December 31, 2012 • 33 mins
Humans have made New Year's resolutions for millennia - and had a terrible time sticking to them. So, great expectations aside, why do most resolutions fail? Listen in to learn more about science of willpower and how to stick with resolutions.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Happy New Year's Eve to everyone.
I hope you're wearing sparkles and donning your party hats
and doing something fun this evening. Drinking champagne perhaps, or
(00:26):
sparkling grape juice or whatever tickles your fancy slash knows
when you drink it. I myself, I'm not really big
on New Year's I think the pressure is too high
for this holiday. I I find it stressful. I would
rather just I know, it's an excuse to party, and
yes I will find a party, but I would rather
(00:47):
just like have a low key night of hanging out
rather than trying to go somewhere where I do have
to wear sequence. There's also a lot of pressure to
like tell yourself and everyone around you that you're going
to somehow make yourself better. Oh yeah, it's the fresh start.
And it's not just in the US. This is a
cross cultural thing. People love New Year's because it gives
(01:10):
us a chance, at least mentally, to say, Okay, you
know what, last year, I did some things whatever, But
I can I can be I can be a new
person this year. I can resolve to make myself better.
Do you have you do you make New Year's resolutions? Caroline?
I do not. I used to when I was a
naive person who believed that by simply saying I will
(01:34):
start running, I would start running, and that consistently did
not happen. So I was like, you know what, instead
of just disappointing myself every January three, I Am just
going to try to make slow lifestyle changes here and
there and not worry about promising something on January one. Well,
as we will get into more in the podcast, Caroline,
(01:57):
you are really on the right track when it comes
to when it comes to these resolutions. Um. But first
before we get into whether or not resolutions really work
and when they do, because I have known people who
will set up with some kind of large goal like
(02:17):
quitting smoking or having a healthier lifestyle, losing weight, and
they actually stick to it and they do it. Um.
So we'll talk about the ways that people can succeed
in those kinds of things. But USA dot gov just
for fun, has tracked the kinds of things the most
common things at least that Americans resolved to do, and
(02:40):
they're pretty easy to guess. Less boozing, less using keep rhyming,
eating healthier food, getting a better education, better job, getting fit,
managing debt, which I'm sure is a big one. I
think money matters in general are a big one for people, um,
quitting smoking, making trips, volunteering, saving money, basically becoming perfect
(03:04):
human beings. Yeah. I do better with some of those things.
It's all in cycles. Like sometimes I'm really good at
saving money because I just get in the mindset of like, no, dummy,
you can't go to the mall every day. That's just ridiculous.
Who does that? And so I become really good at,
you know, eating at home instead of eating out and
(03:24):
doing all that stuff. But sometimes you can't be good
all the time. No, you need to allow yourself some indulgences. Absolutely,
But h One interesting thing though about New Year's resolutions
is just how long we've been making them. I suspected
that it was more of a modern cultural invention, that
(03:47):
New Year's resolutions are this huge thing that everybody has
to do, but no, in fact, this is coming from
the Book of Christmas by Jane Struther's. She talks about
the history of resolution making, and how ancient Romans and
Babylonians would make resolutions at the start of the year,
and Babylonians specifically promised to repay debts and return borrowed objects,
(04:10):
and this was also popular among not surprisingly much later
in history the Puritans. I like the Babylonian resolutions. Well,
they're not really resolutions, but just like I'm gonna give
back what's owed that. That seems like it's an easier
and more noble goal than I'm going to start eating
fewer cheesy poofs, although that's pretty noble too. You can
(04:31):
accomplish it. It's it's true, um, but it's even still though, Uh,
these days, I'd say there's a lot of cynicism towards resolutions,
even though it's something that it's it's a strange part
of almost human nature, it seems like considering how long
we've been doing this. But it's also been accompanied by
(04:51):
this growing acknowledgement that maybe resolutions are just empty gestures
that we make to make ourselves feel better at the
beginning of the year. For instance, Struthers quotes Mark Twain,
who once said New Year's Day is now the accepted
time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week,
(05:14):
you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Oh,
Samuel Clemmens, some people last longer than a week. Yeah,
oh yeah, well off your wild also was skeptical. He
said good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on
a bank where they have no account. And the thing
is Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde were not off the
(05:35):
mark in terms of being dubious. The people will actually
stick to their resolutions. So there were two studies by
John Norcross of the University of Scranton back in nine
John John Norcross has actually focused a lot on resolutions,
will power, all that stuff, and he found that seventy
(05:56):
seven percent of people maintain their resolutions for one week,
So there we go. One week. That's that's pretty good.
Only maintained for the full two years that they followed people.
But I still think that's pretty good. Almost of people
holding onto the resolutions for two years. Yeah, although I
mean we don't we don't have details on what precisely
(06:16):
those resolutions were. Um And I also really liked the
name of the study was called the Resolution Solution Longitudinal
Examination of New Year's Change Attempts. I love academia sometimes. Um. Yeah,
And among those two people that Norcross tracked, a little
bit over half of them experienced at least one slip up,
(06:39):
and those slip ups would be precipitated by self reported
lack of personal control excessive stress, which is something to
keep in mind as we talk about resolutions and negative emotions.
And even though um, those studies are a little bit
dated there, the numbers still apply today for the most part.
(06:59):
It's not like we've gotten any better really keeping resolutions
in the intervening years. UM. John Tierney over at the
New York Times recently looked at statistics on how how
good we are these days at keeping resolutions and forewarned that,
sorry to say this, folks, a third of people will
(07:19):
have broken their resolutions by January, and half of us
will just give up by July. But that still leaves
fifty percent after July. UM. And one of the reasons
why we tend to give up, UM has to do
with us finding ourselves or at least thinking ourselves too busy,
(07:41):
perhaps to really put the effort to dig in and
make the sacrifices. Um. Also in the New York Times,
Tara Parker Pope reported on a two thousand seventh survey
by time management firm Franklin Covee that pulled fifteen thousand customers, uh,
and they found that nearly forty percent attributed breaking their
resolutions to having too many other things to do, and
(08:03):
then thirty three percent we're just i would say probably
a little more honest and said they just weren't as
committed to the resolutions as they were when the clock
struck midnight. Yeah. Well it's hard. It's hard to go
from being a couch that are day in and day
out to being like, no, I'm going to train for
a marathon. I mean that's that's a major step. And
to just decide automatically that you're going to do that,
(08:25):
like maybe get an app like the couch to the
five k app or something like that, like take it
in steps. It is it can be so overwhelming. I know,
you know what I'm talking about. It can be so
overwhelming to be like, I'm just gonna make a radical
life change right just because it's New Year's Yeah, and
we don't think about, uh, the incremental steps needed to
(08:47):
get to that place of actually having a resolution that works. Yeah. Um,
so speaking of resolutions working, you you do really have
to be committed, and so you know, Christ inside of
the he said, they simply just weren't committed. They didn't
feel like, you know, following through on whatever promise they made.
