Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Michael Lewis, and this is against the rules.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to this season on Sports Gambling,
Speaker 1: then you already know that at the heart of everything
Speaker 1: is one thing human psychology. How to understand the passion
Speaker 1: of fans, how to play mind games with them. It
Speaker 1: just so happens that there's another show in my neighborhood
Speaker 1: here at Pushkin. It's all about human psychology and what
Speaker 1: research tells us about our own minds. That's the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: hosted by doctor Laurie Santos. Laurie's a psychology professor at Yale.
Speaker 1: In a while back, she did an episode that grabbed
Speaker 1: my attention. It's called nerd Out, The Happiness of Being
Speaker 1: a Fan. It starts with the story of a woman
Speaker 1: who became obsessed with a British actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, and
Speaker 1: it's delightful. Here's Laurie asking the big questions about fan psychology.
Speaker 2: Could embracing a deep love of a seemingly trivial thing
Speaker 2: and doing so openly and without guilt be the key
Speaker 2: to feeling more connected and more present? Would each of
Speaker 2: us become a lot happier if we two could at
Speaker 2: least metaphorically get cumber batched.
Speaker 1: Now, Laurie's episode is about cultural fandom, obviously, but I
Speaker 1: suspected you'd have some interesting things to say about sports
Speaker 1: fandom and gambling on sports. So I went to my
Speaker 1: studio and she went to hers, and we had the
Speaker 1: conversation you're about to hear there is Laurie.
Speaker 2: Santos, Hey, folks has a gun.
Speaker 1: I feel cumber batched, and I want to get to
Speaker 1: sports gaming. But I do want to talk briefly about
Speaker 1: fandom because you did that episode on Benedict Cumberbatch. Because
Speaker 1: first start, when I was listening to you, we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, fangirling on shows and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It felt kind of mild compared to sports fandom. That
Speaker 1: it felt, you know, although consuming the behavior wasn't anything
Speaker 1: like as insane as as you see with sports fans
Speaker 1: getting close with Benadict Cumberbatch, but that was an extreme
Speaker 1: and I'm warning you. Do you group sports fans in
Speaker 1: this category? Is it a parasocial relationship being a sports fan?
Speaker 2: I think sometimes. I mean, I think sports fandom has
Speaker 2: a couple other different features. Right, So sports teams at
Speaker 2: least a lot of the kind of canonical sports teams
Speaker 2: you can think about the NBA or baseball teams or whatever.
Speaker 2: They also have a feature that activates our sort of
Speaker 2: group psychology. Right, So with Benedict Cumberbatch, you're a fan
Speaker 2: of Benedict Cumberbatch, but you don't see yourself as like
Speaker 2: a Red Sox fan or like a Patriots fan or something. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm a Boston sports person, so those are going to
Speaker 2: be all my examples, right. That kind of group psychology
Speaker 2: is really different because it's not like the Benedict Cumberbatch
Speaker 2: fans like hate some other actor and like really want
Speaker 2: to take him down, right, But as a Red Sox fan,
Speaker 2: like I grew up like hating the Yankees, right, if
Speaker 2: somebody is a Yankees hat, I'm like, that person is
Speaker 2: not my group. They are the enemy, right, And that's
Speaker 2: a special part of our group psychology. It doesn't just
Speaker 2: activate the kind of positive belonging part. It also activates
Speaker 2: the kind of not so good, I don't like you,
Speaker 2: you are not like me sort of part. And I
Speaker 2: feel like that psychologically makes fandom a lot more powerful, right,
Speaker 2: because it kind of gives us both the kind of
Speaker 2: belonging side, like, oh, I'm like these people who like
Speaker 2: the same things that I do. But it also comes
Speaker 2: with the like I don't like those people, Like my
Speaker 2: group doesn't like this other set of people. And I
Speaker 2: think that this plays in sports betting a lot. My
Speaker 2: guess is, sometimes, you know, if I'm a Red Sox
Speaker 2: fan and I make a sports bed on Red Sox,
Speaker 2: sometimes that's like I love the Red Sox and they're
Speaker 2: going to do great. And sometimes it's like screw the
Speaker 2: Yankees or f the Yankee, you know, like words we're
Speaker 2: not gonna say on your podcast towards the Yankees. It's
Speaker 2: about kind of who you don't like, who you're sort
Speaker 2: of kind of fighting against.
