December 10, 2015 • 32 mins
You have very likely used reverse psychology before, trying to persuade someone to do something you want by suggesting they do the opposite. What's behind the bizarre reaction this elicits?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff you should Know.
I'm a little grumpy about this topic. I'm just gonna
(00:21):
go ahead and throw that out there because it's pretty thin.
Well not only is it thin, but just the older
I've gotten, man, it's just all we're talking about reverse psychology,
and I see it's used with like kids sometimes and stuff,
but then when it gets to like relationships and dude,
(00:42):
professional relationships in business, I just it's a little discussed.
It all feels like manipulative games. And the older I've gotten,
the more I just have no time for that garbage.
And I'm just you know, like, be honest. Even if
things don't turn out, well, yeah, at least you were
honest and you weren't being some manipulative puppet master. It's
(01:05):
just gross, dude. I ran across advice on how to
use reverse psychology to get your boyfriend back. There's a
site called ex Boyfriend Recovery dot com and it gives
tips on it. It really insists on asking the question,
do you want the person who you can use reverse
psychology to get back. And if you're using that kind
(01:28):
of stuff, it's like, this is the tactic you're taking
to get your your boyfriend back. Um, then is this
Is this the kind of relationship you really want in life? Agreed?
So I'm right there with you. I think I think
people are so afraid to walk away from a relationship
even if it's toxic. Um, we don't touch on that
(01:48):
kind of stuff much. We should do more stuff on
relationships like that because it is tough, and I get it.
But um, I don't know. Man, you get a little
age under your belt and it's very easy to just
say get out of that. Treat yourself with kindness and respect,
even even if you take that out of the equation.
You shouldn't manipulate other people and being in a relationship
(02:10):
with you, not at all. That's a pretty good rule
of thumb that applies to just about everybody. It will
lead to badness. You also should not be such a
desperate human being that you buy something you can't afford
to impress the salesman who's selling it to you. Another
good rule of thumb that might work on me. Actually,
maybe that's why it bug me too. Oh yeah, I
(02:31):
can't afford that. I'll take two, all right, I'll show you.
All right, that was all preamble. Yeah, but we sadly
covered a lot of this topic and just that preamble.
So we're talking reverse psychology. And it turns out psychology
itself doesn't even really recognize reverse psychology, although it is
(02:53):
definitely a thing. Like you can point to certain instances
of reverse psychology, and the basis of it is that
you are telling somebody to do the opposite of what
you want them to do. And what you're doing when
you get them to react and do the opposite of
what you're saying, which is what you really want them
(03:15):
to do, what they're displaying is is a is recognized
by psychology. It's a it's something called reactants. And with reactants,
people oppose what they're being told out of a sense
of independence or protecting their sense of autonomy. But for
whatever reason, even if it's not in their own best interests,
(03:36):
they'll do something that's the opposite of what they're being told.
That's reactants. Reverse psychology is priming that pump in order
to manipulate somebody into doing what you want. Yeah, and
a lot of the examples given in this article are
very ham fisted, but I'm going to use them anyway.
Like this first one is just a pure definition of
what it could be. Is Uh, a wife wants her
(03:59):
bedroom ainted, so she asked the husband, you know, can
you please paint the bedroom? And he's like, no, I
want to paint the bedroom, until she finally goes, you
know what, Uh, you're not such a great painter. Anyway,
I'm gonna paint in the bedroom because I'll do a
better job. And then in this article, off the couch,
I'm going to the Sherwyn Williams right now, go everywhere
(04:21):
he pauses the football game. Uh. So that's the just
a very bare bones example of how, um, someone might
try and manipulate their husband or wife, yeah, into doing
a chore instead of having just a grown up relationship
where you tell your husband maybe we should talk about
painting the bedroom and he goes, I'll entertain that because
(04:42):
you're a valid human and you have opinions and needs
and what's and if you don't do this, you're in
a big, big trouble. Yeah, it's not just adults, though,
is it, Josh? What that reverse psychology is used on No,
typically it's used on children. UM, something as simple as
saying like, UM, I'll bet you can't finish washing the
(05:04):
dishes before you know your TV show comes on. That's
a good positive use, yes, UM. And psychologists who do
recognize and talk about this kind of stuff because it
is worth talking about, and there is a certain amount
of service among psychologists too. UM. I guess talk to
parents about the use of reverse psychology UM, because it
(05:25):
isn't necessarily something you want to use a lot. You
want to use it sparingly, and there are certain UM
qualifiers that you need to use, like, for example, you
shouldn't use negative reinforcement or negative reverse psychology, right, And
this was actually a pretty good example. I think, UM,
like you'r you want your kid to hang their bike
(05:46):
up in the bike rack above the cars in the garage,
So negative reverse psychology would be if you really want
them to do that, for you to say, you know what,
let me do it, because you're so dumb you'll drop
the bike on the car. What kind of monster would
do that? Apparently they're out there, But that is a
great example of negative reverse psychology. You really want your
(06:08):
son to hang that bike up but you end up
insulting him in the process of trying him to get
you know, get him to do something right. And then
the kid's self esteem is in the toilet and it
spoils around counterclockwise if it's a kid from the Northern
hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern hemisphere, which is not true,
by the way. And I also don't think I didn't
(06:30):
even find this in there. This is just me. I
don't think you should put your children against one another either,
Like you know, I bet you can't finish your green
beans like your big brother can. Um. I grew up
in a family with a big brother that was way
better than me. The way smarter and better looking beans
really took effect on that one. No, but I have
(06:51):
to say my parents never compared us or never expected
me to be him, which was great. Uh. They probably
did it accidentally, but they did it behind your back
maybe so, but at any rate, always they go to
bed and be like, I really like that Scott. He'll
tell you what he did today. Oh, I'm a big
Scott fan myself. That was all the buzz behind the scene,
(07:12):
Scott Scott. So some more recommendations if you're a parent
using reverse psychology is that, Um, you again, you don't
want to use it too often because even a dumb
kid can see through what you're doing eventually. Yeah, and
they're going to think you're a manipulator. Yes, you don't
want your child to think of you as manipulative. Even
if you are. You want to very at least manipulate
(07:33):
them into not thinking that. So you want to be
smart about using reverse psychology. And then there's a whole
school of thought among some parental advice columnists that say
you shouldn't use reverse psychology at all. It's a really
bad idea across the board. It's a form of dishonesty.
I think. Yeah, and what your kids do pick up
(07:54):
on this, they will they will be like, well, my
my parent doesn't really mean anything they say. It will
also teach your teaching your kid not to listen to you.
