Something You Should Know
Why We’re Wired to Imitate Others & How to Have a Great Conversation
Thu, 27 Feb 2025
You probably think raw vegetables are healthier than cooked vegetables. Sometimes they are. But some common veggies get a nutrient boost from the right kind of heat. This episode begins with several of those vegetables and an explanation of how cooking makes them better for you. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raw-veggies-are-healthier/ Humans are wired to imitate others like no other creature on earth. In fact, almost everything you do today is the result of imitating someone else at some point in your life. But wait! Aren’t we independent thinkers with intelligence and ability to think for ourselves? Yes, but according to my guest the primary way you learn everything is by copying others – from driving a car, writing a letter, eating a meal, everything you’ve learned how to do came from imitating others. Here to explain why this is important to understand is R. Alexander Bentley, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee and coauthor of the book, I'll Have What She's Having: Mapping Social Behavior (https://amzn.to/4kbT4NK). Your conversational skills are key to your success in every aspect of your life. People like people who speak well. Yet, I suspect no one ever really taught you how to converse. You just do it. Conversation is both an art and a science. And someone who studies it is my guest Alison Wood Brooks, Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School. She is author of the book TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves (https://amzn.to/4bgzWtF). Listen as she reveals the anatomy of good conversation and what can often go wrong. One of the cool things about a snowfall is how quiet it is afterwards. And it’s not just quiet – it’s a different kind of quiet. Why is that? Listen as I reveal the science of the quiet after a new fallen snow. Source: Kathy Wollard author of How Come (https://amzn.to/3XfrMvN). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off DELL: Anniversary savings await you for a limited time only at https://Dell.com/deals SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Which vegetables are healthier when cooked?
I'll bet you think, I bet most people think, that eating raw vegetables is healthier than eating cooked vegetables. And while that may be true some of the time, it's not always true. Some vegetables are actually better for you when you cook them. Carrots, for example. Boiling carrots until they're tender boosts their concentration of carotenoids, it's a cancer-fighting compound, by 14%.
However, frying carrots has the opposite effect. Mushrooms. A cup of cooked mushrooms has about twice as much potassium, niacin, zinc, and magnesium than a cup of raw mushrooms. Spinach. Spinach is packed with nutrients, but you will absorb more of the calcium and iron if you cook it first. Asparagus.
One study found that cooking asparagus raises the level of six key nutrients, including antioxidants, by 16%. And tomatoes. Whether they are baked, fried, or turned into spaghetti sauce, heat increases the levels of lycopene, which has been linked to lower rates of cancer and heart disease. And that is something you should know. I'm sure you like to think of yourself as an independent person.
You do things because you choose to do them. No one's telling you what to do most of the time. Generally, you do what you do because it is what you choose to do. Humans have big brains. We think independently. We're wired to blaze our own trail. Well, not always. Here's an example of what I mean.
Chapter 2: Why are humans wired to imitate others?
You go into a restaurant with a group of people and the waiter finally gets to you and says, What do you want? And you say, I'll have what she's having. Well, why not get something you want? The fact is we look to others and we follow their lead a lot more than we think. It's what explains the spread of culture, fashion, language, ideas, and behavior. We do what we see other people do.
And here to explore this topic and explain why it's important to understand is R. Alexander Bentley. He's a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, and he's co-author of a book called I'll Have What She's Having, Mapping Social Behavior. Hi, Alexander. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Great to be here, Mike.
So before we get too far into the details here, why is this important and what's the big aha here?
The main thing is that for a hundred years or even more, we've always assumed that humans are fundamentally rational creatures, that they weigh up costs and benefits and then they make a decision based on that.
Chapter 3: How does social learning influence our choices?
And one of the arguments that I've been trying to make for a couple of decades now as an anthropologist is that we are fundamentally social creatures and much of what we do and decide and even opine is based on what others around us are doing.
And just to make sure I'm on the same page with you, that I know what you mean by that, can you give me some examples of how we look at other people and follow what they do?
The first example is that babies will imitate the facial expressions of their parents right away. Children, young children and toddlers will imitate certain tasks to get a little reward like a treat or something out of a box.
They prefer to imitate what they've just seen, even in a situation where it might be a very complex action that has been demonstrated to them, where a chimpanzee will just figure out how to do it without imitating. Toddlers prefer to imitate rather than the more simple action. And the most evident example is simply language.
All humans have an innate capacity to learn language very quickly as children. But of course, we each learn a different language from our parents or caregivers right from birth.
And the example of the title of your book I love because I've always been fascinated by when people say that, I'll have what she's having. Because there's a whole menu of things you could have. it's so easy to say, well, I'll just have what he's having. And I wonder, well, why not? Why do that?
Why not get something you really want? Because that is probably what you want. Everything I say is informed by what I know about human evolution and the way our brains came to be. And one of the things that's important in evolution is of survival, of course. And saying I'll have what she's having usually works.