And uh. Kimberly Moffatt, who's a psychotherapist, quoted in the
(09:10):
Huffington Post, said that New Year's resolutions only work in
very few cases, and typically with those who have a
will of steel. And this gets into the whole like
willpower issues like strength of will, what makes people commit,
and so it can be really hard to commit. This
is another John Norcross study who mentioned him earlier, this
(09:31):
one in two thousand two. He found that by the
end of January, thirty six percent had already broken their resolutions.
Like we said, it can be overwhelming, and it really
is overwhelming if we're faced with too many tasks. So
not only are we like going back to work, we're
getting over the holidays, we're trying to clean up after
all the relatives have been in the house, and we
want to start training for a marathon. It can just
(09:53):
be a lot to handle. Yeah, And Michael Bader, who
is a senior advisor for the Institute for Change, also
says that resolutions don't work because we have an unconscious
resolution to not change. Basically, he thinks that our bad
behaviors serve unconscious beliefs and needs that are the building
(10:15):
blocks of our identities. So he gives an example of
an overeater who's unsuccessful at dieting because binging provides momentary
relief from feelings of loneliness and or anxiety. But I mean,
the thing is though, because he he also goes on
to say, like, this has nothing to do with heredity
or neurobiology. You know, it's just these these unconscious parts
(10:38):
of who we are. We can't divorce ourselves from them.
But it sounds like that's just not getting at the
real root of the problem and shrugging off. You know,
Oh well, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna change, really,
I'm just gonna like, I don't feel like cheesy poofs
are a cornerstone of my identity. I just really like them,
that's all, Like I could. I don't think that giving
(11:00):
up cheesy poofs will reveal anything that's like deep seated
in my brain. But what does the poof represent? Caroline happiness? Oh?
Oh there it is? Yeah. Um well, another reason is
that we really don't want to do them. According to
this is Steve Airy, who's a negative Nancy confidence coach,
quoted over at life Hacker. He said that this is
(11:23):
because resolutions are really about what we should do rather
than what we want to do. So it's like doing
your homework instead of playing video games. You know, it's
like it's what you should do to better yourself, but
do you really feel like you want to do it?
And then he goes on to explain that they're like goals,
but he said that this is a negative, which I
(11:43):
kind of take issue with and I think is weird.
So he says that resolutions are like goals, which puts
a gap between where you are now and where you
want to be. And I don't think that's inherently negative.
I think if you see a goal that you want
to go for, whether that's getting a new job or
losing weight, you should go for it. But anyway, he
says that making resolutions make you look at what's next,
(12:04):
not what's right in front of you, and they make
you feel less than lowering your self esteem, which I
think I feel like he's getting it backwards. I don't
know about you. I mean I could see that coming
into effect if you set yourself up for cycles of
defeat where you continually set goals and then that are
too ambitious and then you don't meet up to them,
(12:25):
and then that would probably ding your self esteem and
you know, lower you rather than propel you forward. Because
it seems like resolution should be more of a motivational factor.
I think it's more something that Christie Hedges, who's a
leadership coach um and quoted over at Forbes, talked about
(12:46):
the fact that we set too lofty of goals. It's
like this all or nothing thing I'm going to become.
You know, I'm going to sculpt my body so much
so that when I go to the beach, will will
ask to take my photo And that's not gonna It's
not gonna happen with you know, one zoom book class
a week or whatever it is that we think um
(13:09):
can do it, and so when we don't hit this
transformational point in a short amount of time, then we
just throw the whole throw the whole thing out. Yeah. Well.
She also says that culturally we're all pretty cynical and
that we live up to our low expectations because we're
setting these incredible goals that we don't honestly expect to me,
(13:29):
And so it's that much easier to just be like, whatever,
I'm not gonna go run anymore or I'm not gonna
do X y Z anymore, because I never really expected
that i'd you know, succeed anyway. I also like how
she refers to this as the cynical zeitgeist, which supports
the gravitational pull of the status quo cynical zeitgeist. Everybody's
a daria um. But there is some science though too,
(13:55):
resolutions and more specifically to the will power that it
takes to change things. Because I think that resolutions can
be a very good thing. I think that we're just
going about them, oftentimes the wrong way. But when you
figure out how willpower works in the brain, maybe we
are arming ourselves with some some information to help us
(14:19):
succeed because sticking to resolutions, i e. Willpower takes actual energy. Yeah,
so it turns out that when you run out of
will plat power, you're running out of energy, like Kristen said,
that is powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which Roy F. Baumeister,
a social psychologist, calls ego depletion. He points out that
(14:42):
you really have to anticipate the limits of your willpower.
And what is it about willpower? Why does it run out?
What's going on? Well, one of the reasons why it
runs out is because all of the research into into
ego depletion, into willpower finds that we don't really have
(15:03):
very much of it. Willpower is a very fleeting thing
humans like to give into their indulgences, and UM, if
we don't exercise it much like a muscle, we we
aren't going to be able to to use it very much. Um.
And this was something that uh jonah Laire who before
I can hear eyebrows raising right now, I realized he
(15:26):
is uh run into some issues lately with some citations,
but nevertheless he wrote, Uh, he did run a fascinating
piece over at wired awhile ago Um called the willpower Trick,
and I just wanted to call out some of these
UM studies that he highlighted. Uh. He talked about behavioral
economists Baba Shiv who asked two separate groups to memorize
(15:46):
either a two digit or a seven digit number, and
later on those two groups were UM tasked with choosing
between a piece of chocolate cake or a fruit bowl,
knowing that the fruit would be a hell fear option
and found Ship found that the people who had to
memorize the seven digit number were much more likely to
(16:10):
just given to the temptation and eat a piece of
chocolate cake because Ships surmised their brains were more tax
those blood glu glucose levels were lower, and hence they
had more ego depletion. Yeah, and this is the same thing.
You get home from work. All day, You've probably exercised willpower,
not just in avoiding the dessert tray at lunch maybe,
(16:33):
but also like not cursing all work. You've exercised willpower
to not be your usual jerk self. You get home
at night, your brain is tired, and you're like, Okay,
I could grill a chicken breast, or I could just
eat this whole macaroni and cheese plate from the grocery store.