And there's a good example of that in this article
where if you really wish that your son would cut
his long hippie hair, um, a type of verse psychology
would be to come up to him and stroke it
(08:16):
and be like, I hope you never cut this hair.
It looks so good, and then the kid sure, And
then maybe because he's creeped out. The kid goes to
the barber the next day, has his hair cut and
joins the army. You know, so you got what you
wanted your kids out of the house. He joined the army. Um.
But you also have taught him to not listen to you,
(08:37):
especially if you praise how good his hair looks um
after he cut it. So not only do you not
mean what you say, you're also kind of wishy washy
because you like the long hair, but now you like
the short hair, and you're praising the kid for having
done the opposite of what you told him to. That's
so this is all all this combined. It's it's basically
(08:58):
it sounds like lazy parenting, yeah, you know, or or
cold calculated terrible parenting. Yeah. Psychopathy Yeah that. Uh. Let's
take a break here and we'll come back and finish up. Now,
I'm just kidding. We'll come back and talk a little
bit more about who might be affected by reverse psychology.
(09:37):
All right, Experts say, if you're a narcissist, man, I
really hate that. I saw that in this article. Experts. Yeah, experts,
but they do say, Josh, if you're a narcissist, or
if you're a control freak check or if you're Type
A that you might be more susceptible to being manipulated
by a um reverse psychologist. Why is that? Well, because um,
(10:01):
you want that control. Yeah, and that's ultimately what it
comes down to. So like, none of this will possibly
work if the person doesn't feel that their autonomy and
sense of freedom and sense of self destiny is not
at stake here. That's what you're doing, is you're you're
you are, You're assaulting that person's ability to choose, and
(10:23):
so they're going to choose the opposite to reassert themselves.
And apparently people who are type a's are more likely
to sense that their autonomy is being tread upon a
more passive person that type B, which we should do
an episode on that where that came from type A
type and definitely we should do one on personality inventories. UM,
(10:46):
but the type BE people, you really shouldn't use reverse
psychology on them because they'll end up doing what you ask.
So you're you're asking them to do the opposite of
what you want and then they'll just go do that,
you know, yeah, just asking what you wanted to do,
and they might go, yeah, great, I'll do that right.
The problem is people who use for psychology are the
same people who who worry that the person they're talking
(11:06):
to is not going to do what they want. You
know what I mean, I guess it's not true. Uh.
There's a doctor, a psychologist named Janette Raymond and Los Angeles,
of course, who says that it's not so much I
don't know. It's not so much the personality type though,
but the dynamics of the relationship, which makes a lot
(11:29):
of sense. It does. Um. I also read an article
in Psychology today on this about that context has a
lot to do with it to whether it works or not.
And this was a two thousand eleven posts. So it's
kind of charming that the guy uses Charlie Sheen and
rehab as an example. He's saying, he's saying that, UM
(11:49):
saying something that like if one of Charlie Sheen's friends
had said to him, like, don't go to rehab. You
totally don't need rehab, don't go, Charlie Sheen very likely
would have been like, awesome, Yeah, you're right, I agree
with you. Because number one, his desire to not be
in rehabbing to do tons of cocaine, and his desire
to be proven to prove that he doesn't need help
(12:11):
would definitely trump any petty fleeting desire to prove that
person wrong and and regain a sense of autonomy. What
a weird time that was. It really was. He was
the most famous person in the world for about a month. Yeah,
didn't you go see his tour? No, okay, I read
about it. I didn't see Mike Tyson. Yes, Tyson two
(12:35):
do very different things. I'm not equating those two. Someone
I knew went to that stupid Charlie sheensur and apparently
the people who went were really unhappy because he tried
to make it like just some normal thing. You're like, no,
tell us all your drugs, like a legitimate stage show,
which it was not right, And like he wouldn't talk
about any of his drug stories or sex stories or
(12:56):
anything like that. He was just basically it's just doing, uh,
just talking. And yeah, he got booed a lot. Yeah,
And I think even now Charlie Sheen is like, that
was that was weird? Well, why did do all that stuff?
He just came to Yeah, just I think he even
admits what a what a dumb period in my life. Um,
(13:19):
I could talk about that guy all day. I don't
think we should do with Charlie Sheen episode. Okay, I
like him. Platoon I think is one of the best
movies ever made, and he did really well in it. Yeah.
Good movie. Men at Work. I never saw it. You
have to see Men at Work, do I? Yeah? Casablanca
first though, sure, okay, just to appease the people in
(13:40):
podcast land. If he asked me personally, you could watch
him at the same time. Um. They give a really
bad example to me in here about Julian Ossange, which
of wiki leaks. This is like, this almost made me, Um,
just throw my laptop away while I was reading this. Yeah,
it said basically, um an examlause. If Julian Assange had
(14:01):
been not been told to stop, if basically the US
government had said fine, just go do it, he would
have lost interest and and never would have published all
those diplomatic cables in this article. Terrible, terrible example. Yeah.
I actually just scratched it out. Are not you with
a pin? Looked like a knife. You just went back
(14:23):
and forth like carving it up. Man. I really can't
believe it made it in there. So children though, Um.
One of the big reasons kids, Uh, it works on
kids is because if you're a parent, um, and I'll
find this out at some point, not yet obviously, but um,
kids it seems like they're innately um, interested in doing
(14:47):
the opposite of whatever you say. Yeah. And plus they're
also their little brains are developing their what you call
naive in a lot of ways. So it does tend
to work on children. Again, like we said, you want
to use this worryingly if at all, UM, But there
have been studies, There have been real studies on this
kind of stuff. We finally get to the studies. So
the study of reverse psychology is phenomenon um of reactance
(15:12):
being primed, right. Um. Really kind of starts in the seventies.
But there's this very famous UM study from two that
was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I
think bulletin maybe in there. Anyway, this is UM. The
the in this study found that children who were who
(15:35):
were given free reign to play with a bunch of
toys except one that toy became super popular. Um. But
there you know, they're studying things. They had to put
it down on paper eventually. UM. They had another study
UM or a very similar one, had kids rate a
handful of toys that were in this room, and then
(15:55):
the researchers went back and picked the one that fell
right in the middle. I think it was a toy
motorcycle or something UM and with a new group said
this is like, you can play with all these toys
except for the motorcycle. And then later on they formed
yet another new group with new UM people running the show,
and some of those same kids that had been told
(16:17):
no to the motorcycle were suddenly very interested in the motorcycle.
So this has been documented, this has been UM looked
at over and over again UM. But they don't exactly
know what the mechanisms are behind it, and we will
dive into that right after this. So before we move on,
(16:54):
I want to point out to adults out there, it's
very normal and even kind of cute when there's two
kids playing with two different things and one kid says
at some point, well, no, I want that one because
they're playing with that toy, so I want that toy.
It looks like way more fun. Uh, it's not cute
when you're an adult. No, and I see it happen
(17:17):
where you know, I want what that person has, why
don't why don't I have that? And people there are
plenty of advertisers out there that use that, that manipulate that.
Some of them go to um hysterical lengths, Like there's
a Patagonia ad that had a picture of a Patagonia
jacket and it just said, do not buy this jacket.
(17:39):
I think it was a little tongue in cheek. Well
you know what actually did if it was tongue in cheek.
I posted this article, um what was yesterday? It will
have been a couple of weeks ago on Facebook on
our Facebook page. One before you sent it as a
what a coincidence? All right, and I said I would
advise you to not read this article like ha, And uh,
(18:02):
it did pretty well. I didn't really got a lot
of shares, and a lot of people seem to read it,
and most people were like, oh, very funny. But I
don't know, did it work probably. I'm almost sorry they
read the article now, But but I think it's it
probably got a lot of reads because it is something
that's so ingrained in popular culture, you know, reverse psychology.
(18:22):
It's used all over the place, either expressly, like there's
a very famous Simpsons episode where Homer's reading a parenting
book and his brain says, um, don't you get it,
you gotta use reverse psychology. Homer's like, that sounds really hard.
I'm not doing that, and his brain goes, well, fine,
don't use reverse callogy goes okay, I will and uh.
(18:43):
I saw another example Tom and Jerry UM when Jerry
has a bomb and they're passing it back and forth,
and then all of a sudden, Jerry changes and suddenly
grabs the bomb back like he wants it, and that
makes Tom want the bomb, and Tom of course ends
up holding the bomb while it explodes. Reverse cycle. And
actually the same lady that made the terrible, terrible example
(19:04):
of UM, Julian Julians does point out that this is
it almost enters the realm of folklore reverse psychology does,
but there is something going on there. And again it
is based on reactants, which is somebody doing the opposite
of what's presented to them, breaking a rule something like that,
but we don't really know what's behind it right. Well,
(19:26):
one another quick example is UM. And this wasn't even
us trying to use reverse psychology, but during some of
our UM like necrotizing fasciitists or maggot therapy. When we're like,
don't go to Google images and look this up. Invariably
we have people to emails like why do you have
to say that? Because that's the first thing I did
and it was disgusting. That's why I spell it correctly
(19:46):
because I know people are not going to listen to it.
But it's not us saying like I really want them
to go look at this. We're gonna tell them not to,
like we really mean it. Don't go look it up.
It's disgusting. Yeah, ah, you sort of do a little okay. Um,
so uh, there there have been there's been research into
trying to figure out what what's going on here? Why
(20:08):
do people do this? Um? And uh Esther inglish Askell,
who writes over I O nine great site. Um, she
wrote a little post on this and is talking about how,
um is it is it that people are rebelling against
authority to to establish their own autonomy again or their
(20:28):
sense of autonomy, or is it that they're trying to
they're curious, their curiosity is peaked. And she makes a
really good case for curiosity being piqued by saying, if
you put forbidden on the door. A lot of people
are going to go right through that door to see
what is on the other side of this forbidden door.
I'd be one of them. But if you put on
that same door a science is forbidden colon toilet overflow,
(20:53):
people are gonna be like, I'm not going in there. No,
there probably donuts in there, and okay, so so you're
the suspicious type. But if you take it on its face,
she makes a good point. Yes, some people would be
repelled by the idea of a disgusting, overflowing toilet in there,
but other people might have their curiosity is squashed and
so they wouldn't need to transgress. So it's a lack
(21:14):
of information in a curiosity. And apparently other studies kind
of bolster this idea because they show that the the
the reactants is more intense, the more arbitrary a rule seems,
so that people are saying, like, wait, why, I don't
understand this. It doesn't make any sense. It seems to
(21:34):
be one component of it um and another component of it, however,
seems to be just disobeying. There's another study that was
I think in conjunction. In that study of teenagers and
it found that, um, these a group of teens were
told do not cheat on this test. It's really important
you don't cheat on this test, and not like all
(21:57):
the other tests. Yeah, I guess which you can cheat on.
And this group was induced to cheat more often more
frequently than the control group who weren't told not to
cheat on this. Yeah. What's the point of that. I
guess it's just I don't know, that's just finding boundaries
or or you could also make the case that they're
they're trying to see what happens if they do cheat
because they're curious. So the jury is definitely still out
(22:19):
on what's behind reactants. Yeah. Um. We talked a little
bit about how business. Um. I think they said in
the article that sales is a common way in business
that you can use reverse psychology. Like the car salesman
who shows all the cars except for the most expensive one,
and they're like, well, why don't you show us that?
And he's like, well, you know, I think that's probably
(22:39):
out of your price range. And then if you're you know,
an adult living in a child's body or a child
living in an adults body, like big, yeah, you go,
well no, let me see that car I can afford that, Yeah,
what do you mean? And the goofers family who's always
broke drives off in their brand new car. Or the
(23:00):
lationship example they gave, like if a boyfriends like, you're
becoming kind of clany to the girlfriend, and the girl
immediate is like, yeah, you know, I think we should
spend some time apart. Actually we should even date other people. Boom,
the guy all of a sudden says, wait, wait a minute,
what do you mean date other people? So some of
(23:22):
that harmless stuff in a relationship happens, I'm sure, but
that's not what we were talking about earlier, with like
truly toxic relationship malation and manipulation. That's that's a different thing.
They're different levels of this. Okay, that's on the same
spectrum for sure, Uh, but it all it also uh
levels all the way up to real UM therapy called
(23:44):
paradoxical intervention, and UM psychologists actually say reverse psychology is
the media inventedat That's not what we call it. It's
an actual therapy that some people say is not ethical
to use. Other doctors say, no, it's just fine to use. Yeah.
