Finance Xpress

Would you like to learn how to earn extra money in 2020? 

Learning how to earn extra income on the side of my day job helped me pay off $38,000 in student loans in 7 months. It’s how I eventually turned my side hustle (blogging) into a full-time job, and it’s how I now travel full-time pursuing my passions.

It’s safe to say that learning how to earn extra money has completely changed my life for the better.

I talk a lot about finding new ways to make extra money on the side because it’s something that I truly believe in.

And, with so many ways to make more money, there is something for everyone. 

So, whether you want to pay off your debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, start investing more, save for emergencies, etc., there are dozens of ways that you can make your goals happen even faster.

Learning how to make extra money can completely change your life now and well into the future. Starting to make more money now can help you:

• Save up for a big purchase, like going on vacation
• Pay off your student loan debt, credit card debt, etc.
• Save for retirement and even retire early
• Quit a job you don’t love
• Diversify your income so you’re not reliant on one source
• Save for emergencies
• And more!

Because blogging is one of the main ways I was able to make extra money, I love using my blog to share these ideas with you. I also love hearing from so many different people about how they have been able to reach their financial goals that much sooner because they have learned how to make and save more money.

What some people don’t realize about making extra money is that it doesn’t have to take all of your time. You can dedicate as much or as little time to it as you want. I started this blog on the side of my full-time job. It did take a lot of work, but I did it when I was available.

Besides starting a successful side hustle, there are some great small ways to earn extra money. The point is, there are so many ways to start making more money that there is no reason not to start now.

Related posts on how to earn extra money:

• How To Start and Launch A Successful Money Making Blog FREE Course
• 12 Work From Home Jobs That Can Earn You $1,000+ Each Month
• 43 Extreme Things People Have Done To Make Money

Here are 80+ ways to earn extra money in 2020:

 

Learn how to earn extra money online.

Some people may be skeptical when they hear about making money online, but there are many legitimate online jobs and business ideas where you can earn a full-time living, or at least a side income. 

Yes, real work from home jobs do exist, and more and more people earn money online these days than ever before.

In fact, did you know that around 4,000,000 Americans now work online? These aren’t just remote jobs either, as many are freelancing online, running their own businesses, and more. 

I love that I learned how to earn extra money online. It allowed me to pay off my student loan debt, quit my day job, work from home, travel full-time on a sailboat, and more.

So, if you are interested in learning how to earn extra money online, start here.

• Start a successful blog – This is the first thing I recommend to anyone interested in learning how to make money online. Blogging is how I earn a living, and just a few years ago, I never thought it would be possible. In fact, before I started my blog, I didn't even know that blogs existed! I currently earn around $100,000 a month with my blog. You can create your own blog here with my easy-to-use tutorial. You can start your blog for as little as $2.95 per month, plus you get a free domain if you sign up through my tutorial. I even have a Free How To Start and Launch A Money-Making Blog Course that you can join, and it will help you start and launch a successful blog! Once you start a blog, you can learn how to monetize it with affiliate income and sponsored posts.
• Teach English online – Did you know that you may be able to make money from home by teaching English online to children? VIPKID is a company that allows you to work from home, create your own schedule, and earn $18-21 per hour (many teachers are earning over $1,000 per month) all while teaching English online. You don't need a teaching degree, but you do need to have a four year degree in something. This is a great option for anyone who has a passion for teaching and looking for ways to earn extra money online. There are several companies out there, but I recommend VIPKID and Education First.
• Answer questions online – Course Hero is a website that helps high school and college students with course-specific questions. Please read How To Make $300+ Weekly Answering Questions With Course Hero to learn more.
• Get paid to answer surveys – Answering surveys online won’t make you rich, but it is one of the ways to earn extra money online that you can put towards your debt payoff or savings goals. Survey companies I recommend include American Consumer Opinion, Swagbucks, Survey Junkie, ProOpinion, Pinecone Research, and Harris Poll Online. These survey companies are free to join and free to use! You get paid to answer surveys and to test products. To receive the most survey opportunities, it’s best to sign up for as many survey sites as you can.
• Build a course and teach others what you know – Before you think that you have nothing to teach, I want to tell you that you most likely do! Online courses are extremely popular right now, and you don't need to have a blog in order to be successful with an online course. I use Teachable for my online course platform, and I highly recommend it. Here's How I’ve Made Over $1,000,000 From My First Course Without a Big Launch.
• Write an ebook – Writing your own eBook is a great way to earn extra money online, and there is probably something super helpful that you could write about (even if you think otherwise!). In fact, my friend Alyssa self-published her first book and has sold more than 13,000 copies. She is now earning a great passive income of over $200 a day from her book ($6,500 in one month alone!). Learn more at How Alyssa is making $200 a DAY in book sales passively.
• Run Facebook advertising for local businesses – Bobby Hoyt, a former band teacher who now runs the successful website Millennial Money Man, started running Facebook ads for local businesses to help him pay off $40,000 in student loan debt in only 18 months. In our interview you can learn about how Bobby got started, why businesses want to run Facebook ads, and how easy it is to get started.  Also, Bobby has a free training on this too. His free course (you can sign up here) will teach you how to start this business even if you're brand new, how to find paying clients, and more. Read the full interview at How To Make $1,000 Extra In Your Spare Time With Facebook.
• Edit content for others – Websites, books, courses, and more all need editors to help them improve the quality of their content. No matter how many times a person reads a piece of content, something will usually slip through. If you’re a grammar-nut, then this can be one of the best ways to make money from home.
• Manage social media accounts for businesses – Being a social media manager can be a fun job for the right person. If you have social media skills and don’t mind spending more time on social media sites, then it might be something to look into. Learn more about How I Started a Pinterest Consulting Side Hustle and why it’s more than just sharing random content online.
• Use Swagbucks for your online searches – Swagbucks allows me to earn Amazon gift cards with very little work. Swagbucks is just like using Google to do your online searches, except you get rewarded with points called SB for the things you do through their website. Then, when you have enough points called SB, you can redeem them for cash, gift cards, and more. You’ll receive a free $5 bonus just for signing up through my link!
• Start your own business – Are you thinking about starting your own business? The Small Business Roadmap will show you what steps to take to start your own business.
• Proofread for a living – In just one year, Caitlin made slightly over $43,000 as a freelance proofreader, while also going on several fun vacations. If you are looking for a new job, or just new ways to earn extra money on the side, this may be something to look into. Learn more at Make Money Proofreading By Becoming A Freelance Proofreader.
• Help job seekers improve their resume – A few years ago, I interviewed a reader who ran a resume business. She showed me how others can earn money by helping people create the kind of resumes they need to land their next job. Because having a good resume is an important part of getting the job you want, this is an in demand option. If you are constantly reviewing resumes for your friends because you're so good at creating them, then you may want to turn your skills into a paying job!
• Post on social media – If you have social media accounts, even just a personal Facebook account, it’s possible to earn extra money by posting small ads on your account. One popular company that I recommend is Izea.
• Become a freelance writer – A freelance writer is someone who writes for a number of different clients, such as websites, blogs, magazines, and more. These writers don’t work for one specific company, rather they work for themselves and contract out their writing. Learn more at How To Start A Successful Freelance Writing Career. When I was at FinCon last year, I heard from a number of bloggers and online business owners who need freelance writers to help them develop new content.
• Moderate forums – Some online forums will pay you to moderate their message boards. If there is a forum you visit often, you might want to see if they are hiring.
• Become a transcriptionist – Do you know what a transcriptionist does? You can learn what it is and how it’s possible to earn extra money on the side as a transcriptionist at Make Money At Home By Becoming A Transcriptionist.
• Become a virtual assistant – Virtual assistant tasks may include social media management, formatting and editing blog posts, scheduling appointments or travel, email management, and more. Basically, you get paid to do any task that needs to be done for someone’s business but doesn’t need to be done by them. You can read more about how Kayla is earning $10K per month working from home as a virtual assistant. My sister, Alexis of Fitnancials, has been my virtual assistant for a couple of years now, and it has helped her quit her job to become a full-time blogger. Plus, she is invaluable to me!
• Become a bookkeeper – Ben, founder of Bookkeeper Business Academy, explains how becoming a bookkeeper may be a possibility for you. Ben helps people start and grow their own online bookkeeping business with his online bookkeeping course. And, guess what? You don’t have to be an accountant or have any previous experience! You can read more about how becoming a bookkeeper at Make Money At Home By Becoming A Bookkeeper.
• Create an online store – Did you know that you can create your own online store to earn extra money? Jenn, a reader of mine, started her online business a little over four years ago and since then she has developed and grown three successful online ecommerce stores earning an average of $19,000 per month. Learn more at How Jenn Makes Over $10,000 A Month With Her Online Store In Less Than 10 Hours Per Week.
• Become a Google Rater – This is when you help Google improve the quality of their search engine results. You can learn more about this at Help Google Better The Internet And Make $1,000+ A Month From Home.

