Shankar Vedantam
Appearances
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. More than five decades ago, an iconic scene in an iconic movie damaged the way millions of people thought about the art of negotiations. In The Godfather, Marlon Brando, playing the role of mafia boss Vito Corleone, is approached by his godson, Johnny Fontaine.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So I understand that in year three, he comes back to the draft again. This time he's chosen as the 374th pick by the Tampa Bay team. And now he's offered less than $100,000. Now, of course, you know, he'd been previously offered, you know, three plus million dollars and then one plus million dollars and now $100,000. And each time he says, you know, how can I be offered so much less than my value?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
He becomes the longest holdout in the history of Major League Baseball.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So yeah, by the year 2009, he's working in the tire department of the local Costco, earning $11.50 an hour. And of course, now that decision looks really foolish. But it's not just the initial contracts that he passed up on. Presumably, if he had played for these teams and had become a star... You know, there would have been future contracts that could have also been lucrative.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
There could have been a future career in coaching and scouting and broadcasting. There's so many ways in which, you know, his overconfidence at the front end may have cost him a great deal through the rest of his life.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
The same kind of negotiating mistakes show up in our personal lives. Each partner in a marriage can overestimate the value they bring to the relationship.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
When we head into a negotiation to buy a new car, to get a refund, to figure out how to divide household chores, our focus is usually on getting the other party to agree to our preferred outcome. We focus on all the ways the other side can be obstinate or intransigent. What we don't focus on are our own biases and blind spots.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
Yeah. So with Eugene Caruso and Nick Epley, you've also researched a technique to take the focus off ourselves and onto the other person. Tell me about this work, Max.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
In other words, you're focusing now on the contributions of the other people rather than on your own contributions. Right.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So one way to apportion credit properly is to follow the advice of the philosopher John Rawls. Can you explain what you mean by this, Max?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
At Harvard Business School, behavioral scientist Max Bazerman studies the theory and practice of negotiation. He says understanding those biases and blind spots can help us craft better deals. Max Bazerman, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you, Shankar. Max, I want to start with the story of a man named Robert Campo.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I'm wondering, in the modern world in which we live, Max, there are so many ways in which we now collaborate, not just with people face-to-face who are working down the corridor from us, but people who are working remotely, people who are working in other parts of the world.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I would imagine that the challenge of apportioning credit fairly, of understanding what other people might be contributing, of understanding in a negotiation what somebody else is giving, becomes so much harder now than it was before. Absolutely.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
And how do you fix that? Because, of course, I don't know if we're going to go back to a world where all of the negotiations are always going to be face to face. I mean, we are in a world now where, for better or worse, we are stuck with, you know, virtual communications and handoffs that can span many, many time zones.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
In 1987, he was featured in Fortune's 50 Most Interesting Business People. He was a real estate developer from Canada, but I understand he had a burning ambition to be more than a real estate developer from Canada?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I want to play you a clip from the television show, The Office. In this clip, Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, has quit his job as the manager of a paper supply company and started a rival firm. Michael and his business partner are now negotiating with the chief financial officer of his former company about selling their startup.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I mean, in some ways, Max, this is comedy, of course, but all of us do this in real life. We simply don't pay attention to what's important to the other side in a negotiation.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I mean, so much of this comes down to how we are anchored in our own minds, Max. So much of what we've been talking about here comes down to the problem of egocentrism. We are seeing things from our perspective. We are seeing things from a narrow perspective. We're not able to get out of our own headspace. We seek confirming evidence to back up what we previously thought.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
We don't go out and seek more information from the people we are negotiating with. All of these are ways in which we are trapped inside our own heads.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I understand that over the years you have fielded many requests for negotiation advice and you regularly receive what you have termed the Sunday night real estate call. What is this call, Max?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I understand that some of this was not just about his business interests. He also wanted to be a somebody. He wanted to be invited to the right parties. And so part of his explorations of acquisitions was connected to him wanting to be a mover and a shaker.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So in other words, you say that the most important rule in real estate is to fall in love with three, not with one. That's right.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
When we come back, when to stick to our guns and when to fold. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I'm Shankar Vedanta. We've all seen the movies of cool negotiators who bluff their way into amazing deals. By exuding overconfidence and charisma, they get their opponents to fold. Real life, of course, is not the movies. The people sitting across from you at work or at the kitchen table are unlikely to be overwhelmed by your charisma and overconfidence.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
In fact, they've watched the same movies you've watched. They may also falsely believe that you'll fold if they just push you hard enough. Max Bazerman is a social scientist at Harvard Business School.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
He is the author of several books about negotiation, including Negotiating Rationally, Negotiation Genius, How to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Brilliant Results at the Bargaining Table and Beyond, and most recently, Negotiation, The Game Has Changed. Max sometimes advises people who are confronting a negotiation to ask themselves an unusual question.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
How would I feel if the other side instantly accepted my offer?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So Robert Campo was a very colorful character. I want to play you a clip featuring the financial reporter John Rothschild, who wrote a book about him. The reporter is talking with public radio host Terry Gross about what happened when bankers trying to execute a deal for Robert Campo once tried to contact him.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
What I love about the question, will I be happy if my offer is accepted quickly, is that by asking ourselves the question, it's a way of actually pointing out to ourselves, we might not know the terrain on which we're standing. And therefore, if this offer was accepted quickly, it would actually tell me that, in fact, I do not know the terrain on which I'm standing.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I should actually educate myself. And so the question is really a disguised way of telling me, go out and do more research, go out and learn some more.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
Max says that he is often surprised by how little research people do before going into a negotiation.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
The younger man wants a part in a movie, but a big-shot Hollywood executive refuses to give it to him. The mafia leader assures his godson that he will get the role. How? Vito Corleone says of the Hollywood exec, I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. By the standards of 1972, what follows is violent and gory.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
I want to go back to Bangkok, Thailand for a second. As you mentioned, Max, you used to teach the art of negotiation to students there. But I understand that your students would challenge you on your own negotiation skills when it came to hiring taxicabs?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
But it is such a powerful story because I think it shows how negotiations, I think, have a way of sucking us in. And then we're almost enmeshed in the narrative of the negotiation that we lose track of the bigger picture.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So presumably between shots of freshly squeezed orange juice, Robert Campo decides he wants to acquire a company called Federated. It's the parent company of the celebrated department store Bloomingdale's, as well as other merchandise stores and supermarkets. There's only one problem. He's bidding against Macy's, which also wants to buy Federated.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
In our companion story to this episode, available exclusively to subscribers to Hidden Brain Plus, we explore what Max calls integrative bargaining, negotiating in a way that tries to leave both parties better off. Max says a crucial idea in getting to win-win outcomes is to negotiate multiple issues at the same time instead of going after them one at a time, as many of us are prone to do.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
We also examine the single biggest psychological obstacle to coming up with win-win outcomes. It has to do with a certain mindset that is extremely common. Mack says fixing this one error can save companies and litigants lots of money and save relationships much grief and heartache.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
If you're not yet a subscriber, please visit support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co slash hiddenbrain if you're using an Apple device. You can get a free seven-day trial in both places. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Max Bazerman is a social scientist at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Negotiation, The Game Has Changed.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
Max, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thank you so much. Use the subject line, Negotiation. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
We end today with a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by Discover. Our story comes from Paul Cotter. More than 40 years ago, when Paul's father was in his early 50s, he began to show signs of early onset Alzheimer's disease. But no one suspected cognitive decline, and his father lost job after job.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
Paul Cotter of Charlotte, North Carolina. This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by Discover. Discover believes everyone deserves to feel special and celebrates those who exhibit this spirit in their communities. I'm a longstanding card member myself. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So I want to just zero in for a second on what happened in March 1988. It looked like Macy's was going to win the bidding war with an outlandish number. The market value of Federated was about $3 billion, but the bidding war had taken the price past $7 billion. I understand Robert Campo approached Macy's with a deal.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
But he won. It sounds like he won the deal.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So more recently, Max, something along the same lines happened between Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines, and JetBlue Airlines. Can you tell me that story? Sure.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
Suffice it to say, the Mafia Don scares the Hollywood executive into giving his godson the role. For decades now, that memorable line, I'll make him an offer he can't refuse, has helped inform how millions of people think they can get their way in negotiations. If you want a raise, or a business deal, or an agreement to end a war, you do it by arm-twisting.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
When companies and individuals go into a negotiation, it's easy to get swept up in the desire to win at all costs. In Robert Campo's case, he saw himself as going up against the titans of industry. But in the end, his biggest enemy wasn't Macy's or the people sitting across from him at the negotiating table. Robert Campo's biggest enemy was Robert Campo himself.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
When we come back, how we self-sabotage our negotiations and how we can do better. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
When most of us think of a negotiation, we focus on the people we are negotiating with. We ask ourselves what's going on in their minds and how we can take advantage of their flaws and foibles. Most of us don't ask ourselves about the flaws and foibles in our own minds. We don't ask how we might be making systematic mistakes as we negotiate. It turns out this is a huge blind spot.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
At Harvard Business School, negotiation expert Max Bazerman has studied the many ways negotiators foil themselves. Max, you've written about the career of a very promising baseball player named Matthew Harrington. In the year 2000, he was profiled in USA Today and Baseball America. How did those articles describe him?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So he entered the draft in the year 2000, and he signed up with a major agent named Tommy Tanzer. What were the discussions before the draft happened in terms of how he was going to perform and what kind of income he could expect to receive once the draft was done, Max?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
If you can make me hurt badly enough, I'll give you what you want. Today on the show, we explore the science of negotiation. What researchers have found about the art of crafting a good deal is more nuanced and more uplifting than the lessons of mafia movies. How to become a better negotiator, this week on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So the agent tells Matthew Harrington that any team that signs him would have to offer a $4.95 million first-year signing bonus. Now, this was an extreme offer at the time. The Colorado Rockies, who chose Harrington as the seventh pick in the draft, actually made a number of fairly compelling offers, including $5.3 million over eight years or $3.7 million without a long-term commitment.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
But the agent and the family and the young man declined.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
So after holding out this first year, he gets a second shot at the big leagues the following year. Matthew Harrington switched agents and entered the Major League Baseball draft again. This time, the team from San Diego chooses him as the 58th overall selection. But the final offer they make is $1.25 million over four years with a $300,000 signing bonus.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator
Now, that's significantly less than what the Colorado team offered him a year earlier. And it's also less than what you know, Tommy Tanzer had promised that he would get when he became, you know, this baseball star. So what happens in year two?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. There's an old saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Nothing is certain in life except for death and taxes. But death and taxes are not the only guarantees. If we live long enough, all of us will experience great setbacks, crises that seem insurmountable, challenges that seem far bigger than we are.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I understand that to lift their mood, he would have them sing together to actually feel like they were a team doing something together.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
He had the boys set an alarm for six o'clock every morning. And I'm wondering why he did this. Day and night must have made no difference in the darkness of the cave.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I understand that he had some of the stronger members of the team look out for weaker members of the team. So he was paying attention to people who might have needed a little extra help.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
At Columbia University, psychologist Adam Galinsky has studied the science of decision-making and leadership, what it takes to rise to the occasion and what happens in our minds when we don't. Adam Galinsky, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank you so much.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So on the 10th day, the batteries of the boys' flashlights began to run out, and Coach Eck told the boys to turn off the flashlights and be with one another in the dark. It was then that they heard something, Adam. What did they hear?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So when the divers found the boys, they had been searching for them for over a week, and everyone had been expecting the worst. The parents of the boys were already grieving. But Adam, you say the divers were shocked when they saw the boys' demeanor. How so?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Adam, in January 2012, an Italian cruise ship carrying over 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew members was on a seven-day voyage in the Mediterranean when it began to veer close to shore. It was unclear why this was happening, but eventually the ship, which was named the Costa Concordia, hit a reef. How deep was the reef and what happened to the ship, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So an army of people soon begins to extract the boys from the cave, and divers are relaying messages from each team member to their parents. What did Coach Eck tell the parents to make sure the parents were doing okay as well during this time?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So this is a remarkable story, Adam. And of course, the story could easily have ended in tragedy. If the storm were a little worse, maybe they weren't able to climb to safety. So lots of factors could have turned this into a complete disaster. But you say there are several things that Coach Egg did right during that time that helped the situation.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
And I want you to walk me through some of the choices he made and what we can learn from them. First of all, you say he was very careful about the words he used as he was talking to the boys. How so?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So you've done some research looking at how hope can be a powerful motivator in times of crisis. You did some work with Thomas Musweiler of the London Business School. Tell me about this research and what you found, Adam.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So Kochek also helped the boys focus on a shared goal. So rather than passively wait to be rescued, he told the boys that they had to dig their way out. Now, it well may have been impossible to do this. We actually don't know how much they would have had to dig or how far they would have had to dig to break through the roof into this, you know, this paradise of orange fields.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
But having a task to do in common and feeling like they were in it together, that in itself was psychologically very helpful.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Now, you can see, of course, that Coach Eck was just a remarkable human being. He happened to be someone with these superhuman capacities. But in interviews afterwards, he credits his own training as a Buddhist monk to what happened in the cave. Tell me a little bit about that training. What happened during his own childhood that prompted him to get trained as a monk?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I'm assuming that water must have flooded the generators and engines. The ship must have come to a standstill almost right away.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Now, of course, all of us are not monks, and all of us have not had practice for nine years going with one meal a day. But that's not really the point of the story. The point is when we're going through challenging times, we can all draw from our past experiences to try and get through what we're going through. Talk about a study that you conducted with Yoris Lammers.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
You had volunteers apply for a job interview, come into the lab, and then do a warm-up task. What was this warm-up task, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So that's terrifying, Adam. But I'm guessing that when something like this happens, it's the job of the captain to take immediate action and begin rescuing passengers. Did that happen?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So it's not just in some ways drawing from your experience that can make you more prepared. It's almost recalling those moments that actually give you the motivation we need to do difficult things.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So what is it about recalling a time when we were powerful or recalling a time when we felt powerless? Why does that change what we do in the present, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Most of us will never be faced with the terrifying challenge of rescuing a group of children from a cave. But in our own lives, we all encounter challenges, sometimes big, sometimes small. A sense of hope and purpose can motivate us to keep going when times get tough, and recalling prior times when we were brave can help us to act more courageously.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
When we come back, what happens when we are called to address a crisis and we have only seconds to act? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. It's easy to believe that courageous leaders are born courageous. They seem to embody the natural traits of heroism. In a crisis, they are cool, calm, and collected.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Adam Galinsky is the author of Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. He says that influential leaders have skills that can be learned and improved with practice. Adam, I want to talk about a woman named Tammy Jo Schultz. She was a pilot for Southwest Airlines. And in April 2018, she was flying a plane from New York to Dallas when suddenly she felt an enormous jolt.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
How did Tammy Jo Schultz describe what happened that day?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Wow. So the debris had smashed through the cabin. I'm imagining it must have been chaos back in the cabin.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So from the passenger's perspective in the cabin, the plane is free-falling, total chaos. People thought they were going to die. But I want to play you a clip of the conversation between Tammy Jo Schultz and an air traffic controller.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So she seems remarkably calm, Adam. Meanwhile, back in the cabin, people are sending goodbye messages to their loved ones?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So as the plane heads to Philadelphia, Tammy Jo Schultz takes control of the plane. What happens as they're coming in to land, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I understand that she comes in to land, but even as she's landing, she has the presence of mind to park right next to the fire trucks that are on the tarmac?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So when rescue efforts finally started almost an hour or maybe more than an hour after the ship first hit the reef, did Captain Francesco Schettino supervise and help passengers get off the ship?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I understand that after they got on the ground, she walked back into the cabin and actually tried to look each person in the eye.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
We talked earlier about how Captain Francesco Schettino panicked when his cruise ship was sinking. By contrast, Tammy Jo Schultz really kept her head during the crisis, Adam.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
You told me earlier in the story of Coach Eck that in some ways what leaders do is magnified. So when they are upset, it has an effect on the people who are watching and observing them. When they are cheerful and optimistic, that has an effect on the people who are observing them. Here, perhaps Tammy Jo Schultz is always calm and always collected.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
But as a leader here, I think it was the case that her calmness and courage under pressure, those were traits or behaviors that became infectious.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So there's something very interesting here, Adam. When many of us think of power, we think of, you know, the iron fist of lacking emotion, being stern, being authoritarian. But in all the examples of powerful leaders who were successful that we've talked about today, there also seems to be a common thread of warmth and kindness. Can you talk about that?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
It seems that almost impossible, but in a moment of crisis, they were not just being competent, but they were genuinely caring about what was happening to the people around them.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Adam calls leaders who have sharp elbows and confrontational styles wire mesh leaders. And he calls people like Tammy Jo Schultz and Coach Eck terrycloth leaders. The terms come from a series of experiments in the 1950s showing animals gravitate to objects that feel warm and inviting. As followers, he says, we can instantly tell when we are being led by a wire mesh leader or a terrycloth leader.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So Adam, after doing this work, do you feel like you are more of a terrycloth leader when it comes to your own life?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So let me just try and catch up with what's happening here. The ship has hit this reef. There's a gigantic hole in the ship. Water is flooding in. The passengers are fearing for their life. And the captain, instead of staying on board and helping the passengers, has himself gotten off the ship onto a lifeboat, but claims he did so accidentally.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
When we see others go through natural disasters or terrible illnesses, or the emotional upheavals that come from child custody battles or losing a livelihood, we think, how terrible for them. I'm so glad this didn't happen to me. But what we fail to see in these moments is that all of us are going to experience our own versions of these emergencies and tragedies.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Adam Galinsky is the author of Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. In my conversation with Adam, we discussed another powerful idea that is a core element of leadership in times of crisis. Leading is not about doing everything yourself. It's about enabling others.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
In our companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we explore how one specific superpower can transform the art of leadership. That episode, titled The Power of Perspective, is available right now to subscribers of Hidden Brain Plus. This is a particularly good time to give our podcast subscription a try. We're extending our standard seven-day trial period for listeners on Apple Podcasts.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Sign up in January, and you'll get 30 free days to try it out. You can sample Hidden Brain Plus by going to apple.co slash hiddenbrain and click try free. Again, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain and click try free. Adam Galinsky, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Do you have follow-up questions for Adam Galinsky about leading through a crisis? If you'd be comfortable sharing those questions with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone. Three minutes is plenty. Then email the file to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line leadership. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Next week in our Wellness 2.0 series, how to figure out what you want from your life.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I understand that he had a conversation with a member of the Coast Guard while sitting in the lifeboat. How did that conversation unfold?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Is it true that Schettino somehow in the middle of all of this catastrophe had managed to change out of his uniform and was wearing something different when he got into the lifeboat?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So the cruise ship hits a reef. It's wrecked. It starts to sink. The captain essentially abandons ship. What happens to the passengers on board that day, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
The captain was brought to trial. He was asked why he steered his ship so close to shore in the first place.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Was Francesco Schettino held to account after the tragedy?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Having to deal with crises is an occupational hazard of being alive. What do we do in such moments? How do our minds respond when faced with catastrophe? And can we better prepare ourselves for their inevitable arrival? Today on the show and in a companion piece on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine the psychology of battling a crisis. It's part of our series Wellness 2.0.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
The story of Captain Francesco Schettino is an unsettling one. Not only because of the tragedy that resulted from one man's poor judgment, cowardice, and selfishness, but also because of the uncomfortable questions it raises. Would you have responded differently in this scenario? After the ship started to sink, would you have done the brave thing?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
All of us would like to believe that we would act courageously in the face of danger. But in reality, we also know we are human. We too are prone to cowardice and selfishness. When we come back, why we crack in times of crisis and what we can learn from those who rise to the occasion. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
In 2012, a cruise ship carrying thousands of passengers sank off the western coast of Italy, claiming the lives of 32 people on board. It wasn't just a tragedy, but a preventable tragedy. Captain Francesco Schettino had no business steering the ship over a shallow reef, and his delay and inaction after the disaster cost many lives. Psychologist Adam Galinsky studies the science of leadership.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
He says the world is full of infuriating leaders like Francesco Schettino, but there are also great ones. These inspiring leaders, as he calls them, can teach us a lot about how to endure in times of crisis. Adam, let's talk a moment about some of the things that Francesco Schettino did wrong that day.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Yes, he should not have steered his ship so close to shore, but can you lay out some of the psychological mistakes he made after the ship hit the reef?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
But besides not taking responsibility for what happened, I understand he even tried to pass the buck.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
Adam, let's take a look at a very different kind of leadership. In June 2018, 12 teenage boys on a soccer team in Thailand were on a hike with their coach. The coach was a 25-year-old man named Ekapol Chantawong. commonly called Coach Eck. The team was exploring a cave. And at one point, they decided to turn back.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
But what they didn't know was that weather conditions outside the cave had changed dramatically. Can you paint me a picture of what happened, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
What happens in our minds when we face danger and what we can learn from those who prove steadfast in such moments? Techniques and strategies for responding better when life throws us crises, curveballs, and catastrophes. This week on Hidden Brain. We are all called upon from time to time to do hard and sometimes seemingly impossible things. Do we rise to the occasion or do we fall short?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So as even more water surged into the cave, the boys were forced to go deeper into the cave to get shelter. Were they able to find it, Adam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
I'm assuming they must have then retreated even deeper into the cave now as they tried to escape the water.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion
So this is completely terrifying, Adam. I can only imagine how scared the boys must have been. What did Coach Eck have the boys do as they were perched on this ledge?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So you've run multiple studies that explore the power of what Jerry did that day on the spacecraft. He talked to himself. He coached himself through the crisis. You've looked at something called distanced self-talk. What is this, Ethan, and what do you find?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Ethan says that one of his favorite examples of someone using this technique can be heard in a clip of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I understand the tennis star Novak Djokovic also knows about this technique. Describe how he used it at Wimbledon in 2022.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Love pulls us toward mates, family and friends. But if emotions are so useful, why do they so often seem to get us in trouble? Why do we lose our cool and yell at our kids or mope around for weeks following a professional disappointment? Why do we lie awake at night worrying about some imagined catastrophe?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
For those of us who speak more than one language, Ethan, you say that being bilingual offers an unusual way to get some distance from our emotions. How so?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
One idea that's related to the concept of emotional distancing has to do with something that is called expressive writing. We've touched on this previously on the show. What is expressive writing, Ethan, and what do we know about its power to help us with emotion regulation?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So some time ago, you accidentally stumbled on another powerful emotion regulation strategy. Your daughter was in a bad mood and you were on your way to a soccer game together. Paint me a picture of what happened that day, Ethan.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
How is it we get carried away when everyone around us is losing their heads and lose ours too? Most important of all, when we do get swept away by our emotions, how should we get back on track? Today on the show, we look at the growing and fascinating science of managing our emotions. What scientists call emotion regulation turns out to be one of the most important life skills we can possess.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So you went on to more broadly study the use of senses in emotion regulation, not just sounds, but also taste and sight and smell?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
This skill is essential in dealing with setbacks, in balancing risks and rewards, in maintaining successful relationships. Harnessing our feelings, this week on Hidden Brain. All of us can recall moments when we acted in ways that made us feel ashamed afterwards.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
When it comes to emotion regulation, it turns out there is no one way to do it that works for everyone. Different people find different techniques effective. In fact, what works for you one day might not work for you the next day. When we come back, why trying lots of different emotion regulation techniques is a good idea and a look at some of the more surprising ways to harness our feelings.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I'm Shankar Vedanta. There are times when we feel a surge of emotion in the moment, and we have to find ways to regulate our feelings in order to function effectively. But there are other times when we do just fine in the moment, but can't stop intrusive thoughts from entering our heads in the weeks and months afterwards. Grief can do this to people, so can worry.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Psychologist Ethan Cross is the author of Shift, Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You. Ethan, you've written about the experience of a woman you call Louisa who dealt with a very scary situation involving her little daughter. Tell me what happened.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
When we look back at these moments with a clear head, we cannot for the life of us understand why we got so angry or greedy or frightened. At the University of Michigan, psychologist Ethan Cross studies the science of emotions and techniques to help us manage them. Ethan Cross, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Now, some people might say that Louisa was distracting herself, Ethan. Is that right? Is that healthy?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So growing up, Ethan, you were able to observe the strategy of selective avoidance in someone who was very close to you. How did your grandmother handle the devastating experiences she had been through as a younger person?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Ethan, when you were growing up, your dad was someone who would regularly sit in the lotus position and practice meditation. He was a calm, patient, and sensitive man. But there was one situation that would transform him into someone completely different. What was that situation?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So it seems like what she was doing was compartmentalizing her emotions. She was saying that now is a time to basically engage in them, soak in them, share them. And there are other times when I'm going to hold it in.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Hmm. Another approach to emotion that psychologists and ordinary people have often assumed is unhealthy is what we might call acting out, letting loose with behavior that's unusual or unconventional. You cite the story of a famous Chicago athlete who went to some lengths to act out, even as his team was on the pinnacle of accomplishing great feats. Tell me that story, Ethan.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Talk about why using a variety of emotion regulation strategies might be better than using only one or two. Why would this be the case, Ethan?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I'm wondering if this is something that you yourself consciously do, Ethan. Do you find yourself reaching for different tools in the toolkits to regulate your own emotions?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
When we come back, an emotion regulation strategy to deploy when all the others fail. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Some months ago, I brought seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain to live stage performances in San Francisco and Seattle. The evenings were electric. We got so much positive feedback from those two sold-out shows that we've decided to launch a tour to more than a dozen cities in the coming months.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Many of us dream of fame and success. We imagine that when we have those things, our lives will be happy and fulfilled. Psychologist Ethan Cross tells the story of a person who stumbled into fame and success and found they didn't have the effects on her emotions that she expected. Ethan, some time ago, we featured the Yale psychologist Lori Santos on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
She talked about some of her early research on animal behavior. We published an episode about her work. Listeners who are interested can go to hiddenbrain.org and look up the episode titled The Monkey Marketplace. This was in 2019. What I wasn't aware of, Ethan, is that Lori's life had recently been upended. What happened?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Yeah. I mean, he was almost playing a cop without wearing a uniform, except he wasn't tailing people and getting them to slow down. He was pulling in front of them and hitting the brakes.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
At one point, Lori was recording a podcast episode. And again, she's like this hamster, you know, juggling different things and trying to keep all the different balls in the air. And during this podcast interview, she finds that she has basically been pronouncing a guest's name wrong throughout the recording. What happens, Ethan?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
You also tell the story about a time when she received a relatively benign request from a student who was looking for help in terms of a dental emergency. Can you tell me that story, Ethan?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So she's a psychologist. She's a researcher. She had tried lots of things. She had talked to people. She was seeing a therapist. She had tried journaling. None of these techniques had worked. So what did she do?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So as you became a teenager, you yourself experienced your own extremes of emotion. You were unflappable on the soccer field, for example, but other situations would tie you up in knots?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I'll be coming to Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. To snap up your tickets, please go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. You can also sign up to say hello and get a photo with me. In some places, you can sign up for an intimate chat with me and a handful of other fans.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I understand that Laurie, stepping away from the stresses of her life in New Haven, she found this really restorative. She ended up giving up several of the things that she was doing. She surrendered some of her responsibilities, decisions that might have been much harder to make if she was still in New Haven.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Ethan, you recently confronted a situation that called for all the emotion regulation skills you could muster. It began early one morning when your phone buzzed. Paint me a picture of what happened.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Ethan Cross is a psychologist at the University of Michigan. He's the author of Shift, Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You. Ethan, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So you became a researcher who studies emotions and emotion regulation. But even all of that expertise went out the window on one occasion at the airport when you felt someone was behaving out of line. Paint me a picture of what happened, Ethan.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So a few years ago, millions of people were watching the Academy Awards. The host, Chris Rock, made a joke that upset the actor, Will Smith. For the handful of people on the planet who don't know, can you recount what happened next, Ethan?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I mean, Will Smith ended up winning the Oscar for Best Actor a few minutes after this incident, and it was presumably one of the most important highlights of his life. But what he had done to Chris Rock seconds earlier upstaged this important moment.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I'd love to see you there. Again, go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. Okay, on to today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The 19th century naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin is best known for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. He described the theory in his book On the Origin of Species, one of the most important publications in the history of science.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
So Ethan, emotions are supposed to be really valuable to us. They're supposed to provide us with useful signals about how to act in the world. So why do they sometimes cause us to say and do things that we will come to regret?
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
When we come back, when emotions go astray, insights into how to reel them back in. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Think back to moments in your life when your emotions carried you away. Perhaps you lost your temper over a disputed parking spot. Maybe a colleague set you off at work, or a small dispute with a partner ended up with shouting and tears. Often, when we look back on these moments, we cannot for the life of us understand how we could have been so short-sighted.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Sometimes, the consequences of our words and actions stay with us for years, even lifetimes. Psychologist Ethan Cross studies our emotions and how they often get the better of us. He's thought a lot about how we can get a handle on our feelings.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Ethan, you tell the remarkable story of an astronaut who had to confront a runaway train of his own emotions in one of the most dangerous situations possible. Set the scene. Tell me his story.