I actually came across a I think a paper from
the nineties or something about the ethics of using paradoxical intervention. Right,
(24:10):
this does help or it can help, And the whole
idea of it, it's not really reverse psychology. It's just
about the closest thing psychology has to reverse psychology, where
you are telling a patient to go and purposefully do
a symptom something they're complaining about. So if somebody is
saying that they're a big procrastinator and they don't have
any control over this is who they are. The doctor
(24:33):
prescribes them one hour of procrastination every day. So I
decide an hour to just procrastinate. And it does a
bunch of different things. One, it's silly. The whole point
of it is meant to be silly. It also takes
something that was formerly thought of as involuntary voluntary, and
since it's voluntary, you can also voluntarily not do it.
It means you can actually control something you didn't think
(24:53):
you could control. Right. But and then also by making
it silly, it disempowers this thing that's like just such
a big problem. It's now it's a silly thing. I'm
I'm purposefully procrastinating an hour out of every day. The
thing is is if the patient is not privy to
what technique you're using, it's very manipulative. Yeah. It's almost
like a lighthearted aversion therapy kind of you sort of
(25:17):
exposure exposure. Yeah, is that the same thing? Yeah, not
a version, but yeah, it's it's yeah, like, if you're
afraid of snakes, let me dump a bunch of snakes
on your head. Yeah that's pretty unethical, I would say, so. Um,
but like you said, some psychologists say, no, you can
use it as a tool in your toolbox, just don't
be a tool when you use it. Terrible. So. Um.
(25:41):
The whole point of all of this is these are
all persuasive techniques, or what are called compliance techniques, right, Yeah,
that's what you're trying to get people to do what
you want. And there's another thing I ran across called
the door in the face. It's a compliance technique which
people use all the time. You'll find it very familiar. Um.
It's when you ask for something really huge that you
(26:02):
know the other person is going to turn down, and
they do. And then you ask for something what you
originally wanted, which is smaller by comparison. They may have
turned down if you'd ask for it just on itself. Yeah,
I think we talked about a version of that in
the m p A. A. Like filmmakers, they'll say, I
really want to get this violent scene in there, so
(26:23):
let me do something really outrageous that the m p
A is gonna pull that and not pay as much
attention to the thing I really wanted to keep right.
So that's door in the face. There's also footing the
door where um, you ask for incrementally larger stuff to
where you finally build up to the thing you want smaller,
smaller to larger, but then lastly check the other thing
I ran across. It was probably the healthiest way of
(26:46):
using reverse psychology. So if reverse psychology works because the
person feels like there's their sense of autonomy is being threatened,
you take their autonomy and you put it front and center.
You say, I can't make you do anything. Only you
can decide whether this is good or bad for you,
So do what you want. And technically it's a form
(27:09):
of verse psychology. But what you're doing is you're taking
this obstacle that really doesn't have anything to do with
anything this person's sense of autonomy putting it right there
in the middle and saying this is a non issue, like,
I respect your autonomy. I can't tell you what to do.
You decided it's it doesn't even strike me as manipulative necessarily,
it strikes me as healthy. Yeah, Or you can just
be honest with people. See where that gets you. But
(27:31):
I think that's honesty. True. But yeah, you can also
just say like I want you to do this. You
know I can't make you, but this is the direction
I want you to go. There's also the door in
the floor. No, do you mean flowers in the attic? No?
During the floor was the the Jeff Bridges movie based
(27:53):
on the John Irving book, A Widow for One Year.
Great book, pretty good movie. John Irving knows what he's doing.
I thought A Widow for One Year is a much
better title than the Door in the Floor. Though you
have a door in the floor. Rhymes. Hollywood loves rhymes,
they sure do. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, you got anything else? U?
Surprisingly No. If you want to know more about reverse psychology,
(28:16):
good luck finding it because we covered everything sadly. Uh.
You can start though, looking at how stuff works in
the search bar by typing reverse psychology. Since I said
search bar, it's time for listening to mail. This is
from Robbie. Hey, guys, thanks for your enlightening coverage of
vast assortment of topics. Help me find common ground with
(28:37):
children and adults and all types of social situations that
could have otherwise have been excruciating the awkward. Um. I'm
an artist, so I listened to you while I paint.
Music is great, but sometimes spoken word allows me to
work longer. It's a steady feed of stimulation instead of
emotional ups and downs. It can come for music and
other music related news. I recently conducted a social science
(28:58):
experiment where around New York City and ask strangers what
there are three favorite things are? The most common answers
were family, music, and food? What would yours be? What? So?
What three? What are your three favorite things? Okay? Um? Yeah? Um?
(29:23):
Can I can I lump food into just one category? Food? Okay?
UM's gonna do you do? What's your guest travel? Yeah?
I guess okay or booze? No. No, I'm not so
sad that I'm going to say that, although it's definitely
up there, I will say. I will say my lemon
(29:46):
tree is probably number three. I love that lemon tree.
It's a producer. Uh, not like that lousy lime tree.
And my friends. I gotta put them there. We'll we'll
say food and friend okay, after doing me my favorite
maturee things. My favorite three things are food. I'm gonna
(30:11):
say friends and family, which includes Emily. It's a bit
of a cheap um food. Friends and family, folks food,
folks and fun fun. Friends and families are chiefs that
includes everybody. Yeah, you can just say folks, food as family,
(30:33):
people and People's number two for you. I'm gonna go
with music. Oh, that's a good one. Boom. What about
movies though? Do you like music more than movies? I like? Oh, man,
that is a tough, tough, tough question. You know who
asks people questions like this, jerks no, because it's so
(30:53):
impossible to just come up with three things. What's this
guy's name, Robbie, Robbie, You're not really a jerk, but man, Actually,
what the email should have said is if I are
you guys, I don't know. I don't think you could
answer it. He should have said, like psychology, I want
to hear you, guys waffle on your top five or
six things that you like the most in the world.
So He finishes by saying, what would yours be? There
(31:16):
are three of you. I'm sorry, but there's only two
of us are here now, umrank the chairs over there,
but he can't. Could you possibly answer the question we
just did? I would record the podcast app on my
Apple TV as you spoke and then include this footage
in his experiment. So, uh, we're being experimented on right now. Yeah,
(31:36):
let's let's ahead give hi permission to use that clip
if he wants. I do not give you promise you
can use my my side, you can use it. That's
a thank you for your incredible work with your three
exclamation points. Is there a site that people can go
to to check out Robbie's progress or keep starter or anything? Well,
he he directed us to a YouTube link. So if
(31:57):
I just go to YouTube and type in three favorite
things and um, you'll probably come across it. Cool. Well,
thanks a lot, Robbie. Uh I mean that ambivalently. Um,
it's like six months ago the yeah, so so you
probably gave up on us anyway. Is there even a
YouTube anymore? Um? If you want to get in touch
with us that you can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
(32:19):
dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast that how Stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at at home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff you should Know.
