugar — gives you the energy you need to react to the stress you're dealing with. Usually, you’ll use that energy by fighting your stressor or by fleeing to safety. Hence, fight or flight. The thing is, your body produces cortisol all the time throughout the day. And this study found that on average, you produce the most cortisol in the morning, and your levels taper off as the day goes on. In other words, your cortisol levels are linked to your circadian rhythm. Which, as we’ve mentioned on this show before, regulates pretty much everything that goes on in your body. And that means that you respond to stress differently depending on whether it’s morning or night. So for this study, researchers put participants through stress tests. Think “having to give a presentation to a panel of stone-faced judges, and then having to do mental math in front of them.” Hope you don’t have a fear of public speaking, am I right? The researchers measured participants’ cortisol levels when they took the stress tests, which some took in the morning, and some took at night. And the morning stress testers saw a BIG spike in cortisol. A bigger reaction in the morning means that if you want someone to take your bad news with some chill, then you should probably do it in the evening. Save that breakup for AFTER work, and you may be less likely to have a drink thrown in your face.
Loss Aversion Says That the Pain of Loss Is Stronger Than the Joy of Gain — https://curiosity.im/2Ms6s0F (Ashley)
We’re going back to psychology basics today with a refresher on loss aversion. It’s a trick of psychology that says the pain of losing something is greater than the joy of gaining something. And I’ll give you a suggestion for getting over it. [maybe ad lib about gambling in Las Vegas, and/or dating amirite]
ASHLEY: The concept of loss aversion was coined by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman back in the early 90s. Kahneman ran an experiment in his university classes that went like this — and feel free to play along at home. We're gonna flip a coin. If it lands on tails, you have to pay us $10. If it lands on heads, how much would you have to win for this bet to be worth it? If it's anything more than $10 — and we're willing to bet it is — that's loss aversion in action. Kahneman told The New York Times, quote, “People want more than $20 before it is acceptable. And now I've been doing the same thing with executives or very rich people, asking about tossing a coin and losing $10,000 if it's tails. And they want $20,000 before they'll take the gamble,” unquote. This plays out in plenty of other situations. You're less likely to sell something for $10 than you are to buy it for $10. You're less likely to walk away from a blackjack table when you've lost a hand than when you've won one. Loss aversion even explains why people stay in dead-end jobs: The fear of losing a steady paycheck is greater than the potential happiness of finding a job you really love. Evolution has made pain a more urgent matter than pleasure, since avoiding pain is the thing that can keep you alive to procreate. So how do you get over it? Carl Richards from The New York Times suggests using what he calls the Overnight Test. Take something you’re afraid of losing, even though you know you'd be better for losing it — camping equipment you're never going to use, a dead-end job, even an unpleasant friendship. Imagine you went to bed, and overnight, someone got rid of it. The next morning, you could choose to get back the thing you lost or stick with the new situation. What would you do? If you'd stick with the new situation, there's your answer — lose what's holding you back and get on with your life.
[CAPTERRA]
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Capterra, a FREE online resource that can help you avert the loss of wasting time.
ASHLEY: Capterra is the leading, FREE online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business. Now, loss aversion might be kicking in for you right now. You might be thinking to yourself, “I don’t want to use Capterra to find a software solution because maybe it’ll be a waste of time or it’ll just end up trying to sell me something.” But TRUST us: that’s just not the case.
CODY: Seriously. Capterra has over seven-hundred-THOUSAND reviews of products from real software users, to help you find everything you need to make an informed decision. And you can search across more than 700 specific categories of software, from project management to email marketing to yoga studio management software. No more hitting up your old coworkers on LinkedIn to be like “what was the name of that program we used to use five years ago?”
ASHLEY: No matter what kind of software your business needs, Capterra makes it easy to discover the right solution, FAST. Now’s the time to join the millions of people who use Capterra every month.
CODY: Visit capterra-dot-com-slash-curiosity for free, TODAY, to find the right tools to make 2019 THE year for your business. Capterra, that’s C-A-P-T-E-R-R-A, dot-com-slash-curiosity.
ASHLEY: One more time, start 2019 on the right foot and show our sponsors some love — for FREE — by visiting capterra-dot-com-slash-curiosity.
A Coin Toss Is Not as Random or Fair as It Seems — https://curiosity.im/2MqYPr5 (Cody)
Remember that coin toss experiment we talked about? Well, this next story might… FLIP IT ON ITS HEAD. Pun completely intended. A coin toss is neither as random nor as fair as it seems. Don’t worry, though. I’m about to give you a heads up on why. [ad lib]
CODY: In 2004, research from Stanford University's Department of Statistics came up with a mathematical analysis of coin tosses. And it turns out the odds change with the way you go about using the coin — as in, a spin versus a flip. And it found that a spinning penny will land tails-up a staggering 80 percent of the time. That's because a penny is slightly heavier on the heads side. That skews the center of mass and makes the coin more likely to turn up tails. Coins with unserrated edges (like a nickel) tend to be slightly more biased too. Magicians will often shave down the tails side so the weight discrepancy is even greater, which makes it even more likely to land tails-up. Flipping a coin could get you a similar bias, too. If you flip a coin into the air and let it fall onto a hard surface to reveal the result, a lot of the time the coin ends up spinning before it settles anyway. And, like I said, a spinning coin is way more often than not a tails-up coin. Note that older pennies may not give you quite as pronounced a bias as newer ones. That’s because you have to account for all the dirt and grime and other junk that can build up on coins over time, because that throws off the center of mass. So forget heads or tails, let's ask a better question: Catch or drop? It may seem silly, but according to this research, it is more fair to catch a coin that was flipped into the air than to let the coin bounce and spin on the ground until it lies flat. Your hand isn't a hard, flat surface like the ground, so it'll land wherever you stick your hand in its falling path. But — you guessed it — even that is not truly random. Apparently, any flipped coin will STILL be slightly biased toward landing tails-up, at about 51-49 odds to be precise. So whatever way you flip it, stick to calling it tails. You'll probably be right.
ASHLEY: Read about today’s stories and more on 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!