For whom the cell tolls

Q: I’m addicted to my phone -- Twitter, Instagram, news, texts… you name it. My girlfriend feels disrespected and unheard when I look at it while she’s talking, but I can’t seem to stop. Please help me out before I lose the woman I love! 

— Addicted

A: If your smartphone were actually smart, it would ping you to listen to your girlfriend before she’s your ex-girlfriend trash-talking you in a bar. 

Instead, smartphones and apps turn us into lab rats ferociously hitting the touch screen for another hit of techno-crack. They do this through what psychologists call “intermittent reinforcement” — “rewards” that come randomly and unpredictably. Checking your phone sometimes “rewards” you with a new message or newsbit -- sometimes (or even often), but not always. When “rewards” come regularly and reliably -- like when a rat pushes a bar and gets a food pellet every time — the rat chills out and only presses when, say, his stomach rings the dinner bell. Unpredictable rewards, on the other hand — only sometimes getting a hit — drive the rats to pump the bar incessantly, sometimes even till the little fellers go claws up. 

However, there is hope for you —- and your relationship — thanks to research on habit formation (by psychologist Phillippa Lally, among others). Repeatedly behaving differently when your girlfriend’s talking to you— by turning your phone totally off and, if possible, relocating it to another room —can eventually change your default behavior from robotically checking your phone to attentiveness to those important to you.

In time, you might expand your attentiveness into other areas of your life. A good test for whether it’s okay to be all up in your phone is swapping in its low-tech counterpart. For example, when the highway patrolman strides over and taps on your car window, is that really the best time to pick up that Stephen King novel and read the end of Chapter 4? 

The customer is always frightened

Your cocktail party conversation shouldn’t translate to “I mean, come on…do I really seem like a danger to myself and society?!”

To calm down so you can talk like a person instead of a scary person, it helps to understand — as I explain in my new “science-help” book, “Unf*ckology” — that “emotions aren’t just thinky things.” They have a basis in the body. For example, in the case of fear, your heart pounds, you breathe faster, and adrenaline surges — whether what you’re afraid of is physical death or just, say, dying onstage while giving a talk — as you watch 43 people simultaneously yawn and pull out their phone.

The human brain is a marvel, but we can take advantage of how it’s also about as easily tricked as my dog. Take that bodily reaction of fear — pounding heart and all — which also happens to be the bodily reaction of being excited. Research by Harvard Business School’s Alison Wood Brooks finds that you can “reappraise” your fear as excitement — by repeatedly saying  aloud to yourself, “I am excited” (to talk with some guy, for example) — and actually shift yourself from a “‘threat’ mind-set” to an “‘opportunity’ mind-set.” 

Also, assuming the current weather isn’t “nuclear holocaust with a chance of rain,” some dude you’re flirting with probably isn’t the last man on the continent. Keeping that in mind, reframe your interaction as a mere opportunity for something to happen with himz — and an opportunity to figure out whether it’s a good idea. 

You do that not by selling yourself like it’s 4:56 p.m. on Sunday at a yard sale but by asking him about himself. Counterintuitively, you’ll probably be at your most attractive by leaving a man guessing about you -- as opposed to leaping to conclusions, like that you were the little girl who beheaded all the other little girls’ Barbies.

Wall of me

Guys love a woman who says yes — until they’re done doing whatever she said yes to. 

It isn’t surprising that you’re inconsistently assertive. There’s this myth of the self as a single, stable entity -- like one of those Easter Island statues (but with lip gloss and an iPhone). However, evolutionary psychologist Lee A. Kirkpatrick and his colleagues find that our self-evaluations (and the behavior that follows) evolved to be “domain-specific” — different in different areas of our lives. 

“Situational variables” matter — like the value to us of a potential relationship. So you might march around like some warrior princess of the work world yet want a boyfriend so badly that you show guys you’re dating that there’s no amount of backward that’s too far for you to bend over. 

The good news is, your emotions are not your factory foreman. You will not be fired and end up sleeping on cardboard in a doorway if you refuse to obey them. Reflect on possible boundary-challenging scenarios and preplan what you’ll say — and then just say it. State your limits, despite any inner squeals of protest from your fears (those jerks). Expect this to feel uncomfortable, but do it anyway. In time, you should see that it’s self-respect, not compliance, that earns you respect from others — leading them to want you for more than…um…temporary erection relief.

A brief history of tame

Where you go wrong is in taking the hesitant approach to asking a woman out — waiting for her to give you some unambiguous indication of interest (ideally, in large red letters on a lighted billboard pulled by a pair of rented elephants). 

That said, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. The psychological operating system now driving you (and all of us) evolved to solve ancestral mating and survival problems, and what was adaptive back then can be maladaptive today.

Take how we evolved to be deeply concerned about safeguarding our reputation. Reputation is essentially our social report card — others’ evaluation of the sort of person we are. It matters today, of course, but not in the life-or-death way it often did in an ancestral environment, where — per anthropologist Irven DeVore’s estimate —  many people were with the same band of about 25 others for much of their life. Back then, if a guy got snubbed by a girl, it would be front-cave news; everybody would know and be laughing behind his back in short order.

Flash-forward to today. You’re in a bar. Some woman you hit on spurns you. Well, that blows —- and more so if there are witnesses. But there are countless other bars — which means you can erase the embarrassing stain on your social rap sheet simply by trotting down the block to the next happy hour. 

Ultimately, recognizing the mismatch between our evolved emotions and modern life helps you understand when the emotions driving you are counterproductively outdated — and basically stupid. In short, assuming that a woman you’re chatting up isn’t giving you a hate glare, ask her out. If she isn’t interested, she’ll let you know —  either right then, with some brushoff like “Actually, I have a boyfriend…” or later, when you phone her and hear: “Home Depot, lumber department. How may I direct your call?” 

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(c.) 2018, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA  90405, or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (advicegoddess.com). Weekly radio show: blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon