Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Olga Hazan on the podcast. Zon
Speaker 1: is a staff writer for The Atlantic, covering health, gender
Speaker 1: and science. Prior to that, she was the Atlantic Global Editor.
Speaker 1: She's also written for The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Forbes,
Speaker 1: and other publications. She's a two time recipient of the
Speaker 1: International Reporting Project's Journalism Fellowship and winner of the twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen National Headliner Awards for magazine online writing. Olga, I'm
Speaker 1: so giddy to talk to you today. I've been weighing
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, no, this is very exciting. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. You know, because I'm weird and I
Speaker 1: own it, and I own it, and as an adult
Speaker 1: I own it. As a child, it was harder, you know,
Speaker 1: but I resonated so much with your book and your
Speaker 1: story and just everything about the way you wrote it.
Speaker 1: I thought we could just start off, maybe you could
Speaker 1: tell our listeners a little bit about the origin of
Speaker 1: your own weirdness. Yeah, totally so. I kind of got
Speaker 1: interested in this topic because I grew up in West
Speaker 1: Texas and my parents were Russian Jewish refugee too, which
Speaker 1: my grandparents were Yeah, oh that's cool. Yeah, when did
Speaker 1: they come over? So my grandma actually escaped the Pagrams.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh wow. They actually hit her at the
Speaker 1: age of like five. They hit her in a little
Speaker 1: wagon and the whole thing she escaped. Wow, she was hardcore.
Speaker 1: Our story was a little less hardcore. Ours was like
Speaker 1: involved airplanes and just like documents and visa processes. But
Speaker 1: we did end up in West Texas where there were
Speaker 1: not a lot of other Russian Jews, and that experience
Speaker 1: really shaped me. I mean, your your childhood experiences, you know,
Speaker 1: do tend to shape who you are. I had I
Speaker 1: was like kind of for forcibly, I guess, like a loaner.
Speaker 1: I never had a lot of friends. I always felt
Speaker 1: really different from everyone else around me, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to explore that feeling of what it's like for people
Speaker 1: who are very different in their environment, that are kind
Speaker 1: of visibly or noticeably not like everyone else around them.
Speaker 1: So I started looking for places that were completely homogeneous
Speaker 1: except for the one kind of outsider, the one outlier
Speaker 1: who stuck out. Love that. And were you a kind
Speaker 1: of person where when you were a kid, you always
Speaker 1: would gravitate towards the people in the playground that looked
Speaker 1: like they were sitting alone or kind of the outlier.
Speaker 1: I know, I certainly did. There's the ones I kind
Speaker 1: of gravitated towards. Yeah, I feel like there's like a
Speaker 1: natural tendency, like loner kids to flock together. I remember
Speaker 1: getting really excited if there was ever any possibility that
Speaker 1: a kid was also foreign, Like I remember I glombed
Speaker 1: onto this one girl in like third grade or something
Speaker 1: because she knew how to sing that French song for
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, she's so international, Like maybe she'll
Speaker 1: understand my family and they're like beat dishes, And so
Speaker 1: I would like seek out kids who I thought were
Speaker 1: also kind of unusual like me, even if that was
Speaker 1: like a totally artificial thing that I was making up
Speaker 1: in my mind. That's cool. You have this. You say
Speaker 1: in your book that this book is for those who
Speaker 1: have spent their lives feeling different, as well as for
Speaker 1: those who only feel different by dint of circumstance, perhaps
Speaker 1: because of a job or move. So maybe you got
Speaker 1: the sense that they moved from France. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 1: So you've argued that just as we're becoming more alienated
Speaker 1: from one another, splintering into tribes and escaping to our
Speaker 1: screens and echo chambers, our livelihoods increasingly depend on being
Speaker 1: smooth and capable collaborators. Everyone is feeling weirder and we're
Speaker 1: all supposed to be fine with it. That's a lot
Speaker 1: that you've you've picked up on about our current state
Speaker 1: of our culture. Yeah, I mean, what I mean there
Speaker 1: is like, you know, I do feel like so, I
Speaker 1: mean this is this is like proven that that white
Speaker 1: collar jobs in particular are more reliant on people's skills
Speaker 1: and social skills and being kind of collaborative and getting along,
Speaker 1: you know, well with other people. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: at the same time, we become a very polarized society.
Speaker 1: You know, not a lot of people have friends outside
Speaker 1: of their political group. There's some research in the book
Speaker 1: about like the shockingly small number of people who have
Speaker 1: friends who are of a different race or sexual orientation.