I'm a little grumpy about this topic. I'm just gonna
(00:21):
go ahead and throw that out there because it's pretty thin.
Well not only is it thin, but just the older
I've gotten, man, it's just all we're talking about reverse psychology,
and I see it's used with like kids sometimes and stuff,
but then when it gets to like relationships and dude,
(00:42):
professional relationships in business, I just it's a little discussed.
It all feels like manipulative games. And the older I've gotten,
the more I just have no time for that garbage.
And I'm just you know, like, be honest. Even if
things don't turn out, well, yeah, at least you were
honest and you weren't being some manipulative puppet master. It's
(01:05):
just gross, dude. I ran across advice on how to
use reverse psychology to get your boyfriend back. There's a
site called ex Boyfriend Recovery dot com and it gives
tips on it. It really insists on asking the question,
do you want the person who you can use reverse
psychology to get back. And if you're using that kind
(01:28):
of stuff, it's like, this is the tactic you're taking
to get your your boyfriend back. Um, then is this
Is this the kind of relationship you really want in life? Agreed?
So I'm right there with you. I think I think
people are so afraid to walk away from a relationship
even if it's toxic. Um, we don't touch on that
(01:48):
kind of stuff much. We should do more stuff on
relationships like that because it is tough, and I get it.
But um, I don't know. Man, you get a little
age under your belt and it's very easy to just
say get out of that. Treat yourself with kindness and respect,
even even if you take that out of the equation.
You shouldn't manipulate other people and being in a relationship
(02:10):
with you, not at all. That's a pretty good rule
of thumb that applies to just about everybody. It will
lead to badness. You also should not be such a
desperate human being that you buy something you can't afford
to impress the salesman who's selling it to you. Another
good rule of thumb that might work on me. Actually,
maybe that's why it bug me too. Oh yeah, I
(02:31):
can't afford that. I'll take two, all right, I'll show you.
All right, that was all preamble. Yeah, but we sadly
covered a lot of this topic and just that preamble.
So we're talking reverse psychology. And it turns out psychology
itself doesn't even really recognize reverse psychology, although it is
(02:53):
definitely a thing. Like you can point to certain instances
of reverse psychology, and the basis of it is that
you are telling somebody to do the opposite of what
you want them to do. And what you're doing when
you get them to react and do the opposite of
what you're saying, which is what you really want them
(03:15):
to do, what they're displaying is is a is recognized
by psychology. It's a it's something called reactants. And with reactants,
people oppose what they're being told out of a sense
of independence or protecting their sense of autonomy. But for
whatever reason, even if it's not in their own best interests,
(03:36):
they'll do something that's the opposite of what they're being told.
That's reactants. Reverse psychology is priming that pump in order
to manipulate somebody into doing what you want. Yeah, and
a lot of the examples given in this article are
very ham fisted, but I'm going to use them anyway.
Like this first one is just a pure definition of
what it could be. Is Uh, a wife wants her
(03:59):
bedroom ainted, so she asked the husband, you know, can
you please paint the bedroom? And he's like, no, I
want to paint the bedroom, until she finally goes, you
know what, Uh, you're not such a great painter. Anyway,
I'm gonna paint in the bedroom because I'll do a
better job. And then in this article, off the couch,
I'm going to the Sherwyn Williams right now, go everywhere
(04:21):
he pauses the football game. Uh. So that's the just
a very bare bones example of how, um, someone might
try and manipulate their husband or wife, yeah, into doing
a chore instead of having just a grown up relationship
where you tell your husband maybe we should talk about
painting the bedroom and he goes, I'll entertain that because
(04:42):
you're a valid human and you have opinions and needs
and what's and if you don't do this, you're in
a big, big trouble. Yeah, it's not just adults, though,
is it, Josh? What that reverse psychology is used on No,
typically it's used on children. UM, something as simple as
saying like, UM, I'll bet you can't finish washing the
(05:04):
dishes before you know your TV show comes on. That's
a good positive use, yes, UM. And psychologists who do
recognize and talk about this kind of stuff because it
is worth talking about, and there is a certain amount
of service among psychologists too. UM. I guess talk to
parents about the use of reverse psychology UM, because it
(05:25):
isn't necessarily something you want to use a lot. You
want to use it sparingly, and there are certain UM
qualifiers that you need to use, like, for example, you
shouldn't use negative reinforcement or negative reverse psychology, right, And
this was actually a pretty good example. I think, UM,
like you'r you want your kid to hang their bike
(05:46):
up in the bike rack above the cars in the garage,
So negative reverse psychology would be if you really want
them to do that, for you to say, you know what,
let me do it, because you're so dumb you'll drop
the bike on the car. What kind of monster would
do that? Apparently they're out there, But that is a
great example of negative reverse psychology. You really want your
(06:08):
son to hang that bike up but you end up
insulting him in the process of trying him to get
you know, get him to do something right. And then
the kid's self esteem is in the toilet and it
spoils around counterclockwise if it's a kid from the Northern
hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern hemisphere, which is not true,
by the way. And I also don't think I didn't
(06:30):
even find this in there. This is just me. I
don't think you should put your children against one another either,
Like you know, I bet you can't finish your green
beans like your big brother can. Um. I grew up
in a family with a big brother that was way
better than me. The way smarter and better looking beans
really took effect on that one. No, but I have
(06:51):
to say my parents never compared us or never expected
me to be him, which was great. Uh. They probably
did it accidentally, but they did it behind your back
maybe so, but at any rate, always they go to
bed and be like, I really like that Scott. He'll
tell you what he did today. Oh, I'm a big
Scott fan myself. That was all the buzz behind the scene,
(07:12):
Scott Scott. So some more recommendations if you're a parent
using reverse psychology is that, Um, you again, you don't
want to use it too often because even a dumb
kid can see through what you're doing eventually. Yeah, and
they're going to think you're a manipulator. Yes, you don't
want your child to think of you as manipulative. Even
if you are. You want to very at least manipulate
(07:33):
them into not thinking that. So you want to be
smart about using reverse psychology. And then there's a whole
school of thought among some parental advice columnists that say
you shouldn't use reverse psychology at all. It's a really
bad idea across the board. It's a form of dishonesty.
I think. Yeah, and what your kids do pick up
(07:54):
on this, they will they will be like, well, my
my parent doesn't really mean anything they say. It will
also teach your teaching your kid not to listen to you.
And there's a good example of that in this article
where if you really wish that your son would cut
his long hippie hair, um, a type of verse psychology
would be to come up to him and stroke it
(08:16):
and be like, I hope you never cut this hair.
It looks so good, and then the kid sure, And
then maybe because he's creeped out. The kid goes to
the barber the next day, has his hair cut and
joins the army. You know, so you got what you
wanted your kids out of the house. He joined the army. Um.
But you also have taught him to not listen to you,
(08:37):
especially if you praise how good his hair looks um
after he cut it. So not only do you not
mean what you say, you're also kind of wishy washy
because you like the long hair, but now you like
the short hair, and you're praising the kid for having
done the opposite of what you told him to. That's
so this is all all this combined. It's it's basically
(08:58):
it sounds like lazy parenting, yeah, you know, or or
cold calculated terrible parenting. Yeah. Psychopathy Yeah that. Uh. Let's
take a break here and we'll come back and finish up. Now,
I'm just kidding. We'll come back and talk a little
bit more about who might be affected by reverse psychology.
(09:37):
All right, Experts say, if you're a narcissist, man, I
really hate that. I saw that in this article. Experts. Yeah, experts,
but they do say, Josh, if you're a narcissist, or
if you're a control freak check or if you're Type
A that you might be more susceptible to being manipulated
by a um reverse psychologist. Why is that? Well, because um,
(10:01):
you want that control. Yeah, and that's ultimately what it
comes down to. So like, none of this will possibly
work if the person doesn't feel that their autonomy and
sense of freedom and sense of self destiny is not
at stake here. That's what you're doing, is you're you're
you are, You're assaulting that person's ability to choose, and
(10:23):
so they're going to choose the opposite to reassert themselves.
And apparently people who are type a's are more likely
to sense that their autonomy is being tread upon a
more passive person that type B, which we should do
an episode on that where that came from type A
type and definitely we should do one on personality inventories. UM,
(10:46):
but the type BE people, you really shouldn't use reverse
psychology on them because they'll end up doing what you ask.
So you're you're asking them to do the opposite of
what you want and then they'll just go do that,
you know, yeah, just asking what you wanted to do,
and they might go, yeah, great, I'll do that right.
The problem is people who use for psychology are the
same people who who worry that the person they're talking
(11:06):
to is not going to do what they want. You
know what I mean, I guess it's not true. Uh.
There's a doctor, a psychologist named Janette Raymond and Los Angeles,
of course, who says that it's not so much I
don't know. It's not so much the personality type though,
but the dynamics of the relationship, which makes a lot
(11:29):
of sense. It does. Um. I also read an article
in Psychology today on this about that context has a
lot to do with it to whether it works or not.
And this was a two thousand eleven posts. So it's
kind of charming that the guy uses Charlie Sheen and
rehab as an example. He's saying, he's saying that, UM
(11:49):
saying something that like if one of Charlie Sheen's friends
had said to him, like, don't go to rehab. You
totally don't need rehab, don't go, Charlie Sheen very likely
would have been like, awesome, Yeah, you're right, I agree
with you. Because number one, his desire to not be
in rehabbing to do tons of cocaine, and his desire
to be proven to prove that he doesn't need help
(12:11):
would definitely trump any petty fleeting desire to prove that
person wrong and and regain a sense of autonomy. What
a weird time that was. It really was. He was
the most famous person in the world for about a month. Yeah,
didn't you go see his tour? No, okay, I read
about it. I didn't see Mike Tyson. Yes, Tyson two
(12:35):
do very different things. I'm not equating those two. Someone
I knew went to that stupid Charlie sheensur and apparently
the people who went were really unhappy because he tried
to make it like just some normal thing. You're like, no,
tell us all your drugs, like a legitimate stage show,
which it was not right, And like he wouldn't talk
about any of his drug stories or sex stories or
(12:56):
anything like that. He was just basically it's just doing, uh,
just talking. And yeah, he got booed a lot. Yeah,
And I think even now Charlie Sheen is like, that
was that was weird? Well, why did do all that stuff?
He just came to Yeah, just I think he even
admits what a what a dumb period in my life. Um,
(13:19):
I could talk about that guy all day. I don't
think we should do with Charlie Sheen episode. Okay, I
like him. Platoon I think is one of the best
movies ever made, and he did really well in it. Yeah.
Good movie. Men at Work. I never saw it. You
have to see Men at Work, do I? Yeah? Casablanca
first though, sure, okay, just to appease the people in
(13:40):
podcast land. If he asked me personally, you could watch
him at the same time. Um. They give a really
bad example to me in here about Julian Ossange, which
of wiki leaks. This is like, this almost made me, Um,
just throw my laptop away while I was reading this. Yeah,
it said basically, um an examlause. If Julian Assange had
(14:01):
been not been told to stop, if basically the US
government had said fine, just go do it, he would
have lost interest and and never would have published all
those diplomatic cables in this article. Terrible, terrible example. Yeah.
I actually just scratched it out. Are not you with
a pin? Looked like a knife. You just went back
(14:23):
and forth like carving it up. Man. I really can't
believe it made it in there. So children though, Um.
One of the big reasons kids, Uh, it works on
kids is because if you're a parent, um, and I'll
find this out at some point, not yet obviously, but um,
kids it seems like they're innately um, interested in doing
(14:47):
the opposite of whatever you say. Yeah. And plus they're
also their little brains are developing their what you call
naive in a lot of ways. So it does tend
to work on children. Again, like we said, you want
to use this worryingly if at all, UM, But there
have been studies, There have been real studies on this
kind of stuff. We finally get to the studies. So
the study of reverse psychology is phenomenon um of reactance
(15:12):
being primed, right. Um. Really kind of starts in the seventies.
But there's this very famous UM study from two that
was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I
think bulletin maybe in there. Anyway, this is UM. The
the in this study found that children who were who
(15:35):
were given free reign to play with a bunch of
toys except one that toy became super popular. Um. But
there you know, they're studying things. They had to put
it down on paper eventually. UM. They had another study
UM or a very similar one, had kids rate a
handful of toys that were in this room, and then
(15:55):
the researchers went back and picked the one that fell
right in the middle. I think it was a toy
motorcycle or something UM and with a new group said
this is like, you can play with all these toys
except for the motorcycle. And then later on they formed
yet another new group with new UM people running the show,
and some of those same kids that had been told
(16:17):
no to the motorcycle were suddenly very interested in the motorcycle.