I love cheese. Is the theme. I think this is
(16:54):
a thing. It's a theme, but I like it. Um
But going more into the research. Back in the nineteen sixties,
there's a famous experiment by a guy named Walter Mitchell
who wanted to test whether or not kids could hold
out for treats, basically looking at will power in childhood,
(17:16):
and he identified among the kids who were able to
hold out, he identified something he called strategic allocation of attention,
in which they literally distracted themselves from the I think
it was a marshmallow or some kind of chocolate treat
on the table that I was sitting there. Um, yeah,
because he told them that they could either eat the
(17:38):
marshmallow now or wait until the researcher comes back in
the room. And then they get to marshmallows. And all
of the kids who just sat there and staring at
the marshmallow and tried to wait it out had much
more trouble and would usually just gobble up the marshmallow.
But the kids who would cover their eyes so they
couldn't see it, they would sing songs themselves, actually hide
(18:00):
underneath the table, essentially blocking that temptation stimulus from view.
We're able to hold out the longest, and so that's
um one thing that researchers have learned about willpower is
the fact that those of us who might seem to
have the most actually have to exercise it the least
(18:22):
because we sidestep temptation by just keeping those things out
of out of our view. Like if if you you're
you know, pitfall is say chocolate or cigarettes or alcohol,
you don't have chocolate or cigarettes or alcohol anywhere, you know.
It's like if you're an alcoholic, you're not going to
(18:43):
go to a bar. Yeah, I read. There was one
commenter on the Wired article. The guy said that he
kept his pack of cigarette. He would only let himself
buy one pack at a time, and he would keep
it in the backseat of his car. So every time
he wanted to smoke, he would have to go out
and get his keys, go outside, get the pack of cigarettes,
get one cigarette, because he would only let himself take
one cigarette a time and then smoke it. And so
that cut way down on just like the boredom smoking.
(19:06):
And he actually ended up cutting way down in general.
And I'm like, well, am I going to have to
keep all of my chocolate in my car? You gotta
keep the cheesy poofs in the trunk? Cat one, I
have a hatch. I can so easily get to it. Um. Yeah,
but that's the whole thing too. I don't keep ice
cream in the house. I don't go down the ice
(19:28):
cream aisle at the grocery store. Like, if I super
duper want ice cream, it means that I have to
either go to the grocery store and get it or
just like stop by the ice cream parlor on the
way home, Which it's just so much of the hassle.
Who wants to do that? Well? And the only thing
though about this kind of research is that it definitely
gives us more insight into eliminating problem behaviors, but not
(19:52):
so much into activating positive ones. In terms of exercising,
going to those zooma classes, Um, I can't keep up.
Uh yeah, I've never taken a zoomba class, but I
have a feeling I would. I don't know, I got
I got two left feight folks um or you know,
like learning a new language or going on trips. It's
(20:13):
kind of volunteering those kinds of things that require more time.
But again it seems like, no matter what the big
lesson is, you gotta start small. Yeah, definitely, Yeah, small
steps are best. This was a stress in l l
A Times article in December. Take short walks at work,
things like that, things that can add up to small
(20:36):
successes that can add up to a better feeling of
self control. Self esteem, like thinking, Okay, that wasn't hard
getting up at three thirty. When you're just like head
on your desk, getting up and just taking a walk
around your floor, around your building or whatever, that eventually
leads you to be like, Okay, well maybe then I
can run a mile on the treadmill instead when I
get home, you know, adding up to bigger and bigger things.
(20:59):
And same with anim with food, Um, it's the whole.
Like if you're drastically cutting everything out, like okay, well
I'm going to go from eating like a normal average
American diet to let us, I'm gonna eat nothing but
let us and tomatoes. Yeah, a, that's not a balanced diet. Yeah,
you need some frosted flakes in there. And also remember
that those glucost levels too. It means that has a
(21:22):
big thing to do with the food, Like people need
to to eat to be healthy to keep those gluecoasts.
Yeah that's why. Yeah, that's why your crash diets are
not gonna work. That's why it has to be a
lifestyle change. And Kimberly Moffatt, who we referenced earlier, said,
in reference to food in particular, think of what you're
adding instead of what you're taking away. This is something
(21:42):
I've actually told my mother, who refuses, I don't know it,
refuses to cut back in some areas and add and others.
I'm like, don't think of it as dieting. This isn't
like your nutral system. This isn't your eating rice cakes
and being sad. This is just trying to add fruits
and vegetables. Maybe take away a little bacon. I know,
(22:03):
cud who wants to take away bacon? I don't know nobody,
but yeah, And and people recommend that you don't spread yourself. Then,
in addition to this, you want to set a single,
clear goal because, as we mentioned earlier, being overwhelmed with
tasks and half two's and must dues, it just gets
to be too much and you won't stick to it. Yeah.
(22:24):
And on that same note, I think this is really important.
Don't overreact if you have a lapse. Lapses happen if
you skip a day of running. If you eat that hamburger,
enjoy it. Enjoy the relaxation that you take from not
exercising one day. Enjoy the satiation from that burger or
(22:47):
whatever food it is that that delights you so much
and then you know and keep going. Don't expect yourself
to be completely perfect right off the bat, but really
ever Yeah, And also I mean, don't think that burger
or that day off from running means your entire diet
or exercise regiment or whatever is off track. You. That's
(23:08):
just one one day, one burger, one whatever, but a
bag of cheesey poof whatever. But just that just means
that the next day you're back at it, right. Um.
And we have not touched on gender at all in
this podcast, but this, this whole thing about willpower and
managing stressed and keeping your energy levels up is especially
(23:30):
pertinent to women because the American Psychological Association did a
pretty end depth survey not too long ago on gender
stress and sticking to resolutions and willpower and found that
women may have a harder time sticking to goals like
these than men do. And I wonder if off the bat,
(23:55):
and I wasn't able to find any statistics on this,
I wonder if just from the get go, women um
might set more resolutions and perhaps more unrealistic resolutions. And
I only say that because I feel like, as soon
as the holidays are over, the messages that we are
immediately inundated with our swimsuit seasons around the corner, ladies, Yeah,
(24:18):
drop those last five pounds all that turkey way, I'm
going to give birth to a turkey. Um. Yeah. It
turns out in the study that both genders do cite
lack of willpower as the number one barrier to change,
but women are more likely than men to cite the
lack of willpower as a barrier preventing them from making
the lifestyle changes recommended by a doctor. And so that's
(24:43):
women versus twenty four percent men. Yeah, And women are
also far more likely than men to report that a
lack of willpower has prevented them from changing eating habits. Um.
When asked what they needed to change in order for
their willpower to improve, women were more likely than and
to say less fatigue and more confidence in their ability
(25:03):
to improve their will power. And also six times as
many women say that having more help with household chores
would allow them to improve their will power. And this
was something that I was thinking about in terms of,
you know what it takes to set a resolution and
really keep to it and make a lifestyle change, and
(25:23):
as a single woman with no kids, like being as
autonomous as I will ever be probably in my life.
