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Short Stuff: That's A Head Scratcher · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Jerry's out there. Oh I'm sorry, and Dave's here in
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: spirit too, So short Stuff you should know the short
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Stuff edition. Dave Bruce, No, Dave Kustan are the editor
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of Short Stuff, the producer. Okay, he's our, he's our
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Jerry for Short Stuff. No, I know, I don't. We
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: haven't given David a lot of love on the show.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I know we need to, man, he's great. Yeah, short
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Stuff came along and Jerry was like, yeah, don't bother
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: me with that. Yeah, I'm time for the crew. Do
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I make extra money then forget it? Yeah. Man, you
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: guys don't know Jerry like we know Jerry. What's great
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: is she'll never hear this. You know, that's right, because yeah,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Kustan will never pass this along. He's too terrified ever,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. So we're talking about scratching our heads
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: when you think, which is something that I don't do.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I don't even when I read this. Though there are
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a couple of thinking ticks that I have that could
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: be explained, that's just not one of them, for sure.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And this was one of those things where I'm like, oh,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is this going to be like the origin of you know,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a grain of salt just gonna send me into like
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: some sort of blind rage. I thought so at first,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and then no, it turns out when you start to
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: really look into this, because if you think about it,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that's a really weird thing to do to scratch your
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: head when you're sitting there thinking, and you might not
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: do it. I don't do it, but we might not
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: even know anybody who does that reliably. The thing is
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: is it's like an idiom, that being a head scratcher.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: It's like a cultural thing, at least in the West,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: where if somebody's scratching their heads and you know they're
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: standing in front of the chalkboard, you know that they're
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out some sort of problem and they're
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: having trouble with it, like that's just what that has
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: to do with and they're the explanations are multitudinous, and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: again it seems like something you'd be that's ridiculous, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: then if you stop and thinking about you're like, that
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: actually could be right in this case. Yeah, Like if
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you were to take a beginning acting class and you
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: were in there with a bunch of dumb beginning actors
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: like I did in college. Uh and the and the
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: professor said, the acting teacher said, all right, you're you're
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: here's the scene. You're trying to figure out a very
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: difficult problem. The first thing one of those dopes would
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: do is scratch their head, because that is just a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: popular trope to indicate, or maybe scratch their chin something
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: like that, which counts as part of the head, I guess,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: but it's it's universally a sign that you're thinking about something. Yeah,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't really make any sense. Is where we
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: have said that you would do that, um and there's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: no definitive explanation for why, which which has really left
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the door open for a lot of people that to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: put some ideas up. One of the big ones is
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that it's a relic of evolution and that really what
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you're doing is you're not like you're not, you know,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: helping along your thoughts. You're actually showing a form of distress,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: whether it's angst anger anxiety. Those are kind of the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: different interpretations and explanations. But the first one is that
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: we're showing a remnant of what we used to do
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: back in the UM. The I guess the Tuck Tuck
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: days where somebody something made us angry, we would maybe
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: throw our arm up and strike them or whatever. And
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the first explanation of this is that we we are
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: starting to do that, like we're raising our arm out
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of anger, and then we stop because we are civilized now,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and that ends up being like, uh, we almost kind
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of play it off by scratching our head. Yeah it's
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a little thin, but but here's the thing. This is
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: when I was really like, oh, maybe there's a little
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: more to this. When you see somebody who's really mad
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and they're trying to keep from hurting somebody, you will
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: free quickly see that person like rubbing their forehead or
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: rubbing the back of their neck or something like that.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And what they're saying is this is some sort of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: like derivation of that. Yeah, yeah, I totally have seen that,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and that is a real thing. Uh. There's another possible explanation.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: This was in a two thousand nine article for Psychology
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Today when a former FBI counter intelligence agent named Joe
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Navarro talked about being under stress, and he said our
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: brain requires a certain amount of hand to body touching,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: like either handwringing or rubbing your temples or touching your
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: lips or something. And what he's saying is is that
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: it's a soother U. Instead of maybe a signal to
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: an enemy, it's just you self soothing yourself through some
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: sort of stressful or fearful situation. And there's actually some
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: research to back that up, which I think choke. We
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: should take a little break, collect our thoughts, and then
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: come back and and talk more about this whole hoad scratcher.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Great shot, all right, so you said that, um. The