 

 

Create a side business (or a full-time one!).

Creating a side business is one of the best ways to earn extra money, and it may even lead to a full-time career. While many people start these businesses on the side of their regular job, most of the people whose interviews I share in this list have been able to turn their side jobs into full-time businesses. 

• Pick up garbage – This might not be the most glamorous way to make more money, but did you know that you can get paid $30- $50 an hour to pick up trash? Read Get Paid $30 – $50 Per Hour To Pick Up Trash to learn more.
• Sell on Amazon – If you want to learn one of the many real ways to make money from home, then you may want to start an Amazon FBA business! Jessica Larrew, of The Selling Family, explains how selling on Amazon may be a possibility for you. She is a friend of mine, and I am blown away by her success! In the first year that Jessica’s family ran their Amazon FBA business together, working less than 20 hours a week total, they made over six figures profit! If you are looking for a new job, or even just a side hustle, this may be something that you want to look into. Learn more at How To Work From Home Selling On Amazon FBA.
• Maintain and clean yards – You can make money by mowing lawns, killing/removing weeds, cleaning gutters, raking leaves, and so on. Because every season offers the opportunity for some type of yard maintenance, this can turn into a year round job.
• House sit for others – House sitting is becoming more and more popular these days, and there are many websites out there for house sitting. You may be paid to watch someone’s house, take in the mail, watering plants, and so on. House sitting doesn’t just have to be in your own town either. It can be something you do while taking amazing vacations. You can read more about it at How We Became Professional House Sitters In Europe & Saved Over $5,000.
• Rent out your RV – Many RVs sit unused in storage lots, driveways, and backyards, so why not try to make a little extra money while you’re not using your RV? Learn more at How To Make Extra Money By Renting Out Your RV.
• Share your car. Did you know that you can share your car with travelers on a daily, weekly, or even on a long-term basis and make extra money? I’m talking about listing your car and making money on Turo, which is like Airbnb for cars. It takes as little as 10 minutes to list your car, and you can earn up to 90% of the trip price.
• Walk dogs and/or pet sit for extra money – If you love animals, then this is one of the best ways to make money on the side! Walking dogs and pet sitting can be a lot of fun because who doesn’t love animals!? With this side hustle, you may be going over to your client’s home to check in a few times a day, you may be staying at their house, or the animals may be staying with you. Rover is a great company to sign up for if you’re interested in becoming a dog walker and pet sitter. Learn more about this at Rover – A Great Way To Make Money And Play With Animals.
• Groom pets – This is yet another animal related side business, and it could be a good one for you. With a mobile pet grooming business you will go directly to the pets rather than needing to find and set up a permanent business location. 
• Become a local tour guide – Do you love showing off your city to friends and out-of-town guests? If so, you can earn extra money as a tour guide in your city. You can create any kind of tour you like – touring restaurants or bars, historical tours, bike tours, and more. Tours By Locals is a great site to connect with if you’re interested in learning more.
• Become a landlord – Whether you rent out a room in your home or start buying up properties to invest in and then rent out, this could be one of the more lucrative ways to earn extra money on the side. Learn more in How This 29 Year Old Is Building A Real Estate Empire. For even more information about becoming a landlord, check out my interview with Paula Pant of Afford Anything: How This 34 Year Old Owns 7 Rental Homes.
• Shovel snow – We no longer need to have our snow shoveled, but it was definitely something we didn’t enjoy doing while we were living in St. Louis. If you get snow where you live, then you may be able to knock on your neighbors’ doors to see if they would like their driveways and sidewalks shoveled. If you want to go a little further, you could even invest in a plow and market your services.
• Become a Tasker – TaskRabbit is an online platform where people list odd jobs that they need done, like assembling furniture or cleaning. You can find one-off jobs in your area using TaskRabbit to earn extra money.
• Babysit and/or nanny children – When I was just 14, I was making $10 an hour babysitting for a neighbor. I babysat 40 hours a week and it was a great way to make extra money! If you have any special skills or can provide extra work, such as cleaning up around the house, teaching the child how to speak another language, picking up the child after activities, and so on, you will most likely be able to charge more than $10 an hour.
• Become an Uber or Lyft driver – Spending your spare time driving others around can be a great money maker. Read more about this in my post How To Become An Uber Or Lyft Driver. I also did a great interview this year with Harry of Rideshare Guy, and he shares his tips for becoming a successful rideshare driver in the interview Want To Be A Rideshare Driver? Tips From The Rideshare Guy.
• Help people fix things around their home – If you are a handy person, this could be a great option for you. Word of mouth is big when it comes to finding clients, but you can also post your services on Craigslist, post flyers to bulletin boards around your town, and more.
• Clean homes – Cleaning is something that many people dread. If you are good at cleaning and enjoy it, then you may be able to find clients who want you to come to their home to clean. This can pay around $20 an hour or more in some areas. Because cleaning for others is such a personal job, you will often find loyal customers who want you to come back over and over again.
• Help people move – Moving is another task that many people dislike. Movers can earn a broad range when it comes to hourly pay, but it’s usually somewhere around $25-$50 an hour if you run your own business.
• Give outdoor or adventure tours – If you love hiking, biking, climbing, etc. and want to earn extra money, you can get paid to take people on tours. Airbnb Experiences is a great place to list your services. 
• Become a photographer – Do you love photography? Then this is a great way to earn extra money while doing something you love to do. Learn more at How To Make $25,000 – $45,000 A Year As A New Photographer.

 

Find a part-time job.

If you’re looking for something a little more permanent than a side hustle, a part-time job might be one of the best ways to earn extra money on the side. And, you might be surprised by how many part-time jobs will work with your full-time job’s schedule. You can find a job on sites such as Snagajob, Craigslist (yes, I’ve found a legitimate job through there before), Monster, and so on.