So this has been documented, this has been UM looked
at over and over again UM. But they don't exactly
know what the mechanisms are behind it, and we will
dive into that right after this. So before we move on,
(16:54):
I want to point out to adults out there, it's
very normal and even kind of cute when there's two
kids playing with two different things and one kid says
at some point, well, no, I want that one because
they're playing with that toy, so I want that toy.
It looks like way more fun. Uh, it's not cute
when you're an adult. No, and I see it happen
(17:17):
where you know, I want what that person has, why
don't why don't I have that? And people there are
plenty of advertisers out there that use that, that manipulate that.
Some of them go to um hysterical lengths, Like there's
a Patagonia ad that had a picture of a Patagonia
jacket and it just said, do not buy this jacket.
(17:39):
I think it was a little tongue in cheek. Well
you know what actually did if it was tongue in cheek.
I posted this article, um what was yesterday? It will
have been a couple of weeks ago on Facebook on
our Facebook page. One before you sent it as a
what a coincidence? All right, and I said I would
advise you to not read this article like ha, And uh,
(18:02):
it did pretty well. I didn't really got a lot
of shares, and a lot of people seem to read it,
and most people were like, oh, very funny. But I
don't know, did it work probably. I'm almost sorry they
read the article now, But but I think it's it
probably got a lot of reads because it is something
that's so ingrained in popular culture, you know, reverse psychology.
(18:22):
It's used all over the place, either expressly, like there's
a very famous Simpsons episode where Homer's reading a parenting
book and his brain says, um, don't you get it,
you gotta use reverse psychology. Homer's like, that sounds really hard.
I'm not doing that, and his brain goes, well, fine,
don't use reverse callogy goes okay, I will and uh.
(18:43):
I saw another example Tom and Jerry UM when Jerry
has a bomb and they're passing it back and forth,
and then all of a sudden, Jerry changes and suddenly
grabs the bomb back like he wants it, and that
makes Tom want the bomb, and Tom of course ends
up holding the bomb while it explodes. Reverse cycle. And
actually the same lady that made the terrible, terrible example
(19:04):
of UM, Julian Julians does point out that this is
it almost enters the realm of folklore reverse psychology does,
but there is something going on there. And again it
is based on reactants, which is somebody doing the opposite
of what's presented to them, breaking a rule something like that,
but we don't really know what's behind it right. Well,
(19:26):
one another quick example is UM. And this wasn't even
us trying to use reverse psychology, but during some of
our UM like necrotizing fasciitists or maggot therapy. When we're like,
don't go to Google images and look this up. Invariably
we have people to emails like why do you have
to say that? Because that's the first thing I did
and it was disgusting. That's why I spell it correctly
(19:46):
because I know people are not going to listen to it.
But it's not us saying like I really want them
to go look at this. We're gonna tell them not to,
like we really mean it. Don't go look it up.
It's disgusting. Yeah, ah, you sort of do a little okay. Um,
so uh, there there have been there's been research into
trying to figure out what what's going on here? Why
(20:08):
do people do this? Um? And uh Esther inglish Askell,
who writes over I O nine great site. Um, she
wrote a little post on this and is talking about how,
um is it is it that people are rebelling against
authority to to establish their own autonomy again or their
(20:28):
sense of autonomy, or is it that they're trying to
they're curious, their curiosity is peaked. And she makes a
really good case for curiosity being piqued by saying, if
you put forbidden on the door. A lot of people
are going to go right through that door to see
what is on the other side of this forbidden door.
I'd be one of them. But if you put on
that same door a science is forbidden colon toilet overflow,
(20:53):
people are gonna be like, I'm not going in there. No,
there probably donuts in there, and okay, so so you're
the suspicious type. But if you take it on its face,
she makes a good point. Yes, some people would be
repelled by the idea of a disgusting, overflowing toilet in there,
but other people might have their curiosity is squashed and
so they wouldn't need to transgress. So it's a lack
(21:14):
of information in a curiosity. And apparently other studies kind
of bolster this idea because they show that the the
the reactants is more intense, the more arbitrary a rule seems,
so that people are saying, like, wait, why, I don't
understand this. It doesn't make any sense. It seems to
(21:34):
be one component of it um and another component of it, however,
seems to be just disobeying. There's another study that was
I think in conjunction. In that study of teenagers and
it found that, um, these a group of teens were
told do not cheat on this test. It's really important
you don't cheat on this test, and not like all
(21:57):
the other tests. Yeah, I guess which you can cheat on.
And this group was induced to cheat more often more
frequently than the control group who weren't told not to
cheat on this. Yeah. What's the point of that. I
guess it's just I don't know, that's just finding boundaries
or or you could also make the case that they're
they're trying to see what happens if they do cheat
because they're curious. So the jury is definitely still out
(22:19):
on what's behind reactants. Yeah. Um. We talked a little
bit about how business. Um. I think they said in
the article that sales is a common way in business
that you can use reverse psychology. Like the car salesman
who shows all the cars except for the most expensive one,
and they're like, well, why don't you show us that?
And he's like, well, you know, I think that's probably
(22:39):
out of your price range. And then if you're you know,
an adult living in a child's body or a child
living in an adults body, like big, yeah, you go,
well no, let me see that car I can afford that, Yeah,
what do you mean? And the goofers family who's always
broke drives off in their brand new car. Or the
(23:00):
lationship example they gave, like if a boyfriends like, you're
becoming kind of clany to the girlfriend, and the girl
immediate is like, yeah, you know, I think we should
spend some time apart. Actually we should even date other people. Boom,
the guy all of a sudden says, wait, wait a minute,
what do you mean date other people? So some of
(23:22):
that harmless stuff in a relationship happens, I'm sure, but
that's not what we were talking about earlier, with like
truly toxic relationship malation and manipulation. That's that's a different thing.
They're different levels of this. Okay, that's on the same
spectrum for sure, Uh, but it all it also uh
levels all the way up to real UM therapy called
(23:44):
paradoxical intervention, and UM psychologists actually say reverse psychology is
the media inventedat That's not what we call it. It's
an actual therapy that some people say is not ethical
to use. Other doctors say, no, it's just fine to use. Yeah.
I actually came across a I think a paper from
the nineties or something about the ethics of using paradoxical intervention. Right,
(24:10):
this does help or it can help, And the whole
idea of it, it's not really reverse psychology. It's just
about the closest thing psychology has to reverse psychology, where
you are telling a patient to go and purposefully do
a symptom something they're complaining about. So if somebody is
saying that they're a big procrastinator and they don't have
any control over this is who they are. The doctor
(24:33):
prescribes them one hour of procrastination every day. So I
decide an hour to just procrastinate. And it does a
bunch of different things. One, it's silly. The whole point
of it is meant to be silly. It also takes
something that was formerly thought of as involuntary voluntary, and
since it's voluntary, you can also voluntarily not do it.