Hidden Brain
How to Harness Your Feelings
Less well known, but also scientifically important, was the biologist's research on emotions. Charles Darwin's view, which has since been adopted by contemporary scientists of emotion, is that our feelings are adaptations that help us survive and thrive in a complex world. Fear guides us to avoid things that can do us harm. Anger girds us for battle and conflict.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Some years ago, a homeless woman was being discharged at a Philadelphia hospital. On her way out, nurses noticed the woman was wearing flip-flops. It was January, and January's in Philadelphia can get very cold. Nursing director Julie Munger had an idea.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Being a great detective or dancer or computer programmer involves being skilled at human relationships. Alison started to call this work of seeing and hearing other people connective labor.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Yeah. I mean, on the surface, you know, we might say we are sending a kid to a school because we want the kid to learn, you know, writing or algebra. We go to a doctor because we want to get a treatment for an illness.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
But what you're saying is that underlying those things actually happening, underlying someone learning algebra, underlying someone listening to their doctor involves this system of trust and feeling seen. And if you're not, if you don't experience that, you're much less likely to say, I want to play along.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Connective labor can often be invisible, but when people don't have the skill to see and hear those around them, the lack of this invisible thing, it suddenly becomes very visible. Allison says connective labor is like engine grease. When you don't have it, the engine might still run, but you're going to hear some screeching sounds.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I love the analogy to engine grease because it truly is at some level it's invisible, but yet when it's not there, you can see the results very plainly.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I think there's an assumption that the work of seeing and caring for people is largely women's work. You say that this assumption leads us to overlook the connective labor that many men perform, both in the workplace and in communities?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
In the coming weeks, we will look at the art of negotiation and ways in which we can get along better with the people in our lives. When boarding a train or subway or going shopping at the mall, we may take in hundreds of people at a glance. On a Zoom call for work, the faces of our coworkers fit into a grid.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
So when you started talking about connective labor in public, did people resonate with that idea? Did people recognize what that was, Alison?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
So when you started talking about connective labor in talks about your research with people, people would recognize that this was an important part of what it is that they were doing. But you say that they used the word magic to describe the power of connection, that they themselves had seen firsthand that when they connected with other people, magical things seemed to happen.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I mean, I think we've all been in workplaces where, you know, perhaps, you know, one boss is replaced by another boss and the new person basically, you know, really has a human touch to them. And within, you know, days or weeks sometimes, you know, a very toxic environment can be transformed and people are suddenly working together and they're cooperating together.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
And it does feel, you know, quite magical that something could have happened that quickly.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
You've tried to pinpoint the benefits of connection in different domains. One study by a group of researchers in Finland found that this type of connection helps us manage our emotions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
In your own research, you followed a chaplain. You call her Erin as she went about her rounds at a hospital. And she recounted an incident where she helped a patient regulate some very intense emotions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Even when we're spending time with close friends and family, our familiarity can get in the way of really seeing the person in front of us. Alison Pugh is a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University. She studies how we relate to one another and how this has changed over time. Alison Pugh, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank you so much for having me.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
And of course, the fact that she was sitting with him and holding his hand, it doesn't take away or change any of the physical things that he's going through. But some of what he's going through is not just physical. He's also experiencing emotional pain. And presumably, Erin was able to reduce some of that pain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
A feeling of connection might also help us learn new things. What have researchers discovered about the effects of being seen and heard for students, Alison?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
So this type of emotional connection also seems to be related to physical health. We touched on this a little bit earlier in our conversation, Alison. What is the effect on patients of feeling seen and heard by their doctors?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Alison, growing up, you were the youngest of five children. You have a story about the first new bathing suit you ever owned. Can you tell me that story?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Wow. So I mean, it has sort of actual physical consequences here, not just psychological consequences.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
You know, an experience of being seen by a chaplain or a teacher or a doctor can be quite intense. But research has also found that, you know, being seen by a passing acquaintance can also make a difference to our well-being. We featured Gillian Sandstrom and Liz Dunn on Hidden Brain before.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Tell me about some of their work looking at the effects of even casual acquaintances noticing us as we go through our day.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
You know, the study and its two conditions point to one reason many of us don't stop to see one another. And that's because many of us, in fact, are frenetically busy and harried as we move through the day. And it's hard to notice the person in front of you when you feel like you have to be in two places at the same time.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I mean, it is the case that sometimes when we see people who are masters of communication, people who are just really good and fun to be around, they often have an unhurried air about them. And sometimes these are very busy people, but they somehow are able to communicate a sense that they're not in a rush.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I, I, I've had relatives like this as well who are often perennially late, but they're often people who are more than happy to have a conversation. And when they ask someone, how are you? And the person actually gives you a five minute answer, they actually sit and listen and they will ask follow up questions. And then it's not surprising that they don't show up on time to wherever they're going.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Seeing others for who they truly are has many benefits, for their emotions, for their health, for their learning. It also has benefits for us, and yet many of us feel it occurs too infrequently in our harried world. When we come back, how to actually see another person and the surprising transformations this can produce in them and in us. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Alison Pugh is a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University. She's the author of The Last Human Job, the work of connecting in a disconnected world. Alison says it's possible for people to learn to get better at seeing other people. In fact, she teaches this skill to students.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
It's also the case that sometimes as people talk, we have very quick interpretations of what it is that they're saying, and sometimes we have very quick reactions to what they're saying. Talk a moment about the importance of trying to set those things aside as well, setting aside our assumptions and expectations in order to be truly good listeners and how difficult that can be to do.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
The bathing suit story is one of many incidents where Allison remembers she was seen as one kid in a crowd. It wasn't about being treated badly. It was about being ignored. Another time, Allison remembers coming home in middle school, upset because some boys in her school were bothering her. She told her mother what had happened.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Her daughter was a basketball player and had left a bunch of old sneakers in the trunk of Julie's car. Would one of those pairs fit the homeless woman? They went out and took a look, but the shoes were all a size and a half too small for the woman's feet. That's when, Julie told a reporter from WTXF-TV, things took an unexpected turn.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
In some ways, being able to get one level below what they're saying, to sort of say, I can recognize that you're feeling pride, or I can recognize that you're feeling sad, that might be even more effective than just simply repeating back to people, here's what I'm hearing you say, or repeating back their words to them, because it really shows that you have actually taken in what they've said, you've understood it, and you're actually trying to give the essence of it back to them.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
You see, Alison, that if we happen to not see someone accurately, if we mis-see someone, this can itself be an opportunity. If we stop to show the other person that we really do want to see them and to correct ourselves. You interviewed a therapist whom you call Sarah, who told you that an episode of mis-seeing was actually crucial to her patient's progress. Can you tell me that story?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
So, Alison, we've seen how being seen and heard can be powerfully transformative to the people who are being seen and heard. But you also are finding that the act of seeing and hearing others can be powerfully transformative for us. You tell the story of a nurse practitioner whom you call Birdie. Can you tell me her story, Alison?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
You know, I'm reminded of this news story I just saw about Pope Francis. In 2024, he washed and kissed the feet of 12 women who were incarcerated at a prison in Rome. You know, the Pope was in a wheelchair, so the women were sitting on a raised stage, and he was wheeled from one person to the next.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
What was remarkable to me when I watched the video of this event was to see the reaction of the women. I mean, uniformly, they were weeping. And it was clear that no one had put them on a pedestal in a long time. No one had seen them. And so the effects of seeing someone really has transformative effects on both the seer and the person being seen. Exactly.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
In our companion episode, available exclusively to subscribers to Hidden Brain Plus, we look at how powerful forces are getting in the way of us seeing one another as people. These forces are everywhere, and they're systematically making it harder for teachers, doctors, parents, and caregivers to really see and hear the people they are working with.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
If you're using an Apple device, you can go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. You'll get a free seven-day trial in both places, and you'll instantly have access to all our subscriber-only content. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Alison Pugh is a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
She's the author of The Last Human Job, the work of connecting in a disconnected world. Alison, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thank you. If you have a follow-up question for Alison and you'd be willing to share it with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone. Once you've done so, email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, Connection. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Thanks for listening. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
So you felt that you weren't really seen by your mom?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Alison is now a mom of three daughters herself. She remembers one incident when the shoe was on the other foot.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Allison started to notice these moments of unseeing or misseeing as she went about her days. One time, during a visit to a new doctor, her physician did a quick evaluation, saw some elevated numbers, and advised Allison to eat fewer cookies.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Now, Allison happens to love cookies, but she also wanted to tell the doctor, shouldn't you learn more about me and my lifestyle before leaping to a conclusion?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
And I think many people have these experiences, right? You go to the doctor and even if the doctor is very competent, he or she spends all their time staring at a computer screen and asking you questions and glancing at you once every 15 seconds. I think many of us have had experiences like that. And you have the sense, is my doctor actually listening to me or watching me or seeing me or not?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
So as a sociologist, Alison, you've conducted some of your research by carrying out dozens of in-depth interviews. A few years ago, you interviewed a chaplain whom you call Hank. It was a very intense conversation, but at the end of it, he had something to tell you about what the exchange meant to him. Tell me that story.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Julie looked down at her own shoes. They were a size 10. They were also super comfortable and she loved them.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
And this is not true just of Hank, right? You've heard this from other people as well?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Allison started to see that the act of really noticing another person, paying attention to them, being present for them, this was not just something that was nice to have. It was something that people craved. She heard from one doctor who told her that her patients often seem to need this kind of attention more than her medical expertise.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Julie unlaced her shoes and handed them to the other woman. Perhaps you've had experiences like this yourself. Our sister show, My Unsung Hero, often features stories like this where people reach out to help one another in unusual acts of generosity. But the reason these stories stand out is because they're at odds with the way most of us feel treated as we go about our days.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I mean, all these stories in some ways reflect something that is an underlying theme here, Alison, which is that when we are not seen, when we're not heard, you know, we notice it. You know, we bring home a set of rocks and twigs and our mom throws them out and, you know, it feels like a big deal to us, even though it doesn't feel like a big deal to the other person.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
On the other hand, someone spends 10 minutes listening to you and looking you in the eye. It makes a huge difference to us. Talk about just the emotional effect of feeling seen and feeling unseen.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
None of us wants to be just another face in the crowd. All of us want to be seen for the unique individuals we are. And yet, the experience of being seen in this way can be dispiritingly rare. When we come back, the psychological benefits of being seen and why it often doesn't happen. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Alison Pugh is a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University. In the course of conducting detailed interviews with people, she came to see she was performing a sort of therapy. She wasn't trying to be a therapist, but the people she talked with reported the experience of being deeply seen and heard felt therapeutic.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
Alison, as you noticed the effects of people feeling seen, you started to recognize the importance of this in different settings. You noticed this in your kids' schools, in doctors' offices, in community settings. In fact, you started to see this everywhere.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
We don't feel seen and heard. We feel ignored and passed over. This week on Hidden Brain, and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine the reasons behind the growing disconnection in our schools, hospitals, and workplaces, and what we can do about it. It's also the start of a series that has long been a favorite with listeners, Relationships 2.0.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Price of Disconnection
When people sign up to be therapists, they know their job is to listen to other people, to try to really see them. But what Allison noticed was that people who went into lots of other fields were also discovering that an essential component of their jobs was paying close attention to the people around them.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Dance like no one is watching. Sing like you are alone in the shower. Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. Countless aphorisms remind us that as we move through life, we have a choice. We can pretend and disguise who we are, or we can be true to ourselves.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
And that sounds more like the experience you had with the church.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
What do we know, not just in your individual case, but in general, about the effects of inauthenticity on our experience of stress and exhaustion?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
One of the interesting dimensions of inauthenticity is that in the workplace, we often sometimes feel like we cannot be the real us. Social scientists sometimes call this emotional labor. What is the idea of emotional labor, Erica?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Today on the show, and in a companion episode on our subscription feed, Hidden Brain Plus, we explore new psychological research into what happens when we are true to ourselves and when we are not. It's the kickoff episode to a new series we're calling Wellness 2.0. We'll go beyond the angst surrounding New Year's resolutions and answer a deeper question. What does it mean to live well?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
In her 1983 book, The Managed Heart, Commercialization of Human Feeling, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild said that emotional labor is something that is in a variety of different professions. So daycare workers and nursing home attendants might need to suppress their feelings of frustration when the people they are caring for act up.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
You know, a bill collector might need to come across as unforgiving because when he might actually be feeling bad for the person he is talking with. You know, cops might need to come across as tough when they are feeling scared.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
So basically, the idea is that you're not just being hired to do a job, but you're required to manage and produce feelings that you might not actually be feeling, which, of course, is another way of saying you're required to be inauthentic.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
You know, I was at a bar in Chicago a couple of days ago, and there were these two men sitting at the bar who were having a debate with one another about
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
and and the bartender was standing behind the bar and she had this you know this fixed smile on her face and i was wondering what was going through her head because these two guys were really going at it and they were just going on and on and on and she kept this smile on her face and i couldn't help but think that she probably was rolling her eyes on the inside and smiling on the outside
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I understand that early in your career, you worked as a consultant at IBM. And in your first weeks, you got some training that showed you not just what the company expected of you in terms of the work you had to do, but also what they expected of you in terms of your emotions. Tell me a little bit about that, Erica.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Over the next few weeks, we'll talk about how to keep your cool during stressful times and how to rise to the occasion during moments of crisis. We'll also help you figure out what you actually want in life and how to embrace the role that chance plays in shaping who you are. We begin with what it means and what it takes to live an authentic life. How to be yourself, this week on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Yeah. So long as you're carrying your ThinkPad and you're on time, the tattoos don't matter.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
But I am wondering in some ways, Erica, whether some of us feel the need to conceal parts of ourselves. And perhaps this is especially true if you're someone who is breaking a barrier to enter a profession. So a woman working on an oil rig or a man working as a nurse might have to go out of their way to conceal parts of themselves that might play into the stereotypes that others have of them.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
So we've seen how emotional labor can come with feelings of stress and feelings of exhaustion, but there are other costs as well. When people are inauthentic, they seem to be at greater risk of engaging in unethical behavior that can also harm others. Can you tell me about this research, Erika?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Hmm. I mean, at an extreme level, I can see somebody who's a mobster who basically says, you know, I can go out and kill someone as part of, you know, something that's happening in my quote unquote professional world. But I can come home and I can love my, you know, my partner and my children. And I'm a good I'm a good husband. I'm a good father.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I'm a good person, even though I've done something terrible 20 minutes ago.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Some years ago, the comedian Ellen DeGeneres came under fire for creating a toxic work environment at her show. Ultimately, three producers were dismissed and Ellen DeGeneres apologized to her staff. You say that this story has something to say about the nature of authenticity. How so, Erica?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Let's talk a moment about some of the benefits of authenticity. What are the effects of authenticity on our well-being and self-esteem, Erika?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
So one domain where people face an ever-present tension about whether to be authentic is on social media. Do you present your true self to the world or do you present an idealized picture of your life to the world? You ran a study looking at the well-being of more than 10,000 people who were either more or less authentic on Facebook. Can you describe the study and what you found?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
So it's so striking, Erica, because I think many of us notice that when you look at social media feeds, especially Facebook and Instagram, we're often confronted by the fact that people are sharing very positive images of their life, right? So people are sharing the best moments, the happiest moments, the most glowing moments of their lives.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
And we sometimes contrast that with the messiness of our own lives. And we say, you know, other people are living perfect lives and I'm not living a perfect life. But I think what you're getting at is actually something really interesting, which is that this disjuncture doesn't just affect me looking at somebody else's social media feed and saying that person has a perfect life and I don't.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Parent, spouse, employee, neighbor, friend. Some roles may feel like the real us, and some may feel put on, even fake. What are the benefits of aligning who we are on the outside with who we are on the inside, and what are the costs of those two selves being out of alignment? Erica Bailey is a social scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
You're saying that if that person is expressing they have a perfect life, but in fact they don't, it actually is bad for them.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Feeling phony extracts a high emotional and psychological cost. Acting in tune with our inner core grants us a sense of meaning and satisfaction. When we come back, the steps we can take to get in touch with our true selves. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
In one sense, we are always ourselves. Even when we are pretending to feel something we don't feel or say something we don't believe, the things we feel and say are also us. Our desire to pretend to be someone we are not is also who we are. But social scientist Erica Bailey says there are moments we all feel fully and truly ourselves. We feel real, genuine, and authentic.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
She and others have studied how we can make those moments more frequent. Erica, can you paint me a picture of a time in your own life where you felt truly authentic?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Why do you think it's useful for all of us to remember moments like this, Erica?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
You know, I'm wondering if this might be one of the reasons people turn to alcohol and other drugs. You know, so a drink might actually loosen our inhibition so we feel like we can dance like no one is watching. But it might also be that the drink gives us permission to loosen our inhibitions, to feel like we can truly be ourselves.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
She has long been interested in the science and the subtleties of authenticity. Erica Bailey, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Now, hidden brain listeners are a very cerebral group of people. We might think that the best way to feel authentic is to reflect and introspect about what it means to be authentic. You say this might not be the best path. What's wrong with thinking our way to authenticity, and what is a better path?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Erica, when you were growing up, you were very involved in the fundamentalist church that was at the heart of your community. What was this church?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
So in other words, when you think back to that moment in the car when you were singing with your friends, it wasn't just a feeling of being authentic. What you're saying, it's almost diagnostic. It was actually telling you something about yourself.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I understand, Erika, that you had an experience along these lines when you first started teaching. Tell me what your first day in class was like.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
And in some ways, it goes back to what you were saying a second earlier, which is that when you recognize that you're in the flow, you're feeling authentic, it actually tells you something important about yourself.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
One of the things you said a second ago just struck me, Erica, which is that one way we can feel more authentic is to remind ourselves about our core values. Tell me about the research carried out by another former guest of Hidden Brain, the psychologist Sheena Iyengar.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Why do you think it is that reminding ourselves of our core values would help us come across to others as more authentic, Erika?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Erica, researchers have found that one way to generate a sense of authenticity is to engage in self-compassion. Can you tell me about this work and why self-compassion might be connected to feeling authentic?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
How much of a role did this church play in your life, do you think, as you were growing up?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I'm also struck by the fact that when we try and identify our authentic self and we look inward, we're obviously going to see things that are virtues, but we're also going to see things that are flaws. And in some ways, being able to see ourselves authentically means to see the whole us, the good side and the bad side.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
And perhaps this is where self-compassion comes in, because as you start to see the flaws in yourself, it might help to look at them with a little self-compassion.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Erika, I understand that there are challenging parts of your own mental makeup that you strive to handle with self-compassion. Can you give me an example?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
In other words, your mind is functioning like a smoke alarm that might be overly sensitive and it's going off and it's distracting and unpleasant. But it's not trying to be distracting or unpleasant. It's actually trying to help you. It's set. Its threshold is set maybe slightly lower than it needs to be set.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I want to contrast what you just said with, I think, what we often do, Erica, which is we have these feelings. We're anxious, and we try and push the anxiety away and say, you know, why am I feeling anxious? And now you're not just anxious about whatever's happening in your day. You're anxious about being anxious, and then it becomes this vicious cycle.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
And I think what you're pointing to in some ways is that by sitting with the unpleasant emotion and, in fact, welcoming it into the kitchen and basically saying, I recognize why you're here. I recognize that you're trying to help me. It might not actually be helpful in the moment, but I recognize that your intentions are in the right place. In some ways, that lowers the temperature in the room.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
What does it mean to be ourselves no matter what they say, as the musician Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, once instructed us? Don't we all contain multitudes? Is there really only one true self? And even if there is, how wise is it to always reveal ourselves?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
You know, I often find, Erica, that when I talk with other people, my thoughts become clearer to myself. When I'm describing a problem that I'm having to someone else, all of a sudden I can see and understand the problem much more clearly than if I just have it, you know, going round and round in my own head.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Is it possible that talking to others in some ways can help us get in touch with what's happening inside ourselves and can be an engine of feeling more authentic?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
In our companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, we will look at a paradox. As we have discussed many times on the show, we are a deeply social species. All of us, in one way or another, rely on the kindness of strangers. Other people's opinions of us not only matter, they help constitute how we see ourselves.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
How do we square the imperative of being authentic, of marching to our own inner drummer, with the fact that other people play a large role in shaping how we feel about ourselves? How can we both care about other people's views and not care about other people's views at the same time? If you're a subscriber to Hidden Brain Plus, that episode should be available in your feed right now.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
It's titled, The Us in Authenticity. If you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up at apple.co slash hiddenbrain. If you're using an Android device, you can sign up at support.hiddenbrain.org via our Patreon membership page. Erica Bailey is a social scientist at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I would imagine now you must have had close friends in the group. And in fact, maybe much of your social community was coming from this group.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Erica Bailey, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Use the subject line, authenticity. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Next week in our Wellness 2.0 series, curveballs and catastrophes.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
We look at the traits of people who cope extraordinarily well in moments of crisis.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
That's next week in our Wellness 2.0 series. I hope you'll join us. Happy New Year from all of us at Hidden Brain. We look forward to bringing you lots of new ideas about human behavior this coming year. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
At the time, of course, Erika didn't think she was in a cult. Like all of us, she wanted direction in her life, and the church seemed to confidently point the way.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
In time, however, Erica started to have doubts. For example, she knew people who were gay and in warm and loving relationships, but the church declared gay marriage was wrong. She wasn't quite sure how or whether to speak up.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
How did the church treat congregants who stepped out of line?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
As social creatures, heavily dependent on the people around us, does it really make sense to ignore how others see us and march to our own drummers? The evidence about authenticity seems clearer when the shoe is on the other foot. When we are evaluating other people, most of us are extremely suspicious of people who may not be what they seem.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
So I understand that you were always academically inclined. Tell me about what happened when you graduated high school and you had to make the choice about whether to go to college.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I'm wondering whether at some point you started to speak up about the beliefs and practices that you disagreed with and how that was received by your peers and by the church.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I understand that at one point you went to a movie, which is something that the church had actually recommended that you not do.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
When we discover someone has lied to us, either implicitly or explicitly, we read this as betrayal. We distrust those who say one thing in public and do something else in private. This is why politicians learn to look you in the eye as they speak to you. Why they master the art of the firm handshake and the steady voice. This is really me they're trying to say. What you see is what you get.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
I'm wondering how the church responded to your evolution. You told me in the past they had not looked kindly at people who stepped out of line.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Wow. Wow. That must have been extraordinarily destabilizing, Erika.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
At one time or another, we've all felt the painful disjunction Erica is talking about, a mismatch between how we feel on the inside and how we're expected to be on the outside. When we come back, the costs of being inauthentic and the benefits of being your true self. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Social life often calls on us to act in ways that don't match up with what we feel or believe. What are the consequences of this mismatch? And what do we gain when we bring our inner and outer selves into alignment? Erica Bailey is a social scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the psychology of authenticity.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Be Yourself
Erika, we just heard about how painful it was for you to feel that your inner self was not in accord with the community that surrounded you. Scholars in your field have found that your experience was not unique when the inner self is not in alignment with the outer self. This can produce feelings of stress and exhaustion.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In November 1971, a man showed up at a flight counter for Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland. He asked to buy a one-way ticket to Seattle. The man provided his name when he bought the ticket. Dan Cooper. He was carrying a black briefcase.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Kenji saw the school was offering a class about sexual orientation in the law. He desperately wanted to take the course, but wondered what message it would send.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Kenji eventually started to come out of the closet. He got a boyfriend, Paul, but went to great lengths to hide Paul from the world.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Today on the show, we look at how many of us go to great lengths to disguise who we are. Most of the time, it isn't because we're planning anything nefarious. It's because we want to fit in or be taken seriously. But such disguises don't just fool others. They have powerful effects on us. What happens when we pretend we are not who we are?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So eventually, Kenji, you became a law professor. And at one point, you received a piece of advice from a colleague that backed up your decision to disguise yourself in the way that you were disguising yourself. What was this advice?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So one day you came by a book that transformed your understanding of what was happening to you and what was happening around you. Can you paint me a picture of this epiphany, Kenji?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
And of course, once you had the vocabulary for this, you started to see examples of this in the larger culture. Everyone knew that FDR had polio, but he goes to great lengths to disguise the fact that he has polio. Everyone knows that Margaret Thatcher is a woman and came from a blue-collar background, but she goes to great lengths not to sound overly feminine or overly blue-collar.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Who are we really and how much of our real selves can we show to the world? These are questions all of us wrestle with. Sometimes we decide to bear it all. Other times we decide to cover up. Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar at New York University who studies the effects these choices have on us and on those around us. Kenji Yoshino, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Think about a hard-driving workplace. You're a new mom. Do you hesitate to put up pictures of your children on your desk? That's what Kenji would call covering. He cites studies that show that in such workplaces, women face a motherhood penalty.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I'm thinking about the famous writer and activist Helen Keller. She was blind, but she was uncomfortable about being photographed from angles that showed her protruding eye. At one point, she later had her eyes replaced with glass eyes. And in fact, sometimes, you know, journalists would comment on how beautiful her eyes were.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Kenji, take me back in time to the story of a very prominent American who went to great lengths to manage how people saw him. You've studied America's 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Tell me his story.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Are all sort of cosmetic interventions in some ways forms of covering? I mean, you know, from the very trivial about the, you know, the bald man who has a comb over or, you know, the person who is dying their hair because their hair is turning gray. Are these all examples of covering?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
When we come back, how covering complicates our understanding of what it means to belong. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar at New York University. He is the author of Covering, The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. Kenji, by the year 2001, you had long since come out as a gay man to your parents.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
They are of Japanese ancestry. But you found yourself having a tense discussion with them about an article about you that was about to be published in the New York Times. What was this article and how did this conversation with your parents unfold?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Your mother used a Japanese term in this conversation that you didn't understand. What was this term, Kenji?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So in other words, live your life, be a gay person, but don't make it your cause.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
One of the concerns that your parents had was not just the effects that this would have on them, but the effects that it would have on you. They were worried that you were going to get hate mail.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So you told your parents that you already got hate mail, and your father was shocked and surprised by that, that you already were getting hate mail. And it struck you that in some ways this detail that may have been connected to his own experience as a young man from Japan who came to the United States in the 1950s. Tell me what went through your mind at that point, Kenji.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Once on board the aircraft and en route to Seattle, the man showed a flight attendant the contents of his briefcase. It looked like a bomb. In return for releasing passengers unharmed, he demanded $200,000 when the plane landed. He also added an odd request. He wanted four parachutes. After the plane landed in Seattle, the ransom and parachutes were delivered.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Your parents had a view of assimilation that is quite different than yours. Your dad sort of describes himself as sort of the stereotypical success story of the American dream and the value of assimilation. Tell me how your views about assimilation have come to differ from your parents, Kenji.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
When I think back to photographs I've seen of FDR, I often see him sitting behind a desk with people standing around him. And of course, he looks very presidential when he does that. But perhaps some of this was also with a view to hiding the fact that he found it difficult to stand and to walk.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
It's striking, Kenji, because I feel like the idea of assimilation, the idea of the melting pot, like we leave our identities behind, we forget that we were Irish or Jewish or gay or black, that we come to America and then we all become this new thing, which is an American. I think that's held up as being a value, an important ideal. You're pointing in some ways to the dark side of assimilation.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I understand that you have conducted surveys in corporate environments that find that covering negatively impacts individual sense of self and diminishes their commitment to their organizations.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I understand that you faced a moment a number of years ago that brought all of your complex views about assimilation into play. It had to do with a wonderful job offer from NYU. Tell me that story, Kenji.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
When we come back, techniques to uncover our true identities and help others do the same. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Legal scholar Kenji Yoshino has spent decades thinking about how people mask their identities in order to conform to both real and imagined pressures from those around them. He's also thought a lot about how we can be more of ourselves more of the time. Kenji, you sometimes hear from people who disagree with you.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
They say, you know, you may be a gay man and feel the need to hide, but I'm straight and I feel the need to hide too. Maybe it's because I'm overweight or elderly or drink too much. Maybe I have a mental illness that's stigmatized. Maybe I'm just shy. Tell me about these encounters, Kenji.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Hmm. I'm thinking also just of behavioral things. Perhaps I'm a shy person. Perhaps I'm a sad person. And perhaps being shy and being sad are not celebrated in the workplace. I'm not going to be seen as an up-and-comer, as a promising employee if I'm seen to be retiring or depressed. And so I feel the need to cover up what I'm going through.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
What's striking about the story, of course, is that people knew that the president had a disability, that he had polio. It wasn't a secret. But yet he went to these lengths in some ways to give the impression that he was OK.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
When I think about something like addiction, for example, or the ways in which addiction has touched so many lives in this country, you know, it has touched the lives of people who are rich and poor and black and white and, you know, every socioeconomic group and every demographic group.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
But clearly there is a huge stigma about addiction today and there's a huge demand to cover up, you know, addictions in the workplace, but also in social life.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I want to play you some tape, Kenji, featuring Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Britain. In 1980, the year she gave the speech, unemployment was rising in Britain and the economy was in recession. Some of her critics urged her to execute a U-turn, reversing the changes she had made. Here's how she responded.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Kenji, what I hear you arguing is that covering in some ways is a unifying cause, perhaps even sort of a universal civil rights struggle.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
You say that there are a couple of different ways that stories of uncovering can be shared. One is what you call distinct storytelling. What is this, Kenji?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
You also talk about something called diffused storytelling. What is diffused storytelling, Kenji?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Listening to that clip, Kenji, it's hard not to notice Margaret Thatcher's distinctive speaking voice.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Or if you're talking about a family member, for example, talking about what you did on the weekend, there are ways in which we can reveal our lives to others without it being, as you say, a set piece that's delivered from a podium.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
What do you think the effects are of this kind of uncovering? You have done some research that basically finds that this kind of storytelling, both the distinct and the diffuse form, have benefits.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I understand, Kenji, some time ago you were at a supermarket and you had an exchange with the cashier. He asked you a question that had to do with your husband, but you didn't tell the cashier about your husband. Tell me that story.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar at New York University. He's the author of Covering the Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. Along with David Glasgow, he is co-author of Say the Right Thing, How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice. Kenji, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Do you have follow-up questions about covering and identity for Kenji Yoshino? If you'd be willing to share your questions with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line covering. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you love the ideas we explore on Hidden Brain, please consider signing up for our podcast subscription, Hidden Brain Plus.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
It's where you'll find bonus conversations you won't hear anywhere else. Plus, you'll be providing us with vital support to continue bringing you more episodes of the show. Please go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
And of course, I mean, she was known as the Iron Lady. And in some ways, that voice added to that impression.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So in this case, Margaret Thatcher wasn't hiding a physical disability. She was hiding the fact that she came from a blue-collar background. But again, it wasn't a secret that she came from a blue-collar background. People knew that she was a grocer's daughter. But in some ways, she again was giving people the illusion that she wasn't.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I want to play you another piece of tape, Kenji. This one features an actor, Ben Kingsley, talking about what it was like to be offered the lead role in the movie Gandhi, a performance for which he would ultimately receive an Academy Award. He's recounting here how it felt like to look in the mirror after he was made to look like Mahatma Gandhi.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
He didn't know at this point whether director Richard Attenborough, who had spent years trying to make the movie, was going to give him the part.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
Dan Cooper allowed the passengers to disembark, but kept the crew on board. He demanded the plane be refueled and fly to Mexico City. The plane took off a second time. The hijacker ordered the crew to stay in the cockpit. He also demanded the curtains between the coach cabin and first class be closed.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So, Kenji, actors, of course, are professionally trained to disguise themselves. Ben Kingsley was pretending to be someone he was not. But you say he wasn't just playing the role of Gandhi?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
And of course, he's not the only actor to have done so. There is a long list of actors and musicians and performers who have changed their names to have stage names that sound more charismatic, if you will, than their given names.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
All these figures were very visible. Franklin Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, and Ben Kingsley lived in the public eye. And yet, there were aspects of themselves that they played down. They were hiding, but hiding in plain sight. When we come back, the subtle ways in which we all disguise our identities and what this subterfuge costs us. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I'm Shankar Vedanta. Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar at New York University. He says that people who feel shame about their identities or fear how they will be treated by others often disguise themselves in three ways, all of which he has done himself. Kenji, let's spend a little time with your own story. You first realized you needed to disguise who you were when you were at boarding school.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
I understand that when you got to college, you directed all your energies into academic pursuits. Were you using your studies to hide your identity now?
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
With no one watching him, he opened the rear exit on the plane and leaped with his parachute and his money into a moonless night. Dan Cooper was never caught. His identity remains a mystery. Clearly, the man who showed up at the airline counter that day was not who he said he was. The story of his hijacking, while real, is the stuff of movies and novels.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So after college, you went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship, but you became depressed when you were in England. Tell me what happened, Kenji.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
At some point during your time in England, Kenji, you went to see a psychiatrist. Tell me what happened when you talked with him and how it turned out.