• Deliver items through Postmate – Postmates is a service that lets people use their phones to order food, drinks, and groceries. Delivering those items is where you come in! Because the holidays are a busy time, many people are looking to make their life easier with delivery services like Postmates. And, you can deliver for Postmates with your car, scooter, motorcycle, or bicycle. How much can you make with Postmates? Postmates says that you can earn up to $25 an hour with their platform. Click here to check out Postmates and sign up.
• Deliver RVs to dealerships – RVs are huge, and the majority of the time they can’t be transported by semi-trucks because of their size. Due to that, someone has to drive them from the manufacturer to the RV dealership. We met a couple who did this for a living, and they both loved what they did. They were able to travel a lot, earn a living, and got to see new RVs all the time. To make extra income doing this, you can contact transport companies in your area, RV manufacturers, RV dealerships, and more.
• Find a part-time seasonal job – If you have a job that gives you the summers off (or whatever season), then finding a part-time seasonal job could be a good way to earn extra money during your time off. Some of the seasonal, part-time job options are listed below.
• Bartend – With bartending experience, you may be able to find a bartending job at a bar, restaurant, catering company, and more. Since the hours for this are usually later at night and on the weekends, it could easily fit with your regular 9-5 job schedule.
• Work at a restaurant – You could be a host, wait tables, bus tables, and so on. You may even get to eat delicious food and receive a discount when dining out at the restaurant you work for.
• Substitute teach – I know quite a few people who substitute teach both part-time and full-time and love it. Sometimes the schedule can be tricky as you may be called at the last moment, but other times you may secure a long-term position. In some places, substitute teaching can pay around $100 per day.
• Teach during summer school – If you are a teacher, then spending part of your summer teaching summer school is a great way to make extra money. My brother-in-law is a teacher and he earns around $3,000 for three 4-day weeks of work, and they aren’t even full days. He and his wife use that money to fund their summer vacations.  
• Work at a hotel, motel, hostel, resort, etc. – There are many jobs in the hospitality industry. If you love meeting new people who are visiting your area, this can be a great way to earn extra money. When we were RVing, we met several RVers who make money at RV parks and campgrounds while they full-time RV.
• Work at a retail store – I worked in retail for over five years, made lifelong friends, and I was able to make an okay income to live off of. Plus, you can usually receive a good discount when working in retail.
• Lifeguard – You could lifeguard at a community pool, a private pool, a water park, and so on. You don’t have to be a teenager to lifeguard either!
• Work as a referee – Did you know that soccer refs for local community centers can make around $25/hour or more? You’ll have to know the sport to work as a referee, and you can learn more by contacting the community or sports center in your area.
• Deliver newspapers – Delivering newspapers can be a good way to make some side money. You may have to wake up early, but maybe those are the hours you are looking for.
• Run errands for others – Being someone’s assistant can be an interesting way to earn extra money. You may get paid to do someone else’s laundry, clean their home, pick up their food, answer phone calls, and more.

Related content: 18 Of The Best Ways To Make Extra Money For The Holidays

 

Sell your stuff to earn extra money.

We all have things around our homes that can be sold instead of collecting dust, or you can even search for items that can be bought and resold for a profit. Or, if you are trying to live a minimalist lifestyle, then knowing that you can earn extra money selling your things might be the motivation you need to get started. If you want to learn how to earn extra money by selling your stuff, then continue reading below.

Related post: 8 Things To Sell To Make Money

• Flip items – Melissa’s family was able to make $42,875 in one year through buying and flipping items for sale, and they were only working about 10-20 hours per week. Learn more in How Melissa Made $40,000 In One Year Flipping Items.
• Sell/donate blood, plasma, eggs, etc. – Yup, all of these can be sold for a price, and you can definitely earn extra money by doing so. Depending on your characteristics, women can earn anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $10,000 or more for their eggs. Egg donors are typically under the age of 30 and healthy. African American women and Asian American women usually make the most money as there is a larger need for their eggs. This is not easy money, though. There are a number of doctor visits, and extracting the eggs requires a medical procedure. For sperm, the average donation pays anywhere from $50 to $100, and some men donate as often as 2-3 times each week.
• Sell items on eBay – Whether it’s clothes, a car, electronics, and so on, eBay is a great place to sell all sorts of things online. eBay also has a worldwide reach, which can be great if the market in your area isn’t large enough. I know many people who earn extra money selling on eBay, and it’s very easy to get started.
• Sell items on Craigslist – Craigslist has gotten a bad rap in the past, but I have always had great success when I have bought or sold things through them. Craigslist can be a great way to sell your items, while often earning a higher value for them too. However, be safe, because you will have to meet with strangers to complete the transactions.
• Sell things on Facebook Marketplace – Facebook is a great place to sell your items to earn extra money. You can find buyers in your area, but for larger items, like cars and furniture, buyers are often willing to travel. Plus, because you are probably already on Facebook, this is one of the easiest ways to sell your stuff.
• Sell on Poshmark – Poshmark is one of the most popular places online for people to buy and sell gently used clothing, shoes, and more. You should always be honest in your listings, take great photos, and ship items out as soon as they sell.
• Sell to second hand stores – There are many second hand stores out there that will take your clothing and shoes. Stores like Plato’s Closet, Hut No. 8, and Buffalo Exchange will pay you upfront for on-trend young adult clothing, and they take all of the legwork out of selling items, which is really helpful. There are also second hand stores for designer items, women’s clothing, children’s items, and more. Some pay upfront, whereas others may not pay you until after the item has sold.
• Sell on Etsy – Etsy is a great place to sell handmade items, vintage finds, and craft supplies. If you are a crafty person, definitely check out this website if you are looking for ways to earn extra money in 2020.
• Sell your gift cards – If you have gift cards that you aren’t going to use, why not sell them to earn extra money? There are many, many websites out there that will pay you cash for your gift cards. Gift Card Granny, Cardpool, and Raise are just a few. 
• Sell items through a garage sale – A garage sale can be an easy way to make extra money because people come straight to your house. The only downside is that you usually don’t make as much for your items as you would if you were to sell them on sites such as eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace.
• Sell your old books – Back when I was in college, I sold my textbooks as soon as the class was over. This helped me regain the amount that I originally paid for the book. You can sell your books online, and most university bookstores have a buyback option.

Related:

• 100+ Ways To Make Extra Income
• 65 Ways To Make Extra Money
• 75+ Ways To Make Extra Money
• Ways To Make An Extra $1,000 A Month

 

 

Earn extra money at the job you already have.

If you’re already employed and not interested in starting a side hustle, by starting an online business, or taking on a part-time job, you can still learn how to earn more at your current job.

• Work overtime – One way to earn extra money at your job is to see if your company will allow you to work overtime. In many cases, overtime is welcomed, and you can earn a decent amount of money by doing so. Plus, what’s an extra hour or two when you’re already there?
• Ask for a raise – Asking for a raise may be the best way to earn extra money at your current job, as the work is the same and you most likely won’t be adding additional hours to your work week. Many people never ask for a raise, which means you might be leaving money on the table. Over numerous years, this can add up to a significant amount of income!
• Get a promotion – If a raise is not possible, then you may want to try for a promotion that comes with a pay bump. Sometimes companies can only pay you so much for the job you currently have, but perhaps a promotion with different and/or additional job duties, a possible move, etc. may result in an increase in pay.
• Earn bonuses – Depending on the industry and the company you work at, you may be able to earn bonuses. Bonuses often come in large chunks which makes them ideal for paying off large amounts of credit card or student loan debt. Or, you could even invest your bonus to earn even more in the long run. 

 

Even more ways to earn extra money in 2020.

If you're looking for even MORE ways to earn extra money on the side, then this is your spot. The things listed below probably aren’t what comes to mind first, and they don’t fit in any of the categories above. I honestly love interesting and creative ways to earn extra money because it proves that there are really so many options out there. If there is something that you do to make money that is not on this list, please share in the comments below!

• Cuddle with strangers – Did you know that you can get paid to cuddle with people that you don't even know? Surprisingly, there are many cuddling companies out there, and this option seems to be growing more and more each year. Some people even make a few hundred dollars a day by cuddling with others. I’m not sure if this is something I could do (haha!), but I know there are people out there who are perfect for this option.
• Scoop poop – Okay, like picking up trash, this isn’t going to be the most glamorous job, but someone has to do it. 
• Write a book about something you love to do – Alyssa and Heath quit their jobs in 2014 to RV full-time. They used their experience RVing to write and publish a book that is making them over $200 a DAY in passive income. Read the full interview at How Alyssa Is Making $200 A DAY In Book Sales Passively.
• Place advertisements on your car, home, or even on your body – Yes, there are companies out there that will pay you to place an advertisement on your car, home, or even your body (such as a tattoo on your forehead). If there’s space on your car or fence that you don’t mind placing an ad on, then look into this!
• Help crew a sailboat delivery – Because you need sailing experience to do this, this won’t be for everyone. But, if you know your way around a boat, then you may be able to earn extra money delivering sailboats. Wes actually helped out on a couple of sailboat deliveries in the past few years, and he traveled to many amazing places along the way, such as visiting several European countries. 
• Be an extra in a movie or TV show – If there’s a movie or TV show that is being filmed near you, you can apply to be an extra to make some money on the side. You won’t have to do much, and it could be a lot of fun, especially if you are able to meet someone famous!
• Write and self-publish romance novels – This definitely isn’t something that most people will think about, but it is a growing and profitable industry. You can learn how Yuwanda Black, a freelance writer, started writing and self-publishing short romance novels in this interview. She earned over $3,000 in one month alone!
• Start investing with spare change – Investing through platforms like Acorns makes investing even more approachable. You simply link your bank or credit cards and Acorns rounds every transaction up to the next dollar. Read more at How To Start Investing With Little Money.
• Sell breast milk – Only recently did I realize that some women earn extra money this way. If you are breastfeeding, then you may be able to sell your breast milk to make extra money. Breast milk often goes for $1 to $2.50 per ounce, and sometimes it sells for as much as $4 per ounce. There are many people who are looking to buy breast milk, not just mothers. Athletes, and those looking to boost their immune systems, are buyers as well.
• Receive bonuses and rewards for using a credit card – There are many credit cards out there that will give you cash back just for using them. If you are good with credit cards (please skip this if you are not), this is something to look into as you can make money without having to do much. Read more at How To Take A 10 Day Trip To Hawaii For $22.40 – Flights & Accommodations Included.
• Take part in medical research studies – Medical studies allow you to help with the research and study of diseases, medicines, treatments, and more. To find paid medical research studies, I recommend checking out your local Craigslist, contacting universities in your area, and seeing if there are any medical testing companies around you. Most cities have these options, and you just have to look for them.
• Enter contests and giveaways – There’s no guarantee that you will win anything when entering contests, but if you get lucky, this would be a really fun way to earn extra money. You may win cash, gift cards, vacations, electronics, and more. The key here is to enter as many as you can. And, many stores and restaurants post drawings and giveaways at the bottom of your receipt.
• Mystery shop – Yes, you can actually get paid to shop at stores and eat at restaurants. A few years ago, I mystery shopped a lot to earn extra money. I made anywhere from $150 to $200 a month mystery shopping and received free meals, makeup, and more as a mystery shopper. I used Bestmark for mystery shopping, so I know that they are a 100% legitimate company. Learn more at Want To Make An Extra $100 A Month? Learn How To Become A Mystery Shopper.
• Use InboxDollars – InboxDollars is an online rewards website I recommend if you want to find ways to earn extra money on the side. You can earn cash by taking surveys, playing games, shopping online, searching the web, redeeming grocery coupons, and more. Also, by signing up through my link, you will receive $5.00 for free!
• Travel the world and be an au pair – In 2016, my sister was an au pair in Italy. It was an interesting experience, and she shares how you can become an au pair and travel the world in her blog post How To Become An Au Pair And Travel The World.
• Play video games on your phone – This is one is completely new to me, but you can earn extra money, even cryptocurrency by playing Long Game on your phone. Long Game was even listed as one of Forbes’ Startups Of The Week! To learn more, you can read my review at How To Earn Extra Money Playing Video Games On Your Phone.
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What are you doing to earn extra money this year?

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Nobody likes to break up. But sometimes you need to break up to get what you really want. In a previous post, I explained how to write a real estate love letter to get the best deal possible. The goal of the real estate love letter is to make a connection with the seller. Once

The post How To Write A Real Estate Breakup Letter To Get A Better Deal appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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It's not easy to start a business from scratch but it can be done. We break down the steps and provide a guide on how to get started.

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We all like to throw around terms that describe human behavior — “bystander apathy” and “steep learning curve” and “hard-wired.” Most of the time, they don’t actually mean what we think they mean. But don’t worry — the experts are getting it wrong, too.

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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We originally published this episode back in May of 2018. It went on to become one of our most popular episodes yet. We’ll be back next week with brand-new episodes. See you then.

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Scott LILIENFELD: What prompted us to write this article was that many of us felt — I felt — that there was a lot of confusion about psychiatric, psychological terminology both in the popular media, pop psychology, and also even in academic circles.

Scott Lilienfeld is a professor of psychology at Emory University.

LILIENFELD: I’m a clinical psychologist by training. And I also have a real interest in the application of scientific thinking to psychology, and also how thinking sometimes goes wrong and can lead even the best and the brightest to embrace ideas that are sometimes questionable — maybe even pseudo-scientific.

Stephen DUBNER: You are an author on a paper called “Fifty Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid: a List of Inaccurate, Misleading, Misused, Ambiguous, and Logically Confused Words and Phrases.” But you’re also the author of an earlier book called Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology. And I have to say, this book is incredibly fun; I love it. It’s hugely enjoyable on the one hand, but also hugely sobering on the other. It’s kind of like looking at a table of contents of the New York Times over the past 20 years — and I mean that not in a complimentary way to the New York Times. Because basically you’re saying that all these things — all these ideas that people love to embrace and talk about and pass on — are somewhere between bogus and trumped up.

For instance, here are your chapter titles: “Playing Mozart’s Music to Infants Boosts Their Intelligence,” which you argue it does not. “Some People Are Left-Brained, Others Are Right-Brained,” which you argue — and we’ve argued on this show — they are not. “Intelligence Tests Are Biased Against Certain Groups of People,” which you argue they’re not.

So my question is a very rude one, and I ask your forgiveness in advance. But it seems as though, if most of the pop or modern psychology that most of us know are essentially mythical or anecdotal stories that you’re saying are mostly not true, and if so many of the terms are abused or misused or exaggerated … what are you people good for?

LILIENFELD: That’s not a bad question, actually. Psychology is a bit of a double-edged sword, because it is so intuitively interesting to all of us. And the positive side is that we’re all psychologists in everyday life. We all know — or at least think we know — something about love and memory, and friendships and dreams and things like that. The downside though is that because something seems familiar it may sometimes seem understandable. There’s a very hungry, very receptive audience for psychological books on positive psychology, emotions, love, relationships, infidelity. That’s all good. But the danger, I think, is we can very easily push our wonder buttons and push our interest buttons using pseudo-science rather than science.

We here at Freakonomics Radio are totally in favor of people pushing their wonder buttons. But we’re also in favor of real science. So, what are some of these misleading, misused, and abused ideas from psychology?

LILIENFELD: So one that comes to mind is “bystander apathy.”

And:

Jerome KAGAN: The biggest error is to assume that these personality traits are unitary, they only have one cause, and that they’re inherited.

And:

Sharon BEGLEY: One of the most important discoveries in neuroscience over the last few years has been that all that hard-wired stuff is completely wrong.

And:

LILIENFELD: A lot of people will say, “Oh, this job has a really steep learning curve.” In fact they’re getting it backward.

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Scott Lilienfeld of Emory, along with fellow academics Katheryn Sauvigné, Steven Jay Lynn, Robin Cautin, Robert Latzman, and Irwin Waldman, published a paper in Frontiers in Psychology listing 50 terms in their field that are inaccurate, misleading, and so on. It begins with an epigraph from Confucius: “If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.”

DUBNER: Now I’m curious, when you write a paper that basically tells your peers and the public, “these are all the ways that we’re screwing up,” does that make you unpopular in the field? Are you thought of as a scold?

LILIENFELD: I always remind my colleagues when they give me a hard time about this, I tell them I’ve probably misused virtually every single one of those terms at some point myself. I’m as guilty of a lot of these misuses as anybody else.

DUBNER: So the summary of the article says that the goal is to “promote clear thinking and clear writing among students and teachers of psychological science by curbing terminological misinformation and confusion.” And then you give 50 commonly used terms that fall into five categories. I’d love you to walk me through the categories.

LILIENFELD: Yes, so those are: inaccurate or misleading, frequently misused, ambiguous terms, oxymorons, and pleonasms.

DUBNER: So category one, inaccurate or misleading. Describe the problem and maybe give an example.

LILIENFELD: Those are terms that can often lead people into erroneous conclusions. So one that comes to mind is “bystander apathy.”

DUBNER: Can you tell us what it means, what it represents, and then where it came from?

LILIENFELD: So what we’re referring to here is a fairly well-demonstrated psychological phenomenon that in emergencies — say, when people are observing someone being robbed, or stabbed, or raped — what we sometimes see is a very peculiar and sometimes very tragic phenomenon where people freeze and don’t do anything. And back in the 1960’s, there was a classic series of studies in this regard that was inspired by a real-life tragedy.

James SOLOMON: Early in the morning of March 13, 1964, a 28-year-old woman named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was brutally attacked in Kew Gardens, Queens, which is a relatively quiet community in New York City.

That’s James Solomon, the director and producer of a documentary film about that real-life tragedy.

SOLOMON: Two weeks later, The New York Times published a story that had originated with the New York police commissioner in a conversation with the then-metropolitan editor of The New York Times, Abe Rosenthal. The police commissioner mentioned that many witnesses had watched and heard what had taken place and reportedly had not called the police.

Solomon’s film is called The Witness. It follows Bill Genovese, Kitty’s brother, as he tries to make sense of the killing many years after the fact. How could so many people have failed to intervene?

SOLOMON: The New York Times reported on its front page that 38 law-abiding citizens had watched for more than a half-hour as this 28-year-old woman was attacked and murdered.

Bibb LATANÉ: Apathy. Apathy was the tagline that Rosenthal gave to the story.

That’s Bibb Latané, a social psychologist and senior fellow at the Center for Human Science.

LATANÉ: For years after the murder and the headline “38 watch and no one calls the police,” this was the subject of different movies, lots of television episodes, and countless magazine articles, books. And most of all, I think in terms of its impact on the country, sermons.

SOLOMON: It spoke to the time. President Kennedy had been assassinated. The country was asking, “Who are we?” We are also not many years from the Holocaust, and it was a story that spoke to the thoughts that many had — that there had been many silent, complicit witnesses to what had taken place in Europe in the 40’s.

LATANÉ: People thought big cities were part of the problem, or that television was part of the problem, or that all kinds of things were part of the problem that was leading us to lose our moral bearings and become almost bestial.

Indeed, how could people just stand by as a woman was brutally attacked, over a significant period of time, ultimately ending in her death? True, the attack happened in the dark middle of the night. People were safe inside their homes, asleep, perhaps scared to venture out. Some who heard the victim shouting thought it was a lovers’ quarrel. But still: was any of that an excuse for such profound apathy, for not a single person calling the police?

LATANÉ: One of the results of the Kitty Genovese murder and the uproar that came out about it is the adoption of the 9-1-1 system, which is now all through the U.S. Before the event, it wasn’t all that easy to report a crime in process.

The Genovese murder reverberated through many realms of life for many years.

SOLOMON: It came to define New York as a place of apathy, violence.

It defined human behavior generally. In 1994, on the murder’s 30th anniversary, President Bill Clinton spoke about it during a public-safety forum in New York.

Bill CLINTON: Well, that story shocked us all 30 years ago, not just because of what happened to that woman, as tragic as it was, but also because of what had happened to her neighbors. It sent a chilling message about what had happened at that time in a society, suggesting that we were each of us not simply in danger, but fundamentally alone.

Rep. Steny HOYER (C-SPAN): Mr. Speaker, 38 neighbors heard her cries, but, out of fear or irresponsibility, not one went to her aid. The next morning, she was found dead.

That’s Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland in 1995, referencing the Genovese murder while urging his peers to pull out of a U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia.

Rep. Steny HOYER (C-SPAN): Today, Bosnia cries out for help. Kitty Genovese is not in Bosnia, but genocide resides there now. Let us act today to lift the arms embargo to give beleaguered Bosnia a chance!

SOLOMON: Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz pointed to Kitty Genovese’s murder as having enormous influence on his thinking about international policy.

Paul WOLFOWITZ: It stuck with me as just a terrible example of disengagement. And then, when I started dealing with decisions about putting American soldiers into harm’s way, the simple clarity of it to me said, “You don’t want to be one of the 38.” And as a country we don’t want to be one of the 38.

SOLOMON: And he said, it’s not the cost of action, it’s the cost of inaction.

International affairs. Public safety. The image of New York City. And there’s one more realm where the Kitty Genovese murder lived on:

SOLOMON: Nowhere was it more impactful than in the field of psychology, behavioral psychology, as a question as to, “how do we remain silent?”

Bibb Latané, was one psychologist who began asking that question. A few years after the murder, he embarked on a series of studies with fellow psychologist John Darley.

LATANÉ: John Darley and I were both newly minted tenure-track professors in New York City, he at New York University, me at Columbia University.

They’d met at a cocktail party.

LATANÉ: We discovered that we both, in some degree, resented the fact that every time we met somebody from outside the university, they would say, “Oh, you’re a social psychologist, so how do you explain this apathy that people in New York seem to have?”

Latané wasn’t convinced that apathy was necessarily the operative explanation. One part of the puzzle: there weren’t just one or two witnesses — but 38.

LATANÉ: Darley and I thought, “Well, maybe that’s part of the explanation. Maybe the fact that it was 38 people led them to behave differently than if it had just been one or two.”

One of the experiments they ran came to be known as the “Lady in Distress.”

LATANÉ: Judy Rodin — who was then a graduate student at Columbia University — played the role of an experimenter who recruited Columbia students to come up to the mathematics building, to fill out some questionnaires. And while they were doing that, she went through a folding curtain into her office next door. Before she went, the students could see that there was a desk with books piled high in a bookcase, and a rolling chair.