Speaker 1: That's second range of emotion. Yeah, we're not just for,
Speaker 1: we're against.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes that against can be powerful.
Speaker 1: But is it happiness inducing?
Speaker 2: I think when the team beats the Yankees, maybe.
Speaker 3: You know, like you knows, like I'm for whatever teams
Speaker 3: playing the Yankees?
Speaker 1: Is it going to make me happy to go looking
Speaker 1: for for tribes to join to tack other tribes? If
Speaker 1: my goal is happiness, is that behavior a tool to
Speaker 1: achieve the goal?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it might be how we're we're defining happiness right,
Speaker 2: it definitely gives us a certain kind of positive emotion, right,
Speaker 2: you know, schadenfreude. We can, you know, talk morally about
Speaker 2: whether or not it's a good emotion to have. Definitely
Speaker 2: feels pretty good when something bad is happening to some
Speaker 2: group that you don't like.
Speaker 1: You know, think about whether it feels really good when
Speaker 1: something bad happens to someone. I'd yes, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought of an example. Okay that works. Yes, it actually
Speaker 1: made me a little I can remember feeling happy again.
Speaker 2: Not all positive emotions, I think are ones that we
Speaker 2: morally want to push for, right, And I think that's
Speaker 2: why I said, we want to think about our definition
Speaker 2: of happiness. I think of happiness really as being about
Speaker 2: living a good, rich life that includes a moral life. Right.
Speaker 2: I don't want to have, you know, seemingly short positive
Speaker 2: emotions that feel good but are kind of yucky when
Speaker 2: I think about how they play out in the world.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So we might want to reject schadenfreude as part of
Speaker 2: a happy life, but kind of sometimes feels good, And
Speaker 2: we'd be lying if we didn't admit that, at least
Speaker 2: in some context.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this fan identity, it plays a role in happiness.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk Let's talk about the positive side, because
Speaker 2: we've been on the Schadenfreuda side for.
Speaker 1: A while and I kind of it's the positive side.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you're experiencing a sense of belonging? Right,
Speaker 2: we're Red Sox fans. We believe in the same things.
Speaker 2: We cheer when the home team, you know, scores, like
Speaker 2: all that stuff feels good in part because of the
Speaker 2: sense of belonging, right, we kind of feel like we're
Speaker 2: part of something bigger. But there's also just mechanisms that
Speaker 2: good things are better when they're shared. Literally. There's some
Speaker 2: studies where you bring people into the lab and have
Speaker 2: them eat a chocolate bar, either at the same time
Speaker 2: as some other people in the lab are eating the
Speaker 2: chocolate bar who they can't talk to. It's just like
Speaker 2: they know they're eating at the same time, or as
Speaker 2: when that second person is doing something else. And what
Speaker 2: you find is that the chocolate bar literally tastes better
Speaker 2: when you're experiencing it at the same time as somebody else, right,
Speaker 2: you know, And so think about a stadium full of
Speaker 2: fans watching a goal scored at the same time as
Speaker 2: everybody else, Right, If that psychological mechanism is in place.
Speaker 2: Those kind of moments of triumph feel even better because
Speaker 2: you're experiencing them with other folks.
Speaker 1: But does it also amplify the feelings of loss when
Speaker 1: things go wrong?
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. Yeah. They also have they have experiments
Speaker 2: having you eating a terrible chocolate bar, and yeah, terrible
Speaker 2: things feel more terrible when you go through them with
Speaker 2: other funds.
Speaker 1: So you're getting just you're just getting a more extreme
Speaker 1: experience of life.
Speaker 2: The emotion shared emotions are amplified, whether that's the glory
Speaker 2: of the win or the agony of defeat. You and
Speaker 2: you didn't need a psychology study to tell you.
Speaker 1: That, right, No you didn't. No you didn't, But it isn't.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting question why people want the amplification and
Speaker 1: are willing to take the risk of the amplification in
Speaker 1: both directions.
Speaker 2: I think there is like a little bit of misery
Speaker 2: loves company, or we can kind of you know, covetch
Speaker 2: together as a Red Sox fan. You know, before the
Speaker 2: Red Sox were winning in the early two thousands, for
Speaker 2: most of my teams, you know, being a Red Sox
Speaker 2: fan was about covetching together with the other Bostonian friends
Speaker 2: of mine, And there's a certain kind of camaraderie in
Speaker 2: the like underdog identity too that I think folks get
Speaker 2: something out of.
