Speaker 1: It's important to understand that there are many ingredients and
Speaker 1: there are many factors that influence motivation. The idea that
Speaker 1: we can make a list and only what's on the
Speaker 1: least counts and everything that's on the least counts is,
Speaker 1: you know, is a bit naive. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. In this episode, I talked to award
Speaker 1: winning psychologist I yell At Fischbach about the exciting science
Speaker 1: of motivation. How do we motivate ourselves to do anything?
Speaker 1: From her extensive research, I yell It shares with us
Speaker 1: four crucial strategies for successful behavior change. First, identify the
Speaker 1: right goals. Second, avoid what she calls the middle, Third,
Speaker 1: resist temptations, and fourth seek social support. And equally important,
Speaker 1: A yell It gives tips on how to sustain motivation
Speaker 1: for longer periods of time. We also touch on the
Speaker 1: topics of reinforcement flow, deliberate practice, self control, and of
Speaker 1: course Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So that further ado I
Speaker 1: bring you, I yell At Fischbach, nice to finally meet you.
Speaker 1: I I we have you know, we have colleagues and
Speaker 1: you know, Angel Dockworth and others that that I love
Speaker 1: you and it's nice to finally meet you. Thank you same.
Speaker 1: So you're a leader in the field of motivation science?
Speaker 1: Is what you how you refer to in the book.
Speaker 1: Can you kind of tell our listeners a little bit
Speaker 1: about the you know, kind of trace the history of
Speaker 1: the field of motivation science and who were some of
Speaker 1: the original key players in the field, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's start there, sort of tell people what motivation science
Speaker 1: Isnation science is that the study of motivation, as we
Speaker 1: can infer from the name, we look at what gets
Speaker 1: people out of bed in the morning and into achieving
Speaker 1: their their goals, be eat the professional goals, their health goals,
Speaker 1: their academic goals, How you motivate others, how you motivate yourself,
Speaker 1: which is specifically interesting for me, and so on. Okay,
Speaker 1: we are interested in this internal power that we call
Speaker 1: motivation that gets people going. You asked about people. There
Speaker 1: are so many, So we briefly chatted about our mutual friend,
Speaker 1: Angela Darkworth. Uh, you know, I work with hair a lot.
Speaker 1: There are just so many. I work with Katie Milkman,
Speaker 1: my advisors, yakovchorpen ur Iku Blansky did amazing work on motivation.
Speaker 1: People like Walter Michelle and Toy Higgins and uh there
Speaker 1: was such a long list. I will I'll stop there
Speaker 1: because they you said, so many people, it's exploding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is an exploiting field. Would you consider Abraham masl
Speaker 1: as part of the origin story of the field, Oh yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: Well then you can go all the way to quote
Speaker 1: Lewin and you know people that inspired our thinking, William James.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, so if we are, you know, go
Speaker 1: back to the origins. What I think was very important
Speaker 1: about Maslow's work was identifying that people have different motivations,
Speaker 1: so that it's not just about what he referred to
Speaker 1: as basic needs. I am less convinced by the hierarchy there.
Speaker 1: I revised the hierarchy actually recently, so I'll send you
Speaker 1: that work. I guess you think about my vision, please
Speaker 1: please do. Yeah, it's tell me more about your criticism
Speaker 1: of the hierarchy. So the massless hierarchy assumes that the
Speaker 1: needs are always fulfilled in certain order, and so you
Speaker 1: would need the food before you would need the safety,
Speaker 1: for example, which I don't think is justifiable by any
Speaker 1: modern research. Feeling safe is as basic as feeling that
Speaker 1: you you meet your your basic I don't needs uh
Speaker 1: and no more. The more central criticism is that for
Speaker 1: many of us are sufficiently comfortable to have enough food
Speaker 1: and and and safety, and we have a roof over
Speaker 1: our heads. So what's missing in a giving moment is
Speaker 1: not in a particular audio. Okay, it's not that we
Speaker 1: first make sure that our job gets us money before
Speaker 1: we want to see if it's also interesting to do that.
Speaker 1: It's really individual. It's very different for different people in
Speaker 1: different situations, and in my thinking, it's often more useful
Speaker 1: to think about what's missing, Okay, what's missing from your job,
Speaker 1: what's missing from your life, what's missing from your exercise regimen,
Speaker 1: and not in a particular order. Yeah, I completely agree,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people misrepresented what he
Speaker 1: actually wrote because he tried to make it clear that
Speaker 1: it didn't all happen in a particular order that was necessary.
Speaker 1: And also he never even drew a pyramid, and that
Speaker 1: was missed represented by people are trying to come up
Speaker 1: with psych textbooks trying to illustrate it incorrect. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I complete agree, and I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: made that point for sure. So now you're a professor
Speaker 1: at the Business School right, the University of Chicago. So
Speaker 1: why did you choose a business school over like a
Speaker 1: psychology department just out of curiosity? So I did not
Speaker 1: choose a business school of psychology department. A business school
Speaker 1: chose me. I applied for ten jobs and nine were
Speaker 1: in the psychology departments and one was in the business school.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's where I got my first job. Twenty
Speaker 1: years later. It pays better, pays better business schools, you know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that at the time. Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's great. You know that there's such great synergy between
Speaker 1: the work being done in business schools, right, I mean
Speaker 1: in psychology departments all around the world. Right, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people collaborating and trying to understand what motivates
Speaker 1: us at work, but also what motivates us to you know,
Speaker 1: out of work as well, you know, and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So you you outlined four essential ingredients in successful behavior
Speaker 1: change in your book, and I'd like to just if
Speaker 1: that's cool with you, can we go through each one
Speaker 1: today and talk about the latest motivation science for people.
Speaker 1: So first, the first ingredient is choosing a goal. You
Speaker 1: argue that's important to pick a goal, that's powerful and
Speaker 1: specific enough but not too specific to get you to
Speaker 1: the finish line. So this is my question, why is
Speaker 1: setting goals harder than it seems at first? I would
Speaker 1: ask myself, I would ask you, is this goal something
Speaker 1: that brings to min actions? Can you relate it to
Speaker 1: something that you are going to do? Is this a
Speaker 1: positive state or is this an end state? Is this
Speaker 1: a goal as opposed to a means or a chalk? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I give the example of setting a goal
Speaker 1: to apply for a job. You actually know what that means.
Speaker 1: When people say I want to apply for a job,
Speaker 1: they can easily translate it into action, but it's not
Speaker 1: very inspiring because it's not really what you want to do.
Speaker 1: You want to have a job, you want to maybe
Speaker 1: have a career, and setting the goal in terms of
Speaker 1: what you're trying to achieve, not in terms of how
Speaker 1: would you do this is better. Setting a goal that
Speaker 1: is intrinsic is very unintuitive to people in a way.