There were three experimental conditions: one in which a student was alone, one with a friend, and one with a stranger.

LATANÉ: Over and over again, they could hear Judy say something about having to get that book down. They could hear the noise of her pulling the rolling office chair up to the desk, and trying to climb up on the chair. They heard the crash and the cry as the chair went out from under her feet and she fell on the floor.

She didn’t actually fall; she jumped down. But—

LATANÉ: It was a pretty effective simulation of somebody possibly having a serious accident in the room next door.

So what’d the students do? And: was their response influenced by whether they were alone?

LATANÉ: Whether they were alone or with other people made a major difference in what they did, with Judy being rescued far more likely if there was only one person hearing her, than if there were two.

LILIENFELD: All things equal, the more people who are present at an emergency, the less likely the likelihood of help.

That, again, is Scott Lilienfeld.

LILIENFELD: The beauty of this was they took pains to try to replicate the findings fairly well. And they observed quite similar effects across different experimental paradigms. So for example, another case, there were people in a room — a small little room — filling out questionnaires, and then what appeared to be smoke began filling up the room.

LATANÉ: Somebody in there alone would typically be working away, they’d smell something first, look up, see that there’s smoke coming out of this vent. And then most often they would find the secretary in the office outside and say, “Hey, something strange is in there. I don’t know if it’s a problem, but there’s smoke.”

LILIENFELD: They were much more likely to run out than when other subjects were there.

LATANÉ: When two people were in there, they would each maybe look up at it, appear puzzled, but each seeing the other one not doing anything presumably felt it wasn’t really fire or that the appropriate thing is to stiff it out and stay there. The phenomenon was surprising, because the smoke got pretty intense after a while, and people were coughing and having to wave smoke away from their faces with — I think they had a file folder in front of them. They were clearly willing to endure discomfort rather than the embarrassment of overreacting.

DUBNER: So the opposite of safety in numbers: if there are a lot of people around —

LILIENFELD: That’s right.

DUBNER: And what was the alleged psychological underpinning of that effect? Why would people be less likely to intervene?

LILIENFELD: So according to Darley and Latané, one of them is just pure fear of intervening. Another one is fear of making a fool of oneself and looking stupid. But there are two other malignant processes that often get set into motion. The first is what they call pluralistic ignorance.

LATANÉ: When you have an emergency in a public situation, where people can see and be seen by others, you have a particular situation where everybody is trying not to flip out, trying not to panic or run screaming.

LILIENFELD: That’s particularly likely when the situation is ambiguous, when it’s not entirely clear that something is an emergency. We see a couple shouting or arguing or something, we don’t know is this really an emergency, or is this just two people having a spat. And what we do is we look around, we see that no one else is intervening. And as a result we figure, “Oh, I guess this is not an emergency.”

LATANÉ: And so that can lead to people failing to intervene.

LILIENFELD: The second process is what they called diffusion of responsibility. When there are multiple people around, we feel less responsibility, less personal guilt, for the consequences of doing nothing. We can always tell ourselves later — probably it’s a rationalization — but we can tell ourselves later, “Well, I should have intervened, okay, but 10 other people could have done it as well.”

DUBNER: Now this idea came into the psychological canon in the, what, late 60’s, early 70’s?

LILIENFELD: Late 60’s were the main studies, that’s right.

DUBNER: And so describe for me briefly just how long it held prominence for, or how long it was considered legitimate, and how strong was the effect?

LILIENFELD: Yes, I would say the effect itself actually is fairly robust. I think what’s not robust is the idea that somehow people are apathetic. In most cases, much more likely what’s happening is that people feel psychologically frozen.

So there’s a supposed psychological phenomenon — bystander apathy — that turns out to be misinterpreted, or exaggerated. What about the story that inspired it, the murder of Kitty Genovese?

LILIENFELD: The irony of this is a number of people have since noted that as it was originally described, much of what the New York Times reported was not accurate.

SOLOMON: There is a saying that many journalists have, that some stories are too good to check. And this was one of those kinds of stories, where its power almost defied the facts.

That again is James Solomon, director of The Witness.

SOLOMON: It took, in many respects, Bill Genovese, Kitty’s brother, over the course of 10 years of his life, to unravel the story of his sister’s murder, for us to begin to understand just how flawed the story was.

Let’s go back to the original Times report. It read, “for more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.”

SOLOMON: In 2004, on the 40th anniversary of the Kitty Genovese murder, the New York Times revisited its own story.

A local resident, Joseph de May Jr., had begun investigating and found several problems with the original reporting. For starters, there weren’t three attacks:

SOLOMON: There were two attacks, and one attack, yes, that was on the street, but the other, the second attack, happened in a small vestibule. The greater majority of neighbors were asleep. And the much greater majority only heard — did not see — an attack.

Nor was it true that no one did anything.

SOLOMON: One of Kitty’s neighbors yelled out to “leave the girl alone.” And the attacker, Winston Moseley, ran off. Those who were at the window at this point saw Kitty stagger around the corner and then lost sight of her.

The attacker returned only after things had quieted down.

SOLOMON: By that point, she had made her way inside a vestibule, inside an interior space, where she had collapsed. No one on the street could have seen her at this point. So there were many who heard portions of the attack, and few who saw even portions, and none who saw it beginning to end.

Perhaps the most neglected part of the narrative is what happened next, as Kitty Genovese’s brother Bill discovered during his years-long investigation.

SOLOMON: It wasn’t until Bill started reading the trial transcript decades later that he came to see, well, there was someone there who rushed to Kitty’s aid. And her name was Sophia Farrar. She was Kitty’s actual next-door neighbor. And when she received a phone call that Kitty was hurt, she rushed outside without hesitating, down her stairs, down a back alley, still in her nightclothes — it’s 3:00 a.m. — having no idea what was out in the rear alley, and who and what was inside the vestibule. Sophia had to force her way inside the vestibule, because Kitty was now laying inside the doorway, her body up against the door, and she cradled Kitty. She cradled Kitty and reassured Kitty, and wasn’t sure if Kitty — who was at that point in extraordinary physical duress — realized she was in a friend’s arms. But Kitty did die in the arms of a friend.

Sophia FARRAR: She was my friend, and I knew she was hurt and she needed help. That was my reason for flying down those stairs.

That is Farrar, in the film, explaining to Bill Genovese that his sister at least hadn’t died alone.

FARRAR: And then when I came in, I’ll never forget the black — it kills me when I think about it — the black leather gloves, and all the cuts, all through the gloves, on her both hands. I only hope that she knew it was me — that she wasn’t alone.

As for Kitty Genovese’s other neighbors: it appears that at least one of them did knowingly refrain from helping. But for many others, things were much less clear. Some who heard the commotion claimed to have thought it was a drunken brawl or a lovers’ quarrel. Still others insisted they did call the police, after the first attack. The police log, meanwhile recorded only one call, well after her murderer had left the scene.

A cynic might wonder if the police were telling the whole truth. What if witnesses had called, and the police failed to respond? Remember, this story got its start when the New York police commissioner told the Times editor Abe Rosenthal about the 38 witnesses who did nothing. This was after the killer had already been caught and had confessed. He also confessed to a second murder — but the police had already gotten a confession from someone else for that one. That’s what Rosenthal was asking about when the police commissioner started talking about the 38 witnesses. Did the police have incentive to play up “bystander apathy” in the Genovese murder?

Here’s how Steve Levitt and I wrote about this scenario in our book SuperFreakonomics: “A story about two men arrested for the same murder clearly had the potential to embarrass the police. Furthermore, given the prolonged and brutal nature of the Genovese murder, the police may have been touchy about who caught the blame. Why hadn’t they been able to stop it?”

With this kind of a story, especially after so much time, there will always be elusive details. Suffice it to say that the tragic murder of Kitty Genovese had been repackaged to represent something that it probably didn’t.

LATANÉ: The “big T” truth is that this probably wasn’t apathy. The whole interpretation of the story was probably wrong. It’s probably a social-inhibition effect. I don’t think most psychologists would use the word “apathy.” A number of them — and I think it’s either misleading or not very descriptive — will call it the “bystander effect,” but that doesn’t tell you whether the bystander effect is to increase or decrease reporting. That’s why I like “social inhibition” or “bystander inhibition,” because that tells you what the effect is.

LILIENFELD: There’s probably a kernel of truth, but it’s probably a gross oversimplification. So much of what was reported was inaccurate.

DUBNER: To me, the irony is that the psychological idea of bystander apathy was created essentially by one newspaper article that, from my perspective, was just a model of poor journalism, that was driven by what we think of as the “if it bleeds, it leads” school of thought. But really, even deeper than that, it goes to another psychological concept, which is this seeming attraction to, or thirst for, the worst version of ourselves. Was this story, in your professional opinion, just too bad to not be true? Was that part of what helped establish the myth?

LILIENFELD: I don’t know. Maybe at some level, we may be drawn to those stories perhaps because they may seem to vindicate our own failures to intervene in some cases. We’ve all had times where maybe we should have done something and we didn’t. And maybe those stories in some way give us a certain amount of reassurance; it’s not just me. But it may just also be the fact that we kind of like things that are sensational.

DUBNER: And give me a sense of the downside of how robustly the bystander apathy — the notion — was embraced. Did it — I don’t mean to say it set back the field of psychology — but maybe it did, I don’t know.

LILIENFELD: I don’t know if it did. If it set back anyone it was probably a generation of psychology students who may have misunderstood this. What students do need to understand is that most people are in fact quite empathic. Yes, there are exceptions. But most of us do have a deep-seated capacity for emotional empathy and when most of us see emergencies, yes, we want to help.

Deep inside of us is the hero; also deep inside of us is the chicken. And maybe in some ways recognizing the fact that part of us is kind of chicken is the first step to helping us overcome it. There is a danger, I think, in assuming that anyone who does not intervene in an emergency is a monster or inherently a bad person. But in fact we’re all capable of that.

DUBNER: We are such imperfect animals, aren’t we?

LILIENFELD: We sure are. My colleague at Emory, Frans de Waal, likes to call us the bipolar ape. We’re capable of great evil in some cases, but we’re also capable of great goodness. That’s part of what makes us such a fascinating, such a complex, and sometimes, such an infuriating species.

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Okay, so the stalwart psychological phenomenon you may know as “bystander apathy” is mostly a faulty interpretation based on the faulty reporting of a 1964 murder. What other things do we know to be so that in fact, are not? How about the notion of being “hard-wired” for a certain behavior?

Fox News: New research on the mind has uncovered the possibility that believing in God may be hard-wired in our brains.

NBC News: And the problem for parents is kids don’t just like sugar — they’re biologically hard-wired for it.

LILIENFELD: I think in the overwhelming majority of cases in which it’s used, “hard-wired” is really misleading and I think sometimes potentially pernicious because it can lead people into assuming that certain behaviors cannot be changed. “The predisposition toward infidelity is hard-wired in the brain” — it must mean that as a male I can’t resist my inclination toward infidelity. Hogwash, of course I can! And we know these things can be resisted, although not always easy.

Sharon BEGLEY: If you say it’s hard-wired, implicitly — or actually not that implicitly, quite explicitly — the message is, you can’t change that.

Sharon Begley has been writing for decades about neuroscience.

BEGLEY: Just as if you wanted to go into your computer’s hard drive with a teeny little screwdriver and start messing around with those integrated circuits to change something, that will not work out very well.

But the hard-wired idea didn’t originate with computing.

BEGLEY: The history of neuroscience has shown us that even going back centuries, whatever was the prevailing cool mechanical machine, device, whatever, that was the metaphor that people appealed to. So the brain was compared to a counting machine, to a clock. And then computers burst on the scene and so people said, “Well, then the brain is like a computer.” But one of the most important discoveries in neuroscience over the last few years has been, in fact, that all that hard-wired stuff is completely wrong in very fundamental ways.

LILIENFELD: There are very few — if any — psychological attributes that are strictly genetically determined, strictly hard-wired into the brain.

BEGLEY: This realization has also led to treatments for major depressive disorder, because there’s a clear neurocircuitry underlying it. O.C.D., which reflects over-activity in a particular circuit, through the form of therapy called cognitive behavior therapy, the over-activity in that circuit can be quieted just as much as if people take the medications that are prescribed for O.C.D.

The brain can even be trained to control different body parts after a stroke.

BEGLEY: So when someone has a stroke, and the region that controlled — we’ll just pick the example of the right hand — is wiped out, obviously you have trouble moving your right hand. But it turns out that there are interventions, rehab techniques, that can teach the brain to turn its right side into the part that controls the right hand. So again, what had been controlled in the left side of the brain, it can move over to the right side and assume a totally new function.

This is not to say the brain’s flexibility is unlimited.

BEGLEY: If you were to ask me, “Can somebody think themselves out of schizophrenia, or think themselves out of addiction?” I would say in those two examples, we do not have evidence that that is possible.

But, Begley says, it may be time to trade in the hard-wired metaphor for a less misleading one.

BEGLEY: The brain is more like an Etch-a-Sketch. You can seem to incise lines on it, and they look for all the world like they’re real, but with a little bit of shaking up, you can make significant changes.

DUBNER: Next phrase, if you would — love this one — “statistically reliable.”

LILIENFELD: The danger of “statistically reliable” is it can mislead people into thinking that if a result is statistically significant, if it falls below a particular threshold for statistical significance — psychologists often use .05, that is 1 in 20, as a kind of rough guideline, — a lot of people think, “Oh, therefore it is likely to replicate in other samples.” Typically when psychologists refer to reliability they mean consistency: consistency over time. That is a misuse of the term because, in fact, most significant results probably don’t replicate. So we shouldn’t confuse a result that is statistically significant with one that is likely to be reliable, consistent over time, or replicable. They’re two very different things.

DUBNER: The next phrase. “Personality type.”

LILIENFELD: “Personality type” — you see that a lot in psychology, especially in pop psychology. Typologies of personality have been around with us since the days of Hippocrates and others. We like to sort people into different types — that is, mutually exclusive discrete categories: introverts versus extroverts, neurotics versus non-neurotics, intuitive people versus non-intuitive people, and so on. But in fact we know from the personality literature that most and probably all personality traits are continuously distributed much like height or weight. They really are dimensions.

Jerome KAGAN: We want to make a distinction between a personality type and a personality dimension.

That is Jerome Kagan, emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard and a pioneer of developmental and personality psychology.

KAGAN: A dimension implies that people range along a certain trait, like how agreeable are you. A type implies a pattern of traits. The major theorist, of course, was Freud, and Freud did posit types. He said there were anal types, there were oral-aggressive types. And although those ideas were appealing in the 1920’s and 30’s, they turned out to not match good scientific inquiry. And so no one uses them anymore.

What most psychologists study, these days, are traits — although traits and types are often confused, which leads to fundamental misunderstandings about personality.