Speaker 1: We imagine a stadium full of little happiness meters, these
Speaker 1: people who are experienced seeing something, and happiness is going
Speaker 1: up and happiness is going down when you introduce phones
Speaker 1: and individual bets to every meter, so that and everybody
Speaker 1: is making their own bet rather than actually just rooting
Speaker 1: for the team. And the bet isn't as simple as
Speaker 1: I'm betting on the team. You might be betting on
Speaker 1: the team to win by eight points instead of four points,
Speaker 1: so you might be betting on some player, so everybody,
Speaker 1: actually the agenda is all of a sudden fragment, and
Speaker 1: the whole place is a bunch of individuals on their
Speaker 1: phones with their bets. What's going to happen to happiness there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it becomes a little bit of
Speaker 2: less of a shared experience, right. I've seen it more
Speaker 2: in the context of say concerts and things like that,
Speaker 2: where you go to a concert and you see everybody
Speaker 2: pulling out their phone and sort of watching things. But
Speaker 2: then they take their phone down, they like clip it
Speaker 2: and they send it to their friend, and so no
Speaker 2: one's actually watching or present or engaging with the event.
Speaker 2: And I think there must be some of that going
Speaker 2: on in the sports betting case, right where you're actually
Speaker 2: not paying attention to the game because you are hopping
Speaker 2: on these sites to kind of make these bets in
Speaker 2: real time and sort of not paying attention to things.
Speaker 2: So I think, like many aspects of our technology, the
Speaker 2: ability to do these bets is sort of pulling us
Speaker 2: out of the experience and taking us away from the
Speaker 2: presence that would be kind of the most fun part
Speaker 2: of the game in a lot of ways. So I
Speaker 2: think it's making us less mindfully aware of what's going on.
Speaker 2: And study after study shows that not being present is
Speaker 2: kind of a hit on our enjoyment, our happiness. Right,
Speaker 2: But it's happening at the same time as you're with
Speaker 2: these kind of little tiny side bets, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of upping the stakes a little bit for the win
Speaker 2: of your team, Right, there's a sort of anticipatory benefit
Speaker 2: of like, now I'm going to win some money if
Speaker 2: my team wins by aid or within eight seconds or
Speaker 2: whatever the bet is, Like, now there's something else at
Speaker 2: stake kind of matters more to me, and that kind
Speaker 2: of you know, risky decision making, as you know, can
Speaker 2: have some benefits, especially in the anticipation phase when you're
Speaker 2: sort of thinking, you know what, if I win, it
Speaker 2: sort of makes it a little bit more exciting. And
Speaker 2: I think these things are just bumping up the arousal
Speaker 2: and the happiness meters of all the folks who are
Speaker 2: watching these games. I think it obviously has some like
Speaker 2: major drawbacks, but in the moment, you know, some of
Speaker 2: these things might be amplifying other effects of the game too.
Speaker 1: What do you think of as major drawbacks.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that these sites are kind of playing
Speaker 2: on people's sense of belonging in ways that are causing
Speaker 2: people who don't really understand this stuff to lose a
Speaker 2: lot of money.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that they're playing on their
Speaker 1: sense of belonging.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean my sense is that, like you know,
Speaker 2: you see these commercials of your sports heroes or these
Speaker 2: celebrities that you see online or influencers who are doing
Speaker 2: this stuff. We're like, look at me, I'm on this
Speaker 2: sports betting site and making all this money and making
Speaker 2: these things, and you feel like, well, I want to
Speaker 2: be like that person, Like I'm going to jump on
Speaker 2: there too, right, you know, it feels like the kind
Speaker 2: of cool thing to do. This is kind of playing
Speaker 2: into our sense of status or sense of belonging and
Speaker 2: being the kind of person who's smart enough to get
Speaker 2: in on this fun thing where you can make some money.
Speaker 2: And I think in the context of sports betting, you're
Speaker 2: often betting on a team that you care about, right,
Speaker 2: So it's kind of activating belonging from all these different
Speaker 2: different pathways, right, But is often doing that in a
Speaker 2: way that people are like literally losing their life savings
Speaker 2: or especially for some of the young people that are
Speaker 2: getting involved in this. And I think more and more
Speaker 2: sports betting is about young people who maybe shouldn't be
Speaker 2: on these sites in the first place, and maybe making
Speaker 2: choices and decisions in the short term that they're going
Speaker 2: to really regret in the long term. And that kind
Speaker 2: of regret is not great for happiness.