Hidden Brain
Dropping the Mask
So this insight helped you accept your identity as a gay man. But when you returned to the United States to go to law school, were you open about being gay?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. It was a cold day in Appalachia on January 7th, 1865. A Union soldier named Asa McCoy was on his way home, wounded from fighting in the Civil War. As he neared his cabin in Kentucky, Asa was given a message, don't return home or you will be killed. A local group of Confederate militia, known as the Logan Wildcats, planned to kill Asa.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Now, in some ways, it's worth pointing out, of course, that not getting that promotion did indeed have personal effects on Dana. It might have affected her life, her finances, maybe even her retirement plan. So it had consequences in her personal life, Fred.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I want to talk about another component of grudges, Fred. You worked with a man named Alan whose wife cheated on him. Can you tell me his story and the thoughts that constantly circled around in his mind?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
History is full of incidents that have sparked long-standing grudges, sometimes with consequences that last decades. But there also are smaller, more personal grievances that we all harbor. Perhaps you still remember some slight you experienced years ago at the hands of a friend or family member?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I can see in some ways how, at least on a short-term basis, this can make you feel better. If you're feeling very upset, if you're feeling very hurt, it does make you feel better to say, I know what the cause of my hurt is. It's this other person. This other person did this terrible thing, and that's why I'm feeling terrible. It's her fault.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So we've talked about the role that taking things personally and the blame game plays in the development of a grudge. These often lead to what you call the final stage in the grievance process, the construction of a grievance story. What do you mean by this, Fred?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Today, we explore the psychology of grudges, how long-standing animosities affect our lives, and what to do about them. This week on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I'm curious why some wrongdoings become grudges and others don't. You talk about a very powerful concept, the violation of unenforceable rules. What does this mean, Fred?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I want to talk about one unenforceable rule that you had in your life, Fred. When your mother-in-law was alive, you and your family would often go and visit her in Connecticut. I understand that she wasn't very nice to you.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So after this fight, I understand that you called a friend to complain about your mother-in-law. You wanted to tell someone else your grievance story. What did you say and what did your friend tell you?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
That's a way of saying you shouldn't allow people who have wronged you to take up too much of your attention. Sounds nice, but is it realistic? We are social creatures, after all, and our interactions and relationships with others matter. When someone is kind to us, it has the power to alter our day, maybe even change the course of our lives. When someone wrongs us, it can also have large effects.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
We've talked about the anatomy of grudges and how they form. Let's spend a moment talking about some of the consequences of holding on to our past grievances. Many studies have examined the relationship between resentment and mental health issues. One study, for example, found that holding a grudge could lead to lower self-esteem.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I feel like I can remember times in my own life, Fred, when I've been up at 3.45 in the morning, upset about what someone said to me or what someone did to me. And I'm lying in bed, tossing and turning. I can't sleep. I'm angry. And of course, it seems like the effects on sleep must be one of the effects of resentment and grievance.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Why is it that grievance and grudges cause these physiological effects? What is happening physiologically to us that cause an effect on sleep, that cause an effect on the heart, that cause an effect on high blood pressure?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
At Stanford University, Fred Luskin has spent a quarter century studying what happens when we hold on to grudges. Fred Luskin, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So the irony here, Fred, is that grudges can make us feel better in the short term. They make us feel like we're getting back at the people who've hurt us. But the people they hurt the most might be us.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
When we come back, strategies for letting go of the past. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the late 1960s, tensions were exploding in Northern Ireland. Riots were breaking out in cities like Belfast and Derry. People were sharply divided on whether to remain part of the United Kingdom or to join the Republic of Ireland.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Fred, some years ago, you met a woman named Debbie. She was having issues with her husband. And when I say issues, this was not merely conflicts about who takes out the garbage.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Catholic nationalists wanted unity with Ireland and Protestant Unionists wanted the country to stay within the United Kingdom. Decades of hostility and turmoil led to what became known as the Troubles, a violent conflict that involved bombings, shootings, and the killing of many people. More than 3,500 people were killed in the conflict, the majority of them civilians.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Many people were left grieving over horrific losses. In another part of the world at the time, Fred Luskin was at Stanford University in California, studying the role of forgiveness in people's lives. A man named Byron Bland reached out to Fred after reading newspaper articles about his work at Stanford.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Byron asked, was Fred willing to try his forgiveness training with mothers who had lost their children to the troubles? Their stories were unimaginably painful. One woman's son had been kidnapped on the way to work, then ushered into a shallow grave where he was shot, his body hidden for 21 years.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Another woman's son had been working at a restaurant when a gunman walked up to the takeout window and shot him seven times. He died on the spot. A third woman said her Protestant son was hanging out with his Catholic friend at a pub when a loyalist rushed in and shot both men dead. The stories went on.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
When the women were flown to California to share their stories, Fred found himself overwhelmed with horror. But he listened, and he began the training. It started with intake. He asked them to fill out questionnaires about their mental state. Then, slowly and carefully, he took them through the steps he had developed. One was along the lines of his own epiphany at Safeway.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
When you are deeply upset about something, take a moment to notice things you are not upset about.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I'm wondering whether you heard from these women or you hear from other people you work with, Fred, a sense of anger directed toward you, because these are people who are saying, you know, I've been through something terrible and the person who did this terrible thing to me, you know, really it's unforgivable. And here's Fred Luskin coming in and telling me to forgive and forget.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I mean, do you get people angry with you? Because in some ways it can feel, even though that's not what you're doing, but it can feel like you're taking, the side of the transgressor?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
What was the effect of these ideas on the women who went through the program, Fred?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
The cycle repeated itself over and over. One day, Debbie came home early from work. She discovered her husband on the couch with another woman. It was the last straw.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
It's interesting, the word forgiveness itself, I think, points our mind toward the person who has done us harm, the person who has done us wrong. When I think I forgive you, I'm thinking that my forgiveness is directed toward you. But everything that I'm hearing from you, Fred, it's that really forgiveness, in fact, is not about the other person at all. It's about ourselves.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
We talked earlier about your mother-in-law and how she would often make rude and critical comments about you. And some of this might have been because she was, you know, you could say an exceptionally tidy person or you could say an obsessively tidy person, depending on your point of view.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
But at one point, you asked yourself a question with her that also made a very big difference in the way you responded to her. What was this question, Fred?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I understand that at one point toward the end of her life, your mother-in-law had a chat with you about the way she may have treated you. Tell me about that story and what happened, Fred.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So many people have been in similar situations where they have been betrayed by a romantic partner and people really struggle with it. How was Debbie's account of what happened to her affecting her life, Fred?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
When we come back, Fred offers more techniques to get us moving when we find ourselves stuck on a grudge. Plus, we take a look at some of the physiological benefits of forgiveness. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Many of us want to be rid of our grudges, but we find that the grievance keeps rearing its head.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Pay attention to me, it tells us. Forgiveness is for suckers. We find ourselves drawn irresistibly to rehashing the events that caused us pain. We may go back to complaining to others about how we have been wronged. Fred Luskin sometimes tells the people he is trying to help about a psychological experiment.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
The Wildcats were led by a member of the Hatfields, a family living in West Virginia who had strong ties to the Confederate Army. Asa hid out in a cave near Peter Creek, Kentucky. But it was no use. He was eventually tracked down and shot dead. The incident is said to have sparked a famous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. It lasted decades.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Fred and other researchers have also found that once we are down the path of constructing a grievance story, our minds reach for more and more evidence that our state of mind is justified.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
You know, I'm thinking back to the moment you went to the grocery store, you know, against your wishes to get something your wife wanted. And of course, you're thinking about your friend Sam and you're thinking about the way in which he had hurt your feelings and the way in which, you know, it was unfair that he treated you the way he treated you.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
And then you show up at the grocery store and now the thing that you wanted is not in the grocery store. Now, that's yet another piece of evidence that the universe, in fact, is unfair because And it allowed me to tell my wife that she was unfair sending me to the supermarket that I didn't want to go to.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
One technique that you teach is to ask people to be mindful about the interventions they have tried in the past and the effectiveness of those interventions. You worked with a woman named Alice who did not get along with her in-laws. Tell me how she tried to fix the problem and how you helped her.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I understand that it was important for her to let everyone else know what a louse her husband was and how much pain he had caused her.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
And of course, the point that you're making here is that very often when we're carrying grievances around, we try the same thing over and over and over and over again. We come back to the same strategy over and over again.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
It doesn't work, but we say, okay, next time I'm really going to tell this person off and next time they're going to come to their senses and realize how much they've wronged me.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Fred walked me through a mental practice he calls Positive Emotion Refocusing Technique, or PERT for short.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Fred says there is lots of evidence that reducing hostility is good for our mental and physical health. The old saying is true, anger does the most harm to the vessel that stores it. One analysis found that far from soothing our pain, grudges have a way of increasing our experience of chronic suffering, as seen in conditions like fibromyalgia.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
You also conducted a study that looked at the effects of forgiveness on workplace productivity and well-being. Tell me about that, Fred.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
We talked earlier about unenforceable rules, the rules we want others to follow, but we cannot make them follow. Let's return to the story of you and your best friend, Sam. So you emailed him at the height of your grudge and told him how you felt. What did you say and how did he respond, Fred?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
In the course of your work and research, you came by another person named Jill, and she confided in you about her troubled relationship with her mother. But unlike in the case of Debbie's ex, Jill's mother was dead?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Fred Luskin is a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. He is the author of Forgive for Good, a proven prescription for health and happiness, and Forgive for Love, the missing ingredient for a healthy and lasting relationship. Fred Luskin, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Do you have follow-up questions about grudges and forgiveness for Fred Luskin?
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
If you'd be comfortable sharing your question with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, grudge. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
You know, what is striking about both these stories you've just told me, Fred, is that in both Debbie's case and in Jill's case, the source of their pain is in their past, but it's almost as if this person, this other person, is standing with them, walking with them, living with them, inside their heads all the time.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So you're a scholar, you're a teacher, you're a therapist, but you're also a human being, and you yourself are not invulnerable to holding on to a grievance. I want you to tell me the story of your friend Sam and what happened to you and Sam, and maybe start with how close you were to Sam for many years of your life.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
In 1873, a McCoy family member, perhaps still seething from Asa's death, accused Floyd Hatfield of stealing his pig. A trial followed, and Floyd Hatfield was acquitted. A few years later, one of the trial witnesses was killed by two McCoys. In 1882, on election day in Kentucky, some McCoy brothers drunkenly fought and killed Ellison Hatfield, stabbing him multiple times in the back.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I understand that at one point, Fred, you heard that Sam was to be married and you did not hear about this from Sam, but from someone else.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So you were not invited to the wedding. This is someone whom you consider to be, as you said, your best friend, nearly a brother. How did that change your outlook and behavior? I understand that the people around you started to notice that you were different.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
I understand that at one point during the saga, Fred, you found yourself in a very unusual place to have an epiphany, the supermarket. Tell me what happened at the supermarket that day.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
For better and worse, people we are close to can affect us in profound ways. Sometimes these effects are fleeting, and sometimes they last for years. When we come back, the physiological and psychological effects of holding a grudge. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
When someone wrongs us, holding a grudge against them almost feels like a form of justice. But psychologist Fred Luskin says that more often than not, grudges don't hurt the targets of our anger. They hurt us. Fred, we've discussed a few ways in which people can hurt us, but sometimes it's a process that hurts us. One person you worked with was upset she did not get a job promotion.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
In retaliation, the Hatfields killed all three McCoy brothers. The feud continued into a cycle of violence that reached its peak in 1888, during what came to be known as the New Year's Night Massacre. Several members of the Hatfield gang set fire to a McCoy cabin and killed two children.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
So if I understand correctly, Fred, Dana's reaction to not being promoted was the sense that she had wasted 10 years of her life, that all this time and effort she had spent at the company going above and beyond, all of it was wasted effort.
Hidden Brain
No Hard Feelings
Let's look at one aspect of the story you just told me. So this was an employee who did not get a promotion. Another way of looking at this is to say the company has a number of different priorities. Maybe I don't fully understand all the priorities of the company. They've picked somebody else, but it's actually not about me. It's just about what the company needed to do at this time.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
When they happened to meet a young woman, the men confused their jitters about the bridge as romantic attraction for the woman. More of them followed up and gave the young woman a call. As Art began studying couples in long-term relationships, he had an insight.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
As couples fall into routines, getting kids ready for school in the mornings, dinner at the kitchen table in the evenings, social activities on the weekends with the same set of friends and neighbors, these activities start to become familiar. Over time, even if these activities are pleasant, they become predictable. Then, they can become boring.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
If people on a shaky bridge confuse their jitters for romantic attraction, what happens if you're in a long-term relationship with someone and constantly find yourself around the same person when you're feeling bored?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Talk about the work that you have done on a longitudinal basis where you interviewed couples over a period of time and asked them about their levels of boredom and then evaluated how satisfied they were with their relationships down the road.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So talk about why this might be the case, Art. I mean, when most people think about the factors that can undermine relationships, they don't think about boredom as being a prime culprit. They might think about infidelity or abusive behavior, but just the ordinary mundane factor of boredom plays a bigger role than many people consider?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So as you've thought about these ideas for many years, you've developed a more sophisticated theory about what might be going on here. You say that people have a fundamental desire to expand the self and that this often occurs through relationships. What do you mean by this, Art?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
They are filled with valuable insights from some of the world's most distinguished researchers on these topics. Today, in the final chapter of our Relationships 2.0 series, we tackle the big question. Love. We look at a problem that seems to be as old as humankind. How do we keep love alive? We've all sat in restaurants next to couples who look like they have been together for decades.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And when you say that our partners help to expand us, is it just because they bring new interests, new passions, new avocations of their own into our lives?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And can you speak a moment about what that drive is about, the drive of basically growth and expansion? You sort of describe it as a fundamental drive. Talk a little bit more about that. Where does that come from and how does that manifest in our lives, Art?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm wondering whether this means that we are drawn to potential partners who promise us the possibility of expanding ourselves?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm wondering whether there is any truth to the idea then that opposites might attract. Because, of course, if you are drawn to somebody who's very different from you, potentially your ability to expand yourself must be greater.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm wondering if one of the implications of this model is that when we first fall in love, you know, the sense of self-expansion is in overdrive.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And is it possible that some of the euphoria we feel when we fall in love is not just because we are drawn to this other person, but in some ways we are drawn to the kind of person that we are growing into, that in some ways we are drawn to our own self-expansion, and that's part of the euphoria of falling in love.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So from that perspective, I'm wondering what this research has to say about the effects of long-term relationships. In other words, when we are in long-term relationships, there's obviously a certain amount of familiarity that creeps in because, of course, you know this other person. You've been with this other person for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Is it possible that this other person just naturally then stops helping you expand because in some ways you know that person very well and they know you very well and this might be a source of boredom?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
They don't talk to each other. They don't touch one another. They barely look at each other. Perhaps you wondered, were they always like this? Was there a time they were madly in love? This week on Hidden Brain, surprising insights into the magic ingredients that keep love alive.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Art's research on the effects of novelty and challenge and on the process of self-expansion suggests a tantalizing possibility. It's the key to keeping long-term relationships romantic and passionate in our own hands. When we come back, practical ways to keep boredom at bay and make a relationship continue to feel exciting and alive. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Arthur Aaron is a psychologist at Stony Brook University. He studies how to keep love alive. Art, in the late 1960s, you were enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley. You were a teaching assistant and helping to instruct a class. Something important in your life happened at the end of that class.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So what was it like in the early days of the relationship, Art, when you and the student, whose name was Elaine, got together? What was it like in those first few days and months?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Given that Art is a psychologist, it's perhaps not surprising that he examined the moment he and Elaine fell in love and asked himself what happened between them psychologically. In time, he and his colleagues explored whether love could be engineered between two strangers.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
They came up with a list of questions that people could ask one another that would get them to open up, to share, to make themselves vulnerable. Years later, this research went viral in a New York Times article titled, The 36 Questions That Lead to Love. Art said that in this research, they paired up strangers and had them sit across from one another.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
The questions were divided into three sections. Over a 45-minute encounter, the couple would pose questions from each section to each other. The researchers gave volunteers specific instructions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
The researchers encouraged volunteers to identify things they had in common. Of course, people do this in real life all the time. We like others who share our passions for music or sports. What the researchers were doing was to force the volunteers to identify such commonalities.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
When we talk about falling in love, we usually refer to it as a very special and unusual period, one characterized by thrilling feelings of exhilaration and euphoria. It's widely assumed that these intense feelings of passion and romance cannot last forever, that they will eventually give way to the mundane realities of daily life. But does that have to be so?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So in set one, I'm looking at the list of questions right now. You know, you have questions like, what would constitute a perfect day for you? Or when did you last sing to yourself? Or if you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or the body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want? And I guess these are interesting questions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
These are the kind of questions you might ask a stranger at a bar, but they're not particularly intimate or deep.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And so the next 12 starts to ask even deeper questions. What is your most treasured memory? What is your most terrible memory? What roles do love and affection play in your life? How do you feel about your relationship with your mother? And these are the questions that you could imagine asking someone once you've gotten to know them.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Now, typically, I think most people in real life might get to asking those questions after getting to know someone for a few weeks or a few months. You're sort of accelerating the process in some ways by having them ask these questions in the second 15-minute bout.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And I'm wondering what happens as you do this. The last set of questions in some ways get to very intense questions. You know, when did you last cry in front of another person? If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? I mean, very, very intense and personal questions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
What happens when you put volunteers through these sets of questions, Art?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Art says the experimental intervention underscored a number of important points. First, self-disclosure, revealing things about yourself to someone else, is key to deepening relationships. But it's not just because people feel closer to those to whom they reveal secrets.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
It's because when we share things that reveal who we really are, it allows other people to respond with compassion and understanding. Self-disclosure is a trigger for other people's responsiveness. Art and researchers like former Hidden Brain guest Harry Rees feel that it's responsiveness that is the glue for relationships.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
It might seem obvious, but another powerful idea embedded in the questions is they ask people to share what they like about each other. Very often as we go through life, we notice things about other people that we like or admire. Few of us take the time to actually voice these thoughts aloud. How much of a difference does that make?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
At Stony Brook University, psychologist Arthur Aaron has pondered this question for decades. Arthur Aaron, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
In a longer intervention, Art and his colleagues went even further to engineer a feeling of closeness between two people.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Wow. Wow. So we've discussed how the 36 questions were intended to create a sense of closeness between strangers. They were not intended necessarily to improve or deepen an already existing relationship between people who had been together for 10 years or 20 years. But you found that there's a way to make the questions useful for couples who've been together for a long time.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Art, in 2009, you and your research assistant set out to look for what you might call a unicorn, for a very unusual kind of individual. What kind of people were you looking for and how did you go about finding them?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And this insight involves other couples. Walk me through this idea, Art.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
In recent years, Art and his colleagues have started to look for other ways to help couples in long-term relationships keep love alive. Many of them go back to that insight from the BRID study. When people experience an emotion when they are in the company of another person, they tend to associate that person with the emotion they are feeling.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
If you spend a lot of time around someone and feel bored, you'll come to think of that person as boring. But if you can spend a lot of time around the person doing interesting and novel things, you'll come to associate that person with surprise and growth. Art says he and Elaine try to put this idea into practice.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Art told me that you don't need to go on expensive vacations in order to find novelty. He says daily activities, where you go for a walk or what you eat for dinner, can also provide such novelty.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I understand that one time you were coming back from a play and you walked by a bar and you noticed that you hadn't hung out in a bar for a long time. Tell me the story of what happened that night.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Another time, Art and Elaine met up at a bar and pretended to be strangers meeting each other for the first time.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Aha. So I think a lot of couples who've been together for a while say, you know, we regularly plan to do activities that we both enjoy. We might go out to a restaurant. We might go and watch a movie. These are pleasant activities. But you're saying pleasant is actually not enough.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And you've run experiments along these lines where you actually ask people to do activities that are either pleasant or exciting. So you're actually trying to distinguish between those two things, between the novel and the pleasant.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So in other words, if I and my partner, for example, don't particularly think of rock climbing or bungee jumping as pleasant, but we would find it very exciting and novel, what you're suggesting is that doing these activities together in some ways can prompt us to feel closer to one another than if we engaged in merely pleasant activities.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Yeah. In one of your studies, Art, you had couples engage in an unusual activity where you tied their wrists and ankles together. Now, this can seem a little risque, but I understand this was a family-friendly experiment?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm curious what these couples told you when they came into your lab. Again, these are people who had been together for a long time, sometimes decades. I understand one couple in their 60s really stood out to you and Bianca?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Art says the key is not getting your heart rate up during the activity. It's about doing something unusual.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Some of your research points toward the importance of engaging in activities with your partner that involve humor. Why would this be important, Dart?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
You also found that one way to create a certain amount of unpredictability in relationships is to engage in activities with your partner that involve friendships with other couples. Why does this matter?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Art says he decided to follow his research findings, and not his gut, when Elaine asked to go on a whale-watching trip. Art gets seasick, but he recognized that the trip was important to his wife and would be a novel activity.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So another way to introduce freshness in a relationship is to find ways to celebrate a partner's successes. Many of us think that relationships are about supporting a partner in bad times. You say it might be even more important to focus on good times?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And so the first thing she saw when she came home was this big poster saying that her paper had been accepted in the journal? Yes.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And I think even beyond the fact that she must have been very happy about the paper being accepted, what she's also hearing in that moment is that you are so happy for her that you've gone to some lengths to celebrate it.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Arthur Aaron is a psychologist at Stony Brook University. Art, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Today's conversation was the final episode in our Relationships 2.0 series.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
If you missed any of the other episodes in the series, you can find them on the Hidden Brain podcast or at hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Some months ago, I brought seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain to live stage performances in San Francisco and Seattle. The evenings were electric. We got so much positive feedback from those two sold-out shows that we've decided to launch a tour to more than a dozen cities in the coming months.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So now it's possible that, of course, that when people say that they are deeply in love and passionately in love, they're just telling you that because they want to make you think that they are in a very happy relationship. So you must have been a little skeptical of what they were saying, given that this runs so counter to the stereotype we have about how relationships decline over over time.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'll be coming to Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Presale tickets are available right now for listeners like you. The presale only runs five days. To snap up your tickets, please go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. The presale password is BRAIN, all caps.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So if I'm visualizing this correctly, you're putting people in a brain scanner and you're showing them pictures of either their beloved or somebody who is just a neutral person or an acquaintance.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So when you scan the brains of people who'd been together for a long time but who reported that they were very intensely in love, besides experiencing this dopamine surge when they saw their partners, you also indicate that they also seem to be a little bit more contented compared to people who had just fallen in love a short time ago.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm struck that these couples went against the stereotype that we have that passionate love fades over time. You know, the honeymoon period is followed by a decline in romantic intensity. Talk about that stereotype, Art, how widespread it is that we believe that relationships start out very intensely and then they decline over time.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So you ran a survey and found that, in fact, these couples are not necessarily unicorns. They might not be a majority of the people who are in relationships, but there is a sizable number of them, right?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
When you shared these findings with others, you found that some significant number of people might feel threatened by the findings or even resistant to the idea that couples could be very happy over a long period of time. Talk about this finding and why that might be the case, Art.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Many of us assume that long-term relationships necessarily wither over time. But what if that's not true? And if it's not true, what's the secret of couples whose passion has lasted for decades? When we come back, the science of keeping a long-term relationship vital. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Arthur Aaron is a psychologist at Stony Brook University. He studies how intimate relationships develop over time. Most of us assume that the passion that characterizes a budding relationship will fade with time. That's just the way it is. But Art has found it doesn't have to be that way.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
In a series of studies, he's found many couples who report being passionately in love, even after being together for decades. Once Art had this epiphany, he set out to explain it. Art, one clue to the puzzle came from a study you'd conducted in Vancouver very early in your career. It became an iconic study in the field of psychology and was widely known as the Bridge Study.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
You can also sign up to say hello and get a photo with me. In some places, you can sign up for an intimate chat with me and a handful of other fans. I'd love to see you there. Again, go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. Okay, on to today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Let's just say this out loud. Romantic relationships are hard.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Okay, so in one case, she's basically stopping men on this shaky bridge that is scary, and she's asking them these questions. And in the other condition, she's standing on a very stable bridge and asking another group of men the very same questions. So what happens?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
You know, I'm wondering whether this might explain some of the enduring popularity of horror movies where young couples might go and sit in a movie theater and watch something really scary.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So the research experiment works, but you have to be careful how it's designed, I suppose.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
So, of course, when couples meet and fall in love for the first time, they experience a lot of what happens on a shaky bridge. You know, you feel unsure, you're uncertain, maybe even a little afraid. You feel jitters and butterflies in your stomach. What you found in the BRIT study is that you can almost reverse engineer the process.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
If you give people the jitters and they're around someone who could potentially be a romantic partner, they're more likely to see the other person as a romantic partner.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
I'm reminded of this story that the psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett once told me. She's at Northeastern University. And she told me that many years ago when she was in graduate school, there was someone who wanted to go out on a date with her and she wasn't very interested. And she finally agreed to go out and have coffee with this guy.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And then she's sitting across from him and suddenly her face is feeling flushed and she's feeling like, you know, a rush of temperature in her forehead. And she's like, oh, my God, do I? Maybe I actually was attracted to this guy, and I shouldn't have dismissed him out of the hand. Maybe I should pursue this. And at the end of the date, he says, can we go out for dinner next?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And she says, yeah, let's do it. And she comes home, and then six seconds later, she has to throw up because she's coming down with the flu again. And what she was experiencing was the early symptoms of flu and not sort of romantic attraction. But it's the same idea, isn't it? Which is that we have these signals that come to us in our minds.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
And in some ways, our brains have to interpret what the signal is about. And they have to draw a conclusion. This signal is about my feelings for this other person.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
Finding the right relationship and then keeping it alive, this requires effort, skill, and luck. In the last few weeks of our Relationships 2.0 series, we've looked at the power of human connection, insights into negotiation, and the role of tiny interactions in our daily lives. Please check out those episodes if you've missed them.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Keeping Love Alive
The shaky bridge study and Lisa Feldman Barrett's story of the confusing date both point to the same underlying insight. We are often not very good at identifying the source of our feelings. Young men on the shaky bridge experienced jitters because the bridge was unstable.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the summer of 2022, a man named Ivan went on a vacation with two friends to Kassandra, a peninsula in Greece. During the holiday, Ivan was swimming in the ocean when a fierce riptide pulled him away from the beach. His friends alerted the Coast Guard, but he was swept out so quickly that the search operation failed to find him.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
And of course, when people build models of political instability and how coups succeed and how coups fail, they're not taking into account whether someone's trousers are slippery.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
It was the one that her sons had lost. It had floated some 80 miles on the ocean, just in time to save Ivan's life. Going about our day-to-day lives, most of us act as if the world is orderly and predictable. We make plans, we set goals, we schedule events. What we don't take into account is the ever-present role of chance and randomness, blind forces that wield more power than we recognize.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So if the world is actually shaped by randomness and chance, but we manage to tell ourselves a tidy story about how it's governed by predictable rules and principles, let's talk about some of the factors inside the brain that make this shift possible. You've observed that there are biases wired into the brain that lead us to overlook the influence of small or random influences.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
One of these is the so-called magnitude bias. What is this, Brian?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
I mean, even in the story that you just told me about the Stimpsons and their vacation to Japan, as you're telling me the story, I'm recoiling at the idea that someone's vacation can decide where an atomic bomb is dropped. Surely, I tell myself, there have to be bigger causes driving this. It can't be something so trivial.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
And of course, if you take the even longer view and you look at the evolution of humans in the first place, the number of chance occurrences that must have had to take place for that to happen is extraordinary.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So, in the middle of the last century, scientists in a number of fields began to recognize that contrary to our assumptions, very small influences could produce very big effects. One of the researchers who first drew attention to this reality was named Edward Lorenz. Who was he, Brian, and what was his story?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
This week on Hidden Brain, we conclude our Wellness 2.0 series with a look at how we can come to grips with the unpredictable forces that shape our world and turn them to our advantage. We hear a lot these days about separating the signal from the noise. The idea is that there's a deep order, a solid predictability we can count on if only we can screen out distracting details, meaningless static.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
One reason we don't see the hand of chaos is that we are often quick to explain things in a way that makes them seem predictable. Brian says this is because our brains are storytelling machines. Evolution has designed us to come up with explanations for the things we see and hear.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
And this must be why when you watch cable television about the stock market or even about sports, you have people very, very confidently explain why the game turned out the way it did, why stock A rose yesterday and why stock B fell 15 points yesterday. It's the same phenomenon.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
There's a movie that came out in 1998 that brought the reality of these choices into sharp relief. I want to play you a clip from the trailer of Sliding Doors.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
You're a fan of this movie, Brian. Tell me how it speaks to all our lives.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
But what if those trivial, random factors actually matter? What if they matter a lot? At University College London, political scientist Brian Kloss studies these hidden forces. Brian Kloss, welcome to Hidden Brain. It's a pleasure to be here. Brian, there's a story you like to tell about a young American couple, Mr. and Mrs. H.L. Stimson, who visited Japan almost a century ago.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So we've been talking about some of the ways in which humans overlook randomness and chance. But you say that modern humans have engineered an interconnected world that is even more subject to random occurrences. How so, Brian?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
You say that also our relentless drive for efficiency has produced very little slack in our lives, and the reduced slack itself has effects on randomness and chance. How so?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So you make a very interesting argument that for modern people, there's a big shift in terms of how predictable our lives are on a micro scale versus a macro scale. What do you mean by this, Brian?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Who were they and what were they doing in that country?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Our failure to recognize that our world is saturated with randomness comes with great costs. We expect order and predictability to prevail and then get blindsided by sudden crises. We see each disastrous development as an inexplicable one-off occurrence instead of the product of a world that was always full of chance and that has become more vulnerable to chance in the modern age.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
When we come back, how we can learn to recognize the role of randomness and how to turn these forces to our advantage. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Brian Klaas is a political scientist at University College London. He is the author of Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So, Brian, I think when we listen to these stories of chance, some of us might find these stories disturbing. And in part, I think we find it disturbing because it challenges the idea that we are actually in control of what's happening. You say that it's important to come to terms with the fact that such control might actually be impossible.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
You deal with this yourself using something that you call the snooze button effect. What is the snooze button effect?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Hmm. Now, the fact that we have little control, I think, prompts many people to say, how can I figure out a way to exercise more control? If you think about people who go down the IVF route of conception, for example, you in fact have more control than if you went the natural route of conception. And there's the illusion, I suppose, with IVF that
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
that maybe you actually do have more control over an unpredictable process. So I think one of our reactions to unpredictability and chance is to say, how can we exert more control? How do we keep all these forces at bay so that, in fact, I can chart my own course? You think that that's a mistake?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Almost two decades after the Stimsons' visit to Japan, the city of Kyoto becomes the topic of much discussion at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Why were American military leaders fixated on Kyoto, Brian?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
One of your important insights, Brian, is that we should all focus a little less on control and a little more on resilience. What do you mean by this?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
For hour after hour, Ivan struggled to stay afloat. The currents carried him farther and farther from land. Eventually, he was treading water about 15 nautical miles from the beach. It was cold. Soon, it was dark. Ivan fought to keep his head above water. The night wore on. His strength began to give out.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
How would you apply the same insight at the level of organizations or nations, Brian?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Would you say that your own life has become happier or at least less stressed as a result of focusing less on control?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Brian Klaas is a political scientist at University College London. He's the author of Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. Brian, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. It's been such a pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
In our companion to this episode, available exclusively to subscribers to Hidden Brain Plus, we talk with Brian about what happens if we stop trying to make our days orderly and instead invite chaos into our lives. If you're a subscriber, that episode is available right now. It's titled, Engineering Luck. If you're not yet a subscriber to Hidden Brain Plus, this is a great time to give it a try.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
We're extending our standard seven-day trial period for listeners on Apple Podcasts. Sign up in January, and you'll get 30 free days to try it out. You can sample Hidden Brain Plus by going to apple.co slash hiddenbrain and clicking Try Free. Again, just go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain and click try free. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Thanks for listening. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So Kyoto is now at the top of this target list, but our Kyoto tourist by this point has become something of an important figure. Tell me what Henry Stimson was up to at this stage.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So at one point, of course, as you just mentioned, Henry Stimson goes about the heads of the generals, speaks to President Truman, has two meetings with him, and finally convinces Truman that Kyoto should be taken off the list. What were the Japanese cities that were left on this potential bombing list, Brian?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
So besides Kokura's luck, you might also say Nagasaki had especially bad luck because, in fact, it was the removal of Kyoto from the list that brought Nagasaki onto the list in the first place. And then the cloud cover over Kokura prompted the bomb to be dropped over Nagasaki. That seems extraordinarily unfortunate, Brian.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
Just as he was about to drown, the first rays of the morning sun illuminated an object bobbing nearby. It was a ball. With his last ounce of strength, Ivan swam to it. He clung to the partly deflated ball, and it helped him keep his head above water. Hours later, he was found and pulled to safety.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
But when you tell me that the fate of tens of thousands of people was partly or perhaps even significantly determined by a vacation that two Americans took decades earlier, there's a part of me that recoils at that, Brian. There's a part of me that feels that is immoral.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
I want to talk about a very different story, Brian. This one is personal to you. Take us back in time again to a small town in Wisconsin in 1905. Something terrible happened there June of that year. Tell me the story.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
A man has swept out a sea and he is saved because a little boy kicked his ball into the ocean. Tens of thousands of people in Nagasaki are killed while their brothers and sisters in Kyoto are spared because of a sightseeing trip. Someone exists today because four children and their mother perished a century ago.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
We like to imagine that we live in an orderly universe that is occasionally upended by an unexpected event. But what if those unforeseeable occurrences are the rule, not the exception? When we come back, why we fail to recognize that we live in a world of randomness and what we should do about it. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
When news of the rescue was broadcast on the news, it caught the eye of a woman in a different part of Greece. Ten days earlier, her children had been playing with a ball on a distant beach. One of them kicked the ball a bit too hard in the direction of the ocean, and it bobbed away. The boy shrugged and went on playing without their toy. Watching the news, the boy's mother recognized the ball.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
At University College London, political scientist Brian Klaas long subscribed to a view that most of us have, that history and politics are shaped by powerful people and predictable currents. Brian, as a political scientist, you studied the way power operates.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
A few years ago, you went on a research trip that made you question whether many of the assumptions and theories of your field were accurate. You visited Zambia to study a coup. What was the story you'd heard about Zambia before you went, and what did you find when you got there?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown
And I'm assuming at this point that if other people in the military hear the top commander say, there has been a coup, I surrender, they would basically fall in line.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. If you're like me, you know this feeling. Maybe you're at a party or you're walking down the street, and suddenly, out of a sea of passing faces, one of them lights up, looking right at you. This person starts waving, says hello. This person is glad to see you. And you? You have no idea who you're looking at. Recognizing faces is a crucial skill.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
One place that's especially true is in the criminal justice system, where eyewitness identifications are often central to police investigations. But this issue also shows up in lots of other settings with lower stakes, recognizing colleagues at an office party or a fellow parent at a school meeting. Julie Dorschlag from Washington, D.C., has had this problem for a long time.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
If Allison Young, the cop we heard from earlier, was a super-recognizer, you might call Julie face-blind. Her whole life, she's been terrible with faces.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Julie's struggles followed her as she left college and entered the working world.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
What do you do about it?