Speaker 1: Often we think about setting goals in terms of a
Speaker 1: going to force myself to do the thing that I
Speaker 1: don't want to do. But you know what, if I
Speaker 1: cannot find any immediate rewards in doing this goal. If
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel right to me, if there's no internsic. Motivation,
Speaker 1: then this goal is going to fail, and I will
Speaker 1: just mention one more thing. Many times we set do
Speaker 1: not goals, avoidance goals, and those tend to be not
Speaker 1: so great. Yeah, what does it mean to set an
Speaker 1: avoidance goal? What does that mean? Exactly? The goal is
Speaker 1: not to do something? Yes, yes, as we ask thousands
Speaker 1: of people about their news resolutions, it's something we started
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and many people set the goal
Speaker 1: of not to do something, not to eat something, not
Speaker 1: to spend on something, and not to be in a
Speaker 1: relationship with certain people. And the problem with avoidance goals, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, they seem urgent. So this is good,
Speaker 1: like when you say I should not do something, that
Speaker 1: seems more urgent than I should do something. But the
Speaker 1: problem is that do not go or avoidance goals tend
Speaker 1: to bring to mind the thing that you're trying not
Speaker 1: to do. And you know, if we go all the
Speaker 1: way back to like Wagner's studies with asking people not
Speaker 1: to think about why bears. If I ask you not
Speaker 1: to think about white bears, you are thinking about white bears.
Speaker 1: If I ask you not to think about your eggs
Speaker 1: or food that you should not eat. Well, you're now
Speaker 1: thinking about that person or the food, and so that
Speaker 1: these avoidance goales tend to bring to mind the thing
Speaker 1: that you are trying to avoid, and they are just
Speaker 1: less intrinsically motivating. I did like the idea I heard
Speaker 1: once of not only having a to do list, but
Speaker 1: having a not to do list. That can be helpful,
Speaker 1: right as long as it's you're just not obsessing over
Speaker 1: what's on the not to do list and constantly thinking
Speaker 1: about that. Can't not to do list be helpful? Yes,
Speaker 1: avoidance goes out useful in the sense that they seem urgent,
Speaker 1: and that certain people just have the personality orientation of
Speaker 1: being more of avoids than approach, and so they are
Speaker 1: just more attractive towards that do not at least saying
Speaker 1: that if you are and sure, go with the approach,
Speaker 1: go with the goals they want. Everyage tend to walk
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Speaker 1: to be a part of the transcender community. Okay, now
Speaker 1: back to the show. Yeah, so here's a massive quote
Speaker 1: I love what's not worth doing is not worth doing? Well?
Speaker 1: That sounds summarizes a lot of what you're saying there,
Speaker 1: which is great. Yeah. One of the chapters you wrote
Speaker 1: is actually called Goals Aren't Chores? Right, And that's to
Speaker 1: highlight the fact that intrinsic motivation matters, and you know,
Speaker 1: our goals should light us up right at some point,
Speaker 1: they should inspire us, energize us. Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I give some examples of how much we hate paying
Speaker 1: for shipping or parking or a gift wrapping or anything
Speaker 1: that's not the thing itself. Like, we would not like
Speaker 1: to invest our money in it. We also would not
Speaker 1: like to invest effort. When we ask people about how
Speaker 1: motivated they are to study for some classes is required
Speaker 1: in order to take another class, the prerequisite they are
Speaker 1: not very motivated. I discovered one of the studies that
Speaker 1: we went in which we auctioned the book and some
Speaker 1: people were bidding on the book. It was a signed
Speaker 1: book by my colleague here R Shaul Saylor. Other people
Speaker 1: were bidding on a tote bag that contained the book.
Speaker 1: Now they knew that the book was in the totepeck
Speaker 1: that we met them. We presented this to them and nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the biddings on the book was about on average twenty
Speaker 1: three dollars, and on the totebeck that contained the book
Speaker 1: only around twelve dollars. So now even though people got more,
Speaker 1: they were willing to pay less. We don't like to
Speaker 1: invest in means. It's such a profound point that I
Speaker 1: feel like is often lost in the workplace a lot
Speaker 1: when managers try to motivate their employees. Yes, we often
Speaker 1: too much in the details, we forget the big picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: trying to motivate ourselves to complete the task. Not sure
Speaker 1: why we even do that. Yeah, yeah, so let's take
Speaker 1: let's let's continue down this train of thought about the
Speaker 1: importance of choosing the right goals and for the goal
Speaker 1: seting process. You also argue it's nice to kind of
Speaker 1: put a number on it, right, and so what's the
Speaker 1: role of quantification in this process? These numbers tend to
Speaker 1: be highly motivating. People tend to think about achieving anything
Speaker 1: that is below with the number as a loss, as
Speaker 1: if they did not achieve the goals. So, you know,
Speaker 1: if I set my goals walking ten thousand steps a day,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a random goal, that's some market
Speaker 1: they are invented. It's really just the number. But if
Speaker 1: this is my goal and I only walk nine thousand
Speaker 1: and nine hundred steps, I might find myself stepping around
Speaker 1: my bedroom just to reach the daily goal. Okay, to
Speaker 1: feel that I achieved. These numbers are highly motivating. Another
Speaker 1: nice example comes from a study that looked at the
Speaker 1: distribution of marath on running times turn out that there
Speaker 1: are many more people who finish marth on just below
Speaker 1: four hours or three hours and fifty nine minutes then
Speaker 1: just about four hours, like four hours and one minute.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of cool because really like what
Speaker 1: motivated them to put the energy in the last a
Speaker 1: few minutes was that they are going to meet their
Speaker 1: goal of getting it after four hours. Four hours, yeah,
Speaker 1: four hours, yeah, yeah, Wow, that's so interesting. So kind
Speaker 1: of keeping that count and and and where you're you know,
Speaker 1: how close you are to getting there on a consistent basis,
Speaker 1: Like I assume that's something you can get obsessed with
Speaker 1: as well, though, right, and that can start to distract
Speaker 1: like anything you know, invertiduce shaped curve, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: everything everything that you shupe inverteduce shape curve. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so sometimes the targets are meaningful, Okay. For some goals,
Speaker 1: it's really all or nothing. Okay, unless you graduate the
Speaker 1: very last class in your degree, you're not getting the Greek.
Speaker 1: Unless you have made all the purchases toward the reward,
Speaker 1: you are not getting the reward. Okay. So for for
Speaker 1: some goals, it really is the case that you need
Speaker 1: to get to the target otherwise you're not getting anything completed.