Um that I could see that happening. I could say,
oh I could, you know, I could, I could do
these kinds of things. Toss a kid in the mix.
I don't know, you know, because that's that increases your
stress level. That And I'm not blaming kids for things.
(25:45):
I'm just saying that I can understand how having a partner,
having a household to take care of, having children, even pets,
um my pet free uh, all of that can impact
this brain space that it takes to really set yourself
up for success. And it also speaks to I mean
(26:08):
not to to to be uh kind of cliche about it,
but it also speaks to the importance of you know,
establishing healthy lifestyles from the get go if possible, and
maybe just using your child as a bench press. Just
bench press your child, incorporate if the child is taking
up so much of your time, incorporate the child into
(26:28):
your exercise. Gentlemen, Well, now that is one of two
bicept curls with the child. There you go. If you've
got twin babies. Obviously autopadded surface j I um no,
but one of the one of the tips was just
play with your kids, because that knocks out increased family
time and also gives you a little bit of exercise.
(26:48):
So here we're here to help. Yeah, that's all we're doing. Yeah,
and I do think that, Um, the fact that there
are so many apps out there too, especially for people
who want to start exercising more, that will give you
reminders keeping some kind of accountability something that's often cited
as well as a good thing to do. So this
(27:09):
this sounds like if I want to get back in
the resolution game, I should make a resolution along the
lines of get moving a little bit every day. So
instead going from nothing, going from walking from my car
to my apartment, take a walk at three o'clock when
I'm starting to feel tired at work. Yeah, it's the
whole thing about taking the stairs instead of the elevator
(27:33):
one day at a time. Like for for me, uh,
like I want to save money this year, and instead
of what I've done in the past is saying by
the end of this year, I want to have a
million dollars. Now I'm not gonna happen. There's no way, uh,
actually saying okay, each week breaking it down. Well, I've
also in terms of money, Like, I've also set an
(27:54):
amount every month that I'm going to put in savings
and never touch again because I actually am working towards
a goal of buying a car. Are like, I have
to get rid of my old, dying, noisy car, and
so I just have to be disciplined about that. But
I do still let myself go out, sure, have a drink,
have a Hamburger, gotee, friends, that kind of thing. I
(28:14):
don't completely deprive myself of any social interaction that involves
leaving the house because I would go insane and then
I would money binge and buy all of the shoes.
So I don't buy all the shoes now. So New
Year's resolutions do they work? Oftentimes? No, But it's just
because well not just because, but I would say largely
(28:34):
because we go about them the wrong way. Yeah, it's
it's almost sort of a desperation move, like, oh my god,
I was not responsible with fill in the blank, and
I need to suddenly backtrack and reverse however, many months
of damage. Whereas it might seem hard, but in the
long run, it's easier to make that lifestyle change and
(28:55):
be kind to yourself. Yeah, that's a good message. Be
kind to yourself. Yeah, and happy New Year everybody. Happy
New Year. Let us know if you have New Year's resolutions.
Very curious to hear all of them. I know we
kind of use exercise and eating well and all of
that as our go to resolutions, but I'm very curious
(29:16):
to know what folks are trying to to change this year.
So send us an email if you'd like mom stuff
at Discovery dot com. Of course, you can always go
over to Facebook and start a conversation over there. Uh.
And we've got a couple of letters to share, but
before we do, I've got a quick word already. Here's
(29:38):
a letter from Asa. She's this about our fimphobia episode.
She said that it definitely struck a nerve with her.
I am a woman in a quite male dominant profession.
I am a new assistant professor and engineering. I also
like to dress in a very feminine way. I almost
always wear skirts in any heels. I can tolerate and
love makeup. It makes me feel better and more confident.
(30:00):
That said, I have noticed people get surprised and my
credentials and competence throughout my career from college with a
very high g P, A grad school, a couple of
years in the industry, where it was by far the
most prevalent, and now in academia. When I was younger,
my mom would tell me that I should not dress
in such a feminine way. It wasn't because she thought
it was not a feminist thing to do, I guess,
(30:21):
but she thought, maybe new, that it would make things
harder for me. She would tell me that I should
appear not as a woman in a sexual sense, but
as a quote unquote sister to be listened to, and
also to avoid being harassed being a professional. That was
the road she took for me. However, that was not acceptable.
I decided that I am not willing to change an
important part of who I am just so men can
(30:42):
get over their preconceptions. Into this day, I feel the
same way. Is it sometimes a problem? Yes, it is
sometimes difficult to be taken seriously, especially by older male engineers.
It is also quite amusing to see people's reaction to
a woman in heels and a pencil skirt, holding hand
tools or rolling along large pieces of equipment. But it
is who I am and I am not willing to
change it because of other people's preconceptions. So thank you Asa. Well,
(31:07):
I've got one here from Justin and this is in
response to our episode on gender and trolling, which featured
Jonathan Strickland, co host of the Text Stuff podcast, and
he writes, I would just like to give my thoughts
about the topic of trolls. I'm an avid YouTube watcher,
and when I was younger, thirteen or fourteen years old,
YouTube was in its early days, and I admit to
(31:29):
being a troll. Back then, I wouldn't say as mean
or sexist things as I've seen these days, but I
can assure you my comments were not nice. As I've matured,
I've realized what I was doing and stopped. I still
regularly watch YouTube videos and stick to only posting positive
or humorous comments at no one's expense. I still regularly
see trolls and have done some independent and unofficial research
(31:52):
of my own about trolls for the last couple of months.
Every time I watch a YouTube video and see a
troll like comment, I click on the user's page to
get a little more information of what regular troll looks like. Uh.
He goes on to talk about UH. There is a
news group called source fed on YouTube, hugely popular, hugely successful.
There are three female hosts on that show, and I
(32:12):
can almost guarantee you that the comments on any of
those videos with them, especially with the one named Tricia Hirshberger,
will be filled with sexist remarks. I always see comments
and top comments that refer to their breasts and other
objectifying remarks. Why because those comments seem always to be
top comments, which only further encourages those remarks. YouTube has
(32:35):
help by allowing YouTubers smart troll like comments is spam
and YouTube will hide the comment. Besides that, I'm not
sure how else YouTube is cracked down on trolls. They
need to start warning into leading accounts if they haven't
done so already, like if your comments have been flagged
as spam over five times, YouTube should have the right
to remove the account. So thanks to Justin for his
(32:59):
insight on trolling, and to everyone who's written into mom
Stuff at Discovery dot com Again. You can find us
on Facebook, like us over there and follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Check out our Tumbler blog
It's stuff I've never told you dot tumbler dot com.
And if you resolved to get smarter for I know
(33:19):
the place you should go it's our website how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Happy New Year's Eve to everyone.
I hope you're wearing sparkles and donning your party hats
and doing something fun this evening. Drinking champagne perhaps, or
(00:26):
sparkling grape juice or whatever tickles your fancy slash knows
when you drink it. I myself, I'm not really big
on New Year's I think the pressure is too high
for this holiday. I I find it stressful. I would
rather just I know, it's an excuse to party, and
yes I will find a party, but I would rather
(00:47):
just like have a low key night of hanging out
rather than trying to go somewhere where I do have
to wear sequence. There's also a lot of pressure to
like tell yourself and everyone around you that you're going
to somehow make yourself better. Oh yeah, it's the fresh start.
And it's not just in the US. This is a
cross cultural thing. People love New Year's because it gives
(01:10):
us a chance, at least mentally, to say, Okay, you
know what, last year, I did some things whatever, But
I can I can be I can be a new
person this year. I can resolve to make myself better.
Do you have you do you make New Year's resolutions? Caroline?
I do not. I used to when I was a
naive person who believed that by simply saying I will
(01:34):
start running, I would start running, and that consistently did
not happen. So I was like, you know what, instead
of just disappointing myself every January three, I Am just
going to try to make slow lifestyle changes here and
there and not worry about promising something on January one. Well,
as we will get into more in the podcast, Caroline,
(01:57):
you are really on the right track when it comes
to when it comes to these resolutions. Um. But first
before we get into whether or not resolutions really work
and when they do, because I have known people who
will set up with some kind of large goal like
(02:17):
quitting smoking or having a healthier lifestyle, losing weight, and
they actually stick to it and they do it. Um.
So we'll talk about the ways that people can succeed
in those kinds of things. But USA dot gov just
for fun, has tracked the kinds of things the most
common things at least that Americans resolved to do, and
(02:40):
they're pretty easy to guess. Less boozing, less using keep rhyming,
eating healthier food, getting a better education, better job, getting fit,
managing debt, which I'm sure is a big one. I
think money matters in general are a big one for people, um,
quitting smoking, making trips, volunteering, saving money, basically becoming perfect
(03:04):
human beings. Yeah. I do better with some of those things.
It's all in cycles. Like sometimes I'm really good at
saving money because I just get in the mindset of like, no, dummy,
you can't go to the mall every day. That's just ridiculous.
Who does that? And so I become really good at,
you know, eating at home instead of eating out and
(03:24):
doing all that stuff. But sometimes you can't be good
all the time. No, you need to allow yourself some indulgences. Absolutely,
But h One interesting thing though about New Year's resolutions
is just how long we've been making them. I suspected
that it was more of a modern cultural invention, that
(03:47):
New Year's resolutions are this huge thing that everybody has
to do, but no, in fact, this is coming from
the Book of Christmas by Jane Struther's. She talks about
the history of resolution making, and how ancient Romans and
Babylonians would make resolutions at the start of the year,
and Babylonians specifically promised to repay debts and return borrowed objects,
(04:10):
and this was also popular among not surprisingly much later
in history the Puritans. I like the Babylonian resolutions. Well,
they're not really resolutions, but just like I'm gonna give
back what's owed that. That seems like it's an easier
and more noble goal than I'm going to start eating
fewer cheesy poofs, although that's pretty noble too. You can
(04:31):
accomplish it. It's it's true, um, but it's even still though, Uh,
these days, I'd say there's a lot of cynicism towards resolutions,
even though it's something that it's it's a strange part
of almost human nature, it seems like considering how long
we've been doing this. But it's also been accompanied by
(04:51):
this growing acknowledgement that maybe resolutions are just empty gestures
that we make to make ourselves feel better at the
beginning of the year. For instance, Struthers quotes Mark Twain,
who once said New Year's Day is now the accepted
time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week,
(05:14):
you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Oh,
Samuel Clemmens, some people last longer than a week. Yeah,
oh yeah, well off your wild also was skeptical. He
said good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on
a bank where they have no account. And the thing
is Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde were not off the
(05:35):
mark in terms of being dubious. The people will actually
stick to their resolutions. So there were two studies by
John Norcross of the University of Scranton back in nine
John John Norcross has actually focused a lot on resolutions,
will power, all that stuff, and he found that seventy
(05:56):
seven percent of people maintain their resolutions for one week,
So there we go. One week. That's that's pretty good.
Only maintained for the full two years that they followed people.
But I still think that's pretty good. Almost of people
holding onto the resolutions for two years. Yeah, although I
mean we don't we don't have details on what precisely
(06:16):
those resolutions were. Um And I also really liked the
name of the study was called the Resolution Solution Longitudinal
Examination of New Year's Change Attempts. I love academia sometimes. Um. Yeah,
And among those two people that Norcross tracked, a little
bit over half of them experienced at least one slip up,
(06:39):
and those slip ups would be precipitated by self reported
lack of personal control excessive stress, which is something to
keep in mind as we talk about resolutions and negative emotions.
And even though um, those studies are a little bit
dated there, the numbers still apply today for the most part.
(06:59):
It's not like we've gotten any better really keeping resolutions
in the intervening years. UM. John Tierney over at the
New York Times recently looked at statistics on how how
good we are these days at keeping resolutions and forewarned that,
sorry to say this, folks, a third of people will
(07:19):
have broken their resolutions by January, and half of us
will just give up by July. But that still leaves
fifty percent after July. UM. And one of the reasons
why we tend to give up, UM has to do
with us finding ourselves or at least thinking ourselves too busy,
(07:41):
perhaps to really put the effort to dig in and
make the sacrifices. Um. Also in the New York Times,
Tara Parker Pope reported on a two thousand seventh survey
by time management firm Franklin Covee that pulled fifteen thousand customers, uh,
and they found that nearly forty percent attributed breaking their
resolutions to having too many other things to do, and
(08:03):
then thirty three percent we're just i would say probably
a little more honest and said they just weren't as
committed to the resolutions as they were when the clock
struck midnight. Yeah. Well it's hard. It's hard to go
from being a couch that are day in and day
out to being like, no, I'm going to train for
a marathon. I mean that's that's a major step. And
to just decide automatically that you're going to do that,
(08:25):
like maybe get an app like the couch to the
five k app or something like that, like take it
in steps. It is it can be so overwhelming. I know,
you know what I'm talking about. It can be so
overwhelming to be like, I'm just gonna make a radical
life change right just because it's New Year's Yeah, and
we don't think about, uh, the incremental steps needed to
(08:47):
get to that place of actually having a resolution that works. Yeah. Um,
so speaking of resolutions working, you you do really have
to be committed, and so you know, Christ inside of
the he said, they simply just weren't committed. They didn't
feel like, you know, following through on whatever promise they made.