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Research suggests, by the way, that people are worse at recognizing faces of people from unfamiliar groups. Many Americans are worse at recognizing the face of someone from a different race than a face of someone from their own race. Now, what makes Julie's dilemma especially acute is her husband, Marty.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Marty Dorschlag, Julie's husband, is a super recognizer. For years, Julie's been keenly aware of her husband's superpower. One time they were in Las Vegas sitting down for dinner at a restaurant. Marty glanced up at the waiter.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Marty's had lots of encounters like this. Like at the Dallas airport, he spotted a man he sat behind at a University of Michigan football game three years earlier. Now, you might think that with this gift, Marty could at least be Julie's crutch. But it doesn't always work out like that.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Julie's cringeworthy ordeals hit close to home. Recently, I was watching a play. The lead actor looked familiar. I stared at his face for the better part of 90 minutes, but it took me until after the play was over to realize this was a colleague of mine from NPR. I'd be absolutely terrible as a TSA agent. And it got me wondering, are there any solutions here? Julie's picked a simple one.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
There are going to be outliers among us, people with extraordinary skill at recognizing faces. Some of them end up as security officers or gregarious socialites or politicians. The rest of us are going to keep smiling awkwardly at office parties at people we're supposed to know. It's what happens when you stumble around in the 21st century with a mind that was designed in the Stone Age.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
We'll start with someone whose job requires her to be quick with faces. She's a cop.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
After the break, Revisionist History brings us another take on facial recognition and how it colors so many of our perceptions about ourselves and each other. You don't want to miss it. Stay with us.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
I'm Shankar Vedantam. For the rest of today's show, we're bringing you a story from our friends at the Revisionist History Podcast. I'll pass things now to Revisionist History host, Malcolm Gladwell.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
She started out several years ago working on response teams in East London. These are the cops who mostly just respond to 911 calls. Then, about three and a half years into that job, she and a bunch of her fellow officers were invited to take a series of tests at a university.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Then a new screen appears with other faces. These ones are obscured in some way or heavily pixelated. One of the faces you saw earlier might now show up wearing a beard.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
The test, of course, was measuring how good officers were at recognising faces. A while later, Alison received her results. She came in second out of all the officers. And they asked me to come down to Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard, of course, is the headquarters for London Police. When she got there, she was told she was being added to a new unit they were forming.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
It was called the Super Recogniser Unit.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Do you feel like a super recognizer?
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
In other words, don't picture Superman leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Picture instead a bunch of cops sitting in front of computers. Members of the super recognisers unit would be given the faces of criminal suspects and then try, in essence, to play a matching game.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Alison was also called on to use her facial recognition skills when she was out in the field. In 2015, for example, the transit police came to Scotland Yard for help. A 21-year-old woman and two girls aged 15 and 16 complained that a man had inappropriately touched them while riding the bus. Transit police pulled security footage taken from the various buses.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
But although your mind is amazing at identifying your boyfriend or your child in a crowd, there are important limits to this ability. Some of us, like me, are extremely bad at it. Some of us are terrific. Today, we bring you a classic Hidden Brain episode about people on opposite ends of the facial recognition spectrum.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
That was revisionist history producer Lucy Sullivan and the show's host, Malcolm Gladwell. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Revisionist History. If you like what you heard, you can find more from Malcolm Gladwell and the Revisionist History team wherever you get your podcasts. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. For more Hidden Brain, be sure to check out our weekly newsletter, where we bring you the latest research on human behavior.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
From the pictures and the witness accounts, it appeared his modus operandi was to get on the bus with a newspaper. He would sit next to the young woman and then attempt to fondle her under cover of the newspaper.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Each issue also features a brain teaser and a moment of joy. You can read it and subscribe at news.hiddenbrain.org. That's n-e-w-s dot hiddenbrain dot org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
The security footage was grainy. The transit police didn't have an ID on the man. And because he struck at different times on different buses, they didn't know how to track him down.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
They studied the security videos, and eventually they figured out which station the man tended to frequent.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Camden Town is a busy neighbourhood. It's heavily populated, with lots of shops and tourists and people always milling about. It's perfect, in other words, for someone to blend into the background. Alison and Elliot Porritt knew what they had to do.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
This was supposed to be just a scouting mission to get a sense of the Camden Town bus station. Alison and her partner decided to look through old security footage in the CCTV room.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Detective Porritt began talking with the transit security. Alison was looking through the glass at the commuters milling about the station.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
They both stopped what they were doing and rushed to catch up with the man.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
They ran out of the station to see if he'd left. They looked left, couldn't see him. They looked right. Alison caught a quick glimpse of a man disappearing around a corner. This fraction of a second was all she needed to recognise her target. The cops started running toward the corner.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
The officers approached the man.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
When we spoke with Alison Young, she was no longer working on the super recognizer unit. She had gone on to other detective work. But she said the time she spent on this unusual unit was the first she ever realized she had an above average ability. The thing is, she's still not sure where the skill comes from.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
We'll also explore how our ability to recognize faces has broad implications in our lives. And then, in the second part of today's show, we're going to bring you another look at facial recognition from the Revisionist History podcast. If you're unfamiliar with the show, Revisionist History is best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell's podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Coming up, how common is Alison's skill? Are you a super recogniser? Can you learn to be one? That and more from a scientist who studies how we identify faces. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. So the other week I was at the airport and just like everyone else, I showed my driver's license to get past security.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
And it occurred to me that I was operating on an assumption that I think is widely shared. I assumed the TSA officer was pretty good at matching my face with the photo on my driver's license. So I asked Mike Burton, he's a professor of psychology at the University of York in the United Kingdom, if that assumption was true.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
When I showed my ID at the airport last week, Mike, I handed over the ID and I noticed that the officer looked at the ID first and then looked at my face second. And I assume there must be some trick to this, that it actually is, you're able to make a better connection if you don't actually look at the person's face, that you start with the ID and then look at the face. Is there any truth to that?
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
It's a little terrifying what you're telling me, because you're saying that this thing that we're relying on to keep ourselves safe, to run security systems at airports and other places, that this is a fundamentally bad system?
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Mike can say all this with some degree of confidence because he ran a study to test for it.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
The show has covered everything from what Americans get wrong about guns to how English muffins get their signature nooks and crannies. It turns out that Malcolm, like me, struggles with recognizing faces. His producer, Lucy Sullivan, on the other hand, is exceptionally good at it. And Lucy wanted to find out what's going on, or isn't going on, in our brains when we see someone we know.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
Mike and his colleagues ran this experiment in both the United Kingdom and in Australia. In both countries, they selected some faces that were likely to be well known locally, but unlikely to be known globally.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
You make a very interesting point in the paper, and I was struck by it, which is that in some ways this might be part of a general phenomenon in cognition where we do not fully understand how difficult a task is for someone else to do. And especially when we're good at something, it's very, very difficult for us to anticipate how much harder it could be for somebody else to do the very same task.
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
And has doing these tests and studying this, has it sort of changed the way you yourself trust yourself or your ability to recognize faces?
Hidden Brain
Do I Know You? (A Hidden Brain-Revisionist History special on facial recognition)
After the break, we talk with someone who, like me, is very bad at recognizing faces. She shares the strategies she's developed to cope in public settings. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Our chronic inability to recognize faces, coupled with our chronic overconfidence in our ability to recognize faces, has big consequences.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Often in life, we find ourselves wrestling with a decision. And when we do, we tend to focus on the outcome of that decision. How we'll feel once all is said and done. Will I love my new job or will I miss my old one? Should I move to a new city or stay close to friends and family? Will having children bring me joy or will they feel like a burden?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. We spend a lot of time trying to make plans for our future selves. That is, the version of ourselves that will exist tomorrow, next week, or a year from now. We make these plans based on the assumption that we are going to be the same person tomorrow, next week, or a year from now. But what if this is not the case?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
What if our future self is a stranger to us? At Yale University, the philosopher L.A. Paul explores this question. Laurie, just like John Newton, the activist Malcolm X also had a number of transformative experiences. Can you give us a quick biographical sketch on how these experiences changed him?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
She's interested in how they inform and transform who we are. L.A. Paul, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Laurie, in the middle of the 18th century, there was a young man named John Newton in England. His life story captures one aspect of this idea that you've been studying for a while. I understand he had a rather difficult upbringing. He was seen as a difficult child.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
And at this point, I think many people are familiar with the speeches he made where he preaches violence as a solution to oppression. And he transforms himself basically from being this troubled kid to someone who basically says, you know, violence is the way to to rid ourselves of the shackles of oppression.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So in 1963, he goes on a pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the holiest sites of Islam. How did this pilgrimage change him, Laurie?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
And so he comes back to the United States, and how does this change the message that he's preaching?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So you call the turns in Malcolm X's life, the turns that we all experience as we go through life, transformative experiences. What do you mean by that term, Lorraine?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
Can you talk a moment about how these transformative experiences are not just something external happening to us, but they're also a way for us to discover something about ourselves that perhaps we did not know earlier?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So his mother was religious, but after she died, John soon found himself not just turning away from religion, but turning against it. He became what you might call a militant atheist. Was his father a source of support, Laurie?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
You told us the story earlier of John Newton, and I'm thinking about what happened to him the night of that storm. He has this terrible catastrophe unfolding around him, but in the process, he's also realizing something about himself. He's realizing that he is vulnerable, that he is scared, that he is calling upon God for mercy.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
In some ways, the storm is revealing something that's inside him to him.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
In both the examples of John Newton and Malcolm X, we see a person transforming into someone they would have considered antithetical to their younger selves. These are examples of dramatic transformations. They underscore the challenge that Laurie has been studying.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
Why do we think we can confidently make plans for our future selves, when in fact, we might have very different preferences, attitudes, and values in the future? Laurie says that you don't need dramatic moments of transformation to see how subjective experience can reshape our minds.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
She cites a thought experiment, first proposed by the Australian philosopher Frank Cameron Jackson, about a brilliant scientist named Mary, who has a very odd upbringing.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
And is the different thing merely subjective experience, which is at this point, Mary being a brilliant scientist has learned everything about wavelengths and frequency. She knows all the physics of light. She knows the properties of red. She knows what things are red. She has had the color red described to her in various settings.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
What has changed when she finally sees red for herself for the first time?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
I mean, Malcolm X had probably read accounts of what people traveling to Mecca experienced, right? He might have read about what this pilgrimage was like, but of course, that's not the same thing as actually going on the pilgrimage himself.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
At a much more trivial level, this might involve the foods we eat, for example, the fruits we eat, for example. If there's something that we haven't tasted before, just having it described to us doesn't quite do it justice.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So there's a real-world example that comes to mind that perhaps has slightly bigger stakes than eating a fruit, Laurie, and that's the decision to have children. Talk about this, that we can read books about what it's like to have children, what it's like to raise children, but that's not quite the same thing as actually having a child yourself.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
You once wrote a paper on this topic, What You Can't Expect When You're Expecting. And it's about this gap between what parenthood is like as you read about it and think about it and actually then experiencing it.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So at one point he was recruited to join the Royal Navy, but even there he was rebellious and got punished for it. What do we know about his life at this point, Laurie?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
When we come back, deeper problems with not knowing who our future selves are going to be. Also, Laurie asks me to imagine a rather unusual scenario.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In life, we very often don't anticipate how much we will change in the future. Sure, we may understand that going through a midlife crisis or having a child or falling in love will have some effect on us. But we do not expect these experiences to upend who we are at a fundamental level.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
The philosopher L.A. Paul is the author of the book, Transformative Experience. She says the people we were before those experiences may not be the people we become afterwards. How do we plan for the future when our future selves might be strangers? And what does this mean for how we should live our lives in the here and now?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
Laurie, one thing we try and do as we are making important decisions is that we try to simulate how we will feel if we went down path A or path B. How effective is simulation in helping us anticipate how we will feel after a decision?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So when we make big decisions, we often come up with lists of pros and cons. Effectively, we're doing a cost-benefit analysis. You have a thought experiment to illustrate this idea that involves vampires. Can you describe the thought experiment for us?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
I'm wondering, Laurie, you know, how we should think about something like advanced directives. In medicine, you know, we ask people, you know, tell us what you would like us to do if you were in this situation. If you were in a vegetative state, if your brain wasn't working anymore, if your limbs weren't working anymore, how much, how aggressive do you want us to be? Tell us what you want.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
And it essentially is asking people, tell me what you want done with your future self. What does the work on transformative experience tell us about how we should approach medical advance directives?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So he finds himself working in the slave trade. And I understand even here, he ends up making lots of enemies among the other men working on the slave ship. So basically, he was just not a very pleasant person to be around.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
We've discussed in different ways how we find it very difficult to imagine who our future selves are going to be, but that's at an individual level. Do you think the same thing happens at a collective level as well, Laurie?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
I mean, the same thing can also happen with an election, can it not, Laurie, which is, you know, you're voting for a candidate or you vote for a party with some understanding or, you know, you're making a prediction of what this party or the president might do in the future. But of course, it's not until you actually get there that you actually see what it's like.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So sometimes we are actually given that rarest of things, a glimpse into who our future self is going to be. Tell me the story of the inventor Alfred Nobel, Laurie.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
L.A. Paul is a philosopher at Yale University. She is the author of the book, Transformative Experience. Laurie, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
We do this with smaller decisions too. Is this expensive vacation going to be worth the cost? Should I find a new preschool for my child? What major should I pursue in college? Our minds fill with questions as we try to predict the best paths to take. We make lists of pros and cons, weigh our options, get advice from friends. All this to make our future selves happy.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you love Hidden Brain, please consider joining our podcast subscription, Hidden Brain Plus.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
You'll be helping us build new episodes of the show. Plus, you'll have access to bonus conversations that you won't hear anywhere else. To sign up, go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, you can sign up at apple.co slash hidden brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So at one point, John Newton gets left on the coast of Africa, and even the slave ship that he was on basically abandons him. He goes through various experiences and adventures, but eventually finds himself back on a ship bound for England. This is called the Greyhound.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
But far from being grateful to his rescuers, he spends his days on the ship cursing and drinking, and at one point even falls into the ocean and has to be rescued.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
On March 10, 1748, John Newton woke up in the night to find the ship was caught in a terrible storm. What did he do, Laurie?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
The story goes that he and the captain of the ship had been plugging a hole. And this was after they had plugged many holes. But when they plugged this one, at one point he says, if this will not do, the Lord have mercy on us. And of course, at that point, he starts to reflect on the fact that he has, you know, railed against God for these many years.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So the battered ship arrives in Ireland and only hours before a second major storm strikes and in some ways convinces John Newton that God, in fact, answers prayers. And for the first time in many years, he visited a church and began to pray.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
But in running these mental calculations, there's something we rarely consider about the future. We might not be the same person when we get there. Our future selves might think, feel, and value things differently than we do right now. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore one of life's trickiest questions.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
So in 1772, this was a little more than two decades after that storm at sea, John Newton writes a hymn to describe his own transformation. Many of our listeners have heard this hymn, Laurie. What is it? It's Amazing Grace.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
I'm wondering, Laurie, what the young John Newton, the rebellious man who was always cursing God and drinking himself senseless, what would he make of the older John Newton, the man we all now remember as the creator of amazing grace?
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
Another transformation that happened in John Newton's life is that he spent some time in the slave trade, working on these slave ships, but eventually became an abolitionist and in some ways led the movement against the slave trade across the British Empire.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
How do we make decisions about the future when we cannot anticipate who we'll be when we get there? Our lives are made up of experiences big and small. Some of these experiences flutter by, never to be thought of again, while others make lasting impressions. At Yale University, the philosopher Laurie Ann Paul, who is known as L.A. Paul, studies these experiences.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
At one point, I understand he writes a pamphlet titled Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, and it's a graphic account of what happens on these slave ships and includes a confession of his own involvement in the slave trade. I understand the pamphlet sells out. The second edition goes to every member of parliament.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
He ends up having a significant effect on the slave trade across the British Empire.
Hidden Brain
The Moments that Change Us
John Newton went from being a man who loved to stir up trouble to a minister who tended to other troublemakers. He went from profiting off the slave trade to an outspoken opponent of it. He died nine months after the slave trade was abolished across the British Empire. We've all had experiences that have had profound effects on us.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Jason refuses to be a part of the strip search. He hands the phone back to Donna Summers and returns to the kitchen.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Donna Summers asks her fiancé to come to her workplace. Walter Nix coaches youth baseball. He's a regular churchgoer. But once in the back room, alone with the frightened teenager, he obediently follows the instructions of the voice on the phone.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So at the end of this period, Walter Nix finally leaves and Donna Summers comes back. He goes to his car, Walter Nix goes to his car, but he recognizes that he has done something that he shouldn't have done. What happens there, Sunita?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So at this point now, the whole ordeal has been almost three hours long. Donna Summers was told by Officer Scott that the police were going to be on their way, and presumably the police should have gotten there within three hours.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
But all of us also remember other moments, moments of silence, of cowardice. We don't post about such moments on our social media feeds, but we do ask ourselves afterwards, why didn't I say something? Why didn't I do something? At Cornell University, psychologist Sunita Sa studies why we stay silent when we know we should speak and how to rediscover our voices. Sunita Sa, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Talk a moment about the fact that as Donna Summers picks up this call, the officer is citing various police codes and statutes. She decides to take that first step of calling Louise to the back room. And from that point on, each action is only one small step beyond the previous action. Talk about this process of gradual escalation, Sunita. You're like the frog in the proverbial hot water.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
I want to discuss another aspect of compliance. Shortly after you finished medical school in the United Kingdom, you were invited to a free financial consultation. What was your life like at the time? What were the state of your finances and who was offering this financial consultations?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Sunita sank into the couch. The financial advisor, whose name was Dan, came in.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So in other words, he has told you that he has something of a conflict of interest in the advice that he's giving you. What was your reaction at this point?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Sunita, I want to take you back to your days in Pittsburgh. There was an evening one day when you felt a sudden pain in your chest. Can you tell me what happened?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So you've come up with a term that I love called insinuation anxiety. What is insinuation anxiety, Sunita?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
You conducted a very interesting experiment on a ferry in Long Island. Tell me about that experiment and what you found.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
And that makes sense because you're getting a sure $5 versus getting something that's likely to be less than $5.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
I mean, it's really puzzling, Sunita, because of course, as you've shown, when you haven't given anyone advice, their preference is just to take the $5. When you give people advice to take the lottery, it goes up to 20%.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
But when you tell people, take the lottery, and I am going to profit if you take the lottery, you would imagine that number should go down because now people should be suspicious of me and my motives, but the number goes up, it doubles.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Tell me about the gender patterns you noticed in running this experiment, Sunita.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So Sunita, you have looked at different fields, aviation and medicine, to see how often people speak up when they see a mistake. What have you found?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
I want to talk about another aspect of compliance. Sometimes, you know, we're just swept along by the current, by what everyone around us is doing. You tell the story of a young Marine named Matthew who was deployed to Iraq when he was 19 years old. He's serving near Fallujah, and things are not good when he gets there.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So at one point, he's in a unit that's basically investigating a neighborhood, and they hear an explosive device go off. It's near a mosque. Describe to me the events that happened next, Sunita.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
You know, some time ago, Sunita, we spoke with political scientist Timur Koran. He works at Duke University. And many years ago, he came up with this term called preference falsification, where he describes what happens in many societies where you have a current of some kind is running through a society. Maybe it's a
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
someone has come to power and this person is very powerful or a regime has changed. Some of the work that he did was looking at East Germany after the fall of the communists and integration with West Germany. And he finds that in many of these societies, what happens is that
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
as people sense that the tides have turned, that the current has changed, they have a very strong impulse to basically fall in line with whatever the prevailing current is. And the idea of preference falsification is I have preferences, but I'm going to, in some ways, suppress my preferences.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
I'm going to falsify my preferences because my preferences are out of line with what the majority seems to want. In the classic example He describes the story of a reporter going to East Germany shortly after reunification with West Germany, and the reporter is trying to find former communists to speak with, to ask how they are faring under reunification.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
And when he gets there, all the communists tell him, you know, I never really was a communist in the first place. I was just pretending to go along with the old regime. And, you know, I always was for capitalism. I always was for the West. One of the points that Timur Koran makes is that it's really, really difficult for individuals to break out of this when this happens to them.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
It's one thing to notice it or even to smile about it when it happens to someone else in another country. Very difficult to do something when you yourself feel swept up by the tides around you.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
A great deal of our rule following is not conscious and deliberate. It's implicit and automatic. Most of the time, we are so compliant, we don't even realize we are being compliant. When we come back, how to regain a sense of agency. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Every country in the world has its national monuments to recognize and remember its heroes. These heroes are invariably people who stepped up to do dangerous, difficult, and courageous things in moments of crisis. They are the stars of our history books, our beacons of inspiration. Psychologist Sunita Sarr is the author of Defy, the power of no in a world that demands yes.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
She says one common lesson from the heroes in our history books is that they listen to their inner voices in times of crisis. Think back to that horrific case of impersonation at the McDonald's. Some employees rebelled against Officer Scott's instructions and others complied, but every one of them felt a defining inner emotion.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So obviously, most of us don't like being tense. We don't like being stressed. But you say that this tension actually can play a very salutary role in our lives. How so?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
I want to go back to the story you told me about how when you had just finished medical school in the UK and you were weighing how to manage your relatively meager savings, you met this charming financial advisor named Dan who told you that he stood to benefit if you chose his recommended investments. Did you go ahead and take Dan's advice, Sunita?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
In some ways, this points to one of the most important pieces of advice you have when people are dealing with whether to consent to something or to defy something, and that is to buy themselves time.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
Sunita had worked as a doctor in the UK before moving to the United States. She knew the symptoms of a pulmonary embolism, which is a blockage in the lungs that's caused by a blood clot.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So I feel like this happens all the time in so many different situations. You're buying a car, and the salesperson basically tries to pressure you into making a decision quickly. or you're sitting in a dentist's chair and the dentist says, you know, we need to do this and that, or here's the procedure we need to do, there's a great amount of pressure for us to act quickly.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
And of course, when we have to act quickly, it becomes much more likely that we will act in compliant ways.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
One of the other ideas that you talk about that can be helpful is to name our own emotions and to potentially talk to ourselves in the third person. Talk about this idea. What do you have in mind and why would it work?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
I understand that there has been research that finds that in fact, patients are less likely to follow advice that is marred by conflicts of interest when they hear about this advice through a third party and they have some time to think about what to do.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
You cite an idea from the political scientist James March about three questions that people can ask of themselves when they feel like they're being pressured into doing something. What are these questions?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
So talk about why asking these three questions is compelling. And I noticed that one of the questions is not what should I do in this situation, but what would a person like me do in a situation like this?
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
There are times in our lives when defying authority and disobeying orders can be scary. We might feel psychologically scared. We might even feel physically scared. These fears can be paralyzing. In our companion episode to this story on Hidden Brain Plus, we explore how we might deal with those fears. It turns out one of the greatest antidotes to fear is not courage, but love.
Hidden Brain
Marching To Your Own Drummer
If you're a subscriber, that episode should be available right now in your podcast feed. It's titled Defeating Fear. If you're not yet a subscriber, I invite you to check out a subscription with a free seven-day trial. Go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Your support doesn't just unlock great content.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
It unlocks a way for us to keep bringing you great content. If you're a longtime fan of the show, it's your way of showing us that you would like us to keep doing this into the future. Again, those links are apple.co slash hiddenbrain or support.hiddenbrain.org. Sunita Sa is a psychologist at Cornell University. She's the author of the book, Defy, The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Sunita, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
If you have follow-up questions for Sunita Sa and you'd be willing to share those questions with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line defiance. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
If you were a son or daughter of a slave-owning family in 18th century America, would you have spoken out against racial injustice? What would you have done? The question is compelling because while we all like to think we would have done the brave thing, the right thing, many of us have the sneaking suspicion we might not.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Moments later, Sunita found herself getting prepped for the scan. She turned to the tech and asked how much radiation the scan entailed. Sunita didn't need to ask the question.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
I want to ask you about another story, Sunita. You have a friend named Rick who was experiencing some lower back pain and he decided that he was going to go in to get a massage. What happened?
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. What would you have done? It's one of the most enduring questions in psychology. If you were a German soldier in the 1940s, would you have followed orders? If you were a member of a Hutu militia group in 1994, would you have killed your Tutsi neighbors in the unfolding genocide in Rwanda?
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
I understand that Rick not only left without saying anything, but he added a tip for the massage therapist on his way out.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Sunita has asked herself how she and so many other people she knows have become so compliant. In her case, she traced it back to her family upbringing.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
We fear that we might have fallen in line like everyone else and done what we were told to do. Today on the show, we explore the reasons many of us fail to stand up to unjust rules and authority. Not just to dictators or people perpetrating crimes against humanity, but to petty tyrants in the workplace, unfair rules in our cities, even mean-spirited gossip in our circle of friends.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
I understand your parents were fairly strict with you. And at one point, your dad would wake you up in the middle of the night to practice your scales. I mean, that's pretty intense.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Some time ago, Sunita noticed she was being similarly demanding of her own son.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Think about the last time you were on a plane or train or bus. Sitting nearby were two families. Both had small infants with them. One was calm and compliant. The other shrieked and screamed. Did you find yourself marveling at the good kid and annoyed by the bad kid?
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
If you're a teacher, do you find yourself drawn to angelic children who follow the rules and find yourself exasperated by kids who constantly test the limits? When we come back, the psychological drivers that prompt us to fall in line and how they can lead us astray. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. All of us need to follow rules.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
When you live in a country where people drive on the right, you cannot suddenly decide to drive on the left. Well, you can, but you'll quickly get in a crash. We expect schools and stores to be open when they say they will be open, and we expect courts and cops to come to our aid when someone breaks the law and harms us.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
But while rules do many good things in our lives, they can also turn us into unthinking automatons. At Cornell University, Sunita Sa studies the psychology of compliance and defiance. Sunita, in April 2004, an assistant manager at a Kentucky McDonald's gets a call from a police officer. Set the scene for me, Sunita. Who was this manager and what was the call about?
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Why we silence ourselves and how we can align our words and actions with our values, this week on Hidden Brain. All of us can remember moments when we stepped up to do the right thing. Maybe we helped a fellow student who was on the receiving end of hurtful barbs. Maybe we defied orders that we knew were wrong. Looking back, we remember these moments with pride.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
The officer cites various laws and criminal statutes that Louise allegedly broke. He tells Donna he has her supervisor, a woman named Lisa Siddons, on the other line.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
Donna Summers brings Louise to the back office. Officer Scott is still on the phone. A note that this next part of the story involves physical and sexual assault.
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Marching To Your Own Drummer
It's cold in the back room. By this point, Louise is wearing only a McDonald's apron. When Donna Summers tells the police officer she needs to attend to the evening rush at the restaurant, he asks her to bring in someone else to watch the teenager.
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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. All parents have moments when their kids test their patience. Lian Yang is no exception.
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Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
In the last few weeks, in our Relationships 2.0 series, we've looked at the importance of human connection and how we can become better negotiators. If you missed those episodes, do check them out. This week on Hidden Brain, how our powers of observation allow us to navigate our social worlds until they don't. We are constantly trying to read other people's minds.
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Yeah, as I was listening to those scenarios, you know, I would have said that the person who didn't mean to harm her friend but accidentally caused harm is, in fact, innocent. But the person who didn't cause harm when she intended to cause harm was, in fact, culpable that this was an act of attempted murder.
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You had the insight to study not just how people reach different conclusions, but how their brains were operating as they reach these different moral judgments. Can you tell me about those studies and what you found, Leanne?
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So you could, of course, say that merely because a brain region appears active, you don't necessarily know that it's actually connected to the outcome and behavior that you're seeing. But you've gone a step further to actually test whether this brain region is, in fact, implicated in understanding the intentions of others. Tell me how you've done this, Leanne.
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That is actually somewhat disturbing, isn't it? The idea that you disrupt a small portion of my brain and something that I think of as core to myself, you know, how I think of myself as being a moral person can be altered by small changes in neurochemistry.
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When we interact with friends, relatives, and coworkers, we ask ourselves, what is going on in this other person's head? What does she want? What are his intentions? Our ability to read other minds involves an extraordinary feat of cognition. Yet, it mostly unfolds in our heads without us being aware of it.
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So much of our moral reasoning depends on our ability to consider the intentions of other people. When someone makes a mistake but we see they didn't mean to do it, we usually are less harsh with them. This is why kids say, it was an accident. But as Leanne points out, a number of factors can change how and whether we are willing to consider the intentions of a wrongdoer.
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When someone steps on your toe in the hallway, you automatically assume they didn't mean to do it. Your mind gravitates to an innocent explanation. But other situations work the opposite way. They make it nearly impossible for us to think about the intentions behind an outcome. Consider this disturbing news story out of Chicago.
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Now, when I hear this, I find it really difficult to think about whether the police officer meant to do any harm. A nine-year-old child is dead. The intentions of the driver seem irrelevant. And when I hear, as actually happened in this case, that the police officer was given a traffic citation rather than a criminal charge, I feel outraged. But here's the thing.
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If the cop had run a stop sign and that was the end of it, do I think he should be criminally charged? That would be absurd. So the same actions with the same intentions caused my mind to reach for very different conclusions.
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There are other situations where our ability to think about intentions gets disabled. If we hear that someone has knowingly committed incest with a sibling, you might not stop to think about whether both siblings consented or that no one else was affected. The violation of the taboo, the outcome, is all that matters.
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Minus this skill, the simplest of interactions would be mired in confusion and misunderstanding. Lian Yang is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Boston College. She has spent years studying this mental ability and the profound effects it has on our lives. Lian Yang, welcome to Hidden Brain.
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I want to talk a moment, Leanne, about how our understanding of events changes as our understanding of the intentions behind those events changes. On September 11, 2001, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center tower, no one knew what was happening. Many news reports, in fact, speculated it might have been some kind of accident.
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But when the second plane hit, it changed the way people understood what was happening. The second plane made it clear the attacks were intentional.
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So do you think this is why in some ways we have this capacity in our heads in the first place? I remember on 9-11, I was working in the newsroom of the Washington Post. And once we knew that two planes had hit the World Trade Center and a third plane had hit the Pentagon... it was clear that we were under attack, at which point it prompted us to say, okay, what should we do?
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Could we be under attack? Is there some danger that's facing us? And of course, if our reading of the events had been different, if we had said, all right, this was an isolated accident, it was just a plane that basically lost control and happened to fly into the World Trade Center building, our response to the incident would be entirely different. We would say, okay, we need to have
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better flight security measures, better pilot training. So our responses to the events are very different as we read the intentions behind those events. And I'm wondering, do you think this might be partly why our brains come with this capacity to read intentions? Because as we read intentions, it tells us how to respond to the world.
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I want to start with a very simple example that shows how important it is for us to read what's happening in the minds of other people. In the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams, the characters Daniel and Miranda have split up, and Daniel comes up with this unconventional way to win Miranda back.