Speaker 1: I could not agree more. When we return, I asked
Speaker 1: Lori Santos about the psychology of the teenage brain. I'm
Speaker 1: back with doctor Lorie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: We started talking about my seventeen year old son Walker,
Speaker 1: who was the subject of this show a few weeks back,
Speaker 1: and that episode was still in the works when I
Speaker 1: spoke to Laurie, so she hadn't heard it, but not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: she had some incredible insights on teen psychology and sports gambling.
Speaker 1: So I was asked to teach my high school senior
Speaker 1: son's narrative nonfiction class. He it's an English elective. The
Speaker 1: teachers say, you know, we read your stuff, Come on
Speaker 1: over to my son's mortification. I went in and it
Speaker 1: was an interactive thing, and my son, very interestingly, knowing
Speaker 1: the subject of the podcast, said I got a question
Speaker 1: for the class. Could anybody raise their hand? Who engages
Speaker 1: in sports betting? And the boys were all on one
Speaker 1: side of the room and the girls were on the other.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on there, but it was
Speaker 1: like they just segregated by gender naturally. And they were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, twenty girls and thirteen boys. All but
Speaker 1: one of the boys raises their hands. None of the
Speaker 1: girls zero. What's going on there? Like, why is this
Speaker 1: so gendered? Why is it that boys brains are activated
Speaker 1: in this way? Why aren't girls cumber batching over this
Speaker 1: thing too?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think they're cumber batching about their own
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, right. I mean, I think partly the
Speaker 2: marketing of these sites is really aimed at boys more
Speaker 2: than girls. I mean, like, I mean, I just watched
Speaker 2: some of these commercials and it feels gendered to me.
Speaker 2: Even the voices that are used like drug like.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not aimed. It's not aimed at thirteen
Speaker 3: year old Lorie. It's aimed at like somebody.
Speaker 1: Thirteen year old Laurie. How would it sound?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean I think there'd be different influencers,
Speaker 2: maybe be like, you know, I don't know, somebody putting
Speaker 2: on makeup and talking about sports betting or something, right,
Speaker 2: Like like there's a whole there's whole sets of marketing
Speaker 2: that work incredibly well for young women, right, And that's
Speaker 2: not what these sites are using. Right. I think historically
Speaker 2: sports has been like male pursuit, particularly like watching sports
Speaker 2: has been a male pursuit. I think that's changing with
Speaker 2: people like Caitlin Clark and others. I think we're about
Speaker 2: to see a real heyday of women in sports, but
Speaker 2: we're not kind of there yet, And so it makes
Speaker 2: sense that sort of sports betting is sort of playing
Speaker 2: into male identity. And I think even if you look
Speaker 2: at the history of gambling addictions in general, like, again,
Speaker 2: all of these things are overlapping distributions, but you know,
Speaker 2: they tend to a little bit skew mail, right, And
Speaker 2: so I think the sites are kind of playing on that.
Speaker 2: It's in a domain that's sort of exciting to boys generally.
Speaker 2: It's using media that are really exciting to boys generally, right,
Speaker 2: kind of like it's like more adjacent to sort of
Speaker 2: video game use, is jumping into sports betting right on
Speaker 2: your phones versus like, I don't know, watching Instagram reals
Speaker 2: of makeup tutorials and so on. But I think adolescent
Speaker 2: brains in general are like prone to risk taking and
Speaker 2: prone to really seeking out belonging in whatever form it's
Speaker 2: sort of presented, And so I feel like these cues
Speaker 2: to belonging are especially salient to young boys too.
Speaker 1: So that's what's going on the belonging side of things.
Speaker 1: If other boys are doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know about the
Speaker 2: one kid of the thirteen who didn't raise his hand,
Speaker 2: but I wouldn't be surprised if after that getting called
Speaker 2: out in the classroom be like, you know, pulled out
Speaker 2: his phone and looked into one of these things too.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's a sense there's a lot
Speaker 2: of work in psychology showing the phenomena what it's called
Speaker 2: social proof, right, like the fact that everybody's doing it
Speaker 2: feels like I should be doing it, right, I'm kind
Speaker 2: of missing out if I'm not doing it. And I
Speaker 2: think this is one of the things that unfortunately podcasts
Speaker 2: like this by contribute to. When we start talking about like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, all these teen boys are on sports
Speaker 2: betting sites, that actually makes it more likely that all
Speaker 2: the teen boys will jump on sports betting sites, right,
Speaker 2: because there's a sense in which this is something that
Speaker 2: you know, teens do. And I think this is a
Speaker 2: problem for all these things that we don't want teens
Speaker 2: to be doing, or that we want teens to be doing.