It means you can actually control something you didn't think
(24:53):
you could control. Right. But and then also by making
it silly, it disempowers this thing that's like just such
a big problem. It's now it's a silly thing. I'm
I'm purposefully procrastinating an hour out of every day. The
thing is is if the patient is not privy to
what technique you're using, it's very manipulative. Yeah. It's almost
like a lighthearted aversion therapy kind of you sort of
(25:17):
exposure exposure. Yeah, is that the same thing? Yeah, not
a version, but yeah, it's it's yeah, like, if you're
afraid of snakes, let me dump a bunch of snakes
on your head. Yeah that's pretty unethical, I would say, so. Um,
but like you said, some psychologists say, no, you can
use it as a tool in your toolbox, just don't
be a tool when you use it. Terrible. So. Um.
(25:41):
The whole point of all of this is these are
all persuasive techniques, or what are called compliance techniques, right, Yeah,
that's what you're trying to get people to do what
you want. And there's another thing I ran across called
the door in the face. It's a compliance technique which
people use all the time. You'll find it very familiar. Um.
It's when you ask for something really huge that you
(26:02):
know the other person is going to turn down, and
they do. And then you ask for something what you
originally wanted, which is smaller by comparison. They may have
turned down if you'd ask for it just on itself. Yeah,
I think we talked about a version of that in
the m p A. A. Like filmmakers, they'll say, I
really want to get this violent scene in there, so
(26:23):
let me do something really outrageous that the m p
A is gonna pull that and not pay as much
attention to the thing I really wanted to keep right.
So that's door in the face. There's also footing the
door where um, you ask for incrementally larger stuff to
where you finally build up to the thing you want smaller,
smaller to larger, but then lastly check the other thing
I ran across. It was probably the healthiest way of
(26:46):
using reverse psychology. So if reverse psychology works because the
person feels like there's their sense of autonomy is being threatened,
you take their autonomy and you put it front and center.
You say, I can't make you do anything. Only you
can decide whether this is good or bad for you,
So do what you want. And technically it's a form
(27:09):
of verse psychology. But what you're doing is you're taking
this obstacle that really doesn't have anything to do with
anything this person's sense of autonomy putting it right there
in the middle and saying this is a non issue, like,
I respect your autonomy. I can't tell you what to do.
You decided it's it doesn't even strike me as manipulative necessarily,
it strikes me as healthy. Yeah, Or you can just
be honest with people. See where that gets you. But
(27:31):
I think that's honesty. True. But yeah, you can also
just say like I want you to do this. You
know I can't make you, but this is the direction
I want you to go. There's also the door in
the floor. No, do you mean flowers in the attic? No?
During the floor was the the Jeff Bridges movie based
(27:53):
on the John Irving book, A Widow for One Year.
Great book, pretty good movie. John Irving knows what he's doing.
I thought A Widow for One Year is a much
better title than the Door in the Floor. Though you
have a door in the floor. Rhymes. Hollywood loves rhymes,
they sure do. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, you got anything else? U?
Surprisingly No. If you want to know more about reverse psychology,
(28:16):
good luck finding it because we covered everything sadly. Uh.
You can start though, looking at how stuff works in
the search bar by typing reverse psychology. Since I said
search bar, it's time for listening to mail. This is
from Robbie. Hey, guys, thanks for your enlightening coverage of
vast assortment of topics. Help me find common ground with
(28:37):
children and adults and all types of social situations that
could have otherwise have been excruciating the awkward. Um. I'm
an artist, so I listened to you while I paint.
Music is great, but sometimes spoken word allows me to
work longer. It's a steady feed of stimulation instead of
emotional ups and downs. It can come for music and
other music related news. I recently conducted a social science
(28:58):
experiment where around New York City and ask strangers what
there are three favorite things are? The most common answers
were family, music, and food? What would yours be? What? So?
What three? What are your three favorite things? Okay? Um? Yeah? Um?
(29:23):
Can I can I lump food into just one category? Food? Okay?
UM's gonna do you do? What's your guest travel? Yeah?
I guess okay or booze? No. No, I'm not so
sad that I'm going to say that, although it's definitely
up there, I will say. I will say my lemon
(29:46):
tree is probably number three. I love that lemon tree.
It's a producer. Uh, not like that lousy lime tree.
And my friends. I gotta put them there. We'll we'll
say food and friend okay, after doing me my favorite
maturee things. My favorite three things are food. I'm gonna
(30:11):
say friends and family, which includes Emily. It's a bit
of a cheap um food. Friends and family, folks food,
folks and fun fun. Friends and families are chiefs that
includes everybody. Yeah, you can just say folks, food as family,
(30:33):
people and People's number two for you. I'm gonna go
with music. Oh, that's a good one. Boom. What about
movies though? Do you like music more than movies? I like? Oh, man,
that is a tough, tough, tough question. You know who
asks people questions like this, jerks no, because it's so
(30:53):
impossible to just come up with three things. What's this
guy's name, Robbie, Robbie, You're not really a jerk, but man, Actually,
what the email should have said is if I are
you guys, I don't know. I don't think you could
answer it. He should have said, like psychology, I want
to hear you, guys waffle on your top five or
six things that you like the most in the world.
So He finishes by saying, what would yours be? There
(31:16):
are three of you. I'm sorry, but there's only two
of us are here now, umrank the chairs over there,
but he can't. Could you possibly answer the question we
just did? I would record the podcast app on my
Apple TV as you spoke and then include this footage
in his experiment. So, uh, we're being experimented on right now. Yeah,
(31:36):
let's let's ahead give hi permission to use that clip
if he wants. I do not give you promise you
can use my my side, you can use it. That's
a thank you for your incredible work with your three
exclamation points. Is there a site that people can go
to to check out Robbie's progress or keep starter or anything? Well,
he he directed us to a YouTube link. So if
(31:57):
I just go to YouTube and type in three favorite
things and um, you'll probably come across it. Cool. Well,
thanks a lot, Robbie. Uh I mean that ambivalently. Um,
it's like six months ago the yeah, so so you
probably gave up on us anyway. Is there even a
YouTube anymore? Um? If you want to get in touch
with us that you can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
(32:19):
dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast that how Stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at at home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com
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