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When we come back, the ability we have to read other people's minds can be a superpower, but this superpower can fail us, sometimes with terrible consequences. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
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This is Hidden Brain.
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I'm Shankar Vedantam. Our ability to read the minds of other people is something of a mental superpower. It allows us to effortlessly navigate a complex social world and intuit what other people want and how they feel. This superpower helps us understand when bad things happen by accident, when they happen by design, and it allows us to tell friend from foe.
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Of course, the fact that our minds read so much into the intentions of others also makes the superpower ripe for exploitation by con artists, marketing gurus, and politicians. At Boston College, neuroscientist Leanne Young studies the psychology of theory of mind, our ability to think about the mental states of others, including their intentions.
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In her lab, she and her colleagues explore the role of intention when it comes to making moral judgments. Leanne, I want to talk about some ways in which our ability to read other people's intentions can sometimes go wrong. And I want to start again with television and the arts. There's a very funny scene in the TV show Seinfeld.
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The character George has just gone on a date with a new love interest. They drive back to her apartment. They're sitting in the car outside. It's midnight. The air is crackling with sexual tension. And here's what happens next.
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Leanne, I'm not sure if you're a fan of Seinfeld, but what makes this clip funny is that George is actually not picking up on her intentions.
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He returns to the house in disguise as Mrs. Doubtfire, an elderly widow who seeks the role of nanny and housekeeper. Now, he quickly wins the trust of the family. Very soon, Miranda is asking Mrs. Doubtfire for life advice, including whether to go on a date with a man she's just met.
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Such miscommunications can be trivial, but they can also sometimes have life and death consequences. A police officer might have to make a split-second decision about whether a suspect is reaching into a pocket to grab a cell phone or to grab a gun. The officer has to read the other person's intentions in order to decide how to respond.
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And how he reads those intentions could be shaped by all manner of factors, including bias.
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So the fact that our ability to read intentions happens, you know, unconsciously, that most of us are not even aware that we are doing it. I'm wondering how much of a role that plays in our misreading of other people's intentions, because presumably that also is happening unconsciously.
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I'm wondering in your own life, Leanne, have you noticed this happening of people failing to pick up on things, reading each other wrong? You've, I think, described during the pandemic wearing a mask as you go into some stores or other social settings and wondering what people must think of you and what your intentions are.
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Not only do we assume we can read the minds of other people, we often feel we can even read their character and intuit whether they are good people or bad people. It turns out we do this a lot in politics. We regularly misread the intentions behind the choices of our political opponents. We see them as malevolent. Here's a political attack ad from the US presidential race in 1988.
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So what I hear in the ad, Leanne, is that Michael Dukakis was intentionally allowing criminals to go scot-free and commit more crimes. And, you know, the ad doesn't explicitly say that, but I think it leads me to that conclusion.
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I'm wondering how much of the daily partisan rancor that we hear, not just in the United States, but in other countries, is shaped by misreading the intentions of our opponents, that we're not just taking what they say and do at face value, but we're reading into it what we assume to be their intentions.
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You've conducted studies involving Democrats and Republicans or Israelis and Palestinians, and obviously each of those groups is prone to misreading the intentions of their opponents. What kind of a study was this and what did you find, Liane?
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So, Lian, if we lack the capacity to read what was happening inside the minds of Daniel and Miranda, how would that change how we understood this scene?
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This tendency to be selective in how we read intentions extends well beyond the realms of war and politics. Lian says we often interpret intentions in a way that confirms the stories we wish to tell about ourselves and others.
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I'm reminded of a conversation we had some time ago with the linguist Deborah Tannen. She says it can be hard to recognize someone's intentions, and so it's worth assuming that their intentions are good because it makes for smoother conversations.
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When this happens and the couch is covered in black splotches or there's smoothie on the floor, the perpetrators inevitably offer this defense.
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Isn't it really hard to do though, Leanne? I feel like, you know, even as I seek, you know, compassion and empathy from other people, it's hard for me to sort of give them the compassion and empathy that they seek. So there's a real paradox here.
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Lian Yang is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Boston College. Lian, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
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After the break, Your Questions Answered, our segment where we bring back recent guests of the show to answer listeners' follow-up questions about their work. In this edition of Your Questions Answered, Fred Luskin responds to listener stories of grudges and forgiveness.
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That's when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. Think about the last time someone really hurt you. Maybe it was a friend who betrayed your confidence, a colleague who took credit for your work, a business partner who cheated you. How long did that hurt stay with you?
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How often did you turn it over in your mind, feeling a fresh wave of pain and anger as though it happened just yesterday? The hurt we experience when someone breaks our trust is a natural emotional response. But these emotions can start to eat at us if we hold on to them for too long.
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We recently discussed this with psychologist Fred Luskin, who studies forgiveness and grudges as the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. If you missed our initial conversation with Fred, you can find it in this podcast feed. It's the episode titled, No Hard Feelings.
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Today, Fred returns to answer your questions about grudges and how we can come to terms with the wrongs done to us. Fred Luskin, welcome back to Hidden Brain.
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One of the things that makes grudges psychologically interesting is that they involve a certain amount of mental storytelling. We weave our own personal narrative of a person and a wrong that they have done to us.
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You've said that grudges can be difficult to shake because we often start to combine different threads of various grievance stories, and these stories start to weave together and create a sort of meta-narrative. How does this happen, Fred?
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You know, I was talking recently with a memory researcher, and she said something really interesting, which is that our memories tend to produce whatever our current emotional states are. In other words, if we are happy, it tends to be easier to pull happy memories from our brain. And when we are sad, it's easier to pull sad memories from our brain.
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And I'm wondering if the same thing in some ways happens with our grievances. So in other words, someone does something wrong to me, and then all of a sudden it becomes so much easier for me to remember all the other times this person has also done something bad to me or said something unkind to me.
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Right. So we're able to read in some ways that he has an agenda here because he wants to keep his wife from dating other men. And we also understand that she doesn't know what's going on. But what's interesting to me, Leanne, is that we intuit all of this effortlessly. No one sits down as they're watching the movie and actually says to themselves, all right, this is what's going through his head.
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I mean, you can think about it almost from an evolutionary standpoint, which is that if someone does something bad to me, if another animal does something bad to me, it's very useful to remember that this animal has harmed me.
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And it might actually be useful to remember the other times this other person or this other animal has harmed me because it tells me now, steer clear of this person, you know, give them a wide berth.
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But what was very useful, perhaps, in our evolutionary history when it came to dealing with other animals and with predators might be less effective in the modern workplace, for example, where we're constantly interacting with colleagues. And now we remember a small slight. Maybe it was an accidental slight. But that now compounds itself with all the other slights that we start to remember.
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And now we form this metanarrative about how a colleague of ours doesn't like us or we don't get along with them.
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Hmm. So we received a number of listener comments and questions from people who decided to sever a relationship with someone else. Here's a question we received from a listener named Lydia.
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This is what's going through her head. It's the fact we're able to take it in so effortlessly that allows us to understand the scene.
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So what do you think, Fred? I can see in some ways both sides of this equation. I might distance myself from someone because I'm holding a grudge, but I also could distance myself from someone because I've thought about this relationship and I don't want to continue it any longer.
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You know, we like to think that when we forgive someone, our relationship with them is going to come out stronger on the other end. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Here's a question we received from listener Sue.
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So you used a term just now, theory of mind. It's a term that you and other researchers have to describe our capacity to understand what is happening in the minds of other people. Can you explain what that term means to me?
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So in Sue's case, Fred, her mother is now dead. She may or may not have been a narcissist, but there's no way that she's going to be able to accept that she did something wrong because she's not with us anymore.
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But I think even there, the point that you're making still stands, which is from Sue's point of view, her forgiving her mother might be good for Sue, regardless of what her mother may have said or done.
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We've talked on many episodes of Hidden Brain about political divisions and how to engage with people in our lives who hold political beliefs that are different from our own. Here's a message we received from a listener named Ezra.
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What do you think, Fred? What advice would you give to Ezra?
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Say more about this idea when you say that the goal is to come up with skillful action. How do we know what skillful action is for Ezra in this case?
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I'm wondering whether any research has been done about the utility of actually asking the person who we feel has harmed us their advice on what we should do. So in Ezra's case, for example, I'm wondering what if he went to his parents and said, here's what I'm feeling. I know that you love me very much. I also feel like you have betrayed me.
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I'm struggling between my feelings of my love for you and my admiration for you and my resentment for you. Help me figure out what I should do with these feelings.
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And again, the fact that we do it so effortlessly, many of us don't even realize that we're doing it. Many of us don't realize that if we're having a conversation and we were not able to intuit what was happening in someone else's mind, really difficult to have a conversation.
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Our guest is psychologist Fred Luskin, joining us to answer listener questions about his work on grudges and forgiveness. More of those questions in a moment. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
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This is Hidden Brain.
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Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Your Questions Answered, our segment in which we bring back past guests of the show to respond to listeners' follow-up thoughts and questions about their work. Today we're talking with Fred Luskin. He's a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project.
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Fred is also the author of the books Forgive for Good, A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, and Forgive for Love, The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship. Let's turn again to listener questions. Our next one is from a listener named Laura, and it's a version of a question that we have received from a number of listeners.
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What do you think, Fred? Is it possible to essentially hold a grudge against yourself?
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In our initial conversation, Fred, we mostly focused on how we can let go of grudges against people who have wronged us. But we've all probably been in situations where we are the wrongdoer, where we have betrayed someone in our life. Here's a question we received about that from listener Buma.
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Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Nearly all the world's greatest stories ask you to exercise theory of mind, to inhabit the minds of other people. Think of books such as Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, or TV shows such as Breaking Bad, or musicals like Hamilton.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
We received an interesting question from listener Richard. He wanted to know about the factors that might affect our ability to forgive someone. Here he is.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Hmm. I think one interesting theme that's come up in many of these questions and also came up in our initial conversation, Fred, is that I think when people think about grudges, they sometimes imagine themselves to be in the position of judges. They're asking themselves, I'm a judge. Here are the facts before me. Do these facts justify forgiveness? Should I hold on to the grudge?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Should I grant forgiveness? Should I not grant forgiveness? And that is one way of thinking about it. But I think the point that you're making is that a judge is making a decision that really is in the public good. They're deciding, should this person be sentenced? Should this person be let free? And you're trying to make a judgment that's in the public good.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
When it comes to the forgiveness that you're talking about, Fred, you're really talking about what's in people's own good. And you're basically saying, is it in my interest to actually let this go, regardless of whether it's in the other person's interest or anyone else's interest?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Fred Luskin is a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. He is the author of Forgive for Good, a proven prescription for health and happiness, and Forgive for Love, the missing ingredient for a healthy and lasting relationship. Fred Luskin, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We had voice acting in today's episode from Clara and Rose Dubois and Scarlett McNally.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
We end today with a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by Discover. In 2022, David Jefferson's wife, Jill, was diagnosed with cancer. Jill didn't have many close friends, but one of her former co-workers, a woman named Nicole Kyle, started coming by to try and cheer her up. Soon, Nicole became a consistent comfort to the couple.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Leanne's reaction, while understandable, is deeply ironic. She's a psychologist who studies how we read other people's intentions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So in 2024, it didn't surprise David when Nicole offered to help him get Jill home after a hospital stay. What did surprise him was the lengths she went to once they got Jill home. David recorded his story in a park where he and Jill hoped to one day hike together, so you'll hear some wind in the background.
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Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So psychologists have found different ways to measure this ability and to test how it develops in small children. What do they find, Leanne? Is this a skill we are born with at birth or is it something that develops over time?
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Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Listener David Jefferson. Jill and David were together for 36 years. This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by Discover. Discover believes everyone deserves to feel special and celebrates those who exhibit the spirit in their communities. I'm a longstanding card member myself. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.
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Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Some of these tests create artificial situations where one character knows more than another. Daniel in Mrs. Doubtfire understands the subterfuge he is perpetrating. Miranda does not. The tests evaluate whether children can keep track of all the different perspectives in the minds of different characters, that one person has a belief that's true, for example, and another has a belief that's false.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Right, so once Anne moves the ball, small children deduce or believe that Sally must somehow intuitively also know that the ball has been moved to the new location, whereas older children realize, no, Sally, in fact, does not have the same mind as Anne, and what Anne knows is not what Sally knows.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Sally knows only what she knows, and as far as she knows, the ball is in the old location, so when she returns to the room, she's going to guess that that's where it still is.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So we've looked at a couple of humorous examples of how theory of mind operates, but I want to stress again this capacity we have to intuit what's happening in the minds of other people. This is a skill that we use all the time. Can you talk a moment, Leanne, about what would happen if we lack this skill? Are there people, in fact, who do not have this skill as they move through life?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Liane and others have found that people who have a difficult time intuiting what is going on in the minds of other people find themselves hamstrung as they go through life. They can be awkward in interpersonal settings. They can fail to read the room in a meeting. They may even demonstrate reduced empathy for others.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Moving through the world without an understanding that other minds are different than your own, that they have different intentions, desires, and hopes, this is like playing music without a sense of rhythm. You find yourself constantly out of sync with your fellow musicians.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
As we go through life, we are constantly making sense of people's actions by interpreting their intentions. Our ability to read what is happening in other people's minds is like an invisible compass guiding us through life. But sometimes it leads us astray. We misread other people's intentions, especially when we're angry or hurt.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
You know, I'm reminded of the work of the psychologist E. Tory Higgins, who's done some work looking at politicians who are very skilled at reading a room. He describes this phenomenon called audience tuning, where in some ways the politicians are changing what they say in order to be best received by the people in the room.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
They're in some ways manipulating the people in the room, but they're also being manipulated by the people in the room so that what they say aligns with the audience in the room. And it's interesting. So theory of mind is not just, I suppose, on an interpersonal level. It can also happen at a group setting where we intuit how a group of people is feeling or feeling toward us.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Lian and other researchers have tried to understand how the physical brain produces this superpower. Surprisingly, they found a specific region of the brain plays a crucial role. They've even found you can temporarily disrupt this brain region and profoundly change the ways people think and act. That's when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. To navigate our social worlds, we rely on something psychologists call theory of mind. It's our ability to guess the intentions, desires, and motivations of other people. When your co-worker tells you she's thrilled it's Monday, you know that's sarcasm because you unconsciously pick up the intention behind her words.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
But as amazing as our social antennae can be, they can also sometimes make mistakes. we can misread other people's intentions. Maybe your co-worker really does like Mondays. Psychologist and neuroscientist Lian Yang studies how our brains read intention, both the intentions of others and of ourselves, especially when it comes to our moral judgments.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Leanne, you run experiments where you test how volunteers react to a story about a woman who accidentally poisoned her friend. Can you tell me the setup of the experiment and describe the scenario in more detail?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In 1906, the journalist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a novel based on his undercover reporting in Chicago's meatpacking plants. The book tells the story of a young couple, Yorgis and Ona, who immigrate to the U.S. from Lithuania along with their relatives. The optimism they feel about their new country is soon tested.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So you say that hopelessness and despair can also be contagious. So hearing expressions of these emotions can induce similar feelings in others. And you tell the story of a student named Job who one day had an outburst in your class. Who was Job and what happened?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
They don't know how to respond or assume any efforts they make will go nowhere. Other times it's because they feel overwhelmed or consumed with paralyzing guilt. Whatever the driver, when it comes to existential issues such as climate change or war, inaction can have terrible consequences. This week on Hidden Brain, we continue our New Year's series, Wellness 2.0.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
What was the effect of that outburst on the class, Sarah?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
How did you yourself respond to this? I understand that you started to feel in some ways the despair that he was experiencing and feeling somewhat burned out yourself.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Like many people in the throes of despair, Sarah looked for quick ways to make herself feel better. Some of these things helped, at least in the short term.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So at one point, Sarah, you were talking with a colleague sitting at an old wooden picnic table about this feeling of being exhausted and burned out. Can you paint me a picture of this conversation and what came from it?
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So in some ways, what I'm hearing you say, Sarah, is that when it comes to confronting climate change, the turn that you made in some ways was not just to say we need to talk about climate change, but we need to talk about the feelings that climate change evokes in us, because those feelings can determine whether we do something about it or do nothing about it.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So as you started studying our emotional responses to big problems like climate change, you centered on several different ideas. And one of them was our tendency towards what you call busyness. This is exemplified by the story of a young woman you call Gabby. Tell me her story, Sarah.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
We look at how we come to feel disengaged and burned out, even on topics we might care about, and how we can begin to retrieve our sense of efficacy and purpose.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
But in some ways, what I'm hearing from Gabby's story is that any kind of pleasure or rest in some ways in her mind was, I am not serious enough about dealing with the concerns that I have about the world.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
You say at one point she was making amends for the debt she owed the planet, which, of course, was a bottomless pit of debt. So there was no end to what she owed. And you call this combination of shame, guilt, you know, perfectionism and anxiety, the cocktail of doom, which is, I think, a very powerful way of putting what many of us feel on a daily basis.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
And I can see some people saying not just, you know, I am not entitled to rest, I am not entitled to pleasure, but also saying, you know, maybe this thing that I'm doing right now, even if it is for the cause or for something I care about, it is insufficient. And so, you know, you could ask yourself, You know, what's the point of sitting in a classroom? What's the point of getting a degree?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
You know, if the world is on fire, what am I doing studying for this exam?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So we've been talking about some of the responses that people have to huge intractable problems and how these responses can sometimes be counterproductive or self-sabotaging. But you say that it's a mistake to blame the people who have these reactions.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
In fact, these emotional responses might be the logical result of the way that problems have been presented to people that in some ways we have taught people to respond in the ways in which they're responding.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
A missing ingredient for a recipe, a burned-out light bulb, a parking ticket. We make short work of these problems, briskly crossing them off our to-do lists. But modern life also seems full of issues that researchers call wicked problems, challenges so huge, complicated, and intractable that they defy our attempts to solve them.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
I want to look at one of the most important pieces of media in framing the way we think about climate change. I want to play you a clip from Al Gore's 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So Sarah, it's been a while since I watched this film, though sound effects really were something else. What was the approach adopted by this film, and what was the effect it had on people, including your students?
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Because, of course, what's happening here is not just that you're telling them that the problem is very big, but they're reminded at every step of the way that, in fact, the problem is too big for them, that they can't do anything about it. So you're telling them it's a terrible problem and you're helpless to solve it.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
For some people, Sarah says, scare tactics don't produce apathy, but what she calls a martyrdom complex.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
When we come up against problems like these, we tend to respond differently. At California State Polytechnic University Humboldt, Sarah Jacquet-Ray studies how we respond to huge, overwhelming problems and how we can get better at dealing with them. Sarah Jacquet-Ray, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Over time, Sarah came to see that there was one emotion she needed to induce in her students. It wasn't despair, and it wasn't blind hope that things would magically get better.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Sarah, a lot of your work focuses on the way people respond to the threat of climate change. Many of your students care deeply about the environment. In the course of working with them, you've seen a lot of intense emotions. Can you describe what office hours were like, late night emails from students?
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Modern life is full of problems that seem too big for any of us to solve. What can we do, we start to ask. The problem is so big, and I am so small. When we come back, how to make our problems smaller and ourselves bigger. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
I'm Shankar Vedant. Sarah Jacquet-Ray has spent many years studying our emotional responses to big, intractable problems like climate change. Over time, she started to realize that our emotional responses to such problems can be part of the solution or part of the problem. Sarah is the author of a field guide to climate anxiety, How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Sarah, can you tell me the story of Chris Jordan? He was a photographer who made multiple trips to the Pacific Ocean to take pictures of birds who were dying from plastic waste that they had ingested.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So Chris Jordan's story doesn't end with him making these photographs and feeling depressed. He writes about how he goes back over time, over and over again to visit these birds. And over time, his emotions start to change. How did they change, Sarah?
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Chris Jordan writes, It wasn't until several trips in that I began to really experience the beauty of these birds as kind of the antidote to the horror. That's been the shape of the journey for me as I slowly found my way to love these creatures, and that's really what my film is about more than anything, just how amazing and beautiful and magnificent they are.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
I think the Laysan albatross is a spiritual being. They are amazing beings, and the fact that they have plastic in their stomachs is just a stupid thing. It's not the main event. When I first started, the horror was the main event. Now the horror is just something to deal with amidst the enormous beauty and grace and magnificence of these creatures.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Hmm. I'm struck by the fact that so many of the debates that we have in public settings often involve talking in binaries. So some people say we should simply celebrate everything that humans have done because we're an amazing species and we have developed science and technology. And look at the number of people we've lifted out of poverty and the number of...
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
People we can feed today who we didn't think we could feed 50 years ago. And this is a story of success and pride. And other people say, no, look at the destruction that humans have done to the planet. And it's irreversible. And we're just a terrible species. And what I'm hearing you say in some ways is that both those stories at some level are true.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
You say it's important to intentionally cultivate positive emotions as a way to constructively address big problems. How so, Sarah?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
I understand that you yourself have taken up gardening recently in ways that you had not before.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Family members find jobs at a meatpacking plant, but the work is dangerous and pays little. The family suffers illness and injuries. Work is tenuous, with periodic wage cuts, poor benefits, and seasonal layoffs. The family is evicted from their home and moves to a crowded, dirty boarding house. Unable to afford a doctor, Ona dies in childbirth, as does her baby.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So when we think of really big problems, you know, climate change or war or genocide or, you know, a pandemic, we often feel helpless because we say the problem is so big, I'm so small. One of the things that you have recommended is that we start to take more pleasure, but also pride in the small things that we can do.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Can you talk about that idea that in some ways we don't have to solve the entire problem to feel like we're making a difference?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
A few years ago, your students felt a powerful connection to a video that appeared on Facebook. I'm going to play a little audio clip from the video. It features a six-year-old boy who has seen a documentary about how human activity is harming animals.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Sarah says it's easy to see hubris and human actions that damage the planet. But she says people fighting to save the planet can suffer from hubris too.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
That's Sarah Jaquette Ray of Cal Poly Humboldt. After the break, another perspective on how to regain our footing when the world feels like too much. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Often when I'm feeling down, I turn to the work of writers I love. I find comfort in favorite poems and wisdom in thinkers who grappled with problems hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Today, as a complement to our conversation with Sarah Jaquette Ray, we wanted to hear a writer's perspective on how to confront feelings of despair and futility.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Pico Ayer brings us this audio essay about a source of refuge he has turned to in difficult moments of his life.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Can you describe what happens in this viral video, Sarah?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Writer Pico Ayer. He has a new book about monasteries and the role they play in a secular age. It's called A Flame, Learning from Silence. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Now, this video in some ways went viral, but I understand that on a Facebook page that you manage, some of your students have blamed your classes for similar meltdowns that they have had. And these are college students, not six-year-olds.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you have follow-up questions for Sarah Jaquette Ray about how to persist in the face of daunting challenges, and you're comfortable sharing your question with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, staying engaged.
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Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Again, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain and click try free. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon!
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Some of the young people you've encountered, Sarah, feel an overwhelming sense of guilt about their role in spurring climate change and other problems. One was a young woman you call Maddie. How did she respond to what she was learning?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Some of Sarah's students said they didn't want to have children themselves. Every additional person was a burden on the planet. If humans were the cause of so much harm, did you really need more of them? Other students, Sarah says, fell into depression.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
When Jorgis and Ona's remaining son dies as well, Jorgis slides into alcoholism. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle with the aim of awakening the conscience of Americans to the desperate conditions of the working poor. He hoped to spark a movement that would reform the nation's labor laws. But the public did not respond the way he expected.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
And it's not just college students. In 2018, a climate activist named David Buckle took this attitude to its most dramatic extreme. What did he do, Sarah?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
So you use a term called eco-suicide that I had not heard before. Is that actually a term that people are using to describe this kind of anguish?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
When we come back, we probe the psychology of despair and how to fight it. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Cal Poly Humboldt, Sarah Jacquet-Ray researches how people deal with complex, large-scale problems.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Over the years, she has seen many young people who have heard from an early age about the dangers of environmental destruction internalize the harms that humans have done to the planet. Sarah was initially focused on teaching students about the environment, but over time, she realized she was confronting a psychological problem whose effects go well beyond climate change.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
The emotions triggered in us by big challenges can themselves become an impediment to solving those challenges. Sarah, college students are not the only ones who experience strong emotional responses to big, intractable problems. You were chatting some time ago with your 12-year-old daughter and talking about the problems confronting the world.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
How did the conversation go and what did your daughter tell you?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Readers did care about the quality of the meat they ate, but seemed indifferent to the plight of exploited workers. Journalists, activists, and leaders often get frustrated when their best effort to draw attention to a cause does not prompt people to get off their couches and take action. Sometimes this is because people feel apathetic.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
I'm hearing, you know, echoes of misanthropy and sort of self-loathing. And to hear that from a 12-year-old seems scary.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
Some time ago, Sarah, you proposed an activity to your students asking them to visualize what the future held. What was this exercise and how did they respond?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much
What was the purpose of the exercise, Sarah? What were you trying to do by having them imagine a world where their hopes and dreams came true? What was the purpose behind the exercise?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
When we come back, why we imagine we know more than we do and what we can do about it. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Perhaps you've had the experience of driving to an important event. You're running late and you decide you want to outsmart all the other drivers who are stuck in traffic. You take a side street because you know it's a shortcut around the traffic jam. Three blocks later, you realize the shortcut isn't a shortcut. In fact, it doesn't get you where you need to go.
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How Much Do We Really Know?
What do you tell yourself in moments like that? Do you say, oh, I got that really wrong? Or do you say, my sense of navigation is impeccable, except for this one tiny misstep? Philip Fernback is a cognitive scientist at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. Phil, as a cognitive scientist, you've studied how humans can be so brilliant, but also really dumb.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
After a week with little progress, Ernest Shackleton realized they would be better off camping on an ice floe and waiting for it to drift toward open water. What followed was an extraordinary story of knowledge and resourcefulness. The explorers managed to get their lifeboats into the water and row to dry land, a place called Elephant Island.
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How Much Do We Really Know?
So researchers who study the mind have come up with a term to describe why our own ignorance is often hidden from us. They call it the illusion of knowledge. What is this illusion, Phil?
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How Much Do We Really Know?
So when it comes to something like a toilet, I think most people imagine, you know, you press a handle and water flows into the bowl and the toilet flushes. And that's how the toilet works.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
At this point, you may be asking yourself, how do toilets work? I asked Phil to test his own knowledge, but he declined to offer an explanation from memory. As he put it, he's learned it about 10 million times, but can never retain it. So here he is reading the explanation.
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How Much Do We Really Know?
Let me try and say it back to you to see if I can test my own illusion of knowledge here. What I think it's saying is that you have this S-shaped curve in the pipe behind the toilet bowl. And as you flush the toilet, it fills with water. It starts to fill up this S-shaped curve. this S-shaped pipe.
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How Much Do We Really Know?
But the desolate island offered little by way of resources and no hope of rescue. So Ernest Shackleton and a smaller group took one of the lifeboats and set out for a whaling station. It was 800 miles away. Across seas were towering waves and deadly storms. The explorers had only basic navigation equipment. Somehow, using the stars to guide them, they made it to the island of South Georgia.
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How Much Do We Really Know?
And as it fills up the pipe with water, the water basically pushes out the air, creating something of a vacuum on the back end of this S-shaped pipe. And the vacuum then suctions the rest of the water inside the bowl out into the drain. How did I do, Phil?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
What you're saying is I should stick to podcasting and not plumbing is the advice I'm hearing you give me.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So talk a moment about how the illusion of knowledge in some ways is a product of the way the human mind works and its limitations as it interacts with this extremely complex world. Why is it that the workings of the world are so hard for us to wrap our heads around, Phil?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
And of course, this must be true for all manner of different things in the world, everything from bacteria to how trees work to how a hurricane works. All of these in some ways are complex phenomena where we have a general understanding of what bacteria do, a general understanding of what a hurricane is, but not the exact mechanics of what's actually happening at a granular level.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I see. So in other words, if I'm a novice, there might be certain patterns that I slip into unconsciously without realizing I've slipped into the pattern. And if you're an expert, you sort of can take advantage of that.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So we can see the problem with mastering too much detail about the world when we look at people with a very rare condition called hyperthymesia. What is this condition, Phil? How does it work?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
But storms had blown them to the wrong side of the island as the whaling station. They now had to hike across the island, across frozen mountains and icy glaciers, to reach help. Ernest Shackleton eventually commanded a ship back to Elephant Island to rescue the remainder of his crew. He saved every last man. This is the kind of story that is popular in novels and movies.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So what I hear you saying, Phil, is that in many ways, it's actually more efficient and more effective for us to discard a lot of details or maybe even never learn the details in the first place and stick with this very generalized understanding of the world. So the problem is not that we don't know everything. That's just the human condition.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
The problem is that most of us think we know more than we actually do.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So in April 1995, a man named MacArthur Wheeler came up with what seemed to him to be a foolproof way to rob banks and get away with it. Tell me what he did, Phil.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So what you're saying is he was not just a terrible bank robber, he was a terrible photographer as well. Apparently so. Phil has also found that our faulty memories play a role in the illusion of knowledge. Take, for instance, the research into how good people think they are when it comes to making smart investments in the stock market.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So we've looked at how the illusion of knowledge and the illusion of explanatory depth applies to physical objects, things like bicycles or toilets. Can they also apply to historical events or public policy in that we imagine that we understand things better than we actually do, Phil?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
The explorers came up with creative solutions to problems and displayed a deep understanding of the challenges before them. They kept their heads and saved themselves. Stories like this obscure how much we understand about our own worlds.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Now, I think if you talk to a lot of people with strong political opinions, they will say, well, you know, I do understand the issues. I do understand what it means to have universal health care. I do understand the consequences of a flat tax. Are they wrong?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
You've also found that people who have some of the strongest views on an issue are sometimes also those with the lowest levels of knowledge about the issue. Why would this be the case, Phil?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
When we face obstacles, even simple problems like a punctured tire, a malfunctioning phone, or an odd pain in our stomachs, are we any good at figuring out what to do? Closing the gap between what we know and what we think we know, this week on Hidden Brain. Human beings are, as far as we know, the most intelligent creatures ever produced by evolution.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Why do you think that's happening? The fact itself, of course, is striking and surprising, but is there a relationship between the two? Is the fact that they don't know partly what causes their certainty?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
It turns out that many of the problems that beset us in the modern world have a common source. We think we know something when actually we don't. When we come back, combating the knowledge illusion. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I'm Shankar Vedanta. Philip Fernback is a cognitive scientist at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Phil, you say that in the face of the knowledge illusion, one effective way to better align what we think we know with what we actually know is to challenge ourselves to explain technologies, procedures, and policies in our own words.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I mean, in some ways, this is not hugely different from what happens in a school setting where you're giving a student a test and you're basically saying, produce for me your knowledge. You know, you think that you know how differential equations work. Produce for me that knowledge by solving this problem.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So you've asked people with strong views on political issues to explain public policies in detail. What effect does this have on their certainties, Phil?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Did you find that when people are asked to engage in this more explanatory style of conversation, that political polarization goes down because some of people's political certainties go down?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I'm wondering whether you might have advice for people who are sitting across the table with a friend or family member with whom they're having a really strenuous disagreement or debate. How would you encourage them to invite the other person to engage in explanatory thinking as opposed to argumentative thinking?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Our brains are unimaginably complex and capable of extraordinary feats of invention and creativity. And yet, these amazing minds also come with certain limits. At the University of Colorado Boulder, Philip Fernbach is a cognitive scientist. He has spent many years studying a rather humbling question. How much do we actually know about the world in which we live?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I mean, I think one thing that I take away from that is that even when we encounter people with beliefs that are very different from our own, or even beliefs that we can prove are certifiably wrong, perhaps the right response actually is some degree of compassion.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Because in some ways, I think what I hear you saying is that the process by which they are arriving at their erroneous beliefs is not different than the process at which I arrive at what might be correct beliefs.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So another way to better grasp what we don't know is to engage in a practice of considering the unknowns. What is this practice, Phil?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
There is another dimension of the illusion of knowledge that affects organizations and groups. And it affects us when we are part of large groups. This aspect of the illusion of knowledge shapes gyrations in the stock market and your retirement portfolio.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
To listen, please check out the episode titled Smarter Together, Dumber Together in our subscription feed, Hidden Brain Plus. If you're not yet subscribed, go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Your support helps us produce high-quality shows with scientific experts.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Some months ago, I brought seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain to live stage performances in San Francisco and Seattle. The evenings were electric. We got so much positive feedback from those two sold-out shows that we've decided to launch a tour to more than a dozen cities in the coming months.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Every episode of our show is thoroughly researched, fact-checked, and edited. By signing up for Hidden Brain Plus, you are helping us build a show you love. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Philip Fernbach is a cognitive scientist at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Phil, in 1946, eight men gathered in a nuclear lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico. They were there to watch a distinguished researcher perform a maneuver known as tickling the dragon's tail. Who were these people, Phil? What was going on?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
With Stephen Sloman, he is co-author of The Knowledge Illusion, Why We Never Think Alone. Phil, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Do you have follow-up questions for Phil Fernbach? If you'd be willing to share your questions with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, knowledge. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We end today with a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by Discover. Our story comes from Kara Beth Rogers.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
In 2008, Kara Beth's brother Luke passed away unexpectedly. Kara Beth was 20 years old at the time, studying abroad in Morocco. The shock of the news made it nearly impossible for her to form a sentence, let alone fly all the way back to the U.S. She managed to get to the airport, but as soon as she boarded the plane, the grief became unbearable.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Kara Beth Rogers lives in Los Angeles. This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by Discover. Discover believes everyone deserves to feel special and celebrates those who exhibit this spirit in their communities. I'm a longstanding card member myself. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I'll be coming to Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. To snap up your tickets, please go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. You can also sign up to say hello and get a photo with me. In some places, you can sign up for an intimate chat with me and a handful of other fans.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
So the lead scientist who was running this experiment, who was tickling the dragon's tail, if you will, was named Louis Slotin. And he was a very experienced physicist, was he not?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I want to ask you about another incident that took place many years later. In 2009, Air France Flight 447 crashed into the ocean, killing more than 200 passengers on board. When the black box of the plane was recovered, it appeared that the aircraft had stalled.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Can you first explain what a stall is and what you're supposed to do when the plane stalls and what the pilots of Flight 447 actually did?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I'm wondering whether the Federal Aviation Administration or other safety organizations evaluated why the error had come about. Did they look into that film?