Speaker 1: But for all these other goals such as exercising or
Speaker 1: no developing professionally, you should just have healthy relationships with
Speaker 1: these target numbers. They are meant to motivate you. They
Speaker 1: are not that importantly. It really doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: almost got to this number or not. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: good to hear. And how do incentives play a role here?
Speaker 1: I guess that's intertwined with the extrinsic versus intrinsic reword
Speaker 1: distinction in psychology. But hell us does hel us doesn't?
Speaker 1: Do incentives matter? Yes and no. We used to think
Speaker 1: that incentives undermine intrinsic motivation. We don't really think that anymore.
Speaker 1: There is really no good evidence that paying people for
Speaker 1: a job makes them less excited about their job, and
Speaker 1: often they are more excited. And some studies find that
Speaker 1: you might initially reduce your effort you were just getting paid,
Speaker 1: and so you think, Okay, I achieved my goal, I
Speaker 1: can relax my effort. I don't need to continue working
Speaker 1: so hard. But then after a while you get the
Speaker 1: motivation back, and payment doesn't really decrease motivation in general,
Speaker 1: and not intuising motivation unless by getting paid you are
Speaker 1: not really sure why you do that anymore, and so
Speaker 1: incentives can mess up our understanding of why we do
Speaker 1: the thing that we do, like the classic studies by Leopard,
Speaker 1: like if you pay. If you give rewards to kids
Speaker 1: for drawing, they might ask themselves, do I even like drawing? Megey?
Speaker 1: Were just doing it in order to get this nice
Speaker 1: certificate with the ribbon. We told kids that food can
Speaker 1: make them strong or smart, and they stop eating that
Speaker 1: food because they they were unsure that they like the food,
Speaker 1: giving that they thought about these incentives. But you know,
Speaker 1: put that aside. If we understand why we do something,
Speaker 1: if we are excited about what we do, then often
Speaker 1: getting the reward, getting the monitory reward or any other
Speaker 1: reward is something that helps us maintain the motivation is
Speaker 1: often the immediate goal. Okay, in the long term, I
Speaker 1: might want to be a professional successful professional. In the
Speaker 1: short term, I'm going to give myself a reward for
Speaker 1: finish a project at work, and so I have some
Speaker 1: short term goals. When I worry about incentives, I say
Speaker 1: that it's really important that you reward the right thing
Speaker 1: so that you don't confuse yourselves about why you do
Speaker 1: the thing you do and what should be measured. Okay,
Speaker 1: how should you evaluate your performance? Don't worry about uncertain incentives.
Speaker 1: They often work better than certain incentives. And don't have
Speaker 1: too many incentives. I don't have too many. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So finding the right the right magic number is difficult.
Speaker 1: But what do you what do you think of smart call?
Speaker 1: You know, the s M A R T. Is that
Speaker 1: a scientifically grounded framework for reaching one's goals? Is it
Speaker 1: aligned with your research? Because I see it everywhere in
Speaker 1: positive psychology, it's a it's a popular acronym. I I
Speaker 1: will connect it back to Maslow. Okay, like that, It's
Speaker 1: important to understand that there are many ingredients and there
Speaker 1: are many factors that influence motivation. The idea that we
Speaker 1: can make a list and only what's on the list
Speaker 1: counts and everything that's on the list counts is, you know,
Speaker 1: is a bit naive. We have many things that affect
Speaker 1: our motivation. So these are important factors that I just
Speaker 1: don't think that there is a single recipe for motivation. Sure,
Speaker 1: and that that's an excellent point. It just seems like
Speaker 1: some of these I think the parts of the smart
Speaker 1: acronym map on the some things you've said already so
Speaker 1: as a specific M is measurable. So you did talk
Speaker 1: about the measurable part, A attainable, R, relevant and T
Speaker 1: time beast. But anyway, there there's a there's there's a move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is no intrinsic motivation there. That's true. That's actually
Speaker 1: very true. Yeah, because Howard would had the eye to
Speaker 1: make it a nice acronym. You know. Well, so you know,
Speaker 1: the nice thing about this acronym, which is very old,
Speaker 1: is that it got people to understand that there is
Speaker 1: more than one thing. And these acronyms they emerge at
Speaker 1: the point in time where we were trying as a
Speaker 1: field to educate people that there is more than one thing,
Speaker 1: There is more than one way to motivate people. And
Speaker 1: so people were saying there was more than one way here,
Speaker 1: there are five ways, but they are also more than
Speaker 1: five ways. In it, there was really a lot of
Speaker 1: ways to think about how to motivate yourself and others
Speaker 1: well are relevant. Seems somewhat linked intrinsic motivation. Your goal
Speaker 1: should align with your values and long term objectives. Can
Speaker 1: you well, this is actually an interesting question. Can you
Speaker 1: have something that's very value aligned but you don't intrinsically
Speaker 1: enjoy doing it, but you kind of you know, even
Speaker 1: if you suffer doing it, Like a lot of people
Speaker 1: do a lot of things that are meaningful to them
Speaker 1: that they don't enjoy intrinsically, but they they want they
Speaker 1: know it'll make the wort a better place. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: many health goals are like that. Okay, they are either
Speaker 1: like that because we find that the way to do
Speaker 1: it that is intrinsically motivating. You know, someone might hate
Speaker 1: exercising because the way that they try to exercise was
Speaker 1: always only motivated by some long term benefits. They could
Speaker 1: not find any pleasure at the moment, and at this
Speaker 1: point it's not intrinsically motivating. Then some behavior, say, some
Speaker 1: actions that we need to take in order to stay
Speaker 1: healthy are very much extrinsically motivating. There are certain treatments.
Speaker 1: If you know, someone has to go through chemotherapy, this
Speaker 1: is very extrinsically motivating and no, nevertheless that has to
Speaker 1: be done. Yeah, yeah, So something can be intrinsically motivating
Speaker 1: in the long term, but not the short term as well, like,
Speaker 1: there are certain things that we're not enjoying doing them,
Speaker 1: but we can still be intrinsically motivated do them. My
Speaker 1: over complicating things. Yeah, so let's define intrinsic motivation is
Speaker 1: doing something for the sake of doing it, Okay, so
Speaker 1: that the value is from doing okay, And in this sense,
Speaker 1: exercising or getting a job, they are rarely just intrinsically motivating.
Speaker 1: You're not just doing it for the sake of doing it.
Speaker 1: You are thinking about long term benefits. But you might
Speaker 1: love your job or your exercise routine, and in this
Speaker 1: sense you're more intrinsically motivated than someone who is really
Speaker 1: only doing it in order to be healthy or pay
Speaker 1: the rent, and these individual differences really matter. Or those
Speaker 1: that are intrinsically motivated, that find the value in doing,
Speaker 1: not just in achieving what they will achieve by doing,
Speaker 1: are much more likely to persist on their goals. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see that in the field. I see interest motivation
Speaker 1: defined differently by some researchers. So I appreciate I appreciate
Speaker 1: you clarifying that. Might head Richard Ryan on my podcast
Speaker 1: you know seft determination theory, you would consider him a
Speaker 1: major player and motivation science field as well. Yes, yes so, yes, so.