Speaker 2: When we talk about how like, oh, so many teens
Speaker 2: are evaping, or so many teens aren't voting, right, so
Speaker 2: many young people aren't voting. When young people hear that,
Speaker 2: an aspect of their psychology says, well, if everybody's not
Speaker 2: doing it, then I shouldn't do it. That's a like
Speaker 2: not for me to do right in the field of
Speaker 2: social science. This has talked about as so called descriptive
Speaker 2: norms becoming prescriptive norms. What does that mean. Well, when
Speaker 2: you describe some statistic like many teen boys are sports betting,
Speaker 2: that becomes in sunsets proscriptive. It's like, well, then many
Speaker 2: teen boys should be sports betting, Like that's just kind
Speaker 2: of what you do. That's the norm out there, So
Speaker 2: I'm going to follow that norm too, And so I
Speaker 2: think we have to be careful as we talk about
Speaker 2: these statistics because as people hear more of these statistics,
Speaker 2: it becomes the kind of thing that people tend to
Speaker 2: do over time.
Speaker 1: So what do we do to dissuade young men from
Speaker 1: jumping into sports gambling? If we're doing a podcast on
Speaker 1: sports gambling?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think the one way to figure out
Speaker 2: how best to motivate teens is to really think carefully
Speaker 2: about like what teen brains are built for. And I
Speaker 2: think in some ways what they're really built for is
Speaker 2: sort of seeking out status, becoming part of the group, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the young adult problem if you think evolutionarily,
Speaker 2: like when you're a kid, you're just kind of figuring
Speaker 2: out the world and so on. But as a teenager
Speaker 2: kind of making the transition to adulthood, and one of
Speaker 2: the things you have to pay attention to is kind
Speaker 2: of where's my place right, where's my sense of agency?
Speaker 2: How do I fit in? How do I gain respect
Speaker 2: and status? How do I find my tribe?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Like, these are the kind of the problems that the
Speaker 2: teen brain is sort of trying to solve, and it's
Speaker 2: doing that in a context where you know, your frontal
Speaker 2: lobe is still developing. You're a little bit more risk
Speaker 2: seeking when it comes to solving those problems. Right. So,
Speaker 2: one way not to motivate a brain that's seeking out
Speaker 2: agency and status and respect and belonging is to tell
Speaker 2: that brain what to do. It's to be like sports
Speaker 2: betting is really bad for you. You shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to prevent you from doing it, right, It's
Speaker 2: like the worst way to motivate teenagers, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of a bad way to motivate just like humans in general,
Speaker 2: just like telling them what to you know, I think,
Speaker 2: what the last time you know, your spouse or a
Speaker 2: good friend like told you what to do? I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're like me, you might just have like a
Speaker 2: moment of like, well, I don't want to, like just
Speaker 2: almost like reactants against that, like I don't want to
Speaker 2: do it, And that kind of reactance is way huger
Speaker 2: in teenagers, right, So telling people, hey, don't do this,
Speaker 2: it's you know, it just gets people to want to
Speaker 2: do it even more sometimes, especially teenagers. Better way to
Speaker 2: motivate teenagers is to appeal to that sense of respect
Speaker 2: and agency. Be like, look, you're a sixteen right now.
