How to Talk to Anyone (Junior Talker #1) by DeYtH Banger (phonics readers .txt) 📕

a calm, reserved person, lowering your energy (or at least lowering the amount of energy you express) will help you to better communicate with them. Using a similar pace and volume when speaking to the other person will help your conversation last longer and be more enjoyable.

 

On the other hand, if you are speaking to a very high-energy person and you remain very calm and reserved, they may find you boring and become disinterested in further interaction with you. In this case, communicating more energetically will help you to bond with them.

 

Matching a person’s energy level is a very easy way to subtly change your communication style to more effectively use rapport-building to bond with them.

 

3. Match and Mirror: Tone of Voice

 

In some ways, matching a person’s tone of voice can be a very easy way to improve your rapport-building.

If someone speaks very quickly, speaking very slowly may cause them to lose interest. If someone speaks at a more steady pace, speaking very quickly may overwhelm them.

 

However, remember that when you are “matching and mirroring” it’s important to do it subtly so as not to cause the other person to feel mocked. Perceived mockery will ruin any chances you have of bonding with someone.

 

Mirroring someone’s mannerisms is another, slightly more complex, way to build rapport through conversation.

For example, my dad is a claims adjuster for a vehicle insurance company. Everyone he talks to has either been in a car accident or had something terrible happen to one of their valuable modes of transportation. In other words, my dad talks to a lot of very unhappy people. And as we all know, unhappy people aren’t always the most pleasant.

 

But somehow my dad manages to bond with nearly everyone he speaks to. He is extremely personable and well-liked. Being in the south, men use the terms “man” and “buddy” when referring to one another in conversation (“How’s it going, man?”, “Yeah buddy I understand”). So when he speaks to someone southern, my dad slightly alters his accent to match the other person’s and uses their culturally appropriate terminology throughout the conversation. When he’s speaking with someone from a different part of the country, he makes minute adjustments to his accent and uses terminology that will be more relatable to to that person.

In this way, mirroring someone’s tone of voice and mannerisms can help them feel like you’re “one of them” and will go a long way towards building rapport.

 

Rapport building is an essential part of bonding with other people. Making them feel that you have a mutual understanding builds trust and lays the foundation for bonding.

 

Using the “match and mirror” strategy to build rapport and bond with people can significantly improve your career as well as your personal and social lives, and it will undoubtedly assist you in developing relationships that last a lifetime. 

How can you use rapport building to impact your life? Share your thoughts in the comments!

 

 

Your Drunk Self May Actually Be the Real You

 

 

 

 

Who do you become when you drink a little too much alcohol? Maybe you're the party animal, dancing on tables and singing at the top of your lungs. Maybe you're the drama queen, getting teary-eyed and overly emotional over a text you sent your ex two months ago. Or perhaps you're the ray of sunshine, complimenting the outfits of everyone at the bar and insisting you'll all hang out sometime. According to research, your drunk alter ego isn't a separate identity at all. That's the real you, pal.

 

Debunk Your Drunk

 

If you're of legal drinking age, we've got news — whether it's news you're ready to cope with or not. Research says that your drunk self is probably not as far off from your actual personality as you think it is. Though it may feel like you're a completely different person when you're in the club getting tipsy, a 2017 study published in Clinical Psychological Science found that your drunk persona doesn't differ from your sober one, more or less. Basically, you're always that special, unique, wonderful you, no matter how many tequila shots you foolishly ended up taking on your birthday.

 

Sloshed for Science

 

For the study, the researchers from University of Missouri and Purdue University sought to find out if "drunk personalities" are a thing or not. They specifically tested if "differences between sober and intoxicated personality expression can be observed reliably" by friends during some drunk game-playing. Two weeks prior to the experiment, the researchers had the 156 participants complete surveys describing their typical sober and drunk personalities. Next, the team gave half of the participants booze, then had their friends join them in the lab to play games meant to bring out different personality traits. The drinkers rated their own in-the-moment personality traits during the session while trained (and sober) raters assessed the same traits. While the drinkers noted personality differences in themselves while drunk, the sober onlookers didn't see any big differences between their sober and drunk personalities. Except for one thing: the drinks made those participants more extroverted. Obviously.

 

"We were surprised to find such a discrepancy between drinkers' perceptions of their own alcohol-induced personalities and how observers perceived them," said lead author Rachel Winograd, a psychological scientist at the University of Missouri, in a press release. "Participants reported experiencing differences in all factors of the Five Factor Model of personality, but extraversion was the only factor robustly perceived to be different across participants in alcohol and sober conditions."

As for why you feel like an entirely different being when you've been a bit overserved? Probably just the placebo effect. If you have it in your head that tequila makes you wild or wine makes you emotional, you'll make those expectations come true all on your own. Kind of impressive, actually. Cheers!