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I'd love to see you there. Again, go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I mean, I'm thinking in a much, much smaller scale. I am so reliant on my navigation tools and GPS technology to get me around that on the occasions when my phone dies, I suddenly feel like I can't find my way out of a paper bag these days.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Both the Los Alamos accident and the Air France crash involved highly experienced people who made seemingly elementary mistakes. Phil's research suggests there are many other instances where less experienced people also make blunders, in part because they assume that other smart people know what they're doing. Take, for instance, the 2008 financial crash in the United States.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
Almost exactly a century ago, a British ship, the Endurance, became trapped in Antarctic sea ice. Aboard were 28 men, led by the explorer Ernest Shackleton. On October 27, 1915, the pressure of the ice crushed the keel of the Endurance. Freezing water rushed in. The sailors dragged lifeboats and supplies from the ship onto the ice. Carrying the lifeboats, they started hiking toward open water.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
I mean, in some ways it's analogous to what happened on the plane. You know, the planes are getting so complex that the pilots in fact are trusting the plane most of the time to fly itself.
Hidden Brain
How Much Do We Really Know?
And perhaps traders or people who manage pension funds are basically looking out at the market and the market has gotten so complex that they basically are saying, okay, we trust that these big banks know what they're doing, these big hedge funds know what they're doing. And in some ways they're outsourcing or reducing their own capabilities to actually deal with a crisis
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There is a reasonable assumption we make as we go through life. Groups act in their own self-interest. Merchants sell things in order to make money. Employers want to hire the best employees. Sports teams want to win matches. The assumption of self-interest is also the lens through which we understand how individuals behave.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
one evening in April 1989, a 28-year-old woman was attacked while taking a run in Central Park in New York. She was beaten, raped, and left for dead. Around 1.30 a.m., she was found unconscious by two passers-by. She was rushed to the hospital, where she remained in a coma for 12 days. Psychologist Saul Kasson remembers the news stories about the horrific crime.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The baseball star was not the only object of Saul's affections. His sixth grade teacher was up on a pedestal too.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
All were Black or Latino. Police questioned them for hours and got their confessions, including four on videotape.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
None of the boys had attorneys present. In the video confession of 16-year-old Corey Wise, he's sitting in what looks like a classroom. It's past midnight. His knees are shaking with nervous energy. A prosecutor grills him with questions.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
All five teenagers were convicted. For several years, most everyone thought they were guilty. The convictions continue to gnaw at Saul, however. And then one day, he got a call from ABC News. The producer said ABC had received a tip that the teenager's confessions were made up.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
What were some of the details, if you remember it, that actually were at odds with one another? And this is the complicated thing because sometimes, of course, you know, if you have three eyewitnesses at a scene of anything that happens, a traffic crash, they in fact are not going to agree. In fact, there's a wealth of psychological studies that show that they will not agree on all of the details.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
And in fact, they might come up with important discrepancies. And in some ways, it's suspicious if five people at the scene of a traffic crash describe it perfectly.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
So there's a part of you that thinks some of these discrepancies might actually be because people forget. Memory is fallible. So it's actually not surprising that some things might clash with one another.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The judges and jurors in the trials behaved exactly like the volunteers in Saul's early jury experiments. The suspects had confessed. Case closed. It didn't matter that there was compelling evidence pointing in another direction.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul found himself dumbfounded. He loved Mrs. Avery, and he loved Mickey Mantle, and he had poured his heart and soul into the book report.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
ABC News contacted Saul because a previously convicted criminal had come forward to claim responsibility for the crime. A serial rapist named Matias Reyes said he was the one who had attacked the Central Park jogger. The samples taken from the crime scene matched his DNA.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The city eventually paid the boys $41 million for the mistake and for the suffering that they had inflicted on them. But what exactly happened during those confessions, Saul? Do we know what happened that prompted the kids to basically make the confessions they did?
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
So we've looked in some ways at the strange phenomenon where some people will step forward voluntarily to say that they have committed a crime when they haven't. And perhaps they're looking for attention. Perhaps they're psychologically disturbed.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
And we've looked at cases where people might come forward and confess, perhaps because they feel under pressure or they feel that this is a way that they can go home and see their families. You also talk in some ways about a more complicated psychological dimension of false confession, where these confessions are actually internalized.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Talk about this idea that in some ways this might be the most difficult idea to absorb, where someone actually comes to believe that they have committed a crime.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
It was Saul's mother who finally obtained justice. She demanded proof from Mrs. Avery that the book report was plagiarized. Mrs. Avery looked for evidence but couldn't find any, so she changed Saul's grade. But the moment of helplessness stayed with Saul. Why had he been unable to speak up? Saul grew up to become a psychologist. His area of study? How people interpret the actions of others.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
So the police basically have arrested someone. They've prosecuted the person. They found the person guilty. A new DA comes in and basically says the person's not guilty. Now, there's still someone who's been murdered, someone who's been killed. Yes. What do the cops do?
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
I mean, some people might look at your work and say, you know, Saul Kasten spends a lot of time trying to get people who are in prison out of prison. But there's another way to look at what you're doing, which is also to say the fact that we've put the wrong person in prison. Yes, that's a tragedy for that wrong person, for Peter.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
But it's also a tragedy for society because the real killer has not been brought to justice.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
When we come back, what happens in our minds when we are induced to make false confessions and the use of police interrogation tactics in workplaces and private organizations. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. So many TV crime shows center on detectives who have an uncanny ability to spot the right suspect.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
But psychologist Saul Kassin has found that the confidence police have in their hunches is mostly unfounded. He once ran an experiment where he asked prison inmates to confess to two crimes, one they had committed and one they had not committed. How good were laypeople and police detectives in telling truth from fiction?
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
In other words, we would do about as well in telling apart truth from lies if we flipped a coin. But that's not all. In the study, police were actually worse than college students at detecting deception.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul and other researchers have also examined a number of psychological factors that cause suspects to make false confessions. Some people seem to be more suggestible. This line of research was developed by a former cop turned psychologist, Geasley Goodjohnson.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Geasley Goodjohnson came up with experiments that mimicked aspects of police interrogations. He'd give volunteers a story and then ask them to recall it.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
When volunteers recalled something correctly, he would also sometimes tell them they were wrong.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
He was especially fascinated by juries. Here were people whose conclusions about defendants had life and death stakes. To evaluate the psychological factors that shape how juries think, Saul came up with cases where some jurors might feel a defendant was guilty, while others might feel he was innocent.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The answer to both questions was yes. The studies found that some people were more suggestible than others. Children, for example, were easier to manipulate than adults. When interrogators ask leading questions, they may unintentionally change the memories of suspects and eyewitnesses.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
When detectives reject what a suspect or eyewitness says, they may think they are merely testing the veracity of the statements, but they might also be causing some people to develop inaccurate memories. We think that asking questions is a neutral activity, but in fact, the questions you ask can shape the answers you get.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Another factor in false confessions, Saul cites a study by the psychologist Leonard Bickman, who found that when a stranger wearing a uniform barked instructions at people on the street, they meekly followed those instructions.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
One of the other ideas that you explore is that we are really dependent on social support. Can you talk about the idea that one of the ways in which many interrogations are constructed is to deprive us of these social supports, and these social supports in fact are integral to our maintaining our ability to function psychologically?
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Could you talk a moment about the role that sleep plays in false confession, Saul? You cite some really amazing statistics on the likelihood of false confessions the longer a suspect is kept awake.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul figured ambiguous cases would shed light on how people make up their minds about guilt and innocence. He started running experiments with volunteers playing the role of jurors. He noticed there were some cases where his volunteers were totally unanimous.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul has come up with a number of experiments to see if he can induce false confessions in volunteers using only the kind of tricks and mild pressure that would be approved by university ethics committees. In one study, he asked subjects to come into his lab and complete a task on a computer.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The experimenter insists on a confession. Here is where the experimental manipulation comes in. There is another person sitting in the room with a volunteer. This person appears to be another volunteer, but is really a confederate working for Saul. For some volunteers, selected at random, this person now pipes up and tells the volunteer, I saw you hit the Alt key.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
If this experiment showed how false evidence can produce false confessions, Saul has also studied the reverse. He's looked at how false confessions can taint the evidence. In one study, Saul had a volunteer sit in a room with another person. Again, the second person was a confederate secretly working for Saul. The two people were divided by a screen.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
They could hear each other breathing and moving around. All of a sudden, the experimenter entered the room in a huff and declared that money had been stolen from an adjacent room. She separated the two people and asked the volunteer in a one-on-one conversation if the other person had ever left the room.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The experimenter accepted this and left. Then she came back a short while later and said the other person had confessed to leaving the room and taking the money. The experimenter asked the volunteer again.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
We can see why someone might lie on a resume in order to get ahead. We also know that no one would lie on their resume to make themselves look worse. When people are accused of wrongdoing, it makes perfect sense that the guilty would claim to be innocent. But every ounce of common sense tells us no innocent person would ever confess to doing something wrong.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Disturbingly, Saul has found that private companies are taking a leaf out of the police interrogation manual. Take the case of Joaquin Robles.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
A confession. When a defendant in a criminal case admitted he had done something wrong, volunteers playing the role of jurors saw these as open and shut cases. Someone says they're guilty, they're obviously guilty.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
The AutoZone loss prevention manager interrogated Robles for hours and then threatened to call the police.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
What would you recommend in terms of ways to limit this, both in the criminal justice system as well as in corporations? It also seems impractical to basically suggest that police can never use pressure or a manager can never make an employee feel uncomfortable if, in fact, something horrendous has happened. What are your solutions to the problems of false confession, Saul?
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
I mean, I think what I'm hearing from you, Saul, is really the importance of having investigators and police in some ways think a little more like scientists, which is when you're a scientist and you have a hypothesis, yes, you want the hypothesis to be true, but they're also, the scientific method teaches you how to be skeptical of your own hypothesis.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
And in fact, it goes to some lengths to try and prove your own hypothesis wrong. And this is, of course, difficult and painful to do because we're often successful in proving our hypotheses wrong.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
But in some ways, I think that's what I'm hearing you saying, which is that if you start with a very strong hypothesis and you start with a belief in your own infallibility, it becomes very hard to exercise the skepticism to say, I could be wrong.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul Kassin is a psychologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He's the author of Duped, Why Innocent People Confess and Why We Believe Their Confessions. Saul, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul wanted cases where volunteers disagreed with each other. Cases involving confessions, where everyone agreed with everyone else, were useless.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you love Hidden Brain and want more of our work, please consider signing up for our podcast subscription, Hidden Brain Plus.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Your subscription provides vital support that helps us bring you more episodes of the show. It also gives you access to a catalog of bonus conversations that you cannot find anywhere else. You can try Hidden Brain Plus with a free seven-day trial by going to support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co slash hiddenbrain if you use Apple Podcasts.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Those sites again are support.hiddenbrain.org and apple.co slash hiddenbrain. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
It happens so often in science as well as in life. We fail to notice something important because we are so intent on something else. It took Saul a while to realize his nuisance was telling him something important. As he continued to study juries, Saul decided he needed to better understand how police procured evidence in criminal trials. He decided to audit a law school class on evidence.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
What kind of techniques were in this manual, Saul? Just one or two examples.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
This, of course, is exactly what Mrs. Avery had done in the sixth grade.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments on blind obedience. He tested if volunteers would comply with instructions from an authority figure. The most famous experiment featured an experimenter who demanded that a volunteer subject someone else to painful electric shocks.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
In reality, no one received shocks. The experiment was designed to test if volunteers were willing to go along with crazy instructions. If the volunteer resisted, the experimenter had a series of verbal prods to keep the experiment going.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul realized he was confronting two powerful facts. Fact number one, juries believe people when they offer confessions. Fact number two, police are taught to extract confessions from people using a series of powerful psychological techniques. You don't have to assume bad intent on the part of detectives for this to be a problem.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Like the rest of us, detectives assume no one who is innocent will admit to being guilty. Saul decided to look more closely at the science of confessions. Only, he found, there was no science of confessions. When someone says they did something wrong, it seems so self-evidently obvious that they did do something wrong that no one had really studied it.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
How and why people come to betray their self-interest This week on Hidden Brain. In the sixth grade, Saul Kassin received an assignment from his teacher to write a book report. It took him about a nanosecond to decide to write about his hero, Mickey Mantle.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Stahl did find one early example, though, a case study described in the early 20th century by a psychologist named Hugo Munsterberg.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
Saul started looking for other cases of untrue confessions in the history books. He found quite a few. Eventually, he came up with a classification system. The first kind were voluntary false confessions, like the time in 1932 when a famous aviator's son was kidnapped.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
So a second kind of false confession is something that you've termed compliant confessions. And as you started to look at the historical record, you find quite a few examples of this, sometimes going back decades or even centuries. You tell the story about events that took place in the 17th century, for example, in Salem.
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
In the Salem witch trials, some suspects who failed to confess were executed. Given the choice between making a false confession and being put to death, many chose to lie about their guilt. Of course, the Salem witch trials took place over 300 years ago. The same thing couldn't happen today, could it? Could it?
Hidden Brain
Did I Really Do That?
When we come back, the story of the Central Park jogger. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. A quick word before we start this next segment. We're going to be discussing two violent crimes that psychologist Saul Kassin has studied. These cases include graphic accounts of murder and rape. Around 9 p.m.
Hidden Brain
The Conversations that Bring Us Closer
Is there a conversation you need to have that you keep putting off?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. I have a question for you. How well do you know yourself? Chances are, you'll tell me you know yourself very well. All of us like to believe this. We feel like we know ourselves better than anyone else does. Every day we make choices based on this knowledge we have of ourselves.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
If you ask them what movies they want to watch, they will tell you about the movies they aspirationally want to watch. But if instead you look at the books that people actually read or the movies they actually watch, it usually paints a different picture of their preferences.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I want to talk about some of the ways you and others have found that our digital footprints can reveal deep truths about our lives. In 2019, you ran a study that predicted people's income based on an extremely unlikely source. Tell me what you found Sandra.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm puzzled by how that would be the case. I mean, what does my posting about a movie that I've watched or a vacation that I've taken, how do you tell what my income is based on those postings, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
What's fascinating about that, of course, is that most of us are not thinking, are my posts describing something that's happening in the present or something that is about the future, for example, but that difference, in fact, can reveal something about us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You used an interesting phrase just now, behavioral residue. What do you mean by that, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
This week on Hidden Brain, how understanding what we do instead of listening to what we say can help us make better financial choices, improve our physical and mental health, and maybe even bridge our political divides. Philosophers tell us the highest wisdom is to know ourselves. They say this precisely because knowing ourselves is difficult, not easy.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Let's look at some of the ways in which these behavioral residues can tell us important things about our lives and the lives of other people. The researcher Yo-Yo Wu once looked at what you could learn about a person from their Facebook likes.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So the study found that after observing just 10 likes from someone's Facebook profile, the model was able to judge a user's personality better than their work colleagues. After 65 likes, it knew users better than someone's friends. And after 120 likes, better than family members. I mean, that's astonishing, Sandra.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm also assuming that when you have intersecting lines of evidence, so this study was looking at Facebook likes, but if you were able to combine that, for example, with people's credit card purchases, if you were able to combine that with their Twitter feeds, if you were able to combine that with what they're saying about themselves, you're gradually producing a more and more accurate profile of who the person is.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm wondering if you can talk a moment about how these sort of in some ways mindless algorithms are painting a picture of us that's more accurate than our friends and neighbors and coworkers. And some of that is because our friends and neighbors and coworkers are bringing their own perceptions and their own biases to the equation as they're evaluating us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Yeah. I mean, in some ways, this is like Sherlock Holmes on steroids is what these machines are doing, right? Because they're actually picking up huge amounts of data, far more than most of us are actually able to observe in the physical world.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So even our search history, what we're looking for online, can say a lot about us. Talk about this, that in some ways what we search for online can paint a very powerful picture of who we are.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
It requires self-reflection, self-awareness, and a healthy dose of humility. At Columbia University, psychologist Sandra Matz studies how one aspect of our behavior can reveal surprising truths about who we are. Sandra Matz, welcome to Hidden Brains.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So we had Seth Stevens-Davidowitz on Hidden Brain some years ago, and one of the things he mentioned was that there was this negative correlation between racist searches on the internet and the likelihood that people would vote for Barack Obama.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, places with higher rates of Google searches using racist terms were less likely to vote for Barack Obama.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In another study, Sandra, you looked at the relationship between social media updates and voting, but you were not looking at explicit data, like people saying they were going to vote for a particular politician. What were you looking for and what did you find?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And again, what's interesting here is that it's like the mismatched socks in the drawer, right? It's not a signal that people are actually thinking will say something about their political preferences. If I'm feeling upset or sad or my affect in general is negative, I don't think it's going to reveal something about my political preferences, but in fact it does.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You know, I'm reminded of that analysis that found in the 2016 presidential election that Donald Trump won three quarters of all counties that had a Cracker Barrel restaurant, but only 22% of counties that had a Whole Foods store.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Now, most people are not thinking about politics when they're shopping for groceries or dining out, but it turns out that our shopping and dining habits can reveal powerful things about us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra, you grew up in a small village in Germany which had two restaurants and no shops. Can you paint me a picture of the place where you grew up?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Most of us spend a great deal of time every day in front of various devices. We scroll and tap and like and listen. We search for answers to our most personal questions and post updates to our social media feeds. When we come back, how all this data can help us improve our lives. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You wake up in the morning and reach for your phone. You open Instagram and leave a comment on a friend's vacation pictures. You sneeze and run a Google search about allergies. On the way to work you buy a muffin at a local cafe using your credit card. Every day we leave dozens of tiny traces of ourselves in the digital world.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
At Columbia University, Sandra Matz calls the accumulation of these traces our digital footprints. She is the author of Mindmasters, the data-driven science of predicting and changing human behavior. Sandra, you say that the traces we leave online not only paint a picture of who we are, they show marketers and political campaigns how to influence us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Now, we've all heard a lot about the problems of digital surveillance, but fewer people know how these tools can be used for good. Let's start with the work you've done showing how psychological targeting can help people save more money.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So just to underscore the principle here, what you're doing is you're basically saying we can tell what people's personalities are by the digital footprints they're leaving behind. And if we can tailor messages in some ways to match people's personalities, those messages are far more likely to break through.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So one day I understand that your doorbell rang and it was a neighbor reporting a missing rabbit?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Our digital footprints can also reveal insights about our mental health. You and a colleague have studied whether there's a connection between depression and a person's location data.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And I suppose, you know, there's always going to be noise in the data. So someone may have lost their phone inside their sofa cushions. And so the phone basically sits at home for three weeks. It doesn't mean that they are depressed and they haven't left their home in three weeks. It just means that the phone was lost.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
But I think what you're really saying, Sandra, is that in aggregate, this data, in fact, are telling us valuable things. And at a minimum, they're basically raising a flag that warrants further investigation.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I mean, this is really no different than basically saying, let me measure your resting heart rate or your cholesterol levels. And over time, if I have enough data, it might paint me a picture of saying, you know, you're heading down a bad path. You might want to change your lifestyle.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So our digital footprints not only reveal things about our past, they can also predict things we might do in the future. You once tried to predict dropout rates among college students by studying their digital footprints. How did you do this, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And, of course, when you put it this way, it seems to make sense now.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
If I know, for example, that a student doesn't have many friends and is not exchanging messages and, in fact, is a little bit isolated and is not spending time hanging out with other students, it's not unreasonable now to say maybe the student doesn't feel like he or she belongs at university and is at higher risk of dropping out.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In other words, instead of a one size fits all approach, now you can actually say the individual person gets his or her own approach.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
We decide how to spend our money, who to vote for, where to go for dinner, based on what we know of our predilections and preferences. But our knowledge of ourselves is not always accurate. A host of biases and self-deceptions keep us from seeing ourselves clearly.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra, you say that these digital tracking tools are increasingly being used not just to identify health issues, but to actually intervene. How so?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You tell the story of a woman named Chukora Ali who was in a car accident that left her severely injured. She spiraled into depression. Tell me her story and what happened to her.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
What was the effect of using this bot on her mental health, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And again, I don't think you're necessarily suggesting that, you know, a bot is necessarily an ideal replacement for a human therapist. But you're saying in a situation like this, where in fact, you know, the person cannot afford or cannot get to a human therapist, this would be a potential solution.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Many people are worried that digital tracking has increased polarization. The moment you click on one video with a political theme, the algorithms quickly paint a picture of you as liberal or conservative and start feeding you more and more of the same content. In other words, digital tracking and psychological targeting can quickly leave you inside an echo chamber.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You say it's at least theoretically possible to use these same tools to reduce polarization?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In other words, if I know that you are basically self-selecting into one echo chamber, you're saying, what if these platforms in some ways can encourage us to basically visit other echo chambers and in some ways broaden our worldviews?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
When I'm thinking about the concerns that major platforms might have in serving up this kind of information, I'm struck by the fact that in some ways I think, Sandra, what you're talking about is the difference between the information we want and the information that we need. So the information that I want might be information that basically confirms that my pre-existing views are correct.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
The information that I need might in fact tell me, hey, take a look at what's happening on the other side.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
How was the rabbit eventually recaptured? Was it a dramatic moment?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In our companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we look at the downsides of digital surveillance. We take a closer look at the harms of tracking technologies and why the most popular intervention to protect people, giving them control over whether they attract online and whether their children attract online, may not be the best approach.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
To listen, please look for the episode titled How to Protect Yourself Online on Hidden Brain Plus. If you're not yet signed up, please visit support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, please go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Sandra Matz is the author of Mindmasters, the data-driven science of predicting and changing human behavior.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We end today with a story from our sister show, My Unsung Hero.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. Today's story comes from Stephanie Cole. When Stephanie was a teenager, she got her very first job. It was around the winter holidays at a department store in Los Angeles.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm getting a sense that this was a village where everyone knew everyone's business. Very much so. Very much so. So when you were 15, Sandra, you loved riding around the village with your boyfriend on a motorcycle. What was this bike like and where would you go?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Stephanie Cole is from Bainbridge Island, Washington. This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. You can find more stories like this on the My Unsung Hero podcast or on our website, hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra and her boyfriend weren't hurt, but Sandra had to spend a year's worth of tutoring money to get the bike repaired.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
When you ask people how smart they are, or how ethical they are, or how good-looking they are, for example, majorities say they are above average, which, of course, is mathematically impossible. But it isn't just about vanity.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
When you say you were punished, how so? What was the reaction of your neighbors and friends?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Yeah. Was there anything good that came from all this surveillance, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Was there a time when you in fact got very useful advice from these people because in fact they knew you quite well?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And in some ways, it sounds like they knew you almost better than you knew yourself.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
How many times have you gone to a restaurant you've been to before and ordered the same dish you ordered last time, only to remember after you started eating it that you didn't like it the last time? Or think about your last romantic entanglement that ended in disaster. By the time it ended, did you wonder how your past self could have gotten involved with someone so unsuitable?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra's experience with the nosy neighbors in her village is what life has been like for most humans through most of human history. We've typically lived in small groups, and people in those groups have known everything there is to know about us. Today, many of us live in a different kind of village.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
It's a global village where anonymous entities, rather than our actual neighbors, have eyes on us. Not all of them have our best interests at heart. When we come back, what our digital footprints reveal about us and how this information can be used both to help us and to harm us. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Every day, as we go about our lives, we reveal aspects of ourselves to the world. If you visit a local bakery a lot, it's probably because you like pastries and baked goods. If you spend time in parks, it's because you value nature and recreation. Someone who rarely ventures outside their home except to go to work might be introverted.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
At Columbia University, computational social scientist Sandra Matz studies how the things we say and do reveal things about our thoughts, preferences, and personalities. Sandra, I want to talk about the clues we unintentionally leave behind us as we go about our lives. Let's start in the physical world.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Many years ago, you were on a date and things were going well and you ended up at your date's apartment. Tell me what you did as soon as you got to his place.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So you weren't wearing a hat and carrying around a magnifying glass, but it feels vaguely Sherlock Holmes-ian to me what you were doing in that apartment.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm wondering whether your impressions of your husband, your first impressions of him when you were dating, did they turn out to be accurate, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So the psychologist Sam Gosling has shown that people, in fact, are remarkably accurate at judging the personality of strangers when given the chance to snoop around their offices or bedrooms. Tell me about this work, Sandra.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Over the last few decades, researchers in a variety of disciplines have discovered there is a much better way to understand people than to ask them questions. When you ask people what books they like to read, people will tell you about the novels and biographies they think they ought to like.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So you say there are parallels between what happened in your village or your behavior when you visited your date's place and what happens to us online. It's as if your village neighbors now have access to your Facebook messages and credit card purchases?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You say it takes shockingly little information to get an extremely granular picture about people, even in a big town like New York City. Now, there are millions of transactions that take place every day in New York. Finding any one person might seem like you're looking for a needle in a haystack.
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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Ask yourself what makes you happy. Many people would say spending time with close friends, quality moments with family, playing with a pet. Most of us can agree relationships are at the heart of a life well-lived. Social science research bears this out. Countless studies suggest that our emotional ties to others shape our well-being.
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In Julian's study, people had an incentive to talk to strangers. In the real world, talking to people you don't know can be awkward. We worry our small talk won't be well received. We fear that people will think we're obnoxious, silly, or unlikable. We've talked about this trepidation on the show before. In our episode featuring the psychologist Erica Boothby, she called it the liking gap.
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It's the gap between how we believe others see us and what they actually see. Julian has found evidence of the liking gap phenomenon in her own research.
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I'm wondering, Jillian, if you can talk a moment about how our intuitions and forecasting errors are sometimes compounded by the messages we receive from society. I want to play you an old public service announcement about how children should think about strangers.
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Making friends can be hard, especially if you're someone who is naturally shy. At the University of Sussex, psychologist Gillian Sandstrom studies what we can do to combat the growing challenge of social isolation. Gillian Sandstrom, welcome to Hidden Brain.
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run fast. So it's not just our internal messaging that gets it wrong, Gillian. Sometimes the external messaging is also saying, keep to yourself.
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I'd like to talk about some of those benefits that you yourself have realized in your own life. You've actually tried to walk the talk of your research and practice what you've preached. Tell me about a time that you had an interesting conversation on the train with a woman who was carrying a very fancy cupcake.
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Jillian, being a psychologist, went a step further. She realized that weak ties are a source of novelty in our lives. Once she had this insight, it started to pop up all the time.
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Jillian, I understand that you were somewhat introverted and shy as a child. Can you describe the younger version of yourself to me?
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Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
We often fail to see the benefits of talking to strangers because of our own biases. We worry that people won't like us. We assume that small talk is empty talk. In reality, these interactions have a subtle but significant effect on our happiness. Weak ties, it turns out, offer tremendous value in our lives.
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But during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have experienced a catastrophic loss of these connections.
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And at the same time, Jillian, I think a lot of people are reporting, you know, even people who enjoy working from home and feel like working from home has actually allowed them to spend more time with family and better have a better work-life balance. Many people then report, you know, I somehow feel cut off from the world in important ways.
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And perhaps part of what they're experiencing is what you're talking about here. You know, your spouse is still your spouse. Your child is still your child. Your coworker is still your coworker. And you have fixed ways of dealing with them. Weak ties are what bring in surprise and unpredictability into your life.
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As we go about our daily routines, there are countless opportunities to connect with others. We often take these opportunities for granted. When we come back, techniques and strategies for making the most of our weekdays. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
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This is Hidden Brain.
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Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
I'm Shankar Vedantam. Across a number of research studies, psychologist Gillian Sandstrom has found that people are happier when they have lots of casual conversations with strangers or people they know only slightly. The cafeteria worker who makes you a sandwich, the lifeguard who watches over your kids at the swimming pool, and usher at the theater.
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Most people don't prioritize these relationships, perhaps because they are fleeting. Jillian grew up shy, but has tried to become more outgoing in conversations with strangers. In recent years, she has developed something of a science on how to go about talking to strangers.
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She has discovered that there are distinct psychological problems in starting conversations, maintaining conversations, and ending conversations, and each problem requires its own solution. She explained to me the challenge involved with breaking the ice.
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Breaking the ice involves, well, breaking the ice. You have to accept there are going to be a few moments where the other person might be wary. There may also be situations where someone clearly does not want to be engaged in a chat. As they say, read the room.
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As a teenager, Jillian's shyness intensified. It got to the point she found it difficult to even have routine phone conversations.
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The second problem people face in talking to strangers is in maintaining the conversation. If breaking the ice feels scary for many people, awkward silences can be terrifying.
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Sometimes, Gillian says, the problem is not an awkward silence, but a perfectly interesting conversation that suddenly goes sideways.
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And did you sort of sidle away from the conversation at that point, Jillian? What did you do?
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Can you talk a little bit about how when we have conversations that are awkward or conversations that start off being interesting but end up in an odd place, many of us draw the wrong conclusion from this, which is that the next conversation is also likely to be difficult or the next conversation is likely to be unpleasant. In some ways, we overcount the likelihood of negative interactions.
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And I understand this must have been especially hard for you because you had one member of your family who was the polar opposite of you. Tell me about your dad.
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Jillian wanted to figure out if she could override people's tendency to undercount the likelihood of good conversations and overcount the risk of bad conversations.
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Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
What was the scavenger hunt game that involves talking to strangers? I thought scavenger hunts are about finding treasure.
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Some volunteers were asked to merely observe the strangers they found. Others had to engage the strangers in conversation.
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Jillian began to see how important it was to not just have the insight that talking to strangers could be fun, but to actually practice doing it. She has developed a workshop to get people to practice these skills. It's called How to Talk to Strangers.
