Dr. Ethan Kross
speaker
968 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Dr. Ethan Kross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I mean, I've listened to music my whole life, and it wasn't until this experience I had with my daughter that I began to start using it strategically. She woke up, was in a kind of morose mood. It was bumming me out because at the time that she was playing soccer, I looked forward to this weekend event throughout the week. It was like my release. I loved just watching her play.
I played when I was a kid.
and she just didn't want to go is in a funk and and then we get in the car and i put the radio or whatever you call the i don't know streaming device whatever we call them nowadays on and don't stop believing just came on and you know i can't help myself i start jamming out to that song i'm bopping my head i'm humming i'm singing and then i look in the rear view mirror and i see danny
without even knowing it, is like bopping her head along and she's into it. And that was really surprising because normally she tells me my choice of music is terribly embarrassing, but I guess that's a universal, that song.
And next thing I know, we're like, we're having a ton of fun in the car and we pull up to the soccer field and she just darts out of the car and, you know, scores seemingly a gazillion goals that game, as far as my memory tells me. We know memories are fallible, so... We won't fact check that detail, but she did do really well.
And it was just this wonderful example of how sensory experiences can modulate how we feel super fast. And so since that moment, number one, we've done some research on this topic. We actually published a paper identifying this as a bit of a blind spot in the areas that we work in for emotion regulation researchers.
But I now have playlists that I have on my iPhone that I go to to help me reach certain kinds of goals that I have. I've got some pump-up music. I have some calming music. And it's a tool right there, and I avail myself of it all the time.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are tools that organizations and other entities are wielding all the time. to trigger emotional responses in you. I mean, just think of not just the hotel and restaurant industry, which I talk about in the book, but think about every international airport you go to in the duty-free zone. It is populated by perfumes and colognes, right? This is an entire industry.
I don't know what the number will put on it, but it's a pretty big one, I think. This is all about how scents are being applied to our skin to trigger emotional responses in other people. Typically approach, although we know that odors can also elicit the other kinds of response as well. Just take a ride in a New York City subway if you want the other experience.
But these are some of the tools, and this is just an example of some of these tools that are hidden in plain sight that on the one hand, We've all experienced them. But I don't think a lot of us are consciously wielding those tools to help us reach our goals, our emotion regulation goals on a moment to moment basis throughout our lives. And so there are lots of shifters that take that form.
You've probably worked with them, but you may not have realized it. Then there are shifters out there that you've never encountered before. And then we go even outside of the shifters that exist within us into the next part of the book that deals with how our interactions with other people can shift us. Our interactions with our physical spaces can shift us.
And then we talk about culture more generally to think about how do the cultures that we are a part of shape our view of our emotional worlds and how we can manage them. And what role do we play as individuals that can shape the cultures that we belong to, to not only help ourselves, but to help other people that we work with and live with do the same?
Well, in some ways, culture is the most powerful shifter that exists because it's ever present. We are bathed in it. It is like the air we breathe. And what does it mean to be a part of culture? Well, culture determines our values and beliefs. So do you think you can control your emotions? Do you think you should control your emotions?
Culture is influencing those values and beliefs that we have about emotions and emotion regulation. Culture is also providing us with norms. Norms are rules, both spoken and unspoken, that guide our behavior throughout our lives. And so culture is shaping the norms that govern the way we behave on a moment to moment basis.
Is there a norm in your family or in your organization for talking about emotions or bottling them up? We have norms for all sorts of emotional behaviors that are then impacting us and those around us. And then culture also can give us practices tools that we use to manage our emotions. Rituals, as an example.
Families have rituals, organizations have rituals, some of which are designed to help us manage our emotions. Families, we often teach our kids and our loved ones how to manage our emotions. Employees, bosses, mentors are constantly mentoring those beneath them, ideally. without a deal with adversity. Adversity, by definition, an emotional experience in those kinds of organizational contexts.
So culture is the kind of, what's the word I use for, they use for this in the book? It's the big kahuna of shifting. It's impacting it at every level. And the reason I think it's so important to start thinking about the role culture plays in our lives is because
on the one hand you're parts of different cultures so if you understand what culture is beliefs and values norms practices you can start getting in there to maybe push the culture around in a direction that you think is more beneficial for you and those that you love if though you find yourself as in part of a kind of culture that is toxic with respect to emotion emotion regulation and there's not much you can do about it
You can make the decision to leave that culture too. And that is a noble decision to make when that culture is working against you. And I think thinking about culture through the lens of emotion regulation makes it a lot easier for us to start reasoning about how to change culture, when to join new ones, leave them and so forth.
The best place to go is my website, www.ethancross.com. And there's information about Shift, my lab, my old book, and lots more. So check it out.
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