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Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Adam Mastroianni: Why You So Often Get It Wrong

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Bobi NYC

Science, Society & Culture, Comedy

4.83.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Do you believe people are worse now than they use to be? That smarter people are happier people? That you know when to quit a conversation? Wrong on all counts, according to Adam Mastroianni, a social psychologist. He’s also a professional improv performer and uses those skills teaching business school students.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

0:06.8

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

0:11.8

I'm Alan Older, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

0:27.4

We asked people, how kind, honest, and good are people today, and then what about at various

0:32.0

points in the past 10 years ago, 20 years ago?

0:34.4

The year in which you were 20, the year in which you were born, and over and over again,

0:38.7

people tell us, people are less good today than they used to be.

0:42.3

They're less kind, they're less nice, less honest, they're less ethical, they're less

0:45.9

moral.

0:46.9

They feel like some switch has been flipped into society, something's gone wrong, and we

0:50.5

need to fix it, we need to turn things around.

0:53.0

But in this case, that negative trend that people perceive, it isn't there.

0:56.4

So whatever you would do to turn around isn't going to do anything, because it didn't

0:59.1

do anything in the first place.

1:00.1

It's like turning on the sprinkler system in a building that's not on fire.

1:04.0

You're just going to make everybody wet, and you're not going to help anything.

1:08.3

That's Adam Maestroiani.

1:10.4

He's a social psychologist who's fascinated by how many things people get wrong about

1:15.0

the people around him, like how most of us are so certain that people used to be much

1:19.2

kinder than they are now, or how most of us don't know how to end a conversation.

1:24.8

He's also found that being smarter doesn't make you happier.

1:28.6

And if all of that isn't interesting enough, he also happens to be a professional improviser.

...

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