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Do you have icebreakers yourself that you've used, Jillian, in terms as you've become a better conversationalist and better at talking to strangers? What do you go up and talk to strangers about? How do you start a conversation? What do you do?
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So there have been studies that found that conversations don't end when one party wants them to end, and they don't even end when both parties want them to end, partly because people are so uncomfortable with terminating conversations. Conversations can go well past the point. They're enjoyable for either party. How do you get out of conversations with strangers, Gillian?
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Or texting a friend and asking a friend to call you in the middle of a conversation so that you can be pulled away. Right.
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I'm wondering if at these workshops, Jillian, anyone ever brings up the question of gender. And I ask this question because some time ago we came by an interesting post on Reddit. A trans man named Lysander Baker wrote that he had transitioned from female to male over the course of the pandemic, and he'd noticed that his social interactions had changed.
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I want to play you a clip of what he told us.
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So Lysander told us, Julian, that he felt that his license to talk to strangers had suddenly expired.
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So what do you make of this, Jillian, this mandate to talk to strangers? Is it some ways harder if you're a man compared to a woman?
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And did you really feel like you were embarrassed when he did these things? Did you try and prevent him from doing it?
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We started this conversation, Julian, by talking about how you thought of yourself and perhaps still think of yourself as being introverted.
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But I understand that partly maybe learning from your own experience as an adolescent or as a young person at parties, you now make it a habit to go up to the person who is standing by themselves in a corner at the party, the person who is clearly the introvert, and actually strike up a conversation with them?
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So in many ways, Jillian, you grew up thinking of yourself as being shy and introverted. And in some ways, it's kind of remarkable how far you've come. You've really practiced changing your own behavior. Do you ever think to yourself, it's remarkable how far I've come and how much I've changed?
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And what would he say in response?
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Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Your dad would have been proud of you, Jillian.
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Jillian Sandstrom is a psychologist at the University of Sussex. Jillian, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
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Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Because our listeners are amazing, they regularly ask the most thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. We've decided to run some of these conversations in our regular feed. Today, after the break, we pose your questions to researcher Erica Bailey, who studies authenticity and what it means to present our true selves to the world.
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I love both the questions and the answers, and I think you will too. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. It's a Friday evening, and you've made it to the end of a long week. You settle in on the couch with your favorite takeout order and turn on the TV. It's time for an episode of the show you don't admit you watch, but secretly love.
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You know the one. You take a deep breath and let it out. You feel relaxed, unhurried, completely yourself. Now here's a question. Who's allowed to see this authentic version of yourself? Your partner or spouse? Your roommate? If your boss were to call unexpectedly, would you be embarrassed to tell her about the show you're watching?
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If your mom surprised you at the front door, would you panic about the stack of unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink? Being authentic, even with people who ostensibly know us well, isn't always easy. It can feel scary to show our true selves to others. And sometimes we aren't even sure what it means to be our true selves.
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As an adult, Jillian's desire to fade into the wallpaper began to have real consequences.
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We discussed all of this recently with the researcher Erica Bailey, who studies authenticity at the University of California, Berkeley. If you missed our initial set of conversations with Erica, you can find them in this podcast feed. The first is called Wellness 2.0, Be Yourself. And the second, for subscribers to Hidden Brain Plus, is Wellness 2.0, The Us in Authenticity.
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Erica Bailey returns to the show today to answer your follow-up questions. Erica, welcome back to Hidden Brain.
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Erika, I'd like to start by talking about a space where many of us spend a lot of time, and it's also a space that can feel sometimes inherently inauthentic, which is social media. You once posted a self-revealing message on Twitter that seemed to strike a nerve in the academic community. Can you tell me the story of what happened?
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Long-running analyses that track people over time show that social connections are not just about our emotional well-being, they're important determinants of our physical health. But it's one thing to say that relationships are important. It's another to go about getting them or preserving them. Lifelong friends move away to other towns and countries. Romantic relationships come undone.
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You know, in some ways, your story reminds me of that researcher who wrote a failure resume that included all the jobs that he didn't get and academic programs that rejected him. You know, I get why it can be powerful for other people to hear failure stories and to know they're not alone. But your research suggests that there's a benefit to the people who are sharing those stories as well.
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You found that when people are actively prompted to be more authentic in their self-presentation on social media, they feel happier?
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Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Hmm. So whether on social media or face-to-face, I think many of us feel torn between presenting what feels like an authentic version of ourselves and a more idealized version of ourselves. Is this tension a bad thing, Erica?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Are there situations where you think, in fact, it is smarter to only show the polished version of ourselves?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Let's turn now to listener questions. The first is from Buland, who wanted to ask about a specific memory that you discussed in our earlier conversation. You talked about driving down the road in high school with your friends, singing along to the radio, and it was a moment that made you feel particularly authentic. Here's Buland's question.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So, Erika, take us back, if you would, to that moment in the car with your friends and say more about why it felt authentic to you and then respond, if you could, to Bulan's broader question about the ingredients of an authentic moment.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
We've talked in many different contexts on the show about how the culture in which we live can shape us as individuals. A listener named Kelly had a question about how culture might shape our sense of authenticity.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So this is an important question, Erica. What does the research tell us about how authenticity is conceptualized in different parts of the world?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
What happens if the culture that you're in, in some ways, is out of step with your own personality? Does it become harder then in some ways to be authentic because it's harder to get that inside version of yourself to align with the outside perception of you?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So national identities are, of course, only one way that culture shapes who we are. We may have different ways of being at work compared to when we are with family or friends. Listener Jennifer had a question about being authentic when you're inherently uncomfortable at work.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Several years after the luggage incident, Jillian signed up for a graduate program in Toronto. She had been working as a computer programmer for a decade, but wanted to try something new. She decided to get a master's degree in psychology. Jillian was in her 30s. As she looked around at her graduate school cohort, she worried she wasn't smart enough.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So this is an interesting predicament, Erica. What do you make of Jennifer's story?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
I love the suggestion of trying to find elements of the job where you can feel authentic as a way to feel more at home in the workplace. But do you think it's the case that if someone truly feels they can't be themselves in some environment, is that really a signal to them that this is not the right environment for them?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So when we feel like we are constantly being inauthentic in some situation, is that a way of us telling ourselves, maybe I need to find a different situation?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
This is Your Questions Answered, our segment in which we bring back researchers we've featured on the show to answer listener questions. After the break, we'll continue our conversation about authenticity with Erica Bailey. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
This is Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
I'm Shankar Vedant. At the University of California, Berkeley, Erica Bailey studies authenticity and how being true to ourselves shapes our personal and professional lives. We featured Erica's work in a series of conversations in December. You can find the links to those conversations in the show notes for today's episode.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Erica, here's a question we received from listener Lauren, who writes, The whole time I was listening, I was hoping she would address the disconnect that people of color feel in the world they live in in America. We often feel completely different in a home or church or community group setting compared to a work setting. We are still a very racially divided country, unfortunately.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
We often feel we are our authentic selves at home, but somehow are constantly fighting to be someone else in the workplace, molding to the values of the majority and the cultural norms of the majority, which are slightly different from those with which we grew up.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
If I could learn to bring my authentic self to work and stop worrying about those small perceived judgments or slights, I believe I could be a much more productive and integral part of my work team. What are your thoughts on Lauren's email, Erica?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Soon enough, however, Jillian settled into a routine. It gave her more than structure. It gave her an insight.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
This next listener question adds an extra layer of complexity to our conversation. What does it mean to be authentic when you may have multiple and perhaps competing identities? This comes from listener Guadalupe who writes, all my life I have had to edit or censor which parts of myself I'll need to leave outside the door when I enter a room.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
I'm Sephardic Jewish, Mexican Latina, part of the indigenous tribal people of Coahuiltecan, and a lesbian-identified nun. I'm also an elder with disabilities. I've worked very, very hard to live authentically, and it's not always been easy. Because I'm a Roman Catholic nun, I've had the benefit of a spiritual director who insisted that part of my spiritual path is to live authentically.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
God can only work through us as a vessel to the extent that we name and claim all our identities. I wonder if there's a place on your program to discuss the gifts and challenges of living authentically with multiple strong identities. Erika, does this conversation become more complicated when our true selves are multifaceted?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So, Erica, one of the realities embedded in this conversation is that as humans, we are social creatures and we face enormous pressure to conform to the expectations of the people around us. That may be particularly true for people with autism spectrum disorder. Our listener Peggy says that she was only recently diagnosed with autism. and ADHD. She writes,
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So the email speaks to how daunting it can feel for many people, including those who think of themselves as neurodivergent, to present their true selves to the world. First of all, you have to figure out what it means to be your true self.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
And then the next step is to move through a world that may penalize you for behaving in ways that feel authentic to you, but may be frowned upon by society more broadly. That feels difficult, doesn't it, Erica?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
We had several listeners who reached out asking for books and other resources on living authentically. I'd love for you to share any reading materials that you would recommend, Erica. And before you do, here's a related question we received from listener Lori.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
On some days, as Jillian crossed the street, she noticed something curious. The hot dog lady was not at her usual spot. That wasn't what was curious. The thing that struck Jillian was her own emotional reaction.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Any suggestions, Erika?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So, Erika, in our earlier conversation, you talked about growing up in a fundamentalist church and making the decision to leave that community. We received a question from a listener named Hannah who says she experienced a similar religious upbringing and has since left her church.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So what I take from Hannah's question, Erica, is that there can be a very painful tradeoff when we make the decision to live more authentically. In Hannah's case, being true to herself meant giving up the sense of purpose that religion had given her. Is that something that you experienced as well after leaving your church? And how did you cope with it?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Erica Bailey is a social scientist at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Erica, thank you so much for joining me again on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Thank you for being an ambassador for Hidden Brain. We really appreciate it. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So Jillian, when you think about these relationships that you're talking about, like your relationship with the hot dog lady, they're different than the kind of relationships you would have with a spouse or a child or even a colleague at work. And sociologists have come up with names for these kinds of relationships. Can you talk about the different terms they use for these kinds of relationships?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Relatives pass away. And especially as people get older, many find it difficult to form new relationships, even as they yearn to feel close to others. New psychological research suggests a solution to this problem, or at least a partial solution, and it's one that's easily accessible to everyone.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So a little while later, you were starting a PhD, and I believe this was in the lab of Elizabeth Dunn, who we've previously had on Hidden Brain as a guest. And Liz Dunn asked you what you wanted to study, and how did you respond?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
When we return, how the people we least expect to matter in our lives can have a profound impact on the way we experience the world. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
When you think about the most important people in your life, you probably think about a spouse or a best friend, your children, maybe even a beloved pet. Chances are you don't give much thought to the people on the periphery, the woman selling hot dogs on your way to work, the person sitting across from you on a train. Even when we encounter these people every day, we often ignore them.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
If our lives were a movie, they wouldn't even be supporting characters. They're the extras. Jillian Sandstrom is a psychologist at the University of Sussex. She studies these relationships and why they are much richer than most of us think. Jillian, some time ago you ran an interesting experiment involving a little tool called the clicker. Tell me about that study.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
If a volunteer smiled at someone they didn't know very well on their way to class, click, weak tie. If they had a conversation over lunch with their best friend, click, strong tie.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
Last week in our Relationships 2.0 series, we looked at the common mistakes we make when negotiating with other people. This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you a user's manual on how to boost your social connections and your happiness. Rigorous studies suggest that the problem of loneliness is growing around the world. Many people feel they don't have others in whom they can confide.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So, Julian, we talked earlier about the sociologist Mark Granovetter and his work on weak ties. If I recall correctly, he had a famous paper called The Strength of Weak Ties, looking at how, in some ways, our connections to people who are peripheral in our lives are actually very important to us.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
And this has been borne out in lots of studies, looking at how, if you're searching for a new job, for example, you're much more likely to find that job through a network of weak ties of people whom you know slightly. compared to the network of people who are very close to you. So Granovetter and others have looked primarily at the power of weak ties in the context of professional relationships.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
But in some ways, what you were realizing from the Clicker study was that the strength of weak ties might also affect our social lives and our emotional well-being.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
So the biggest source of weak ties comes from the world of strangers or people we don't know. Can we talk a moment about whether there's a difference between strangers and weak ties? I mean, what's the difference between someone who we would call a stranger and someone we would call a weak tie?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
You started to conduct other studies besides the clicker study, looking at the power of weak ties. Can you talk about some of that work? One of your studies, I understand, took place in a coffee shop.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. Religions tell us they have the key to our best lives. Advice columnists tell us how to solve problems in our relationships. And airport bookstores are stuffed with tomes on how to grow rich, manage our time better, and build effective habits. All these sources of counsel can teach us valuable skills such as planning, patience, and perseverance.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Here was a set of ideas to explain why people found it hard, why Ken himself had found it hard to figure out what to do with his life. By the time a person is in their early 20s and is making important decisions about careers and relationships, they've had a good two decades of indoctrination. Indoctrination from the culture, which tells them what's worth striving for and what is not.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Indoctrination from parents and well-wishers who have told them what is high status and what is not. And indoctrination from schools that often take passion and enthusiasm for a subject and turn it into a race for grades, certificates, and academic honors. The irony is, the better one does at each stage, the harder it becomes to ask if you're actually doing what it is you want to do.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Soon the systems of carrots and sticks that guides us through adolescence and youth is now driving us through our careers. In one study of 6,000 practicing lawyers, Kent found that many of these professionals prioritized things that the world had decided should make them happy, often at the expense of things that actually made them happy.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So you've said that unhappy lawyers might represent an especially striking example of a widespread phenomenon, which is that these people are privileging extrinsic motivations over intrinsic motivations. What do you mean by those terms again?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I understand that you have done work with Ed Deasy, who conducted some of the earlier studies into the nature of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Tell me about what you did together.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Ed Deasy found that these two kinds of motivation had different sources of nourishment. Intrinsic motivation springs up from the inside. It's often shaped by interest and curiosity. Extrinsic motivation comes from the outside. Of course, by the time professionals have embarked on a career, they've had 20 or 30 years of carrots and sticks thrown at them by family, by teachers, and by the world.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
The experiments that Ed D.C. ran show that even when people started doing an activity because of interest and curiosity, adding external rewards and punishments had the paradoxical effect of destroying intrinsic motivation.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
You conducted a real-world study that had some remarkable findings. You're working, of course, at the University of Missouri, which has a very extensive athletic program. Some student athletes at the school are recruits whose tuition and expenses are paid for by athletic scholarships. Others are walk-ons who play just for the fun of it.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So one group has a bunch of external incentives to play, the other primarily education. has internal incentives. Now, you've studied these two groups of athletes and their long-term involvement with and enthusiasm for their sport.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I mean, that's such a paradoxical finding, isn't it? Because, of course, the students who are the varsity players are being rewarded. They're being told, we love how you play. We're going to give you these incentives to keep playing. It's really strange that these external incentives seem to damage people's internal drive or love for the sport.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So I want to summarize where we are. If we want to know what to do with our lives, we need to examine our inclinations and propensities. We should try and hold at bay the signals we get from the outside world about what's truly important. But it turns out that doing these things may not be enough. In some ways, maybe we should go back to the days after you graduated from college.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I think you were following your inclinations and propensities when you decided to become a musician. You were not following the dictates of money and power and status. Some of your research has focused on what may be the trickiest problem of all, which is we fail to understand ourselves because when we look inward, we can only see one aspect of our own minds. How so, Ken?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I understand that at one point you were recording songs for a radio song contest and things didn't quite go smoothly.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Some of this has to do with the fact that when most of us think about our own minds, we think that our minds are just our conscious minds. But some of your work has looked at the idea that a significant portion of our minds, in fact, are hidden away from conscious introspection.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
When we come back, how to figure out what's inside, well, your hidden brain. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies how we come up with the goals that animate our lives. He is the author of Freely Determined, what the new psychology of the self teaches us about how to live.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Ken's research has found that happiness comes when we bring together the propensities and inclinations we are aware of with deeper preferences that lie in our unconscious minds. Can you have a name for this process of successfully matching our goals to our conscious and non-conscious inclinations and propensities? You call this self-concordance. What do you mean by this term?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So, of course, the things that are in our minds that are not consciously accessible to us are, by definition, not consciously accessible to us. So merely asking ourselves what our non-conscious minds are up to will not give us the answers.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So your research has found that one way to get at what's happening in our non-conscious minds is to follow a path that artists, designers, and inventors take as they engage in the process of discovery. What are the steps in this process, Ken?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So partly what I hear you saying is that this process of preparation is really important. It's important to actually try and grapple with the problem consciously, even if it turns out that the answer lies in our non-conscious minds.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Because by grappling with something consciously, you're setting the stage, if you will, to have a conversation with your non-conscious mind and to allow something to bubble up.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So once a period of preparation has led to a moment of illumination, we then have to proceed to the stage you call verification. Is that right? Not every revelation we have will pan out.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
In order to know what we really want, we need to get better at attending to subtle thoughts and feelings that many of us have spent lifetimes suppressing. Like many other skills, the ability to listen to yourself can be improved through deliberate practice. Ken says there are techniques that can help.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
What happened to Ken, of course, has happened to millions of people. Maybe it's happening to you right now. You set your heart on something and then find the thing you wanted doesn't look anything like the thing you thought you wanted. So Ken did what lots of us do. He flailed around looking for something new. He signed up for a master's program.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Ken, in your book, Freely Determined, you write about a character you call Amy. She's not a real person, but an amalgamation of many people you've worked with. And you use Amy's story to illustrate your technique of getting to self-concordance. Set things up for me. Who is Amy and what is the challenge she faces?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So in terms of the specific techniques that you mentioned a second ago, the idea of preparation, illumination, and verification, how does Amy's story represent those stages, Ken?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
You know, it's so interesting when you think about it. So few of us actually ask ourselves those big questions. And those of us who do often don't listen to the voice of illumination that might pop up. And then those of us who do that might not actually stop to verify or elaborate it. And it really is several different steps. And each of them is actually quite important.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
One of the subtle traps that you have studied is the idea that once we make choices, our minds are very good at coming up with reasons why those choices are in fact the correct choices. It becomes very difficult to actually evaluate the choice, you know, really on its own merits.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Can you talk about that idea that there is a commitment that happens inside our minds once we've decided to go down path A rather than path B?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
In some ways, we've become almost prosecutors. We're basically amassing evidence for a conclusion that we've already reached instead of having an open mind.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Once we take the time to really look inward and listen to the quiet voices within us, there is still an important hurdle to overcome. Just because Amy discovered what felt like her true calling doesn't mean that the rest of her life was going to be a bed of roses.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Getting to self-concordance is a great way to harness the power of intrinsic motivation and to start to live your life in accordance with your deepest values. But changing course and making plans for a new life are not enough. As boxing heavyweight champion and part-time psychologist Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Ken has studied the motivations of people who, in a single season, hike the Pacific Crest Trail. The trail runs more than 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada. I asked him to share what happens to the hikers' intrinsic motivation as their journey unfolds.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
You found that when intrinsic motivation wanes in this way, it can actually be replaced by something else, a different reason for pushing forward, but one that is still positive. It's called identified motivation. What is this, Ken?
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
You know, it's so interesting. A lot of this research, I think, speaks to the importance of mindfulness or being, you know, willing to listen and pay attention to where you are and how you might really feel. I'm not quite sure it goes all the way back to that S seminar that you did in your 20s. But to some extent, some of it is about, you know, really paying attention to where you are.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Psychologist Ken Sheldon works at the University of Missouri. He's the author of Freely Determined, What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live. Ken, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Again, just go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain and click try free.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
If you've missed any of the episodes in our Wellness 2.0 series, you can find them in this podcast feed or at hiddenbrain.org. Last week we looked at the traits of leaders who keep their cool during moments of crisis. And in our kickoff episode, we explored authenticity and what it means to be true to yourself.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Next week, we continue our series with a conversation about how to avoid despair and burnout when the world around us feels like a train going off the rails.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Again, Ken was doing what lots of us do. We look to the outside world to give us answers to questions about what we should do with our lives. Ken's foray into existential phenomenological psychotherapy was short-lived. The answers he was looking for were not forthcoming.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
These can be vitally important to success. But in a world overflowing with useful advice, why do so many people feel stuck? One answer, many of us are pursuing goals that are misaligned with our own deepest values and preferences. This week, in the latest installment of our Wellness 2.0 series, what psychology can teach us about choosing a meaningful path for our lives.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
In addition to not knowing what to do next, Ken felt like he was not measuring up. He sensed the world expected more from him and his impressive college degree. He expected more from himself. He felt lost. Still looking for answers, he signed up for a workshop that was all the rage in the 1970s and early 80s. It was called the Erhard Seminars Training, or EST Training.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I understand that at one point you had this training with a 60-hour course spread across two weekends. Describe the course to me. What happened and what you learned and how it ended.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I understand the course guaranteed enlightenment at the end of the second weekend? Yes.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I imagine this must have been something of a letdown for the 200 people in the hall.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So it's interesting. So in this period of your life, Ken, I think you went through what a lot of young people go through. You know, you've just graduated college. You're trying your hand at different things. You're throwing darts at the wall. Nothing's really sticking. There must have been a period in your life when it must have felt quite discouraging.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Did thoughts of self-doubt go through your mind at this time in your life?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Adrift and uncertain, Ken asked himself what he wanted from life. The band hadn't worked out. The master's program in existential phenomenological psychotherapy turned out to be a bad fit. The EST workshops were a letdown. Ken had always enjoyed science and big ideas. He decided to enroll in a Ph.D. program in psychology. At first, this seemed like another mistake.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
But several years into the program, a teacher came along who changed the way Ken thought about the question of what he should do with his life.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Observing how other people write down the things they were striving for gave Ken a crucial insight.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
The hard question Ken realized wasn't figuring out how to get where you were going. It was in figuring out where you wanted to go. When we come back, how to find the answer to that difficult question. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies how we choose goals for ourselves.
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Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
His research has found that we often select the wrong goals. That is, we point ourselves in directions that don't ultimately lead to lasting happiness. An important reason for this error is that people don't have a good sense of what will make them happy.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
When you're a kid, grown-ups ask you what you want to do when you're an adult. When you're a teenager, college counselors ask you what you want to study. Once you join the workforce, managers ask you what your goals are for the next few years. At every stage, we are really being asked the same question. What do you want to do with your life?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So one of the biggest reasons that you and others have found that people come up with the wrong goals is that we blindly follow voices in our society that tell us what we ought to want. I want to play you a famous clip from the 1987 movie Wall Street. Michael Douglas plays Gordon Gekko, a wealthy corporate trader who has some strong views about greed.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So, Ken, today we might say that Gordon Gekko goes too far, but even if we are not willing to be as explicit as this, can you talk about some of the subtler ways in which society tells us that money and power and status are the ultimate barometers of a successful life?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
Yeah, and I suppose another major way that many of us might end up pursuing the wrong things is that we choose goals set for us by other people in our lives. And very often, these might be people whom we love, you know, our parents, our teachers, our friends, people who say they want the best for us, but people who might not actually know what will make us happy.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
So some years ago, you were approached by a law professor at Florida State University, and Lawrence Krieger wanted to discuss a problem he was seeing among some of his law students. What did he tell you, Ken?
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
I understand the two of you went on to co-author a number of studies involving law students and practicing lawyers. Tell me some of what those studies found.
Hidden Brain
Wellness 2.0: Who Do You Want To Be?
At the University of Missouri, psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of knowing what to want, how to set your sights on targets that will actually make you happy if you achieve them. Ken Sheldon, welcome to Hidden Brain. Hey, I'm happy to be here. I want to take you back to 1981, Ken. You just finished college and moved to Seattle. You wanted to become a musician. You started a band.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In Chinese mythology, Meng Po is sometimes known as the goddess of oblivion. She polices the land of the dead and has a special responsibility. She makes sure that souls on their way to being reincarnated do not remember their past lives. To ensure this, she prepares a soup with five ingredients.
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Forget About It!
I remember a time when I was running around. I must have been 12 or 13. It was dark. I think I was in a parking lot somewhere. I tripped and fell. I landed very hard on my finger. I broke my finger. It was very painful at the time. But now when I look back on it, I look back on it and say, that's what being a kid was. You ran around, you did silly things, and you had injuries.
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Forget About It!
I no longer remember the pain. I don't remember the details. To be honest, I'm not even sure which finger was actually hurt anymore. But with Jill, because she has this detailed memory, the memory is also painful in a way for her that it's not for me.
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Forget About It!
So Jill Price doesn't just remember this one childhood event. She remembers other things in her life. Tell me the story about her husband, Jim, and what happened to him, Ciara.
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Forget About It!
Now, one of the things that's striking is that because Jill had such good memory, she could remember many of the good times in great detail, perhaps in much better detail than many of us could have remembered it. She remembered when she first met Jim, you know, that first night together, what their wedding day was like.
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Forget About It!
She remembered the good times in extraordinary detail, but that also meant that she remembered the tragic end in excruciating detail.
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Forget About It!
Many years earlier, she was jilted at the altar on her wedding day. She becomes obsessed with this moment and cannot move on from it. She surrounds herself with reminders of that day, wearing her wedding dress and keeping the clock stopped at the exact moment of her wedding. In so doing, she becomes consumed with sadness. She becomes a prisoner of her own memories.
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Forget About It!
Kira, say more about this idea. I think when many of us think about forgetting, we think about forgetting as a flaw. I find myself forgetting things all the time, and whenever I forget things, I'm so upset with myself. And I say, I used to have a fantastic memory, and now my memory is failing me. It's not good. I worry if I have a disorder of some kind.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
Talk about this idea that in some ways, we get it profoundly wrong when we think about forgetting as a flaw.
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Forget About It!
The memories we carry say a lot about who we are and how we see the world. At University College Dublin, psychologist Keira Green studies how memories are formed and the roles that both remembering and forgetting play in our lives. Keira Green, welcome to Hidden Brain.
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Forget About It!
You know, it's so striking, Kira, because I think when most of us think of memory, not just in our individual lives, but also I think in our social lives, we think of forgetting as almost being something that is bad.
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Forget About It!
I mean, if you think about courtroom settings, for example, we think about people who don't remember where they were or what they were doing at the time of a crime as being potentially suspicious or even guilty.
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Forget About It!
Kira, I want to talk about something that happened to you some time ago. You live in Dublin, and it's common for people to get around by bike. You were riding your bike on the way to a piano lesson. Can you describe the day for me?
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In some ways, Ciara, there's a famous Maya Angelou quote that sums up very well what you were just saying.
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You know, I also find it a little amusing that people remember that quote as coming from Maya Angelou when in fact it probably predated her. So the feeling that it was from Maya Angelou sticks in our head more than the fact of whether it actually was from her or not.
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Forget About It!
When we come back, how evolution has sculpted our brains to quickly forget certain painful events.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There's no shortage of tips for how to improve your memory. Exercise more, meditate, try a crossword puzzle. We all want to boost our memory and curb our forgetfulness. At University College Dublin, Kira Green studies the science of memory.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
In her book with Gillian Murphy, Memory Lane, The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember, Kira explores all the ways memory can fail us, but also all the ways it can be strengthened. She says that forgetting is not the opposite of memory. In fact, it plays a crucial role in how our brains function. It's a vital part of living a healthy life.
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Forget About It!
So, Kira, you and Julian Murphy were working on a project together, and I understand Julian was pregnant. Tell me a little bit about that. I understand it was a difficult pregnancy.
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Forget About It!
You know, as memory researchers, both of you study the science of memory. What did you notice about this? What did you observe about the fact that she seemed to have completely forgotten what the first pregnancy was like?
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Forget About It!
There's a very popular movie series about a girl named Riley. The premise of the Inside Out movie series is to personify the different processes unfolding inside Riley's head. In one scene, characters are playing different emotions in Riley's head, and they go through her old memories, discarding unused piano lessons, the names of most of the U.S.
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Forget About It!
presidents, even the names of Riley's favorite childhood toys. So the movie suggests that one purpose of forgetting is a form of decluttering. Is that right, Keira?
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Forget About It!
Ciara started zipping through the night to her class. The roads were slick.
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Forget About It!
Talk about some of the emotional reasons we have for forgetting. What is the link between negative memories and psychological disorders like depression?
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Forget About It!
I understand that in that study, the people remember their A grades accurately 89% of the time, but they remember their D grades only 29% of the time.
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Forget About It!
I understand there was one study which provided people either critical information about them or critical information about another person. But when they were asked to recall what this critical information was down the road, people had better recall for the critical information when it was about somebody else as opposed to when it was about them.
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Forget About It!
So other research has found that we tend to forget more if we cannot do anything about a particular memory. Talk about this research, Ciara. What does it find?
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Forget About It!
What I love about what you're doing here, Ciara, is that you're really showing how forgetting is actually very often functional.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
Kira and other researchers have found that even our pernicious tendency to remember negative things about our political opponents and positive things about our political allies, even this likely has functional benefits from an evolutionary point of view, even if it might be bad for democracy.
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Forget About It!
Her five-flavored soup of oblivion produces immediate and permanent amnesia. The soul can now proceed to be reincarnated with no memory of previous lives. There are rare occasions when spirits fail to drink the five-flavored soup, and when these souls are reincarnated, they become humans who can remember their past lives.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
One practical implication of all this research, Kira says, is that we should look at our own memories with skepticism and our own forgetfulness with compassion. Indeed, just observing how our biases shape what we remember and what we forget can change how we feel about painful memories.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
In our companion story to this episode, we look at provocative science that explores how we might do a better job forgetting the past. Can we really put painful memories to rest or prevent them from getting deeply anchored in the brain? Research suggests there might be a sweet spot when it comes to forgetting. Try too hard to forget a painful memory and you could end up strengthening it.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
If you're subscribed to Hidden Brain Plus, that episode is available for you right now. It's titled, Setting the Past to Rest. If you're not yet subscribed, please sign up at support.hiddenbrain.org. If you have an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. In both places, you can get a free seven-day trial. Keira Green is a psychologist at University College Dublin.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
With Gillian Murphy, she is the author of the book Memory Lane, The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember. Keira, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
Do you have follow-up questions about memory and forgetting for Kira Green? If you'd be comfortable sharing those questions with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, memory. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.
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Forget About It!
Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Correll, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Thanks for listening. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
As Ciara waited in the rain for the ambulance to fight its way through traffic, she started to experience the kind of pain she had never dreamed possible.
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Forget About It!
Around midnight, doctors decided to try and set the leg. They told Keira they would give her anaesthesia.
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Forget About It!
I'm wondering how the memories of this event have stayed with you. Have you been able to get back on a bike? Have you been able to go back to the place where the accident took place? What's happened?
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
Nearly every culture in the world has stories and legends about memory and forgetfulness. Our ability to remember long ago events is a signature accomplishment of the brain. Our inability to remember important things is an endless source of frustration. Today on the show and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine the science of forgetting.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
And when you consider sort of going on the bike, when you consider the inconvenience of parking and you say, maybe I should bike today, what happens in your mind? What does your mind say?
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Forget About It!
You mentioned a second ago that what happened at the hospital was also in some ways very difficult, that in some ways you continue to have these memories. Are you still bothered by those memories of what happened when you received ketamine and when you were in the hospital?
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Forget About It!
All of us want to have a sharp memory. But Kira's painful memories of her bike accident raise an important question. Is a sharp memory always a good thing? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Most of us wish we could remember things better. We think of forgetting as a flaw. But being able to forget some things can be a blessing.
Hidden Brain
Forget About It!
We look at why our minds hold on to some memories for a lifetime but discard others within seconds. And we answer a question many people ask themselves. Is my forgetfulness a sign that something is wrong with me? Forgetting to remember and remembering to forget. This week on Hidden Brain. In Charles Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, we are introduced to the character Miss Havisham.
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At University College Dublin, psychologist Keira Green cites the example of a woman with an unusual ability.
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Forget About It!
So Jill Price wrote a memoir about her condition. And in the memoir, she tells a story about something that happened to her when she was a child. Tell me the story, Kira.
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Forget About It!
Now, because she has this extraordinary memory, this extraordinary autobiographical recall for things, she remembers very vivid details about what happened that day. She remembers hearing her mother walking away from her and hearing the sound of her mother's heels as they walk away from her. Really, really detailed.