Speaker 2: You're smart, right, You're like really technologically savvy. What are
Speaker 2: these companies trying to do?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Do you think they, like are giving you the agency
Speaker 2: that you deserve, or do you think they're trying to
Speaker 2: hook you in? Look at what they're doing with these
Speaker 2: celebrities who are advertising to you. Look at the way
Speaker 2: they set up you know, the way these games work
Speaker 2: to kind of hook you in. Like they're not giving
Speaker 2: you agency, they're trying to sucker you, and you're not
Speaker 2: a sucker, right. I think that kind of messaging would
Speaker 2: work even better, And there's some hints that that is
Speaker 2: the case, because if you look at the few kinds
Speaker 2: of successful marketing campaigns to teens for other kind of
Speaker 2: public health hazards, I'm thinking of things like cigarettes and
Speaker 2: so on. The kinds of things that have worked well
Speaker 2: have sort of used that move.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Cigarette ads that worked terribly were like smoking kills, like
Speaker 2: don't smoke like students are like kills like that's cool,
Speaker 2: it's really you know, like that's like a way to
Speaker 2: gain my own agency. That doesn't work. But the smoking
Speaker 2: ads that have worked historically are the ones that have said, look,
Speaker 2: these cigarette companies know that they're killing you, Like they
Speaker 2: like know they're causing you harm, and they're trying to
Speaker 2: hook you to this thing that's like really addictive. Like
Speaker 2: you're smart. Do you want to like give in to
Speaker 2: these folks that like, you know, think that they can
Speaker 2: have control over you and hook you to this thing
Speaker 2: and get you when you're young so that you stick
Speaker 2: with them. You don't want to do that? What do
Speaker 2: you want to do? Push back?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Those kinds of ads of showing these kind of evil
Speaker 2: you know, CEOs of the man, like hooking kids to cigarettes,
Speaker 2: those ones actually had an impact and got kids to
Speaker 2: quit or not start up more often. Right, I think
Speaker 2: we could use the same kind of campaign against sports betting.
Speaker 2: It's like these sites they know what they're doing, they're
Speaker 2: not stupid. They're hooking you in. They're targeting you right
Speaker 2: like you're an agent. You know you are the kind
Speaker 2: of person that's afforded respect. You should You're too smart
Speaker 2: to fall for that, right, That kind of marketing work
Speaker 2: is way better.
Speaker 1: They're trying and trying to make you look stupid by
Speaker 1: losing exactly.
Speaker 2: That's at the sort of societal level. But you could
Speaker 2: ask a different question, which is, like, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're a parent listening to this right now, and you
Speaker 2: have a team who's kind of caught up in this, right,
Speaker 2: you want to help, but you can't be like no,
Speaker 2: I'm going to take your phone away or just don't
Speaker 2: do that, Like that's not going to work. What's a
Speaker 2: sort of strategy that you can do to sort of
Speaker 2: mirror that respectful kind of get them to be agentive
Speaker 2: about the situation? And researchers have come up with this
Speaker 2: kind of path forward that they call collaborative troubleshooting right
Speaker 2: where you can again kind of treat your kid or
Speaker 2: whoever you're trying to negotiate with as an agent and
Speaker 2: you start from this place of respect. You could even
Speaker 2: start from like, look, you know, I know you're a
Speaker 2: smart kid, right, and I just kind of want to understand, like,
Speaker 2: what are you getting out of this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Like, I know you're doing this for a good reason, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I know, like there's probably a good reason. It's either
Speaker 2: fun or what like, talk through me what you're getting
Speaker 2: out of it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Starting point number one, you're treating with respect. I know
Speaker 2: you've thought about this. You know, you probably have come
Speaker 2: up with your own good reasons why to do this,
Speaker 2: because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. What's going on?
Speaker 2: Let's talk through it right Step number one. Your kid
Speaker 2: when they back to you with what their reasons, they
Speaker 2: might say some things, and then I think what you
Speaker 2: first want to do is sort of validate some of them.
Speaker 2: There might be good ones, like you know, you enjoy
Speaker 2: the game, you think it's fun, right, your friends are
Speaker 2: doing it. You want to see what it's like. There's
Speaker 2: all this hype like those those are in some ways
Speaker 2: reasonable reasons to go check something out and do it, right,
Speaker 2: But you're also hearing some of the downsides, like maybe
Speaker 2: they've lost some money, or maybe they don't like it,
Speaker 2: or maybe they feel stuck. That's when the kind of
Speaker 2: collaborative troubleshooting comes out as you said, Okay, well, you know,
Speaker 2: given that part about you feeling stuck, like, how can
Speaker 2: we do this a little bit better? Like I'm sure
Speaker 2: you can come up with some strategies to like, you know,
Speaker 2: fix this a little like like maybe like what would
Speaker 2: you do with your phone different if you don't want
Speaker 2: to be on these sites as much? You know, or
Speaker 2: how can we You've probably thought about some boundaries that
Speaker 2: you can come up with. What are some right, So
Speaker 2: it's kind of like you're assuming they're AGENTA and they
Speaker 2: have their own ideas, but you're kind of helping them
Speaker 2: pull it out in a way that's really respectful and
Speaker 2: so on. And so if you're a parent who's kind
Speaker 2: of dealing with a team who's negotiating some of this stuff,
Speaker 2: I think that's a really a much more effective strategy
Speaker 2: than just telling them what to do, because you get
Speaker 2: them to realize, like, oh, I have the solution myself
Speaker 2: to figuring this out. I can identify the problem myself,
Speaker 2: and then you kind of feel like it's your solution
Speaker 2: rather than one that was forced upon you.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break when we return,
Speaker 1: I asked Laurie Degrade, my sports gambling experiment with Walker.