KAGAN: The biggest error is to assume that these personality traits — agreeableness, conscientiousness — are unitary — they only have one cause — and that they’re inherited. They’re not in your genes, and there’s no basic set of personality traits.

LILIENFELD: So assuming that certain people fall into types I think can predispose us to a lot of misunderstanding, because it can make us think that certain groups of people are somehow qualitatively different — different in kind rather than in degree — from the rest of us. Yes, introverts and extroverts do differ in important ways, but in fact they often grade imperceptibly into each other.

DUBNER: Is this related to the broad concept of “hard-wired,” and if it is, is there some comfort in the notion that, “Oh, I can explain better that person’s behavior if I can attribute it to something that was etched already into the code.”

LILIENFELD: So, I think in some cases — not all — but in some cases, this idea of something being dichotomous — yes or no; presence or absence — may be tied in our heads to the idea that somehow it is biologically wired that we’re either X or Y.

DUBNER: And the last one we’ll do right now is “steep learning curve.”

LILIENFELD: A lot of people will say, “Oh, I started on a new job where I was having to do something new. And this job has a really steep learning curve.” In fact they’re getting it backward. A steep learning curve is easy. Because a steep learning curve means —

DUBNER: You learn a lot in a hurry, right?

LILIENFELD: Not slowly.

DUBNER: When I read that in your paper I thought, “Oh my goodness, that’s really interesting that we’ve all got it backwards.” But then I quickly rationalized and said, “Well, I guess what I always assumed was that the steepness was on the axis referring to difficulty somehow,” right? And that if a task is particularly difficult, then that’s the steepness, and that’s the curve I’m on. So really, when we encounter something that’s really difficult, and we’re having a hard time mastering it, we should say we’re on a very shallow —

LILIENFELD: A very shallow learning curve, that’s right. I think when people say, “This task has a steep learning curve,” what they mean is, “Man, I feel like I’m going up like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill and going up a very steep mountain!” But in fact if something has a steep learning curve, that means that it’s acquired very quickly.

DUBNER: Let’s take a step back now and talk about the phenomena that you’ve been describing generally of misuse of language and so on. What would you say are the reasons for this poor usage? Even I, as a total amateur, could imagine a few. Maybe the narrower the language is, the more easily that you can claim as a researcher that your research has legitimate and original value, if it’s getting to something that others hadn’t gotten before. Or maybe you’re trying to cover up the fact that you don’t really know what you’re talking about, or maybe you’re trying to impress peers and journal editors and students — I guess the non-academic saying is, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit, right?

LILIENFELD: I think all of the above, actually. I think some of it’s also the fact that a lot of human behavior, a lot of human phenomena, are very multiply-determined. Even just the way people use terms like O.C.D. or depression. Depression — I think there’s probably some some core thing there, but we’re talking about a very heterogeneous entity. There are probably a lot of different depressions, rather than one pure form of depression out there that’s the same across everyone. So I think it can often mislead us into thinking we’re talking about one thing when in fact we’re talking about multiple things.

DUBNER: And give me an example, a real-world example where there are real, serious ramifications.

LILIENFELD: Some people might think that the quick and simple cure for school shootings is mental-illness reform. I think that may have to be part of the picture, but it’s unlikely to be all of it. And another reason that’s the case is many perpetrators of violence are not mentally ill. So I think the link between mental illness and violence falls in between two extremes. So what we do know is that the substantial majority of the mentally ill — and by the mentally ill, I mean schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychotic depression and the like — the overwhelming majority of people with these disorders are not and never will be violent. The rates are probably well under 5 percent. And we also know that people with severe mental illness are much more likely to be the victims rather than the perpetrators of violence. At the same time, I think we also have to avoid the error of saying there’s no increased risk at all among the mentally ill. It’s probably a modest increased risk among people with schizophrenia, and in particular when severe mental illness is paired with substance use. So we have to realize the picture is a lot more complicated than it’s often portrayed.

DUBNER: Let me ask you a ridiculous and impossible question. If, let’s say, all of psychological and psychiatric knowledge were a pie, like a blueberry pie, how much of the pie is known now?

LILIENFELD: Yeah, that’s a tough one. If I have had to come up with a number, I’d guess about 10 percent. And I think it will vary depending a lot on the area. But I think we tend to overestimate the level and certainty of our knowledge. I suspect when we look back in 100 years, or maybe even 50 years, we’ll be astonished at how silly many of the ideas we currently hold near and dear to our hearts are actually wrong.

DUBNER: I guess in that regard, psychology and psychiatry are very similar to the rest of medicine. But one could argue the same for economics and a lot of the social sciences. It’s really hard to prove a lot of causality in your field, is it not?

LILIENFELD: It is. And I’m inclined to agree with E.O. Wilson, that the real hard sciences are the social sciences — sociology, psychology, and others. And a lot of people say the opposite of hard is easy.

DUBNER: Right.

LILIENFELD: Not to minimize the difficulties of —

DUBNER: Physics is tough.

LILIENFELD: Oh, it’s tough, too. But we live in so much more of a probabilistic world when we’re dealing with people. There are so many other variables coming into play — so many moving parts — and sometimes we’re criticized, perhaps justifiably, for how crappy we are at predicting behavior, like predicting violence. Sometimes it amazes me that we do even as well as we do, that we can do even better than chance, for example, at predicting violence or predicting work performance or predicting happiness or longevity, given all the moving parts.

So even though I teach a course where I call all that stuff into question and try in many cases to debunk it, I don’t look down on people who have those beliefs. Because I think they often reflect a kind of thirst for knowledge, which I think is actually healthy. I think we scientists sometimes make that mistake, when we’re dealing with claims we don’t agree with, like creationism. We sometimes are inclined to think, “Gee, these people are so silly or so stupid.” But in fact many of us, myself included, held ideas that we now look back on as not so good. And I think the bottom line here — not to get too preachy here — but scientific methods, although they’re not perfect and they can make their mistakes too, because they’re practiced by we humans who are all imperfect — but scientific methods are ultimately our best hope for sorting through and sorting out which of these lay beliefs, intuitive beliefs, has some truth and which doesn’t.

So there you go: a dose of humility, along with a plea for good science. Thanks to Scott Lilienfeld for having the humility, and the courage, to challenge the veracity of his own field, and doing so with such grace and nuance. And, going back to the Kitty Genovese story, there’s one further detail I thought you might find interesting. Her killer, remember, was named Winston Moseley. You’ll also remember that he wasn’t caught at the scene — that’s what led to the bystander-apathy story. So how was he caught? It happened several days after the Genovese murder. Here again is James Solomon, director of The Witness.

SOLOMON: Moseley was in another part of Queens in the middle of day and was stealing the T.V. from an individual’s apartment. And as he went back inside, a neighbor noticed Moseley and knew that the neighbor hadn’t given anyone permission to remove things from their house. So he confronted Moseley. And the neighbor chased Moseley and pinned Moseley until the police came. So the ultimate act of a Good Samaritan — and the irony is, the sort of story that we only associate with bad Samaritans had a Good Samaritan who led to the apprehension of Moseley.

The moral of the story, I guess, is to always be careful of what you think you know.

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Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Stephanie Tam. Special thanks to James Solomon for letting us use clips from his documentary, The Witness; thanks also to Andy Lanset, New York Public Radio’s director of Archives. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Zack Lapinski, Matt Hickey, and Corinne Wallace; we had help this week from David Herman and Dan Dzula. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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