Full Episode
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Have you ever noticed when you offer a friend or a colleague or a partner a suggestion for improvement, they often experience an urge to defend themselves? Rather than listen to how they might change or do something better, they try to preserve the status quo.
Like generals fighting a war, they try to protect every square inch of the person they are instead of embracing the person they might become. If you missed that episode, I'd urge you to go back and listen to it in this podcast feed. Today, we look at one of the most powerful reasons we fail to make changes in our lives.
Very often, the people around us can see what we need to do differently or better. But when they tell us, when they offer us feedback or, heaven forbid, criticism, we respond with anger, with denial, with defensiveness. This is a paradox because many of us also believe we want to live lives of continuous improvement. What better way to improve than to listen to suggestions for improvement?
What causes so many of us to feel defensive? How can we listen better to feedback and offer feedback in a manner that will be heard? Overcoming defensiveness as a way to improving our lives. This week on Hidden Brain.
We've all been there.
Someone pipes up at a work meeting to ask why we were late. Or a partner tells us we need to do a better job cleaning up after ourselves. A friend asks why we haven't called in a while. Almost effortlessly, the excuses come. The traffic was bad. If the sink was not full of dirty dishes, we would happily wash up our mugs.
Did our friend not know that we have been going through a really difficult time at work? At the University of Pennsylvania, psychologist Emily Falk studies the science of defensiveness and what we can do about it. Emily Falk, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Thank you so much for having me.
Emily, you are very close to your grandmother, Bev. Recently, she shared with you her thoughts about the time that you spend with her. Can you paint a picture of what happened that evening, Emily?
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