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Forget About It!
Now, what's striking, of course, is that when things happened to us many years ago, in time, our memories start to fade. We start to forget details of it. But that seems like that's not the case for Jill.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola was feeling threatened by the growing popularity of its rival, Pepsi. Executives at Coca-Cola decided to shake things up. In April 1985, they launched a new product.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
At the time, it really didn't seem plausible that these things would dramatically upend our lives. But one of the things that I think Cliff Stoll missed was how much technology was going to change in the coming years. It wasn't an instantaneous change, but it unfolded over 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Well, and the
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The origins of this expression go back even further. Farmers believed that when something worked, it was best to leave well enough alone. Tinker with things, and you risk disaster. Today, we look at the truth of this old adage.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
I mean, the interesting thing, of course, is that when we look back, I mean, it feels like the whole online revolution was the work of an instant, right? It feels like looking back now in hindsight, it feels like it all happened very quickly. But it actually took a long time. It
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
for widespread broadband service to be widely available, for us to carry around these little computers in our hands and in our pockets where we could access the internet, where we could press a button and it had our credit card information stored. All of these things took time. But looking back, it can seem like they were the work of an instant.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
We talked earlier about how Gillette, the razor company, failed to see the inflection point of a subscription model that Dollar Shave Club offered. There's another company that you talk about, Kodak. Most of us are familiar with the brand, but not as familiar with the story of a man named Antonio Perez, who joined the company in 2003. He had previously been at Hewlett Packard.
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When To Pivot
So what's striking about the Antonio Perez story, Rita, is that he had been wildly successful betting on printers while he was at HP. And in fact, as you just pointed out, it had produced billions of dollars in revenue. The very same play, five years later, 10 years later at a different company, completely different outcome. Indeed.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
Another reason organizations can miss out on inflection points is timing. We can see how trying to jump on a bandwagon late, like Gillette offering a subscription service after the inflection point had passed. But you say that companies can also jump on an inflection point too early. I understand this was the case with the video rental company Blockbuster?
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
When it makes sense to stay the course, and when it makes sense to change direction, this week on Hidden Brain. Imagine you're paddling a boat across a calm lake. The wind is steady. You're moving forward slowly but surely. There's no need to change course, adjust your stroke, or head back to shore.
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When To Pivot
You've described the life cycle of inflection points, and you say there are often four stages to them. Can you walk me through these four stages, Rita?
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
Given that you can be too early to an inflection point, but also too late to it, timing clearly matters. You say there are warning signs that an inflection point is passing you by. What are some of these signs, Rita?
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
But what if a storm rolls in, or your boat springs a leak, or you feel a sudden stabbing pain in your chest? Now, staying the course and sticking to your plan could be disastrous. At Columbia University, Rita McGrath studies when it makes sense to pivot and when it's wiser to stick with what's worked. Rita McGrath, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
You know, I worked in the newspaper business for many years, Rita, before moving to radio and to audio. But I remember there was a point in my newspaper career where I was actually not reading the newspaper on the page, but I was reading it online online.
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When To Pivot
And at the time, I think the companies that I worked with were still sort of ambivalent about digital journalism and the idea that people would really read things in a widespread way online. But one of the things that you point out is that when you yourself or the employees at your company are not using your product, it's a warning sign. It's basically a canary in the coal mine.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
Yeah. And of course, if you're actually, you know, you're working at a company that makes some kind of product and you have your employees at that company who are buying products from a rival, in some ways it tells you that the people who are presumably your most loyal, who should be your most loyal customers, are in fact not your loyal customers.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
Rita, you tell the story of the Gillette Company, a popular personal care brand that most people are familiar with. Give me a brief history of the origins of the company.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
Sometimes sticking with what you've always done makes perfect sense. But what worked yesterday isn't always guaranteed to work tomorrow. When we come back, how to successfully spot inflection points. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. There are times in all our lives when doing the same old thing no longer works.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
The strategies that once helped you excel have now led to a plateau. The things that helped you stand out at work have become yesterday's news. Rita McGrath is the author of Seeing Around Corners, How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. She says there is a science to spotting inflection points.
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When To Pivot
Rita, in the late 1990s, a man named Ivan Seidenberg was leading Bell Atlantic Telephone Company. At this time, landlines were the norm and there was no indication that they were going anywhere. It was a hugely profitable company. But Ivan Seidenberg had a vision. What did he see?
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When To Pivot
Hmm. Hmm. Tell me a little bit about what he did when it came to selling off some of Verizon's landline assets, because he wasn't so much depriving customers of landline access, but he was saying as a company, that might be less of our future than it is today.
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When To Pivot
You say that Ivan Seidenberg did two things right. One, he was continuously adapting and two, he was able to disengage. What do you mean by this, Rita?
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When To Pivot
I'm struck by the fact that very often when we think about innovation, we're often not thinking about this aspect of innovation, which is we're always thinking about what we can build that's new. But of course, in order to build something that's new, we might have to give up something that we've been building for a long time. We might have to give up the old.
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When To Pivot
So in 2010, two entrepreneurs, Mark Levine and Michael Dubin, met at a holiday party. Mark was a product wholesaler who had a problem in one of his warehouses, and Michael was a marketer. What was the problem in the warehouse, Rita?
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When To Pivot
Besides the challenge of just noticing things that have been around for a long time and that have just simply faded away from our attention, there's also the fact that we get attached to things that we have built. We have emotional connections to the things we've built. These are our babies. These are our children. We're not willing to cast them aside.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
But of course, if you don't cast some of the things that you do as a company or an organization or as a person aside, if you can't cast them aside, it's very hard to move forward.
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When To Pivot
Another example of a company that found an innovative way to ride an inflection point was Procter & Gamble. They had come up with a water purification chemical, but it was not taking off. Tell me that story, Rita.
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When To Pivot
I understand that it also had significant public relations benefits because now they were in the business not just of making money, but they were also in the business of saving lives in poor countries. And that had sort of brand benefits, if you will, that also indirectly helped the bottom line.
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When To Pivot
You say that Procter & Gamble took advantage of an inflection point because they fell in love with the problem rather than the solution. What do you mean by this, Rita?
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When To Pivot
So I understand at this point, Mark has something like 250,000 twin razors in this warehouse, and he approaches Michael, who's an online video marketer, about potentially going into business together. What was the proposal?
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When To Pivot
I'm wondering how much of the signs of inflection points that you have studied at an organizational level, Rita, how much of this applies to individuals and their own lives? Are any of these lessons applicable to us as we navigate our personal lives?
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When To Pivot
One thing that strikes me is that when it comes to running a business or running an organization, the metrics of success are relatively clear, right? So if you're a business, you have happy employees, you have happy customers, you're making money, you're a successful business. It's very straightforward in some ways what constitutes a successful business.
Hidden Brain
When To Pivot
It's a little bit harder with individuals, I think. It's a little harder at an individual level to say what constitutes success. And I'm wondering, from that point of view, does that make the science of inflection points a little more difficult at the personal level? Because it's not quite clear what actually constitutes success or failure. Some of that is subjective.
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When To Pivot
Some of that involves a personal sense of what matters to you, what doesn't matter to you. Do some of the things then fail to carry over because of the subjectivity, do you think?
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When To Pivot
Rita McGrath studies the science of reinvention at Columbia Business School. She's the author of Seeing Around Corners, How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. Rita McGrath, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
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When To Pivot
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you love Hidden Brain, please consider joining our podcast subscription, Hidden Brain Plus.
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It's where you'll find episodes you won't hear anywhere else. Plus, you'll be doing your part to help cover the costs of the research, writing, and audio production that go into every episode of the show. You can try Hidden Brain Plus with a free seven-day trial by going to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. I'm Shankar Vedantham.
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When To Pivot
Mark, who had the warehouse of 250,000 South Korean razors, and Michael, the video marketer, asked themselves if they could sell razors over the internet. This could save customers a trip to the store to buy Gillette's higher-priced razors. But the duo also had a brainwave about how to lock in customers long-term. They called it Dollar Shave Club.
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Sounds great, right? But not everyone was happy. Consumers took to the streets to protest New Coke, pouring out the beverage in defiance. The Coca-Cola company received over 40,000 calls and letters from angry, dissatisfied customers.
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When To Pivot
So the idea was you sell a subscription to people and razors basically show up at your doorstep on a regular basis. So you don't have to go to the store. You don't have to buy it. There's a predictability about it. I understand they went to a number of bloggers to try and spread word about it and decided to get people to sign up. What was Gillette's initial response to this upstart, Rita?
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When To Pivot
So it turns out that Dollar Shave Club didn't just come up with a new business model. They also came up with a more conversational, casual style of marketing. Here's a clip from one ad.
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When To Pivot
I want to play you an ad that Gillette published around this time. This one featured the tennis champion Roger Federer shaving his face in the mirror.
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When To Pivot
So in 2019, Dollar Shave Club put out another ad. This one featured a handful of middle-aged men who didn't look at all like Roger Federer. The men were dancing in towels while they shaved their faces. The video campaign was titled, Dad Bard, and the slogan was, whatever your bard, welcome to the club. That same year, Gillette released its own ad campaign.
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When To Pivot
It was inspired by the Me Too movement and included imagery of men treating women in inappropriate ways.
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When To Pivot
So I understand that Gillette eventually pivoted to try and get into the subscription business as well and sell Razor as a service. They started a Gillette club. How did that go?
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When To Pivot
So we talked about how Gillette missed two potential inflection points, the subscription model, but also this changing tide in the kind of marketing that customers were responding to. What was the long-term effect on Gillette's market dominance, Rita?
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When To Pivot
New Coke was a disaster. Customers boycotted it, the media mocked and criticized the move, and distributors were reluctant to sell it. Sales plateaued and a rapid decline loomed on the horizon. The company threw in the towel and switched back to its original formula. Peace and taste buds were restored. There's a saying that's often attributed to Burt Lance, a political appointee of former U.S.
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But it's also the case that the market dominance they had for much of the century, much of the 20th century, that has sort of disappeared. I mean, they no longer are in quite as dominant a position as they were through much of the 20th century.
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When To Pivot
You use the term inflection point to describe situations like what happened with Gillette and Dollar Shave Club. What is an inflection point, Rita?
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When To Pivot
When we come back, why businesses and people fail to see inflection points and what we can learn from their mistakes. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. The personal care and safety razor company Gillette had been the leader in its industry for nearly a century. When competitors came along, Gillette said, don't fix what isn't broken.
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The strategy worked until it didn't. When does it make sense to stay the course? And when does it make sense to roll with changing tides? At Columbia Business School, Rita McGrath studies this question. She studies the science of inflection points, a change that dramatically shifts the course of events. Rita, I want to talk about some of the reasons why organizations miss inflection points.
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In 1995, a man named Cliff Stoll published an article in Newsweek. It was titled, Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana. What did the article say?
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Yeah. So at one point in this article, he says, the truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher, and no computer network will change the way government works. And of course, looking back now, that prediction can seem hilarious. But from what you're saying, there's a certain truth to it.
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We Need to Talk
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At various points in our lives, all of us turn to coaches and trainers. If you're a student athlete, you might need a coach to improve your tennis stroke or soccer footwork. If you need to take up a musical instrument in your 30s, you'll need the help of a piano teacher or guitar instructor.
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Now, in certain moments, I suppose it's possible to communicate to the other person, you know, I think the conversation is going off the rails. I'm feeling sad. Can we talk about something else? You know, you shouldn't be telling me to break up with my boyfriend. In fact, I'm about to get married to him. But in many situations, that's inappropriate to do. So talk about this added complexity.
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We Need to Talk
It's not just that we have these, you know, huge complexity of different things that are happening, but we can't actually openly talk about them.
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We Need to Talk
You say one reason people may be less skillful than they could be at conversation is that they rarely get feedback on their conversational missteps and bad habits. I'm thinking back to your blind date. You know, I imagine this man had gone on other dates before he went on a date with you, and other women may have felt exactly the same way that you did, but no one told him.
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I'm wondering if the problem is actually compounded when it comes to our acquaintances. When we have a close friend or a relative or a partner, maybe we do sit down and have a conversation with them about something that's bothering us. But I can think of many acquaintances who say and do things that rub other people the wrong way, that rub me the wrong way. I never say anything.
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Nobody else says anything. And the person goes through life blightly believing that everything they're saying and doing is fine. And of course, And I suppose it would be inappropriate for us to go up to every acquaintance and say, can I give you feedback on the way you're talking to people? That would seem very odd.
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But at the same time, it means that most of us are left in the dark about how we are behaving. That's right. That's right.
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We Need to Talk
But it turns out that most of us have a lot to learn when it comes to having conversations that are dynamic, engaging, and meaningful. Alison Woodbrooks is a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. For many years now, she has studied the science of conversation. Alison Woodbrooks, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Let's look at some of the trapdoors that undermine conversation. One is that we get stuck in a kind of purgatory of small talk. You entered one such conversational doom loop on a recent Halloween. Tell me what happened, Alison.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So in some ways, what I'm hearing, Alison, is that this guy might have been a milder version of the blind date you went on many years earlier. He also was not very curious about what was going on in your life. He also was someone who was not asking you many questions. I understand that the value that you place on question asking stems from a backstory involving your mom.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
You've gotten to know a professional matchmaker named Rachel Greenwald, and she has a great term for people who lack conversational curiosity. Tell me about her, Alison.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Alison, when you were younger, you went on a blind date that was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Can you paint me a picture of what your life was like at the time and who this mystery man was?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So there's a more insidious form of the same problem. And here the person does ask questions, but the questions do not stem from curiosity about the other person. You call this boomer asking. What is boomer asking, Alison?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
And I say, oh, the weekend was fun. You know, we went to a nice restaurant and went for a walk in the park.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
There's another trapdoor in conversations that might be familiar to many people. I want to play you a clip from the 1993 movie Wayne's World 2, where Wayne and Garth are being interviewed by a radio host about a big concert they are excited about.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So, Allison, how often is it that people in conversation fail to listen to one another?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
For most of us, talking doesn't seem hard. We open our mouths and words come out. But as we go through life, it is usually the case that the people around us are not telling us when they find us boring or irritating or just plain offensive. When we come back, how to make our conversations more engaging. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
I have a vivid memory of a great conversation right before the COVID pandemic struck. I was sitting in a New Orleans restaurant with four researchers who were in town to attend a psychology conference. The conversation felt like a rapid-fire game of ping-pong. It felt effortless. It was glorious.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
At Harvard Business School, Alison Woodbrook studies how we can all have many more memorable conversations. She is the author of Talk, The Science of Conversation, and The Art of Being Ourselves. Alison, I have a strong belief that authentic conversations must just emerge naturally, and I suspect many listeners have the same belief. You say this is a mistake?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
And in some ways, we do this to some extent in work settings, right? So we can have a meeting, for example, and there's an agenda that's circulated before the meeting saying, here's what we're going to talk about. But that seems okay in work settings in ways that it seems difficult to do in personal settings.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So you have found that topic preparation can be helpful even when we are talking with someone who is close to us. You recently met up with a very good friend of yours, and she had an unusual proposition for you that involved the singer Whitney Houston.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
If you decide you want to learn a new language in your 50s, you sign up for classes with an expert in that language. But there are lots of domains in our lives where many of us never dream of recruiting the help of a coach. That's because we feel we are masters in those domains already. We don't need a coach to help us breathe or walk or talk. Or do we?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So he, in some ways, is the real life version of that popular meme that's been going around, which says, I'm looking for a man in finance, trust fund, six, five blue eyes.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
And I'm wondering, were you singing along when each topic changed and each new song had to be played or came up?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So no matter how well we've planned and chosen our topic, eventually conversation subjects can run out of juice. Your research has found that switching topics frequently can make for better conversation.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
And what if you feel like the conversation is fizzling out, but you're worried that maybe other people find the conversation really interesting, and so you're hesitant to jump in and change the topic?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
So you've created a tool called the Topic Pyramid to help people map out where they are in conversations and where to take conversations. What is the Topic Pyramid, Allison?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
All right. So that's very optimistic and hopeful. So what happens when the dinner gets underway?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
We talked about the importance of asking questions. One of the things that you and others have found is the importance of asking open-ended questions. Describe what these questions are, Alison, and why they have such a powerful effect in conversations.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Now, you've actually studied negotiations. And of course, negotiations in some ways are one particular form of conversation. And you find that negotiators, in fact, do not ask enough open-ended questions.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
You've also found that it's very powerful to ask follow-up questions. Why is this a good idea, Alison? Besides the fact that it's just more questions, asking a follow-up question that's connected to a previous question and answer, why is that so powerful?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
I want to play you a bit of tape featuring two people having a conversation. This is the late night host Stephen Colbert and the news anchor Anderson Cooper. Both these men, of course, are gifted communicators, but both also experience the loss of people close to them. And they're talking here about the nature of grief.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
I mean, you could also see, of course, that they are talking over each other. And many of us, I think, were raised to believe that it's rude to interrupt another person. But in some ways, as I listen to this, I'm not hearing, you know, rudeness at all. I am hearing, as you say, co-creation of the story that Anderson Cooper is telling Stephen Colbert.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
There is another conversational move that can bring us closer to others. And you saw this when you and a friend went to a party hosted by another friend named Dave. Can you tell me that story, Alison?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Yeah. And of course, one of the powerful things about flattery is that the person being flattered doesn't see it as flattery. They see it as finally the world is acknowledging what I have long known to be true.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Alison Woodbrooks is a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. She's the author of Talk, the Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. Alison, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Next week on the program, we bring Alison back to discuss a very specific type of conversation. These are the conversations we dread having, the ones we put off, the ones that often end in tears and hurt feelings. If there's a difficult conversation you know you need to have with someone, you'll want to listen to this episode first.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Do you have follow-up questions for Alison that you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience? If so, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line conversation. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. For more Hidden Brain, be sure to subscribe to our free newsletter. In each issue, we'll bring you more ideas about human behavior, plus a brain teaser and a moment of joy.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
You can sign up at news.hiddenbrain.org. That's n-e-w-s dot hiddenbrain dot org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
I'm assuming at this point you're asking yourself how you can extricate yourself from the date.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
There was another instance in your life, Alison, that illustrated in some ways the nature of conversational pitfalls. You went out for dinner with a good friend of yours. There was something you had been working up the nerve to tell her. Who was this friend and what had you wanted to tell her?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Just because we've done something a long time doesn't mean we are doing it right. Just because we feel we are skilled at something doesn't mean we don't have plenty of room for improvement. Today on the show, we focus on a skill that seems so commonplace that many of us fail to see how difficult it is to do well.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Wow. So when you had that conversation with her at dinner, she wasn't being reticent because she was thinking deeply about what you were saying. She was probably saying, I don't know how to tell Alison that, in fact, my boyfriend has proposed or is about to propose.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
We're going to look at how we engage in conversation and the things we can do to get better at it. Learning to talk This week on Hidden Brain. When discussing the children in our lives, we say they learn to talk at age one or two. For the late bloomers, maybe it's three or four. We make it sound as if learning to talk is something we master early and then practice without a problem as adults.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Yeah, I mean, you must have felt terrible, Alison, at telling her to break up with her boyfriend, you know, moments before he proposed marriage to her.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
I'm wondering if your own worries and concerns about bringing up the topic with her and the fact that you were so anxious about it and so focused on how you were feeling about it, is it possible that that kept you from seeing the cues that might have actually told you something different about the situation?
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
When we come back, why conversations are much more complex than most of us realize, and how to get better at them. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
Most of us engage in conversation all day, every day, with partners, children, friends, co-workers, neighbors. Yet, despite all this constant practice, we're not as skilled at talking to others as we might expect. We miss cues, misunderstand what others are saying, and get stymied by moments of awkwardness or tension.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
At Harvard Business School, Alison Woodbrook studies the science of conversation. What makes talking with one person a joy and talking with another person a chore or a bore? Alison, when you start to dissect the conversation like a scientist, you realize that it's more complicated than we realize.
Hidden Brain
We Need to Talk
You call it a complex coordination game with trap doors and challenges hidden inside a maze of decisions. What do you mean by this?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. It was a cold day in Appalachia on January 7th, 1865. A Union soldier named Asa McCoy was on his way home, wounded from fighting in the Civil War. As he neared his cabin in Kentucky, Asa was given a message, don't return home or you will be killed. A local group of Confederate militia, known as the Logan Wildcats, planned to kill Asa.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Now, in some ways, it's worth pointing out, of course, that not getting that promotion did indeed have personal effects on Dana. It might have affected her life, her finances, maybe even her retirement plan. So it had consequences in her personal life, Fred.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I want to talk about another component of grudges, Fred. You worked with a man named Alan whose wife cheated on him. Can you tell me his story and the thoughts that constantly circled around in his mind?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
History is full of incidents that have sparked long-standing grudges, sometimes with consequences that last decades. But there also are smaller, more personal grievances that we all harbor. Perhaps you still remember some slight you experienced years ago at the hands of a friend or family member?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I can see in some ways how, at least on a short-term basis, this can make you feel better. If you're feeling very upset, if you're feeling very hurt, it does make you feel better to say, I know what the cause of my hurt is. It's this other person. This other person did this terrible thing, and that's why I'm feeling terrible. It's her fault.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So we've talked about the role that taking things personally and the blame game plays in the development of a grudge. These often lead to what you call the final stage in the grievance process, the construction of a grievance story. What do you mean by this, Fred?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Today, we explore the psychology of grudges, how long-standing animosities affect our lives, and what to do about them. This week on Hidden Brain.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I'm curious why some wrongdoings become grudges and others don't. You talk about a very powerful concept, the violation of unenforceable rules. What does this mean, Fred?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I want to talk about one unenforceable rule that you had in your life, Fred. When your mother-in-law was alive, you and your family would often go and visit her in Connecticut. I understand that she wasn't very nice to you.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So after this fight, I understand that you called a friend to complain about your mother-in-law. You wanted to tell someone else your grievance story. What did you say and what did your friend tell you?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
That's a way of saying you shouldn't allow people who have wronged you to take up too much of your attention. Sounds nice, but is it realistic? We are social creatures, after all, and our interactions and relationships with others matter. When someone is kind to us, it has the power to alter our day, maybe even change the course of our lives. When someone wrongs us, it can also have large effects.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
We've talked about the anatomy of grudges and how they form. Let's spend a moment talking about some of the consequences of holding on to our past grievances. Many studies have examined the relationship between resentment and mental health issues. One study, for example, found that holding a grudge could lead to lower self-esteem.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I feel like I can remember times in my own life, Fred, when I've been up at 3.45 in the morning, upset about what someone said to me or what someone did to me. And I'm lying in bed, tossing and turning. I can't sleep. I'm angry. And of course, it seems like the effects on sleep must be one of the effects of resentment and grievance.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Why is it that grievance and grudges cause these physiological effects? What is happening physiologically to us that cause an effect on sleep, that cause an effect on the heart, that cause an effect on high blood pressure?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
At Stanford University, Fred Luskin has spent a quarter century studying what happens when we hold on to grudges. Fred Luskin, welcome to Hidden Brain.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So the irony here, Fred, is that grudges can make us feel better in the short term. They make us feel like we're getting back at the people who've hurt us. But the people they hurt the most might be us.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
When we come back, strategies for letting go of the past. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the late 1960s, tensions were exploding in Northern Ireland. Riots were breaking out in cities like Belfast and Derry. People were sharply divided on whether to remain part of the United Kingdom or to join the Republic of Ireland.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Fred, some years ago, you met a woman named Debbie. She was having issues with her husband. And when I say issues, this was not merely conflicts about who takes out the garbage.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Catholic nationalists wanted unity with Ireland and Protestant Unionists wanted the country to stay within the United Kingdom. Decades of hostility and turmoil led to what became known as the Troubles, a violent conflict that involved bombings, shootings, and the killing of many people. More than 3,500 people were killed in the conflict, the majority of them civilians.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Many people were left grieving over horrific losses. In another part of the world at the time, Fred Luskin was at Stanford University in California, studying the role of forgiveness in people's lives. A man named Byron Bland reached out to Fred after reading newspaper articles about his work at Stanford.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Byron asked, was Fred willing to try his forgiveness training with mothers who had lost their children to the troubles? Their stories were unimaginably painful. One woman's son had been kidnapped on the way to work, then ushered into a shallow grave where he was shot, his body hidden for 21 years.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Another woman's son had been working at a restaurant when a gunman walked up to the takeout window and shot him seven times. He died on the spot. A third woman said her Protestant son was hanging out with his Catholic friend at a pub when a loyalist rushed in and shot both men dead. The stories went on.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
When the women were flown to California to share their stories, Fred found himself overwhelmed with horror. But he listened, and he began the training. It started with intake. He asked them to fill out questionnaires about their mental state. Then, slowly and carefully, he took them through the steps he had developed. One was along the lines of his own epiphany at Safeway.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
When you are deeply upset about something, take a moment to notice things you are not upset about.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I'm wondering whether you heard from these women or you hear from other people you work with, Fred, a sense of anger directed toward you, because these are people who are saying, you know, I've been through something terrible and the person who did this terrible thing to me, you know, really it's unforgivable. And here's Fred Luskin coming in and telling me to forgive and forget.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I mean, do you get people angry with you? Because in some ways it can feel, even though that's not what you're doing, but it can feel like you're taking, the side of the transgressor?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
What was the effect of these ideas on the women who went through the program, Fred?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
The cycle repeated itself over and over. One day, Debbie came home early from work. She discovered her husband on the couch with another woman. It was the last straw.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
It's interesting, the word forgiveness itself, I think, points our mind toward the person who has done us harm, the person who has done us wrong. When I think I forgive you, I'm thinking that my forgiveness is directed toward you. But everything that I'm hearing from you, Fred, it's that really forgiveness, in fact, is not about the other person at all. It's about ourselves.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
We talked earlier about your mother-in-law and how she would often make rude and critical comments about you. And some of this might have been because she was, you know, you could say an exceptionally tidy person or you could say an obsessively tidy person, depending on your point of view.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
But at one point, you asked yourself a question with her that also made a very big difference in the way you responded to her. What was this question, Fred?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I understand that at one point toward the end of her life, your mother-in-law had a chat with you about the way she may have treated you. Tell me about that story and what happened, Fred.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So many people have been in similar situations where they have been betrayed by a romantic partner and people really struggle with it. How was Debbie's account of what happened to her affecting her life, Fred?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
When we come back, Fred offers more techniques to get us moving when we find ourselves stuck on a grudge. Plus, we take a look at some of the physiological benefits of forgiveness. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Many of us want to be rid of our grudges, but we find that the grievance keeps rearing its head.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Pay attention to me, it tells us. Forgiveness is for suckers. We find ourselves drawn irresistibly to rehashing the events that caused us pain. We may go back to complaining to others about how we have been wronged. Fred Luskin sometimes tells the people he is trying to help about a psychological experiment.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
The Wildcats were led by a member of the Hatfields, a family living in West Virginia who had strong ties to the Confederate Army. Asa hid out in a cave near Peter Creek, Kentucky. But it was no use. He was eventually tracked down and shot dead. The incident is said to have sparked a famous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. It lasted decades.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Fred and other researchers have also found that once we are down the path of constructing a grievance story, our minds reach for more and more evidence that our state of mind is justified.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
You know, I'm thinking back to the moment you went to the grocery store, you know, against your wishes to get something your wife wanted. And of course, you're thinking about your friend Sam and you're thinking about the way in which he had hurt your feelings and the way in which, you know, it was unfair that he treated you the way he treated you.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
And then you show up at the grocery store and now the thing that you wanted is not in the grocery store. Now, that's yet another piece of evidence that the universe, in fact, is unfair because And it allowed me to tell my wife that she was unfair sending me to the supermarket that I didn't want to go to.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
One technique that you teach is to ask people to be mindful about the interventions they have tried in the past and the effectiveness of those interventions. You worked with a woman named Alice who did not get along with her in-laws. Tell me how she tried to fix the problem and how you helped her.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I understand that it was important for her to let everyone else know what a louse her husband was and how much pain he had caused her.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
And of course, the point that you're making here is that very often when we're carrying grievances around, we try the same thing over and over and over and over again. We come back to the same strategy over and over again.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
It doesn't work, but we say, okay, next time I'm really going to tell this person off and next time they're going to come to their senses and realize how much they've wronged me.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Fred walked me through a mental practice he calls Positive Emotion Refocusing Technique, or PERT for short.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Fred says there is lots of evidence that reducing hostility is good for our mental and physical health. The old saying is true, anger does the most harm to the vessel that stores it. One analysis found that far from soothing our pain, grudges have a way of increasing our experience of chronic suffering, as seen in conditions like fibromyalgia.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
You also conducted a study that looked at the effects of forgiveness on workplace productivity and well-being. Tell me about that, Fred.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
We talked earlier about unenforceable rules, the rules we want others to follow, but we cannot make them follow. Let's return to the story of you and your best friend, Sam. So you emailed him at the height of your grudge and told him how you felt. What did you say and how did he respond, Fred?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
In the course of your work and research, you came by another person named Jill, and she confided in you about her troubled relationship with her mother. But unlike in the case of Debbie's ex, Jill's mother was dead?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Fred Luskin is a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. He is the author of Forgive for Good, a proven prescription for health and happiness, and Forgive for Love, the missing ingredient for a healthy and lasting relationship. Fred Luskin, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Do you have follow-up questions about grudges and forgiveness for Fred Luskin?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
If you'd be comfortable sharing your question with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, grudge. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
You know, what is striking about both these stories you've just told me, Fred, is that in both Debbie's case and in Jill's case, the source of their pain is in their past, but it's almost as if this person, this other person, is standing with them, walking with them, living with them, inside their heads all the time.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So you're a scholar, you're a teacher, you're a therapist, but you're also a human being, and you yourself are not invulnerable to holding on to a grievance. I want you to tell me the story of your friend Sam and what happened to you and Sam, and maybe start with how close you were to Sam for many years of your life.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
In 1873, a McCoy family member, perhaps still seething from Asa's death, accused Floyd Hatfield of stealing his pig. A trial followed, and Floyd Hatfield was acquitted. A few years later, one of the trial witnesses was killed by two McCoys. In 1882, on election day in Kentucky, some McCoy brothers drunkenly fought and killed Ellison Hatfield, stabbing him multiple times in the back.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I understand that at one point, Fred, you heard that Sam was to be married and you did not hear about this from Sam, but from someone else.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So you were not invited to the wedding. This is someone whom you consider to be, as you said, your best friend, nearly a brother. How did that change your outlook and behavior? I understand that the people around you started to notice that you were different.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
I understand that at one point during the saga, Fred, you found yourself in a very unusual place to have an epiphany, the supermarket. Tell me what happened at the supermarket that day.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
For better and worse, people we are close to can affect us in profound ways. Sometimes these effects are fleeting, and sometimes they last for years. When we come back, the physiological and psychological effects of holding a grudge. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
When someone wrongs us, holding a grudge against them almost feels like a form of justice. But psychologist Fred Luskin says that more often than not, grudges don't hurt the targets of our anger. They hurt us. Fred, we've discussed a few ways in which people can hurt us, but sometimes it's a process that hurts us. One person you worked with was upset she did not get a job promotion.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
In retaliation, the Hatfields killed all three McCoy brothers. The feud continued into a cycle of violence that reached its peak in 1888, during what came to be known as the New Year's Night Massacre. Several members of the Hatfield gang set fire to a McCoy cabin and killed two children.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Can you tell me Dana's story and what went through her mind?
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
So if I understand correctly, Fred, Dana's reaction to not being promoted was the sense that she had wasted 10 years of her life, that all this time and effort she had spent at the company going above and beyond, all of it was wasted effort.
The Bible Recap
Day 034 (Exodus 13-15) - Year 7
Let's look at one aspect of the story you just told me. So this was an employee who did not get a promotion. Another way of looking at this is to say the company has a number of different priorities. Maybe I don't fully understand all the priorities of the company. They've picked somebody else, but it's actually not about me. It's just about what the company needed to do at this time.