Speaker 1: There are a few definitions of intrinsic motivation, and I'm
Speaker 1: really happy that you bought it up first. The economists
Speaker 1: usually or sometimes talk about intrinsic motivation is anything that's
Speaker 1: not money, okay, And so they really put the content
Speaker 1: that if you are being paid, you're extrinstically motivated. If
Speaker 1: you are not getting paid, your intrinsically motivated. And by
Speaker 1: that definition, you could think about the person or undergoes
Speaker 1: a chemotherapy as being intrinsically motivated because they they want
Speaker 1: it they are not getting paid. Psychologists don't really use
Speaker 1: that definition. We use that the definition of doing something
Speaker 1: for the sake of doing it and getting the value
Speaker 1: from doing it. Now, what Ryan and this did in
Speaker 1: their work on intrinsic motivation is trying to understand what
Speaker 1: is the content that is most likely to be intrinsically
Speaker 1: motivating and what are the kind of goals that people
Speaker 1: pursue usually for the sake of pursuing and not for
Speaker 1: the sake of achieving. What are what they call internal
Speaker 1: motives And this is really important work. What my work
Speaker 1: was doing is looking more at the structure okay, and
Speaker 1: putting aside the content, seeing that if people feel that
Speaker 1: doing is right for them, the doing feels good, they
Speaker 1: will be more intrinsically motivated, regardless of the content of
Speaker 1: the motivation. So the feeling is a real big part
Speaker 1: of this. You know, how it feels when you're engaging
Speaker 1: in the activity? Is that right? You know something that
Speaker 1: Angela because my office used to be right next door
Speaker 1: to Angela's at Penn and we used to discuss flow
Speaker 1: and its relationship to to deliberate practice, because sometimes there
Speaker 1: are kind of opposites in some ways, at least the
Speaker 1: feeling experientially of putting in the effort of deliberate practice
Speaker 1: versus experientially the feeling of flow. And then some you know,
Speaker 1: some people in the field say that the flow feeling
Speaker 1: is kind of a neutral feeling. You don't feel positive
Speaker 1: or negative because you're just not focused on you're you're
Speaker 1: so absorbed in the activity that it doesn't feel anything.
Speaker 1: You chick sent me I had said that, had said that,
Speaker 1: I believe at some point. So I think it's just
Speaker 1: interesting that you can have other states that are more
Speaker 1: like neutral when you're engaging them, but are really meaningful
Speaker 1: to you. You're really so enraptured with what you're doing.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yes? Absolutely, you know, sometimes the
Speaker 1: feeling might not be just like fun and pleasant, and
Speaker 1: still you feel very good about what you do. We
Speaker 1: recently published a paper that tells the story of a
Speaker 1: study that we went with people who are studying improvisation,
Speaker 1: and this is with the Second City Improvisation Club here
Speaker 1: in Chicago. These are not professional people. These are not
Speaker 1: people who are who know how to act and plan
Speaker 1: to have a career. This is like people like me.
Speaker 1: You just want to boost the confidence through improvisation. And
Speaker 1: so when they start taking these classes, they tend to
Speaker 1: not like their experience very much. They feel embarrassed. It
Speaker 1: feels odd like you have to do something with your
Speaker 1: body and I get attention on you and you just
Speaker 1: take not quite in your comfort zone. And what we
Speaker 1: did was asking people to feel uncomfort and so we
Speaker 1: told them your goal is to feel uncomfortable, and they
Speaker 1: were more engaged and they have more likely to tell
Speaker 1: us that they will come back, that they want to
Speaker 1: do it, and in a way that having this goal
Speaker 1: to feel uncomfortable really works for them. Now, what's going
Speaker 1: on there? Is that, Well, I know how to feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and when I get myself there and I feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: then I feel like I've achieved my goal. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is working. Okay, this is right. So like
Speaker 1: we capture like this feels right by having people embrace
Speaker 1: the discomfort that you will feel in the short run
Speaker 1: when you're just studying, learning import I love that I'm
Speaker 1: doing some work with Second City as well. Is a
Speaker 1: Kelly Lennard And yeah, what do you do with them?
Speaker 1: Creating a code words top secret? We haven't we haven't
Speaker 1: unraveled to the general public yet, but yeah, I can
Speaker 1: say they're dear friends of mine and they have actually
Speaker 1: told me that they're doing some work with you, and
Speaker 1: they're very excited about working with you. Now I remember
Speaker 1: we really have the same friends. How come we've never met? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that's why. That's why the beginning I was like, well,
Speaker 1: it's so nice to finally meet you. Yeah, yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: I'm that's that's so great to hear that you're doing
Speaker 1: you're doing work with them on that they're they're also yeah,
Speaker 1: that's and that's really yeah, and that's really important. That's
Speaker 1: really important. Work okay, So let's let's like move on
Speaker 1: in our ingredients. Even though you said they're not roles,
Speaker 1: you know, they're just ingredients. The second is you need
Speaker 1: to sustain your motivation, right, Why is it important to
Speaker 1: solicit feedback on your performance and during this this kind
Speaker 1: of stage, Well, it's it's really hard to learn without progress.
Speaker 1: It's last so it's really hard to learn without feedback.
Speaker 1: So you don't know where you stand. You don't know
Speaker 1: whether we are doing it well or you are not
Speaker 1: doing it well. It's really hard to sustain your motivation
Speaker 1: when you don't know that you're making progress okay, when
Speaker 1: you cannot look back or look ahead and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm getting somewhere okay. And often in order to
Speaker 1: perceive progress, you need to either look back or look forward,
Speaker 1: so you know, sometimes the target is moving okay, or
Speaker 1: it's really far away, but you can look back and say, well,
Speaker 1: I already did something, okay, I already I took my
Speaker 1: first class, or you know, I wrote the first page
Speaker 1: in the book that I'm planning to write. That helps
Speaker 1: people maintain their motivation. And we found, for example, that
Speaker 1: when students were unsure whether they should study for an example,
Speaker 1: looking back the materials that they've already covered helped them
Speaker 1: stay motivated. When people were not sure whether they should
Speaker 1: support a course charitable giving, looking at how much was
Speaker 1: already done, how much they contributed, to how much others contributed,
Speaker 1: motivate them to keep giving, to keep helping the course.
