Learn about why your brain jumps to extremes; how to choose the best charitable cause for your next donation; and why dogs really do look like their owners. 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: SKILLSHARE: Get two months of unlimited access to more than 20 thousand classes for just 99 cents at http://skillshare.com/curious Your Binary Bias Makes It Hard to See in Shades of Gray — https://curiosity.im/2DNFVcq Here's How to Choose the Best Charitable Cause for Your Donation — https://curiosity.im/2DKKfJN Dogs Really Do Look Like Their Owners — But It Doesn't Stop There — https://curiosity.im/2DM9wmD Additional resources discussed: GuideStar — https://www.guidestar.org/Home.aspx Charity Navigator — https://www.charitynavigator.org/ CharityWatch — https://www.charitywatch.org/home Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey 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! Learn 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!
Learn about why your brain jumps to extremes; how to choose the best charitable cause for your next donation; and why dogs really do look like their owners.
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:
Additional resources discussed:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
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!
Learn 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/your-brains-binary-bias-how-to-choose-charities-and-why-dogs-look-like-their-owners
CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiositydotcom 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 about why your brain jumps to extremes, how to choose the best charitable cause for your next donation, and why dogs really do look like their owners.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. Have you ever had an argument with someone, and the person acts like there are two options, and nothing in between is valid? Well, it turns out there's a thing called binary bias. And it's your brain's way of setting up false dichotomies for you to choose between. I feel like this bias basically explains the entire internet.
ASHLEY HAMER: See, but whenever we talk about biases, it's always easy to talk about other people. But everyone does it. So you do it. I do it. Everybody.
CODY GOUGH: If you've ever attempted to leave a one-star or five-star review somewhere, and you can't even consider leaving a two, three, or four-star review, this is an example of that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Totally.
CODY GOUGH: It's either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. I remember this happening with the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is like one of the best Zelda games ever made. And I want to Metacritic right after it came out. And there's all these one-star reviews. And it's like I didn't like this one thing, so it's the worst game ever.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: It's like dude, what are you doing? This game's genius. Anyway, according to a new study in psychological science, binary bias distorts the way you form beliefs. Here's an example from the study. Let's say you're reading through a list of the effects of a certain drug, and the results you're seeing don't all agree with each other. Some test groups say the drug makes them hungry four times more often than usual, while others don't experience any change in their hunger, and others become hungry about half as often as usual. Now, it's your job to figure out how the drug affects hunger levels overall.
The researchers gave participants different data for how many people would experience each effect. But the average of the data sets was always the same number. Most of the participants came up with totally different averages though. That's because they had split the difference between the extreme effects. They would judge the likelihood of hunger based on how many high results there were compared to low results, not what the average result was.
The researchers found the same thing in another experiment, where they showed participants menus from two different restaurants. Both had the same average price per item, but the first menu had higher prices for the dishes that were lowest and highest priced. So a lot of people said that that menu was more expensive.
This bias is so pervasive, the researchers believe it's a cognitive shortcut that helps us process large amounts of information more efficiently. According to the authors, quotes, our work suggests that bias is a basic processing mechanism, which is applied across many contexts, including health, financial, and public policy decisions, unquote.
That's why it's easy to paint someone with different political beliefs with a broad brush and just say they're the absolute, extreme end of the spectrum. Just remember that there's almost always a lot of middle ground to cover. So just because Ashley doesn't love video games doesn't mean she hates them. And just because I like video games, doesn't mean that I don't do anything else.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Around the holidays, you might spend hours figuring out your shopping wish list or hunting for the best sales. But how much time do you spend researching charities? Today is Giving Tuesday, an international movement to promote a day of charitable giving at the beginning of the holiday season. And we've got some tips for how to choose the best charitable cause for your donation.
That's because of the sad fact that a lot of charity programs just don't work. Their heart is in the right place, but the numbers aren't. A 2015 literature survey found that out of 90 educational interventions tested, 90% had weak or even no positive effects. Of employment-boosting programs, that figure was 75%. But a little extra research can ensure you get the biggest bang for your charity buck.