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: FBI agent Joe Navarro said that this is kind of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: like a soothing thing, like we're self soothing, Like the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: sense of touch can have a soothing effect on us.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And if we're experiencing stress or anxiety or something, just
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: touching yourself can can help. And supposedly because our um
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: head is the source of this issue, our brain is,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: that's why we would touch our head rather than say,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: like our knees or something. The thing is, there is
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: some research to back this up. Um. There was a
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: study in two thousand and seventeen and Scientific Reports, which
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: is a journal, and it's it watched Resus macaques um
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: which who are sorry not sorry, and they found that
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the kind of the the higher on the totem pole
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: level macaques, when they were stressed out, they might start
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to itch or scratch or just do something. Um and
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: that this was taken by other maccaques who were saying
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: maybe more aggressive as a sign of like, I'm really
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: stressed out, so just kind of leave me alone, and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: they actually were left alone. Yeah, it made me think
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of the Seinfeld where George said, if you want people
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: to leave you alone, look stressed out and annoyed. And
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: there were all the times that they would walk by
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: his office in Yankee Stadium and he was doing that.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: He would have his hands on his head, rubbing his temples,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and people be like, you know, everyone would pass by
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: his office and he's a versus macaque. These um, these
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: researchers were saying that the way they interpreted that is
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that it tells this potential attacker, you know, one, I'm
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: not fully stable here, so you don't know what I'm
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: gonna do, so maybe you lay off me. Or I'm
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: super stressed that I can't possibly defend myself. There's no
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: point in attacking me to show your dominance. I'm already
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: already submitting here, so don't waste your energy either way.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: The Reese's macaques that displayed some sort of um itching
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: or scratching behavior, sorry, scratching behavior while they were stressed
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: out signaling they were stressed, were attacked less than those
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that didn't. So I like this last one a lot too. Uh.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: This one that you dug up displacement activity. So you've
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: got an animal that has a couple of different options
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and let's say a stressful situation, uh, and it doesn't
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: want to do either one of them, or maybe can't
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: decide which one to perform, so it does uh what's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: called the displacement activity. So you've got a bird, let's say,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: uh that another bird comes to attack, It's like, well,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: should I attack back or should I just fly out
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of here? Uh? I'm just gonna pick up the ground instead.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And um, preening might be another activity, or grooming oneself.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And the theory is that these may have emerged. Maybe
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: it's a soothing physical contact, or maybe it's just a
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: routine behavior to calm yourself down, or maybe sort of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: linking with that other one to throw off the person,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: which kind of made me think of that guy in
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Athens who crashed his bike that day. He had two
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: choices was get up really quick and get my books
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and right out of there, and or act in a
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: lot of pain. And he said, I'll do the third thing.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna act like I'm reading a book. Yeah, so
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: he engaged in displacement activity. So there's one one last
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: explanation that I found, and that is that people who
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: scratch their head or you know, rub their eyes or
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: something like that while they're thinking UM are engaged in
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: a certain kind of UM learning mode is what it's
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: called a dominant learning mode, and that is where we
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: our senses are involved in the way that we think about,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: or recall or take in information. And so people who
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: are tactile with their learning modes would might touch themselves,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: touch their their heads or something like that. UM. People
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: who are visual learners might kind of look up in
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the sky or something like that. That's where you're like,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you're kind of exaggerating the point of the sense, even
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: though that sense is not giving you any information and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: helping along. It's almost like we just kind of revert
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: to the sense that we're most comfortable with maybe taking
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: information in with I'm not sure, but that's the last
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: explanation I saw. Yeah, that's the one that really hit
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: home for me because I am one thousand percent of
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: visual learner. Uh. If somebody's trying to explain something like
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: how something operates, they can talk to me untill they're
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: blue in the face. But if I actually see it,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I will understand it. And if I'm thinking of something
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: or if I'm deep in thought, I will often like
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: tip back in my chair and kind of look up
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: in sky and they're saying that that's what I'm doing. Basically,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense. Somebody needs to teach you
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: about percentages visually because there ain't no such thing as
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a thousand percent. Shut up. I have to say, Chuck,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you can't see me right now, but I have never
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: scratched my head more than I heard during this this recording.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: This has been brutal. Alright, well, hopefully you didn't lose
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: too many. Um So that's it for short stuff. Everybody,
• 10:25
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• 10:31
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• 10:35
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