Speaker 1: Other times, when you're almost well, let's say, when you're
Speaker 1: beyond the fifty percent and you're getting closer to your target,
Speaker 1: and it's actually better to look ahead and to look
Speaker 1: at the discrepancy. And this is where the discrepancy theories
Speaker 1: in psychology suggest that when you look where where you
Speaker 1: want to be and how far you are from there,
Speaker 1: that that will motivate you. You will monitor your pocus
Speaker 1: towards that point. Yeah, that even goes back to one
Speaker 1: of my mentors and as an undergraduate, Herb Simon's work
Speaker 1: right on means and analysis and all that nerdy stuff
Speaker 1: from that time period of the fifty sixty Simon and
Speaker 1: new Yeah, yeah, there is, Yeah, there is like the
Speaker 1: you know, the total model, the test operate test accent,
Speaker 1: which is and all the suggest that you monitor you're
Speaker 1: pogus always looking forward, you're looking at the target. You
Speaker 1: see how am I getting there? Am I close enough?
Speaker 1: If I'm close enough, and maybe I can relax my efforts.
Speaker 1: If I'm fou, I should increase my effort. That only
Speaker 1: works for people who are already committed. If you are uncommitted,
Speaker 1: if you're very far from your target and looking at
Speaker 1: the discrepancy tends to destroy commitment. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: You're talking about avoiding the importance of avoiding the middle problem.
Speaker 1: What is the middle problem? Yes, so you're you start something,
Speaker 1: you are fully motivated, you're excited, you just decided to
Speaker 1: do that thing. When you're about to reach your target
Speaker 1: or your goal, then again there is excitement that usually
Speaker 1: the increase in the effort. In particular, if it's there's
Speaker 1: all or nothing called in the middle. We don't have
Speaker 1: parties in the middle. We it's not something that we
Speaker 1: in particular pay attention to. And this is where we
Speaker 1: see a motivation not quite, not quite where we want
Speaker 1: it to be. And we see that the declining motivation
Speaker 1: both on like how hard people work and on how
Speaker 1: much they adhere to their personal standards, how much they
Speaker 1: are willing to cut corners to just you know, cheat
Speaker 1: a little bit, maybe in a way people behave as
Speaker 1: if they are aware that they will not remember what
Speaker 1: they did in the middle, so they don't need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to be too careful about doing it right.
Speaker 1: To give you a couple of examples, we looked at
Speaker 1: people in Israel lighting the manora over the eight days
Speaker 1: of Hanukahs. So they are supposed to light the manora
Speaker 1: on every day between day one and they eight, and
Speaker 1: most people light them Noah on the first day, and
Speaker 1: many people, the majority actually lights them Norah on the
Speaker 1: last day. But in the middle it's when people are slacking.
Speaker 1: We did the study. We did studies in which people
Speaker 1: actually had to do something, do a task for several trials,
Speaker 1: and in the middle they were not doing such a
Speaker 1: great job. Yeah. I think a lot of people will
Speaker 1: resonate with that when they listen to this podcast. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know I certainly resonate with that. Okay, I know
Speaker 1: avoid the middle problem, but how can you overcome it?
Speaker 1: Do you have any strategies or tips for that keeping
Speaker 1: middles short? You know, instead of an annual saving goal,
Speaker 1: make it a monthly saving goal instead of a monthly
Speaker 1: exercising goal, and make it a weekly exercising goal. So
Speaker 1: they were just less of a middle. The problem with
Speaker 1: the Nuious resolutions, for example, is that this goal is
Speaker 1: for years, so you know, it's it's really hard to
Speaker 1: maintain the motivation as moving from like March to April.
Speaker 1: And another solution is to I find new beginnings either.
Speaker 1: You know, my my colleague Katie Milkman came up with
Speaker 1: a fresh start effect, which basically chooses some kind of
Speaker 1: random date to announce that it's it's the first day,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the first day of pursuing this call
Speaker 1: because it's a Monday, okay, or because it's my birthday,
Speaker 1: or because it's the first day of the month, and
Speaker 1: any any reason that you can find in order to
Speaker 1: restart the count. It helps people recruit their motivation, motivation.
Speaker 1: Think about it as a beginning, good good, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: Katie is wonderful. She was on this podcast when her
Speaker 1: book came out, and I'm so glad you're you're working
Speaker 1: with her. Yeah, she's part of the Angela team, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, yeah, that's the whole team over there. Pet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're killing it. They're killing they're crushing, crushing it,
Speaker 1: they're getting it. Done. They're getting it done right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they walk the talk. Okay. So the third ingredient is
Speaker 1: learning how to juggle multiple goals. I think that for
Speaker 1: a lot of people this might be the hardest one
Speaker 1: for them because there's lots of things pulling us in
Speaker 1: different directions. How can we set priorities and find the
Speaker 1: right balance here? Yes? So, yeah, we always want several things,
Speaker 1: so we have to do lists for every day in
Speaker 1: our minds, and they are often conflicting goals. And sometimes
Speaker 1: we want to choose between these goals. Okay, Sometimes we
Speaker 1: really want to set priorities. Okay, I might prioritize my
Speaker 1: health goal over my desire to each food. Other times
Speaker 1: it's really a matter of balancing, of making tradeoffs and
Speaker 1: so I you know, I might want to eat organic food,
Speaker 1: but I also don't want to spend too much money,
Speaker 1: and they usually organic food is expensive. IM to balance
Speaker 1: between these goals, I need to decide how much I'm
Speaker 1: going to expand on the organic food or you know
Speaker 1: that they're ultimate balancing is career and family most well,
Speaker 1: I actually don't have the numbers, but many people choose
Speaker 1: to balance between career and family. Of course, some people
Speaker 1: decide that they're going to postpone having a family so
Speaker 1: they can focus on a career, or that they will
Speaker 1: resign their career because they want to ployot as the family.
Speaker 1: But for many of us, it's a matter of balancing
Speaker 1: and to the extended people are making these tradeoffs, then
Speaker 1: we can look at what activities they choose, and in general,
Speaker 1: people prefer activities that maximize attainment. Yeah, these activities that
Speaker 1: help them achieve more than one goal. So exercise in
Speaker 1: a way that maybe it's also my commute to work,
Speaker 1: it's also a way to spend time with a friend.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's also not an expensive way of exercising, so
Speaker 1: I can also meet that goal. The problem with these activities,
Speaker 1: we call them multi final means, is that because they
Speaker 1: sell different goals, they sometimes seem less efficient, less instrumental
Speaker 1: for any of these goals. In a way, sometimes people
Speaker 1: feel that a commute to work is not as good
Speaker 1: exercise as an exercise that is just an exercisekin that
Speaker 1: doesn't also get you another thing. And they're actually funny
Speaker 1: examples with it that people prefer mouthwash that stings because
Speaker 1: you know, if it's pleasant, I assume that it's not
Speaker 1: very good. Yes, right, And this is a mistake. But
Speaker 1: these kind of mistakes when people choose means that only
Speaker 1: self one goal teaches us about how people's goal systems work,
Speaker 1: how people in fail instrumentality based on the number of
Speaker 1: things that they can achieve by pursuing an activity. Does
Speaker 1: this make sense? Maybe I was a bit too academic. No, no,
Speaker 1: it absolutely, it absolutely doesn't make sense. I think that
Speaker 1: a big part of this is having patience and building
Speaker 1: your self control muscle, right, and that's hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have any tips for people and how they
Speaker 1: can build those muscles? Well, the first thing is to
Speaker 1: remember that this is a metaphor. We often use metaphors
Speaker 1: in order to help people understand what we are talking about,
Speaker 1: to help people understand that self control takes practice, basically, right,
Speaker 1: This is why we're referring to it as the muscle.