And uh. Kimberly Moffatt, who's a psychotherapist, quoted in the
(09:10):
Huffington Post, said that New Year's resolutions only work in
very few cases, and typically with those who have a
will of steel. And this gets into the whole like
willpower issues like strength of will, what makes people commit,
and so it can be really hard to commit. This
is another John Norcross study who mentioned him earlier, this
(09:31):
one in two thousand two. He found that by the
end of January, thirty six percent had already broken their resolutions.
Like we said, it can be overwhelming, and it really
is overwhelming if we're faced with too many tasks. So
not only are we like going back to work, we're
getting over the holidays, we're trying to clean up after
all the relatives have been in the house, and we
want to start training for a marathon. It can just
(09:53):
be a lot to handle. Yeah, And Michael Bader, who
is a senior advisor for the Institute for Change, also
says that resolutions don't work because we have an unconscious
resolution to not change. Basically, he thinks that our bad
behaviors serve unconscious beliefs and needs that are the building
(10:15):
blocks of our identities. So he gives an example of
an overeater who's unsuccessful at dieting because binging provides momentary
relief from feelings of loneliness and or anxiety. But I mean,
the thing is though, because he he also goes on
to say, like, this has nothing to do with heredity
or neurobiology. You know, it's just these these unconscious parts
(10:38):
of who we are. We can't divorce ourselves from them.
But it sounds like that's just not getting at the
real root of the problem and shrugging off. You know,
Oh well, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna change, really,
I'm just gonna like, I don't feel like cheesy poofs
are a cornerstone of my identity. I just really like them,
that's all, Like I could. I don't think that giving
(11:00):
up cheesy poofs will reveal anything that's like deep seated
in my brain. But what does the poof represent? Caroline happiness? Oh?
Oh there it is? Yeah. Um well, another reason is
that we really don't want to do them. According to
this is Steve Airy, who's a negative Nancy confidence coach,
quoted over at life Hacker. He said that this is
(11:23):
because resolutions are really about what we should do rather
than what we want to do. So it's like doing
your homework instead of playing video games. You know, it's
like it's what you should do to better yourself, but
do you really feel like you want to do it?
And then he goes on to explain that they're like goals,
but he said that this is a negative, which I
(11:43):
kind of take issue with and I think is weird.
So he says that resolutions are like goals, which puts
a gap between where you are now and where you
want to be. And I don't think that's inherently negative.
I think if you see a goal that you want
to go for, whether that's getting a new job or
losing weight, you should go for it. But anyway, he
says that making resolutions make you look at what's next,
(12:04):
not what's right in front of you, and they make
you feel less than lowering your self esteem, which I
think I feel like he's getting it backwards. I don't
know about you. I mean I could see that coming
into effect if you set yourself up for cycles of
defeat where you continually set goals and then that are
too ambitious and then you don't meet up to them,
(12:25):
and then that would probably ding your self esteem and
you know, lower you rather than propel you forward. Because
it seems like resolution should be more of a motivational factor.
I think it's more something that Christie Hedges, who's a
leadership coach um and quoted over at Forbes, talked about
(12:46):
the fact that we set too lofty of goals. It's
like this all or nothing thing I'm going to become.
You know, I'm going to sculpt my body so much
so that when I go to the beach, will will
ask to take my photo And that's not gonna It's
not gonna happen with you know, one zoom book class
a week or whatever it is that we think um
(13:09):
can do it, and so when we don't hit this
transformational point in a short amount of time, then we
just throw the whole throw the whole thing out. Yeah. Well.
She also says that culturally we're all pretty cynical and
that we live up to our low expectations because we're
setting these incredible goals that we don't honestly expect to me,
(13:29):
And so it's that much easier to just be like, whatever,
I'm not gonna go run anymore or I'm not gonna
do X y Z anymore, because I never really expected
that i'd you know, succeed anyway. I also like how
she refers to this as the cynical zeitgeist, which supports
the gravitational pull of the status quo cynical zeitgeist. Everybody's
a daria um. But there is some science though too,
(13:55):
resolutions and more specifically to the will power that it
takes to change things. Because I think that resolutions can
be a very good thing. I think that we're just
going about them, oftentimes the wrong way. But when you
figure out how willpower works in the brain, maybe we
are arming ourselves with some some information to help us
(14:19):
succeed because sticking to resolutions, i e. Willpower takes actual energy. Yeah,
so it turns out that when you run out of
will plat power, you're running out of energy, like Kristen said,
that is powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which Roy F. Baumeister,
a social psychologist, calls ego depletion. He points out that
(14:42):
you really have to anticipate the limits of your willpower.
And what is it about willpower? Why does it run out?
What's going on? Well, one of the reasons why it
runs out is because all of the research into into
ego depletion, into willpower finds that we don't really have
(15:03):
very much of it. Willpower is a very fleeting thing
humans like to give into their indulgences, and UM, if
we don't exercise it much like a muscle, we we
aren't going to be able to to use it very much. Um.
And this was something that uh jonah Laire who before
I can hear eyebrows raising right now, I realized he
(15:26):
is uh run into some issues lately with some citations,
but nevertheless he wrote, Uh, he did run a fascinating
piece over at wired awhile ago Um called the willpower Trick,
and I just wanted to call out some of these
UM studies that he highlighted. Uh. He talked about behavioral
economists Baba Shiv who asked two separate groups to memorize
(15:46):
either a two digit or a seven digit number, and
later on those two groups were UM tasked with choosing
between a piece of chocolate cake or a fruit bowl,
knowing that the fruit would be a hell fear option
and found Ship found that the people who had to
memorize the seven digit number were much more likely to
(16:10):
just given to the temptation and eat a piece of
chocolate cake because Ships surmised their brains were more tax
those blood glu glucose levels were lower, and hence they
had more ego depletion. Yeah, and this is the same thing.
You get home from work. All day, You've probably exercised willpower,
not just in avoiding the dessert tray at lunch maybe,
(16:33):
but also like not cursing all work. You've exercised willpower
to not be your usual jerk self. You get home
at night, your brain is tired, and you're like, Okay,
I could grill a chicken breast, or I could just
eat this whole macaroni and cheese plate from the grocery store.
I love cheese. Is the theme. I think this is
(16:54):
a thing. It's a theme, but I like it. Um
But going more into the research. Back in the nineteen sixties,
there's a famous experiment by a guy named Walter Mitchell
who wanted to test whether or not kids could hold
out for treats, basically looking at will power in childhood,
(17:16):
and he identified among the kids who were able to
hold out, he identified something he called strategic allocation of attention,
in which they literally distracted themselves from the I think
it was a marshmallow or some kind of chocolate treat
on the table that I was sitting there. Um, yeah,
because he told them that they could either eat the
(17:38):
marshmallow now or wait until the researcher comes back in
the room. And then they get to marshmallows. And all
of the kids who just sat there and staring at
the marshmallow and tried to wait it out had much
more trouble and would usually just gobble up the marshmallow.
But the kids who would cover their eyes so they
couldn't see it, they would sing songs themselves, actually hide
(18:00):
underneath the table, essentially blocking that temptation stimulus from view.
We're able to hold out the longest, and so that's
um one thing that researchers have learned about willpower is
the fact that those of us who might seem to
have the most actually have to exercise it the least
(18:22):
because we sidestep temptation by just keeping those things out
of out of our view. Like if if you you're
you know, pitfall is say chocolate or cigarettes or alcohol,
you don't have chocolate or cigarettes or alcohol anywhere, you know.
It's like if you're an alcoholic, you're not going to
(18:43):
go to a bar. Yeah, I read. There was one
commenter on the Wired article. The guy said that he
kept his pack of cigarette. He would only let himself
buy one pack at a time, and he would keep
it in the backseat of his car. So every time
he wanted to smoke, he would have to go out
and get his keys, go outside, get the pack of cigarettes,
get one cigarette, because he would only let himself take
one cigarette a time and then smoke it. And so
that cut way down on just like the boredom smoking.
(19:06):
And he actually ended up cutting way down in general.
And I'm like, well, am I going to have to
keep all of my chocolate in my car? You gotta
keep the cheesy poofs in the trunk? Cat one, I
have a hatch. I can so easily get to it. Um. Yeah,
but that's the whole thing too. I don't keep ice
cream in the house. I don't go down the ice
(19:28):
cream aisle at the grocery store. Like, if I super
duper want ice cream, it means that I have to
either go to the grocery store and get it or
just like stop by the ice cream parlor on the
way home, Which it's just so much of the hassle.
Who wants to do that? Well? And the only thing
though about this kind of research is that it definitely
gives us more insight into eliminating problem behaviors, but not
(19:52):
so much into activating positive ones. In terms of exercising,
going to those zooma classes, Um, I can't keep up.
Uh yeah, I've never taken a zoomba class, but I
have a feeling I would. I don't know, I got
I got two left feight folks um or you know,
like learning a new language or going on trips. It's
(20:13):
kind of volunteering those kinds of things that require more time.
But again it seems like, no matter what the big
lesson is, you gotta start small. Yeah, definitely, Yeah, small
steps are best. This was a stress in l l
A Times article in December. Take short walks at work,
things like that, things that can add up to small
(20:36):
successes that can add up to a better feeling of
self control. Self esteem, like thinking, Okay, that wasn't hard
getting up at three thirty. When you're just like head
on your desk, getting up and just taking a walk
around your floor, around your building or whatever, that eventually
leads you to be like, Okay, well maybe then I
can run a mile on the treadmill instead when I
get home, you know, adding up to bigger and bigger things.
(20:59):
And same with anim with food, Um, it's the whole.
Like if you're drastically cutting everything out, like okay, well
I'm going to go from eating like a normal average
American diet to let us, I'm gonna eat nothing but
let us and tomatoes. Yeah, a, that's not a balanced diet. Yeah,
you need some frosted flakes in there. And also remember
that those glucost levels too. It means that has a
(21:22):
big thing to do with the food, Like people need
to to eat to be healthy to keep those gluecoasts.
Yeah that's why. Yeah, that's why your crash diets are
not gonna work. That's why it has to be a
lifestyle change. And Kimberly Moffatt, who we referenced earlier, said,
in reference to food in particular, think of what you're
adding instead of what you're taking away. This is something
(21:42):
I've actually told my mother, who refuses, I don't know it,
refuses to cut back in some areas and add and others.
I'm like, don't think of it as dieting. This isn't
like your nutral system. This isn't your eating rice cakes
and being sad. This is just trying to add fruits
and vegetables. Maybe take away a little bacon. I know,
(22:03):
cud who wants to take away bacon? I don't know nobody,
but yeah, And and people recommend that you don't spread yourself. Then,
in addition to this, you want to set a single,
clear goal because, as we mentioned earlier, being overwhelmed with
tasks and half two's and must dues, it just gets
to be too much and you won't stick to it. Yeah.
(22:24):
And on that same note, I think this is really important.
Don't overreact if you have a lapse. Lapses happen if
you skip a day of running. If you eat that hamburger,
enjoy it. Enjoy the relaxation that you take from not
exercising one day. Enjoy the satiation from that burger or
(22:47):
whatever food it is that that delights you so much
and then you know and keep going. Don't expect yourself
to be completely perfect right off the bat, but really
ever Yeah, And also I mean, don't think that burger
or that day off from running means your entire diet
or exercise regiment or whatever is off track. You. That's
(23:08):
just one one day, one burger, one whatever, but a
bag of cheesey poof whatever. But just that just means
that the next day you're back at it, right. Um.
And we have not touched on gender at all in
this podcast, but this, this whole thing about willpower and
managing stressed and keeping your energy levels up is especially
(23:30):
pertinent to women because the American Psychological Association did a
pretty end depth survey not too long ago on gender
stress and sticking to resolutions and willpower and found that
women may have a harder time sticking to goals like
these than men do. And I wonder if off the bat,
(23:55):
and I wasn't able to find any statistics on this,
I wonder if just from the get go, women um
might set more resolutions and perhaps more unrealistic resolutions. And
I only say that because I feel like, as soon
as the holidays are over, the messages that we are
immediately inundated with our swimsuit seasons around the corner, ladies, Yeah,
(24:18):
drop those last five pounds all that turkey way, I'm
going to give birth to a turkey. Um. Yeah. It
turns out in the study that both genders do cite
lack of willpower as the number one barrier to change,
but women are more likely than men to cite the
lack of willpower as a barrier preventing them from making
the lifestyle changes recommended by a doctor. And so that's
(24:43):
women versus twenty four percent men. Yeah, And women are
also far more likely than men to report that a
lack of willpower has prevented them from changing eating habits. Um.
When asked what they needed to change in order for
their willpower to improve, women were more likely than and
to say less fatigue and more confidence in their ability
(25:03):
to improve their will power. And also six times as
many women say that having more help with household chores
would allow them to improve their will power. And this
was something that I was thinking about in terms of,
you know what it takes to set a resolution and
really keep to it and make a lifestyle change, and
(25:23):
as a single woman with no kids, like being as
autonomous as I will ever be probably in my life.
