Podcast: Hidden brain
Contents
Introduction
Hidden Brain is an interesting and thought-provoking podcast about psychology and human behavior - I highly recommend it. Find it e.g. on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
I will be updating this page with new memorable episodes as I listen to them. If for no other reason, then for my own reference and memory!
The snowball effect
Most viral phenomena spread by talking between friends/colleagues, including Twitter, Facebook and Black lives matter.
Simple ties, e.g. a person you hardly know recommends something, works when something makes intuitive sense and carries no/low risk (e.g. buying a new brand of a product). Complex ties (e.g. joining a protest or movement) requires continuous buy-in from peers over time, since it carries risk.
Influencers most often join as the phenomena is already taking off, they don’t start it - too high risk, they watch their network adopt.
25% buy-in is needed for an effect to take off. It’s not only the content itself, it’s the engagement of peers that matters.
Less is more
When persuading, the weight is not sum of your arguments - it’s the average. Omit weaker arguments altogether for best effect. Separating the strong arguments and highlight them is better, but not as good as omitting weak arguments.
Dilution effect: information overload leads to averaging effect, so important things are lost - diluted.
Remember more, forget less
Rehearse in the way you’re going to use it, e.g. rehearse presenting with very little looking at notes.
You don’t remember what you want to, you remember what you think about. Make sure to think deeply about why, how things are connected etc. and rehearse the right things.
Repetition is good, but can also lead to shallow thinking and thinking you’re familiar with a topic that you really aren’t.
Read table of contents and make guesses or ask yourself questions about what the contents might be. After reading, see if they matched your expectations, or what would have been better questions.
Stories and characters are memorable - storytelling, story arches is a very powerful way of making things memorable by giving them connections to other things.
Mnemonics are also good.