Speaker 1: I'm back with doctor Lori Santos. Can I tell you
Speaker 1: my two solutions. You can tell me why they were stupid?
Speaker 2: Please? Yeah, I'm sure they weren't that stupid.
Speaker 1: The first was to give my son five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: just and assume he was going to vaporize it, and
Speaker 1: give him smart people, not me, to talk to, like
Speaker 1: real pro sports gamblers who beat the house constantly, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and have him talk to them about
Speaker 1: the bets he was making and why he was making them,
Speaker 1: and be able to ask him anything he wanted to
Speaker 1: ask them. And I assume that he'd be sitting there
Speaker 1: having heard from smart people, not me, why he shouldn't
Speaker 1: make these bets, and he lost all the money, and
Speaker 1: that was humiliating. And it's a bit like my father,
Speaker 1: which happened when I was like fifteen, sticking a glass
Speaker 1: of whiskey in my hands in New Orleans and saying,
Speaker 1: drink this because it's going to people going to make
Speaker 1: you drink this stuff. I want to be here while
Speaker 1: you're going to supervise this. It's sort of this inoculation
Speaker 1: approach to to the problem. I think this worked in
Speaker 1: a roundabout way. But he made four thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: the problem was the signal that came back was not
Speaker 1: the signal I was expecting.
Speaker 2: Well, a couple of things there, right One is first,
Speaker 2: I think you're embodying a lot of this or of
Speaker 2: collaborative troubleshooting approach. Right one, you gave him some money.
Speaker 2: Right you were like, I see you as agentive, I
Speaker 2: respect you. I'm going to give you this money to
Speaker 2: do it right. Like, that's maybe the most kind of
Speaker 2: agentive thing you could do, is like give him money
Speaker 2: to kind of do this right. So I think that
Speaker 2: that's already in the motive. You're not telling him what
Speaker 2: to do, You're kind of letting him try it himself. Second,
Speaker 2: you hook him up with these other sports betting folks. Like,
Speaker 2: not only were you not like I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you how to do this, You're like, hey, you are
Speaker 2: a collaborator who is as respected and kind of as
Speaker 2: high status as these other interesting sports bet guys. Go
Speaker 2: have a conversation and talk to them. And I bet
Speaker 2: in the context of that conversation he probably learned some stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, at the very least, he probably learned that
Speaker 2: the bets he was making before weren't the greatest bets, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, if only because he started, either he had
Speaker 2: like a three sigma like kind of you know, lucky
Speaker 2: streak that like got in this four thousand bucks, or
Speaker 2: he learned something about you know, appropriate kinds of sports betting,
Speaker 2: or ways to kind of hedge things or think differently, right,
Speaker 2: or some combination of both. But the point is that
Speaker 2: my guess is that you agentively allowing him with respect
Speaker 2: to talk to these high status people made him listen
Speaker 2: to those high status people's advice, right. He kind of
Speaker 2: had a choice of who to talk to. It wasn't
Speaker 2: like forced upon him. He probably got some reasonable advice.
Speaker 2: And my guess is that those folks, even though they're
Speaker 2: kind of good at it, probably shared with him some
Speaker 2: of the downsides, you know, some of their own downsides
Speaker 2: from dealing with this stuff, and I think that can
Speaker 2: be kind of powerful. So I think, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: like to some sigma lucky breaks now was standing across
Speaker 2: you know, his money. My guess is he learned something.
Speaker 2: And I bet if you surveyed him, he'd be more
Speaker 2: skeptical about the whole practice of sports betting, and at
Speaker 2: least a little bit more mature about going into it.
Speaker 1: The initial survey was interesting that I asked him, after
Speaker 1: whatever six weeks, what's the next bet, because he'd been
Speaker 1: betting frantically and he said, I'm done. And I he said,
Speaker 1: I'm up four thousand dollars and this is stupid. They're
Speaker 1: going to take my money if I keep doing it.