 

 

Fake News Spreads Way Faster Than Real News Online

 

 

 

There's a quote that's often attributed to Mark Twain: "A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on." Ironically enough, he probably never said it. But it just goes to show the adage is true, and so does a new study on fake news and social media.

 

 

Cascade of Lies

 

According to a 2018 study published in Science, false "news" spreads faster and more widely over social media than real news does. Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral of the MIT Media Lab looked at more than 10 years of tweets from 3 million users and tracked how different kinds of stories behaved in the Twittersphere. They did so by tracking how the tweets "cascaded," or spread to other corners of the internet via retweets and replies. Afterward, they'd rank how those stories did according to six independent fact-checking organizations, including Snopes and Politifact.

According to Nature News, are two ways a tweet can cascade. If a famous celebrity with a million followers shares it, it might be retweeted by 10,000 of their fans. Or it could be shared by a person with few followers, all of whom retweet it. Then those users' followers retweet it and their followers' followers retweet it until eventually, it gets to a crowd of 10,000. The first example, where a bunch of people share one person's tweet, is called a shallow cascade. The second, where the tweet is shared via a chain of thousands, is deep. And in the battle between real news and fake news, fake news dominates both varieties.

That's right, fake news consistently reaches a bigger audience than real news, and it tunnels deeper into social networks than real news does. That's even true when you factor out the bots whose only job is to spread fake news. Real news struggled to chain together 10 retweets, while fake news could easily amass a chain of 19 in a tenth of the time. So what is it about falsehoods that makes them so darn speedy?

 

Brain Bait

 

When you factor out the bots, it becomes clear that it really is human beings that cause fake news to spread — seriously, the bots actually show less of a preference for false stories than people do. And that suggests that the problem might just be our brains. But it's not as if we seek out lies in order to spread them. Even accurate stories that function well as propaganda, like this story about Trump allowing a sick boy to fly on one of his planes, don't spread as well as false stories that can serve the same purpose. To the researchers, that suggests that something intrinsic to falsehoods makes them spread more easily.

 

It basically comes down to two things: novelty and emotional charge. Accurate news tended to inspire sadness, joy, or trust, while fake news inspired feelings of anger, disgust, and fear. Those charged negative emotions? They spread like wildfire. And when you aren't constrained by the truth, you can make your headline as out-there as you can get away with — and that's a recipe for clickbait.

The good news is that other studies have found that an overwhelming majority of people get their news from legitimate sources, according to Nature News. It's also important to recognize that this study only tracks how headlines spread, not how trusted they are. After all, the retweeters might just be laughing at the tinfoil hat-wearing corners of the internet.

To arm yourself against misinformation, check out "The Truth Matters: A Citizen's Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks" by New York Times bestselling author Bruce Bartlett. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase through that link, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.

 

 

Box Breathing Is the Navy SEAL Technique for Reducing Stress and Staying Calm

 

 

 

With a motto like "The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday," Navy SEALs are known for their toughness. But we should probably start lauding these combat-ready professionals for being zen masters, too. The group has a quick, simple exercise that anyone can use to reduce stress and remain calm, cool, and collected. Got 16 seconds to try it?

 

Got What It Takes?

 

Being a Navy SEAL is no walk in the park, unless that walk is a mile-and-a-half trot that clocks in at less than 11 minutes and 30 seconds. To be a SEAL, you must be able to swim a 500-yard breast or side stroke in less than 12 minutes and 30 seconds, do 42 push-ups in two minutes, do six pull-ups, and do 50 sit-ups in two minutes. This training prepares you for war, after all.

On top of transforming your body into a fitness machine, you need the ability to keep cool under pressure, too. Maintaining a calm demeanor in every setting and scenario is crucial for a SEAL before, during, and after the chaos of combat. To do that, they do some deep breathing, using a tried and true tactic that can slow the heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure.

 

Breathe Outside the Box

 

This calming technique is called box breathing, and you can try it yourself right this moment. Why not? You'll see that each of the four steps is done for four seconds, hence the box part of the title. It will only take you 16 seconds to cycle through the method one time. Just repeat the cycle as long as it takes you to feel relaxed. (This SEAL recommends doing the technique for five minutes.) Follow along:

 

Breathe in for four seconds. Make sure all the air has been expelled from your lungs before you start to inhale. Once you start sucking up your air, make sure to really fill those lungs. Hold your breath for four seconds. No more inhaling at this point, and don't let any air escape yet. Exhale for four seconds. Let the air out of your lungs at an even rate for the whole stretch of time, and make sure to get it all out. Hold your lungs empty for four seconds. It may be tempting to suck in some more air immediately after letting it all out, but just hang on for four.

 

Whether you're in combat, reading a tweet from a political nemesis, or just trying to keep cool at work, box breathing can keep you frosty in the most heated situation. Give