Surprisecast – Michael Rousell

#19 Your Expectations Activate Your Present Behavior

November 30, 2018

Learn how your expectations activate your present behavior. This leads us to produce self-fulfilling prophecies.

#18 What Surprises One Person, May Not Surprise Another

November 17, 2018

Learn how being surprised is a personal event based on your personal beliefs. What passes as a mundane expression to one person may shock another.

#17 Surprise is a Two Stage Process

October 29, 2018

Learn how surprise is a two-stage process that creates an opportunity for a strategically crafted experience.

#16 Solving Our Curiosity

September 4, 2018

Learn how our need to solve our curiosity is so deeply ingrained in our genetic architecture that we’ll accept anything that reduces this discomfort.

#15 Sense-Making During a Surprise

August 21, 2018

Learn how the brain instantly goes through a surprise-discernment-reflection process during a moment of surprise. It then instinctively settles on the first solution.

#14 Agents of Influence

August 7, 2018

Learn why asking WHO is most powerful as an agent of influence is not necessarily the best question to ask. The question WHEN appears more enlightening.

#13 Much of What We Do is Driven By Unconscious Processes, Part 2.

July 24, 2018

Learn how our brains are essentially prediction machines and their primary function is to reduce surprises by developing an increasingly nuanced model of the world.

# 12 – Unconscious Processing Makes Evolutionary Sense

July 18, 2018

Learn why much of what we do is driven by unconscious processes. Part 1.

11 – Beliefs About Ourselves are Self-Affirming

June 28, 2018

Learn how beliefs about the external world are easily verified, but beliefs about ourselves are self-affirming.

10 - Surprise Creates an Opportunity to Change the Experience of an Emotion

June 13, 2018

Learn how the experience of emotional arousal is adaptable. Heightened emotion is the brain telling us that something important is happening. On occasion, this allows us to label that emotion to create the experience.

9 - Seemingly Simple Comments May Create Self-Perpetuating Mindsets

May 27, 2018

Learn how seemingly simple comments, especially when surprising, may create self-perpetuating mindsets. Once we accept an explanation of our behavior, that explanation continues, and fortifies. It’s one more reason to always focus on positive attributes.

8- How Advertisers Use Surprise to Create Brands and Beliefs

May 1, 2018

Learn how advertisers use surprise strategically to impress us with their brands and trigger new belief formation. This all takes place instantly, and outside conscious awareness.

#7 Episode: Surprises About Our Self Concept Can Be Life Changing

April 16, 2018

Our self-concept serves as a basis for screening, categorizing, and interpreting our experiences. Surprises that disrupt our self-concept differ from surprises about the external world. Self-concept surprises may trigger life-changing beliefs.

6- Traditional Uses of Surprise

April 5, 2018

Learn how movie directors and television shows use surprise strategically to manipulate our emotions, enhance our excitement, and create spontaneous belief transformation.

5- Strategic Procrastination

March 22, 2018

Learn how a portion of Adam Grant's TED talk surprised me, triggering an instant belief revision. I used to feel lazy and unproductive when I procrastinated. Now I do it strategically.

4- Surprise Triggers One-Shot Learning

February 20, 2018

Learn how One-Shot learning triggered by surprise involves a different brain system than gradual learning. One-Shot learning works like a switch. Our emotions trigger this complex cognitive process during moments of high uncertainty such as surprise.

3- How Surprise Changes Your Behavior

February 20, 2018

Learn how information, received after a surprise, predisposes you to apply that new information instinctively in subsequent situations.

2- The Importance of Surprise

February 20, 2018

Learn how comedians use surprise in punchlines to create dissonance with our expectations. A surprise alarms us that our expectations are out of whack and need a spontaneous adjustment.

1- Surprise: The Belief Revision Reflex

February 20, 2018

Learn how the element of surprise evolved as a survival mechanism to trigger an instant belief formation or transformation.

The Surprisecast