071 They Didn't Steal Your Idea - It Was Cryptomnesia
The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori
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Have you ever had somebody take credit for your work?
Well, it may not have been their fault.
Hear me out. I was riding the train down to DC from Baltimore because I was teaching a course for executive master's program at Georgetown University, and while I was on the train, I was looking at my slides. And something distracted me and I got pulled to my phone.
Somebody messaged me or something and then I found myself scrolling. So my slides were open and I'm scrolling on my phone and I saw somebody that called themselves a body language expert, and they referenced a statistic from a study that was done in the 1970s that has been since, spoken out about against even by the original scientist who conducted the study because the results are being misused.
In other words, they're giving attribution to this study that a certain amount of our communication is nonverbal and it is not true. That is not what the study was studying, but it's still often quoted. And so while I was sitting there watching this. Self-described body language expert. Using that study to quote the percentage of nonverbal communication, I found myself feeling a little judgy.
And I was like, you know why? I'm surprised that if she's an expert, then she would know that that's not what that study says at all. And this is just a statistic that people are throwing around and they're just regurgitating it with no attribution to the original scientist who conducted the study. Nonetheless,
I found myself judgy, but then I looked over at my slides and my slides happened to be on a particular portion of my slide deck that was related to addressing one's own state, one's own emotional state, mental, state energy, physiology, et cetera. And the words that I had on the slide said, "Assume the best."
Assume the best. So I was just feeling judgy. I look over, I see, assume the best. I start to sort of like take account of myself. Hey, maybe I shouldn't have been so judgy. Maybe there's more to this story. So I look back at this woman describing this nonverbal communication and its high percentage of our communication.
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And I'm looking at it and I realized, I started thinking about my own self. When have I misattributed? When have I made a mistake? When have I done something? And now this one example is a shocking example. I can't describe how I felt when this moment occurred.
Let me explain when my kids were little. I decided I was going to write a series of health books, kids' books. a way that they could learn and I can influence their health over time, their wellbeing. Through story and through kids' books. So I wrote a series of books called Saleem's Dream. In the very first book I wrote I told the story of Saleem, who basically under a little bit of peer pressure from his friends ends up drinking alcohol.
Then at night he falls asleep. Yeah, and he has a dream where he's in court and his organs are testifying against him, so his tongue is testifying against him because he said things that he wouldn't have otherwise said. His stomach is testifying against him for the damage that it does to the stomach.
His esophagus was testifying against him, his liver, all these things were testifying against him in court. Okay. Great story. It was so fun to make. My kids loved it. I made an audiobook version. I had a valley girl voice for the tongue. I had this like South Philly Italian voice for the stomach.
I had a stuck up kind of British accent for the liver. So all these like fun voices for the kids and also the illustration were amazing. Now, the second book actually. In that story, Saleem
is saving up all of his money for a video game, and he finally has enough for the video game and the game is being released that day while he's in school. In the cafeteria, a girl approaches him and asks for money because she doesn't have enough for lunch. And all the other kids are making fun of her, and he lies to her and says, I don't have any money.
And so he then goes, purchases the game, plays the game all night, falls asleep and has a dream where again, his organs testify against him. His hands testified against him, his tongue for lying, his heart for feeling the pain of lying, but not listening to it. His money testified against him, et cetera.
You get the idea. So this series of books about Saleem having his organs testify against him, I thought was a phenomenal idea, and I thought it was my idea. However, a couple years ago, somebody that I went to fifth grade with posted something on Facebook and she tagged me in the post, and she referenced me in the comments.
And it turns out she had posted a video or she found it, somebody posted it, a video from elementary school. So I don't know if you can think about, but like going to fifth grade in the eighties to get a video recording and to still have it and to post it on YouTube. It's a feat beyond what you can imagine.
But now I'm looking at this video. In the video, I'm acting in a play. And guess what? The play has a character in it. His name is not Saleem. It's Zachary Dachary. And guess what? He is testifying. He is in court and his organs are testifying against him. So all of my fifth grade friends are different organs and they're up there telling him what he did to their body by drinking alcohol.
Do you see what just happened? I thought the idea was my own. It wasn't. What is that called? That's called cryptomnesia. Cryptomnesia is essentially where you have a memory of a concept or an idea or a principle, and that memory is still there, but the source, the memory of the source has decayed.
Okay? So when you recall the memory of the content and you forget the source. You attribute it to yourself and you think it's your idea. You think it's your idea. So what does this have to do with you? What does this have to do with someone taking your idea? They may not have taken your idea.
They may have heard your idea and the source decayed, but they remembered the principle because it was such a good idea. And because they experienced it, without recall of the source, they experienced it as their own. There was no malice, there was no ill intent. They simply had cryptomnesia, and this is a phenomenon that is common in all of us.
One time I, when early on, like when I first got married, my wife and I had turned the whole couch over to the tv and we were watching comedy movies and comedians doing standup, et cetera. It was like just a whole night of like popcorn and chips and watching comedy at one point. I see. I feel her looking at me, you know when somebody's staring at you and you feel them looking at you.
So I look over and then I look back and I'm like, what? And she goes, you. And she's laughing. You are a fraud. And I was like, what? She goes, every single one of your jokes comes from Airplane, its sequels and Steven Wright. And every time I hear another comedian, I hear one of your jokes. And so anyway, that, that's the point, right?
So I'm telling jokes, I'm being funny, I'm doing whatever, but I'm not necessarily remembering the source.
This phenomenon has occurred again and again, cryptomnesia. The memory of the source has decayed, but the memory of the content is thought to be your own. Now, think about this. When it comes to seeing someone on stage and they say something. For example, when I speak about influence and I give the seven simple rules of influence, rule number one, hands down bar none is no, there's none more important than this one.
It's to manage your state. Now, what's interesting about that phrase is that. That concept exists in every single influence domain I've studied over the past 23, 24 years. Okay. But the phrase itself, I first heard it from Tony Robbins, so he said the phrase that all of the other influence domains would speak of, but he said it the most elegantly.
And so sometimes when I say that rule manage your state, sometimes I fail to attribute it to Tony Robbins. And as somebody who teaches at a university, I absolutely should be attributing it to where I found it. Or to where I first heard that, that source. Now that idea wasn't his, but the way he said it was, and maybe it was, maybe he took it for someone else, I don't know.
In any case, we tend to judge ourselves by intent. And we tend to judge other people by the impact. So it, we judge them as if they took your idea, we assume malice, we assume like he took my idea and expressing it as his own, or my boss took that idea and ran with it, is that what happened? I don't think so. I think it was cryptomnesia, and I think generally we would be better if we cited the sources. But sometimes the source decays.
So give each other some grace and give yourself some grace.
And I have to do that more now that I'm getting older.
Anyway, thank you for listening.
I'll see you in the next episode.
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