Speaker 1: That my bets I just got. He basically said, we
Speaker 1: just got lucky, got really lucky. And they've made me
Speaker 1: aware of just how dumb these bets are.
Speaker 2: That's so huge, right because if you had told him,
Speaker 2: if you had told him, like, these bets are dumb, like,
Speaker 2: don't do it, he would have just ignored you right
Speaker 2: or thought you were. But like that experience kind of
Speaker 2: got him to do it. I mean, I think this is,
Speaker 2: you know, not just for a conversation about sports betting,
Speaker 2: for a broader conversation about parenting. Is that why parenting
Speaker 2: is hard is that we want our kids to learn,
Speaker 2: but the way we learn as humans is through our
Speaker 2: own mistakes and reaping the consequences of those mistakes. And
Speaker 2: that sucks as a parent because you don't want your
Speaker 2: kid to reap negative consequences. You don't want them to
Speaker 2: get physically, her, financially, her, emotionally, her experience just like
Speaker 2: the sting of failure that sucks for us as parents,
Speaker 2: and we don't like letting our kids experience that. But ultimately,
Speaker 2: like that is the way that they're going to learn.
Speaker 2: They don't learn we just as humans, don't learn as
Speaker 2: well by being told stuff or forced to do stuff
Speaker 2: or strong armed into stuff. We learn by experiencing our
Speaker 2: own consequences, kind of troubleshooting things for ourselves, sometimes messing
Speaker 2: up and then learning better strategies. And what you did
Speaker 2: in the situation with your son is you like let
Speaker 2: him do that, you know, and you know to the
Speaker 2: two to five thousand bucks and maybe like some.
Speaker 1: But he didn't. But he didn't, he didn't make the
Speaker 1: naked eye, he didn't make mistakes.
Speaker 2: But if he's walking away saying I'm done, he's learned
Speaker 2: something that he had not learned when he was making
Speaker 2: these bets all over them. Yes, right, And that might
Speaker 2: be a thing a conversation to have, Like you know
Speaker 2: you're saying you're done, I'm just curious, like you know,
Speaker 2: what was the biggest thing you learned? Like I'm sure
Speaker 2: you you did this so successfully, right, Like I thought
Speaker 2: you were going to crash in burbas. Somehow you get
Speaker 2: this money, whether you're lucky or not. You know what
Speaker 2: did you learn? Tell me?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like give him this sort of idea of like agent
Speaker 2: of respect when you have that conversation, right to assume
Speaker 2: that you're going to learn something from him. And that
Speaker 2: is when we allow our teens to have the most insight.
Speaker 1: My second strategy, so I was going to resort to
Speaker 1: if he didn't learn from the first strategy, was to
Speaker 1: offer to be the bookie and say, all right, you
Speaker 1: see this this bet on fandula draftings you and all
Speaker 1: your friends. I'll take every side of every bet you
Speaker 1: want to make. Just how And I think that that
Speaker 1: is such a good bet to have that I will
Speaker 1: be on the other side of all your bets going forward.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how it was a form of ridicule,
Speaker 1: not directly to my son, but to the audience. This
Speaker 1: kind of mocking, a little bit of mocking tone may
Speaker 1: not be the worst way to go about it. Uh
Speaker 1: create an environment in which people feel a little foolish
Speaker 1: doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think making people aware of the consequences of
Speaker 2: it right, you know, getting in on there like but
Speaker 2: but again, you know, how much do you learn when
Speaker 2: other people experience shodden flord on your behalf right or
Speaker 2: at your expense?
Speaker 1: I learned a lot. I learned who I want to
Speaker 1: hang with and who I don't. But it's funny. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's that this is this is an interesting question.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think strategy number one probably worked better than
Speaker 2: you thought, and it was much more consistent with the
Speaker 2: social science research on teenage motivation than you might have expected.
Speaker 1: Strategy number two is going to be a hail Mary,
Speaker 1: all right, this was this was.
Speaker 2: This was great, awesome, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Lori Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and
Speaker 1: host of the Happiness Lab here at Pushkin. Check it out.
Speaker 1: It's a really great listen and full of useful science
Speaker 1: that you can use to make your life actually better.
Speaker 1: Against the Rules is written and hosted by me Michael
Speaker 1: Lewis and produced by Lydia gene Kott, Catherine Gerardeau, and
Speaker 1: Ariella Markowitz. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Sarah Bruguer. Against the Rules is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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