I can't see you right now, but if I said I'll wear what you're wearing tomorrow to work, it would be fine. If you know, even if you're thinking about what stock to invest in and if you know somebody who pretty good investor, just say, I'll buy what she's buying. It works wonders and it saves us an incredible amount of time. We can't all be experts on everything.
But I will almost never. Just out of principle, I will never have what she is having or he is having just because I don't, there's something about that. It's like too easy. And yeah, I want to, so I just out of principle, don't do that.
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Chapter 4: What is the role of experts in decision-making?
So if you needed to do something like maybe cut a rope or something and you saw some rocks around you, maybe you figure out how to pound out a couple of stone tools or break off a flake of tool and cut that rope. But beyond that, so many of the things that we do, or even our ancient ancestors did, was learned. And that's the basis for the success of our species.
So we have, what is innate is our capacity to do this learning. We're the best in the business at this. We can imitate like no other species on the planet.
But our inclination to imitate other people, We don't imitate everybody. There must be a hierarchy of people. There must be maybe it's our friends or people that we work with or, you know, our family. There are more people I'm more likely to imitate than others, I suspect.
Yeah, yeah. So there are lots of nuanced details about the way that we copy. And one of the things that humans will do and chimpanzees will do this as well and a few other species of monkeys is we prefer to copy. individuals who are high ranking in the ranking system or prestigious or successful. But it's interesting because that's not even specific to our species.
Even fish learning, trying to stickle back fish, little fish, learning where food is, will actually kind of sit in the vegetation and watch to see which other fish, where they're getting their food and whether they were successful or not. So the point is that the copying is not just ad hoc, it's strategic.
Here's something that happens, and it's not exactly imitating or copying other people's behavior, but I imagine it's part of this same discussion, and that is recommendations. If you needed a dentist and you said, hey, Mike, I'm new to town, I need a dentist, can you recommend one? And I gave you the name of my dentist, That's probably going to carry a lot of weight with you.
You're going to probably call that dentist. But the reality is that I'm no expert on dentists. I don't have a lot of experience with them. And so I don't know. Maybe my dentist is a great dentist. Maybe he's not. But the fact that I recommended it to you will carry weight with you.
And we do that right from when we're children, where children are more inclined to copy or learn from others when they're uncertain of something. But think about the fact that if we go back a few centuries and then go way back thousands and thousands of years,
we humans and their ancestors lived in small communities and we always they always knew who the experts were and the experts are always peep in different topics so they might be an expert in your village in yam cultivation it might be somebody who knows about fishing and there might be somebody who knows about medicinal plants in a hunter-gatherer society We always know who those experts are.
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Chapter 5: How does speed of change affect imitating behavior?
buying something that I just saw on the street not too long ago, because you'd be surprised how often what you when you think you're making an original decision. And I used to notice this about baby names as well. You think you're coming up with something original and you look, you look it up and it's one of the most trending things out there.
But when we are uncertain about things, that's when we're most likely to make decisions by learning from others. So you gave that great example of learning directions in a new neighborhood. Children will do this as well. When they're uncertain about something, they're more likely to then copy a parent or something.
And it was shown years ago that when people are confronted with a complex problem in a psychological experiment, like something looking at some kind of obscure facts or or or some kind of puzzle. If it's a difficult problem, they're more likely to look it up on Google. And it seems obvious. And if it's an easy problem, they're more likely to just do it themselves.
So we gauge when to socially learn versus when to try to solve something ourselves.
Is looking it up on Google the same as I'll have what she's having?
that's kind of philosophical. I'm often amazed at how good Wikipedia usually is. And that's because it's moderated to my knowledge by human experts. So, or if you're a scientist, to what degree are you learning from others? I mean, ideally science, science is building on the shoulders of giants. So it, it, If you kind of think about it, you can really go deep into it.
And that's where I come to the conclusion that almost everything we're doing, we are actually learning from someone else. They just might happen to be in the past.
So I wonder how the speed of change... influences all you're talking about. And what I mean by that is, you know, when I was growing up, I copied a lot of what my father did. I would watch him and then do that. But today, there are people doing things that I don't even know what they're doing because it's some new gadget, some new technology.
So it's hard to copy it because I don't know what it is that the speed of change is messing with your theory somehow.
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Chapter 6: What makes a great conversation?
And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Professor, thanks for coming on.
Thanks, Mike. This has been fantastic and I loved your questions.
Hello, I am Kristen Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer once more with spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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To dance the night away, to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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I'm Anne Foster, host of the feminist women's history comedy podcast, Vulgar History. And every week I share the saga of a woman from history whose story you probably didn't already know and you will never forget after you hear it. Sometimes we reexamine well-known people like Cleopatra or Pocahontas, sharing the truth behind their legends.
Sometimes we look at the scandalous women you'll never find in a history textbook. If you can hear my cat purring, she is often on the podcast as well. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get your podcasts.
Every day, I imagine, you have conversations with people. You do it because you have to. No one probably taught you how to have a good conversation. You just do it. And your ability to be good at it will impact your success in all walks of life. Your career, relationships, friendships.
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