Speaker 1: But then people take this metaphor too far and you know,
Speaker 1: coming up with all kinds of physiological explanations for self control,
Speaker 1: which I really and not not like. What this is
Speaker 1: the work on a good depletion, which suggests that after
Speaker 1: people excess self control, they get tired. Okay, they know
Speaker 1: they feel that they need to replenish their resources. And
Speaker 1: a lot of this is true. But then again using
Speaker 1: the muscles metaphor preventive from understanding that a lot of
Speaker 1: it is the mental fatigue case that you're tired of
Speaker 1: doing it, that you cannot resist certain temptations for a
Speaker 1: really long time because you feel fed up with that. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not that you actually got tired, it's just that
Speaker 1: I can resist cookies for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: At one point I would just say whatever, like you know,
Speaker 1: give me a break here, I say, of that cookie.
Speaker 1: So but going back to the tips on how to
Speaker 1: have better exercise self control, I would say that a
Speaker 1: lot of the problem with self control is in identifying temptations,
Speaker 1: and we need to first see that there is a
Speaker 1: problem before we battle it. So we first need to
Speaker 1: identify the temptation and then battle it. And the reason
Speaker 1: that it's not trivial is that many of the temptations,
Speaker 1: our every day temptations, will not help us if we
Speaker 1: do it is just once, if I yell at my
Speaker 1: partner just once, or leave a mess mess in the
Speaker 1: bathroom like no, nothing happens, skate like it's it's okay,
Speaker 1: like you know, in all me long enough, you will
Speaker 1: forgive me. It's really about being obnoxious to the people
Speaker 1: around you too many times. That makes it inappropriate that
Speaker 1: you will need to control your your negative emotions or no,
Speaker 1: eating one cookie will not destroy your diet. Drinking one
Speaker 1: glass of alcohol might actually make you more pleasant at
Speaker 1: the party. It's drinking the seventh class that will make
Speaker 1: you very endpless. And and the trick is really understand
Speaker 1: when a temptation is a temptation. One way that I
Speaker 1: write about is using broad decision of frames, thinking about
Speaker 1: doing that several times, so all the time. And there
Speaker 1: are some really nice studies that show that if you
Speaker 1: just get people to think about making these decisions several times,
Speaker 1: they are going to exercise more self control. So, now
Speaker 1: if you get people to think about the number of
Speaker 1: times that they will buy champagne this year, okay, and
Speaker 1: they realize that it's not just for today's party, it
Speaker 1: actually is something that I do several times a year,
Speaker 1: then they are paying more attention to how much money
Speaker 1: they are spending on the champagne bottle. Well, any other
Speaker 1: research studies along designs as well, because I actually really
Speaker 1: enjoy hearing about the studies. You've conducted also gives our
Speaker 1: listeners a kind of a window into scientific research. I
Speaker 1: will mention another study that we when with helping people
Speaker 1: identify temptations, we asked them about a bunch of ambiguously
Speaker 1: unethical things that you can do at the work place
Speaker 1: case such as taking office supply home or calling seek
Speaker 1: when you really just don't feel like going to work,
Speaker 1: using your traveling the budget for buying a meal for
Speaker 1: you and a friend, and so on, and for these
Speaker 1: kind of behaviors. When people consider doing it just once,
Speaker 1: they say yeah, okay, yeah, I can see myself doing it.
Speaker 1: When you ask them whether they are going to do
Speaker 1: it multiple times, then they say no. So, in a way,
Speaker 1: by using the port decision from you get able to
Speaker 1: say no, I will not going to take office supply
Speaker 1: home if I think about all the times in which
Speaker 1: I can do this. Then we did some other studies
Speaker 1: on what people do once they identify a temptation, and
Speaker 1: it turned out that if people anticipate temptations, if they
Speaker 1: know that they are coming, they are better able to resist.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like if I tell you that my
Speaker 1: desk is very heavy and can you help me lift it?
Speaker 1: You're going to oppose it with more force than if
Speaker 1: I tell you, this desk is very light, Can you
Speaker 1: help me get it to another corner of the room.
Speaker 1: Knowing that the temptation is there makes people prepare to
Speaker 1: it and better able to resist it. So knowing in
Speaker 1: our studies, knowing that medical checkup is going to be unpleasant,
Speaker 1: the exercise is going to be hard, the studying is
Speaker 1: going to be difficult, led people to plan to invest
Speaker 1: more airport and more time in these activities. I'm really
Speaker 1: glad I asked you to mention another study because I
Speaker 1: love that study that you just mentioned, so thank you.
Speaker 1: In Doctor Fishwalk, that's wonderful. It kind of speaks to
Speaker 1: the value of mindful awareness. I mean that links to
Speaker 1: Ellen Langer's work, would I would say right to a
Speaker 1: certain degree, Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Also, you know the study
Speaker 1: that we discussed with the second City, I think speaks
Speaker 1: to hell that too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: more I hang out with those guys, you know, like
Speaker 1: Kelly and and I realized that if you treat life
Speaker 1: like improv you know, you have a much more enjoyable life.
Speaker 1: And also you make more friends because you can yes
Speaker 1: and everyone, Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I
Speaker 1: really what I took like working with them is really
Speaker 1: the getting more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. I think that
Speaker 1: improvisation is such a good experience a feeling uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: being okay with that, experimenting with it. Yeah. Complete, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of staying positive, right, because like in positive psychology,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of focus on optimism as such a
Speaker 1: strong breaker of lots of things. In your book, you
Speaker 1: talk about how to know if and when a glass
Speaker 1: half full or have empty perspective will motivate you. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to kind of link that to some of
Speaker 1: these ideas about optimism. And you know, yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I don't really think about the glass half empty
Speaker 1: as being a passions Yeah. And actually I think in
Speaker 1: the book, like you know, I know that this was
Speaker 1: are usually meant optimism. Pessimists, the dis wepancy theories look
Speaker 1: at people getting motivated they what they have not done.