Um that I could see that happening. I could say,
oh I could, you know, I could, I could do
these kinds of things. Toss a kid in the mix.
I don't know, you know, because that's that increases your
stress level. That And I'm not blaming kids for things.
(25:45):
I'm just saying that I can understand how having a partner,
having a household to take care of, having children, even pets,
um my pet free uh, all of that can impact
this brain space that it takes to really set yourself
up for success. And it also speaks to I mean
(26:08):
not to to to be uh kind of cliche about it,
but it also speaks to the importance of you know,
establishing healthy lifestyles from the get go if possible, and
maybe just using your child as a bench press. Just
bench press your child, incorporate if the child is taking
up so much of your time, incorporate the child into
(26:28):
your exercise. Gentlemen, Well, now that is one of two
bicept curls with the child. There you go. If you've
got twin babies. Obviously autopadded surface j I um no,
but one of the one of the tips was just
play with your kids, because that knocks out increased family
time and also gives you a little bit of exercise.
(26:48):
So here we're here to help. Yeah, that's all we're doing. Yeah,
and I do think that, Um, the fact that there
are so many apps out there too, especially for people
who want to start exercising more, that will give you
reminders keeping some kind of accountability something that's often cited
as well as a good thing to do. So this
(27:09):
this sounds like if I want to get back in
the resolution game, I should make a resolution along the
lines of get moving a little bit every day. So
instead going from nothing, going from walking from my car
to my apartment, take a walk at three o'clock when
I'm starting to feel tired at work. Yeah, it's the
whole thing about taking the stairs instead of the elevator
(27:33):
one day at a time. Like for for me, uh,
like I want to save money this year, and instead
of what I've done in the past is saying by
the end of this year, I want to have a
million dollars. Now I'm not gonna happen. There's no way, uh,
actually saying okay, each week breaking it down. Well, I've
also in terms of money, Like, I've also set an
(27:54):
amount every month that I'm going to put in savings
and never touch again because I actually am working towards
a goal of buying a car. Are like, I have
to get rid of my old, dying, noisy car, and
so I just have to be disciplined about that. But
I do still let myself go out, sure, have a drink,
have a Hamburger, gotee, friends, that kind of thing. I
(28:14):
don't completely deprive myself of any social interaction that involves
leaving the house because I would go insane and then
I would money binge and buy all of the shoes.
So I don't buy all the shoes now. So New
Year's resolutions do they work? Oftentimes? No, But it's just
because well not just because, but I would say largely
(28:34):
because we go about them the wrong way. Yeah, it's
it's almost sort of a desperation move, like, oh my god,
I was not responsible with fill in the blank, and
I need to suddenly backtrack and reverse however, many months
of damage. Whereas it might seem hard, but in the
long run, it's easier to make that lifestyle change and
(28:55):
be kind to yourself. Yeah, that's a good message. Be
kind to yourself. Yeah, and happy New Year everybody. Happy
New Year. Let us know if you have New Year's resolutions.
Very curious to hear all of them. I know we
kind of use exercise and eating well and all of
that as our go to resolutions, but I'm very curious
(29:16):
to know what folks are trying to to change this year.
So send us an email if you'd like mom stuff
at Discovery dot com. Of course, you can always go
over to Facebook and start a conversation over there. Uh.
And we've got a couple of letters to share, but
before we do, I've got a quick word already. Here's
(29:38):
a letter from Asa. She's this about our fimphobia episode.
She said that it definitely struck a nerve with her.
I am a woman in a quite male dominant profession.
I am a new assistant professor and engineering. I also
like to dress in a very feminine way. I almost
always wear skirts in any heels. I can tolerate and
love makeup. It makes me feel better and more confident.
(30:00):
That said, I have noticed people get surprised and my
credentials and competence throughout my career from college with a
very high g P, A grad school, a couple of
years in the industry, where it was by far the
most prevalent, and now in academia. When I was younger,
my mom would tell me that I should not dress
in such a feminine way. It wasn't because she thought
it was not a feminist thing to do, I guess,
(30:21):
but she thought, maybe new, that it would make things
harder for me. She would tell me that I should
appear not as a woman in a sexual sense, but
as a quote unquote sister to be listened to, and
also to avoid being harassed being a professional. That was
the road she took for me. However, that was not acceptable.
I decided that I am not willing to change an
important part of who I am just so men can
(30:42):
get over their preconceptions. Into this day, I feel the
same way. Is it sometimes a problem? Yes, it is
sometimes difficult to be taken seriously, especially by older male engineers.
It is also quite amusing to see people's reaction to
a woman in heels and a pencil skirt, holding hand
tools or rolling along large pieces of equipment. But it
is who I am and I am not willing to
change it because of other people's preconceptions. So thank you Asa. Well,
(31:07):
I've got one here from Justin and this is in
response to our episode on gender and trolling, which featured
Jonathan Strickland, co host of the Text Stuff podcast, and
he writes, I would just like to give my thoughts
about the topic of trolls. I'm an avid YouTube watcher,
and when I was younger, thirteen or fourteen years old,
YouTube was in its early days, and I admit to
(31:29):
being a troll. Back then, I wouldn't say as mean
or sexist things as I've seen these days, but I
can assure you my comments were not nice. As I've matured,
I've realized what I was doing and stopped. I still
regularly watch YouTube videos and stick to only posting positive
or humorous comments at no one's expense. I still regularly
see trolls and have done some independent and unofficial research
(31:52):
of my own about trolls for the last couple of months.
Every time I watch a YouTube video and see a
troll like comment, I click on the user's page to
get a little more information of what regular troll looks like. Uh.
He goes on to talk about UH. There is a
news group called source fed on YouTube, hugely popular, hugely successful.
There are three female hosts on that show, and I
(32:12):
can almost guarantee you that the comments on any of
those videos with them, especially with the one named Tricia Hirshberger,
will be filled with sexist remarks. I always see comments
and top comments that refer to their breasts and other
objectifying remarks. Why because those comments seem always to be
top comments, which only further encourages those remarks. YouTube has
(32:35):
help by allowing YouTubers smart troll like comments is spam
and YouTube will hide the comment. Besides that, I'm not
sure how else YouTube is cracked down on trolls. They
need to start warning into leading accounts if they haven't
done so already, like if your comments have been flagged
as spam over five times, YouTube should have the right
to remove the account. So thanks to Justin for his
(32:59):
insight on trolling, and to everyone who's written into mom
Stuff at Discovery dot com Again. You can find us
on Facebook, like us over there and follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Check out our Tumbler blog
It's stuff I've never told you dot tumbler dot com.
And if you resolved to get smarter for I know
(33:19):
the place you should go it's our website how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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