According to the non-profit, 80,000 Hours, the most pressing problems will have a good combination of three things. Scale, solvability, and neglectedness. So in other words, how big is the problem, how easy is it to solve, and how many resources are already devoted to it? Let's use the HIV/AIDS epidemic as an example.
Say you were considering supporting one of these five interventions to fight AIDS. Surgical treatment for an AIDS-related illness, antiretroviral therapy to fight the virus in people who are infected, prevention of transmission during pregnancy, condom distribution to prevent transmission on the whole, and education for the groups at highest risk of infection. Which one do you choose?
Without any research, you might think that they're all just as cost-effective. But in fact, the best of these is a whopping 1,400 times more cost-effective than the least. Surgery barely registers on the chart, while education towers over the other methods. The more cost-effective the intervention, the more power your dollar has. Once you've chosen a pressing issue with a cost-effective, evidence-based intervention, it's time to choose your charity.
Sites like GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and CharityWatch are useful for rating charities themselves. They look at things like accountability, transparency, and financial health to make sure your donations are being used effectively and honestly. One more time, those sites are GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and CharityWatch. We'll put a link in today's show notes in case you're in a giving mood.
Hey, look who's back? Today's podcast is sponsored by Skillshare.
CODY GOUGH: Skillshare is an online learning platform with more than 20,000 classes in business, marketing, design, technology, and more. You can take classes on everything you're curious about or want to get better at, like computer coding, productivity, mobile development, copywriting, graphic design.
ASHLEY HAMER: Basically, you name it, Skillshare has got it. And it's not just professional skills. I'm taking a cooking course right now from a prominent food blogger and cooking coach.
CODY GOUGH: And Skillshare has been a lifesaver for me here at Curiosity thanks to their classes on video editing. They have really detailed courses on how to use video editing programs like Final Cut Pro 10. I took one class from a filmmaker and another one from a professional graphic designer. And Skillshare's classes are all taught by real experts in their field or public motivational speakers.
ASHLEY HAMER: Again, Skillshare offers more than 20,000 classes. And today, you can join the millions of students like us who are already learning on Skillshare with a special offer for Curiosity Daily listeners. Get two months of Skillshare for just $0.99. To sign up, visit skillshare.com/curious.
CODY GOUGH: That's skillshare.com/curious for two months of unlimited access to more than 20,000 classes for just $0.99.
ASHLEY HAMER: One more time. That's skillshare.com/curious.
CODY GOUGH: Research shows that dogs really do look like their owners. No, seriously. In 2004, psychologist Michael Roy found that strangers could match up purebreds with their owners about 64% of the time. Other studies since then have agreed that it's relatively easy for strangers to pick out which dogs belong to which people based only on their looks. But this only works with purebreds. That 2004 studies showed that strangers only got the right answer about 35% of the time with mutts.
But it's not just dogs that this works with. Here's where things get interesting. A 2014 study had participants try to match people with the cars they owned. And they guessed which cars belong to which people at a rate that was greater than chance. But only when they saw the cars head on. That suggests that it really is a car's, quote unquote, face that matches up with its owner.
The question you're probably asking right now is why? Is it that people are more likely to buy a car that looks like them, or that they're more likely to be sold one? Well, a 2018 study published in the Society for Consumer Psychology suggests the latter. In this study, researchers found that regardless of a customer's preferences, salespeople had a distinct tendency to pitch round-shaped products to overweight customers. And there was no evidence to suggest that overweight people prefer rounder products.
That suggests that at least some of the time, people are picking up the products that are being pushed on them based on their looks, instead of based on their preferences. Either way, this is all pretty interesting stuff. Just leads me to one question. Ashley, do you look like your cat?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, definitely, I do. I hope I do. She's gorgeous.
CODY GOUGH: How did you pick her out?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's a cute story actually. I went to the shelter. I was petting all the cats. I started petting her. She was very sweet. And then I was like, OK, I got to pet the other cats now. So I put her down. And then she put her little paw on my leg to be like, oh, no. Keep going, please. And that was it. I was hooked.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Maybe the cat chose you because the cat thought that you looked like the cat.
ASHLEY HAMER: Maybe. Maybe my cat is a narcissist and just needs things that look like her.
CODY GOUGH: Catception.
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about today's stories and more on curiositydotcom.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
ANNOUNCER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.