Speaker 1: Now it's not it's not that they are upset about
Speaker 1: the thing that they have not done. It's just that
Speaker 1: they look at what they have yet to achieve. We
Speaker 1: you know, we did a study with their employees in
Speaker 1: an advertising company and that was in Seoul in South Korea,
Speaker 1: and we asked some of them to look back at
Speaker 1: what they achieved last year and the others to think
Speaker 1: about what they haven't yet achieved. And so no one
Speaker 1: is really upset or in particular happy about this exercise.
Speaker 1: But they either have in their mind the glass half
Speaker 1: fool everything that they achieved, or have empty like the
Speaker 1: thing that they have not yet achieved and they can
Speaker 1: still walk on it, but it hasn't happened yet. And
Speaker 1: what we found is that those who look back like
Speaker 1: the account war more. They were more enthusiastic about what
Speaker 1: they did, They wanted to do that more. But those
Speaker 1: that were looking ahead had what we refer to is
Speaker 1: higher level of aspiration. They wanted to move to their
Speaker 1: next world. And so you you get those like high
Speaker 1: achieving people. They they always look forward, okay, they always
Speaker 1: look at the glass half empty, not in the negative sense,
Speaker 1: but in the sense of like, this could be my
Speaker 1: next step, that could be my next challenge, that is
Speaker 1: the next mountain that I want to climb on. Their
Speaker 1: mind is on the on the things that they have
Speaker 1: not yet achieved. That makes sense, that makes sense, But
Speaker 1: you don't also don't want to get, you know, the
Speaker 1: fear of missing out, you know. I yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get too focused on that rate and be like and
Speaker 1: and and not find the meaning and extract the joy
Speaker 1: in the moment of what you're currently accomplished accomplishing, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and so you you can choose to look at what
Speaker 1: you have achieved versus what you still want to achieve.
Speaker 1: And I think that you're pointing out something very important
Speaker 1: that if you're always future oriented, you never get to
Speaker 1: celebrate your achievement. Right, You're never quite you want to be,
Speaker 1: You're always walking towards something that will happen in the future.
Speaker 1: And I also talk about learning from negative feed deck
Speaker 1: and I think that there is a lot of negative
Speaker 1: feedback around us that if we can extract useful lessons from,
Speaker 1: then we can improve, we can do things better. It's
Speaker 1: not easy, well it's not easy, but in your book
Speaker 1: you actually go through and help people with some suggestions
Speaker 1: on how to stay on track when facebook negative feedback.
Speaker 1: That was one of my favor I'm gonna be serious,
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite chapters in your whole work
Speaker 1: or sections sections in your book, you know, like, so
Speaker 1: talk can you talk all about that, you know, like
Speaker 1: what is a you know, what is a warning mindset?
Speaker 1: For instance? And distancing and yeah, I talk about something
Speaker 1: that thank you, so you know, there is a lot
Speaker 1: of research in motivation science on how to learn from
Speaker 1: negative fitback, and the reason is that we are not
Speaker 1: very good at it. Okay, so people are not very
Speaker 1: good written as they say that. Also animals are not
Speaker 1: very good, Like, it's really hard to learn from negative feedback.
Speaker 1: It's easy to pay attention to the negative feedback, like
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to say, oops, I messed it up.
Speaker 1: But the lessons So if not this, then what should
Speaker 1: you do? That's not trivial. It's not trivial because it
Speaker 1: requires thinking in terms of elimination, k Like eliminated one way?
Speaker 1: Then what are the ways that I could try it?
Speaker 1: Also just how emotionally because you might be too upset
Speaker 1: about the negative feedback, but we developed a way it's
Speaker 1: gay and one way is a called a growth mindset. Okay,
Speaker 1: thinking about negative feedback in terms of learning. So now
Speaker 1: asking yourself or asking people around you, what have you learned? Okay,
Speaker 1: what is a better way to do that? Given the
Speaker 1: feedback that you just received and people that are learning
Speaker 1: from failure are improving? Okay. Another way is distance yourself.
Speaker 1: We find that it's much easier to learn from other
Speaker 1: people's failures, gay and so we we use really simple tasks.
Speaker 1: You asked to guess the answer to some question I
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like giving your pictures of two couples
Speaker 1: and we ask you which one is a real couple,
Speaker 1: which one is just two people that we put their
Speaker 1: pictures next to each other, and you guess it, and
Speaker 1: we either tell you that you were successful or not.
Speaker 1: After five minutes we learn what have you learned? Do
Speaker 1: you still remember which couple is the right couple? Turn another?
Speaker 1: When people get negative feedback for themselves, they don't learn
Speaker 1: very well. But when they watch another person making the
Speaker 1: wrong guess, they learn. Okay, they butter were able to
Speaker 1: learn from another person's mistakes. So distance yourself ethan courses
Speaker 1: work on a self talk comes to mind, all right.
Speaker 1: He said that one way to distance yourself is to
Speaker 1: refer to yourself with your name. Okay, So like for
Speaker 1: me it would be I yell at what happened? I
Speaker 1: yell it? What should you do in this situation? And
Speaker 1: kind of like look at myself as if I'm looking
Speaker 1: at another person, if I'm looking at you, Scott messing Up, okay,
Speaker 1: and what I would learn from you? And I would
Speaker 1: mention one more thing that we develop, which is giving
Speaker 1: advice to another person. And this is actually a paper
Speaker 1: with the low and ask Chris Winkler and Angela Duckworth,
Speaker 1: Oh she's great, Okay, well you know we we should
Speaker 1: Lowen was my past talk. So she's close to my heart.
Speaker 1: And as Alan came up with the idea that how
Speaker 1: but we ask people to give advice, So we will
Speaker 1: ask people who are struggling with school like kids to
Speaker 1: give advice to other kids who struggle in school. A
Speaker 1: lot of people that are overweight to give other people
Speaker 1: advice on how to lose weight. To people that are
Speaker 1: unemployed to give other people advice on how to get
Speaker 1: a job. And now that if you give advice to
Speaker 1: another person, that really requires you to think about what
Speaker 1: you have learned and so you are learning. But it
Speaker 1: seems to me that's also related to like christ and
Speaker 1: have self compassion work as well, right, like how can
Speaker 1: we integrate the self like the self like having self
Speaker 1: compassion about about it as well as giving advice. I
Speaker 1: think there's a nice integration. There's a paper there if Kristen.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Actually, you know, like in our work on
Speaker 1: advice that really the effect was on the person who
Speaker 1: gave the advice. So you gave the advice and now
Speaker 1: you feel more motivated. And we didn't go to the
Speaker 1: next step of like what your advice is actually doing
Speaker 1: to the person who received it. Many times it was
Speaker 1: just a mental exercise of what your advice would be.
Speaker 1: We didn't actually give it to anybody. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: but it's probably having an effect. Yeah, it's probably happen. Okay, Colauren, Colaaren,
Speaker 1: I'll make the intro to Kristin Kristen, you know, because
Speaker 1: she's doing great work. Okay, let's let's talk about the
Speaker 1: value of social support. I really love this part of
Speaker 1: your book as well. Why is it What is important
Speaker 1: to think about when you're pursuing goals in the presence
Speaker 1: of others? What should you think through it? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so many of the goals that we pursue are with others. Actually,
Speaker 1: the most important goals in our lives, I often think
Speaker 1: that we do with other people. Okay, with the it's
Speaker 1: you know, at work or starting a family or like
Speaker 1: in your community. Okay, you're doing things with other people,
Speaker 1: and so working with other people is critical because with
Speaker 1: your two hands and one mind, you cannot do enough.
Speaker 1: And other times it's in the context of personal goals
Speaker 1: and doing something without social support is it's extremely hard.
Speaker 1: Often if you don't have social support, that is, the
Speaker 1: people around you are not on board with your goal.
Speaker 1: That the first thing that you should do is find
Speaker 1: those people who support you. Okay, find that that mentor okay,
Speaker 1: that person that agrees that what you're doing is worth
Speaker 1: doing and is going to support you and be your
Speaker 1: role model maybe, but mainly someone that contains your goal
Speaker 1: for you. So I talk about these two aspects, how
Speaker 1: to do things with others and how to make sure
Speaker 1: that we connect to the people that support our goals. Hmm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you argue that goals make a happy relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what is that? What is that connection there? Yes,
Speaker 1: so we are drawn to our people who are who
Speaker 1: support our goals and we are you know, we just
Speaker 1: completed a series of studies where we ask people how
Speaker 1: much they know someone like a friend or a partner,
Speaker 1: and how much they feel that that person knows them,
Speaker 1: and then The third question is how satisfied are you
Speaker 1: with the relationship. And when we have these three questions,
Speaker 1: we can see what better predicts relationship satisfaction. And this
Speaker 1: is really relationship with anyone okay, with a friend, with
Speaker 1: a colleague, with the spouse. It is mainly predicted by
Speaker 1: how much you feel that they know you, okay, And
Speaker 1: so we are drawned to be closer to the people
Speaker 1: who we feel know us, and you can therefore support
Speaker 1: our goals. The person that knows what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: achieve in my life is the person that I want
Speaker 1: to be in a relationship with. Now, of course, no
Speaker 1: relationship has more than one person in it. So to
Speaker 1: the extent that I know their goals and can support theirs,
Speaker 1: and I want to be with them to the extent
Speaker 1: that they say I didn't say it quitely, to the
Speaker 1: extent that they know me, I want to be with
Speaker 1: them to the extent that I know them they want
Speaker 1: to be with me. Hopefully I did not confuse you
Speaker 1: with that sentence. The extent to which you know them,
Speaker 1: can that also increase the chances that you want to
Speaker 1: be with them, not not just that they want to
Speaker 1: be with you. Well, so for each side. It is
Speaker 1: more critical to feel that you are not feel seen. Yes,
Speaker 1: feel seen, and that's selfish. Well you know what, yeah
Speaker 1: kind of No, No, I get it, I get it. Look,
Speaker 1: you know, I think this rates a little bit to
Speaker 1: Eli Finkle's work. Yes, Eli Finkle, Yeah cool. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you agree with that because I went out
Speaker 1: and know when connecting it to his work. But I'd
Speaker 1: like to you on these podcasts kind of trying to
Speaker 1: see make linkages when I can tell other researchers in
Speaker 1: the field. And I really like how he has this
Speaker 1: kind of self actuisation model of relationships and he brings
Speaker 1: in my favorite psychologist Maslow in talking about you know,
Speaker 1: you want to feel it like both partners are helping
Speaker 1: each other grow, and that seems very much related to
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Yes, exactly. And Elay's work is mainly
Speaker 1: in the context of romantic relationships. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Really often look also other relationships and see a similar
Speaker 1: pattern where you want to be with a colleague or
Speaker 1: a boss or you know, and anyone in your life,
Speaker 1: a friend that understands your goals, that supports you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you say quote. Ultimately, What matters is that a relationship
Speaker 1: helps rather than hurts your goals. In this way, helping
Speaker 1: each other pursue our goals is fundamental to social connection.
Speaker 1: I just want to end this interview today on that note,
Speaker 1: because you know, during COVID and you do link at
Speaker 1: you have a paragraph there right about COVID there at
Speaker 1: the end of your book. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: people feeling really lonely right now right, and you know
Speaker 1: Caciopo's work, et cetera has shown the real health, you know,
Speaker 1: really be detrimental to our biology, in our health when
Speaker 1: we're feeling lonely. So you know, just kind of ending
Speaker 1: on there's no kind of giving people a little bit
Speaker 1: of hope and how we can restore more relationships feel
Speaker 1: us only using some of this core research. I think
Speaker 1: it's very valuable, absolutely, And you know, John cosiopus work
Speaker 1: on social connection and how critical it is for physical
Speaker 1: health is the first to come to mind. We are
Speaker 1: very concerned with the loneliness service suggested people nowadays are
Speaker 1: lonelier than before. And this is data before COVID. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is just like the modern lifestyle. We just people
Speaker 1: have more personal space and the negative aspect of that
Speaker 1: is that they just spend more time alone, or that
Speaker 1: older people can end up spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: by themselves. This is unhealthy. This is killing people, and
Speaker 1: in the context of COVID, that's a major concern when
Speaker 1: we are trying to to think about how to maintain
Speaker 1: a healthy lifestyle. This is definitely part of what we
Speaker 1: think of clar for kids and for all their people,
Speaker 1: how to make sure that social connection is part of
Speaker 1: their daily lives. Huge, huge, Yes, your book is timely
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways and will always be timely
Speaker 1: for the rest of the homost sapiens that want to
Speaker 1: get things done what it will always want to be
Speaker 1: know how they can be better motivated. So your research
Speaker 1: is prey relevant to humanity, doctor Fish. But thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Yes, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: my podcast today and it was a true honor and
Speaker 1: pleasure for me and I wish you well with continuing
Speaker 1: your research and the book. Yes, thank you, congrats, congrats
Speaker 1: on the book. Thank you very much. It feels good
Speaker 1: and really love talking to you about it. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll meet in person one day. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be very nice. That'd nay. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
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Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
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