Speaker 1: A lot of people in general don't know a single
Speaker 1: transgender person. So we all kind of live in our
Speaker 1: little bubble, and we kind of are say, within our
Speaker 1: little bubble, and at the same time we're expected to
Speaker 1: just be like effortlessly getting along with everyone else with
Speaker 1: no hard feelings or frictions at work. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I was describing there. Yeah, it's an interesting
Speaker 1: paradox in sense, you know, we're all with our tribes,
Speaker 1: and we and within our own tribes, we may be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we feel so weird, we feel so outcasted, But it
Speaker 1: seems like everyone's kind of feeling outcast outcasted is that
Speaker 1: a word outcasted? I don't know, but everyone feels like
Speaker 1: an outcast these days. It seems like something we could
Speaker 1: all bond over as opposed to polarize over, I guess,
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So this has been something that I have wondered about,
Speaker 1: is like, will people bond over the feeling of being
Speaker 1: an outsider? And I do feel like people tend to
Speaker 1: be like yes or no. Like either people buy the
Speaker 1: book and they're like, yes, this is for me. I
Speaker 1: feel weird, like you totally captured something that I was
Speaker 1: dealing with, or people are like, I have no idea
Speaker 1: what's talking about. I have no Like I don't feel
Speaker 1: weird at all, Like I this, you know, the this
Speaker 1: is maybe interesting, but it doesn't describe me. So I
Speaker 1: do think a ton of people out there feel weird
Speaker 1: and feel like there's something different about them and feel
Speaker 1: a lot of social anxiety or just like misfitness. But
Speaker 1: you know some people are just like president of the
Speaker 1: sorority and have a ton of friends and like never
Speaker 1: dealt with any of this stuff. So yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: totally fair. I mean, I wrote a book on creativity
Speaker 1: on creative people. People either really got it They're like,
Speaker 1: that's me, I'm a creative person, or they didn't really
Speaker 1: resonate so deeple with the descriptions. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap between the probably people who resonate
Speaker 1: with your book as being weird and the people resonate
Speaker 1: with my book is being conceptually thinking of themselves as
Speaker 1: the creative person. Yeah totally Yeah, Well that's actually in
Speaker 1: the book is that people who are weird tend to
Speaker 1: be more creative. So you're probably wrote that whole chapter. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's great. You talk about social norms and you talk
Speaker 1: about how social norms can change, well, that people actually
Speaker 1: changing their attitudes. Can you give an example that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the example that I used in the book was, well,
Speaker 1: i'll use the lighter example because I don't want to
Speaker 1: get into the Rwanda genocide and psycho but the one
Speaker 1: that I like, so this again is backed up by research,
Speaker 1: but the one that I picked up on in my
Speaker 1: everyday life was I went to this spa called Spa
Speaker 1: World where you have to be naked and they don't
Speaker 1: let you go in with a swimsuit on or like
Speaker 1: any kind of rope or anything like that. And it
Speaker 1: was amazing how like to watch people. People clearly thought
Speaker 1: it was like gross and weird. They did not who
Speaker 1: were new to it, like they didn't want to be naked.
Speaker 1: They were like, you know, people couples would come there
Speaker 1: for like their couples spa get away and said they
Speaker 1: were like being stripped down and like separated by sex
Speaker 1: and like it was very like a love So people
Speaker 1: were clearly upset, but like you quickly saw them like
Speaker 1: agree to follow the norm. Like people literally no one
Speaker 1: broke the nakedness rule. People were like very cool about
Speaker 1: like gazing and like the middle since kind of like oh,
Speaker 1: this is what we're all doing and like this is
Speaker 1: I guess fine. So it's just like an interesting example
Speaker 1: of how like if you're told to do something, you know,
Speaker 1: people will shift their norms even if like Okay, this
Speaker 1: is weird or whatever, I don't really want to do this,
Speaker 1: but I'll do it. Well, isn't there some deep implication
Speaker 1: there We have to be very careful about how much
Speaker 1: we normalize some things because they can become the new
Speaker 1: normal in a way that go against our values, our attitudes. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not saying that's necessarily always a good thing,
Speaker 1: Like it can be a good thing, and you can
Speaker 1: shift norms for the better, like you can you know,
Speaker 1: we don't discriminate or we don't you know whatever, say
Speaker 1: racist things, which is great, but you could also create
Speaker 1: a norm that goes in the opposite direction that people
Speaker 1: are just as likely to follow. So it kind of
Speaker 1: just shows the not that example in particular, but the
Speaker 1: research on norms shows the incredible power of norms and
Speaker 1: how much people like to follow whatever the rules are
Speaker 1: and kind of go along and get along. A love that. Well,
Speaker 1: you say that it's wait, you talk about brain science,
Speaker 1: and you talk about one reason why it's hard to
Speaker 1: be the different one is that to our brains, there's
Speaker 1: something intoxicating about the familiar. There must be individual differences
Speaker 1: in that, because there's something in talks king to me
Speaker 1: about being weird. But maybe you're saying for most people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for most people, we just like things that we're kind
Speaker 1: of used to. So I use examples from the history
Speaker 1: of dating and the workplace and just different contexts. Were like,
Speaker 1: a lot of anti immigrant sentiment comes from people just
Speaker 1: not liking cultural differences, like people not even necessarily saying
Speaker 1: I'm worried about, you know whatever, Mexican stealing our jobs.
Speaker 1: Kind of deeper than that, as people saying I actually
Speaker 1: just don't like it that they don't speak English like
Speaker 1: people people like other people who are remind them of themselves.
Speaker 1: This is actually something that comes a lot, as I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're aware from like re search on representation in
Speaker 1: the workplace kind of why it's important to have representatives
Speaker 1: of different cultures and you know, minority backgrounds and things
Speaker 1: high up in the workplace. Is that is that people
Speaker 1: tend to promote people who remind them of themselves. And
Speaker 1: if you don't have anyone who if there's only white
Speaker 1: men at the top, they're only going to promote white
Speaker 1: men because that's what they're like, reminds of them. So
Speaker 1: that kind of can be that is extrapolated, and that
Speaker 1: that holds true for other realms. It also can surely
Speaker 1: demotivate those who aren't white men to be motivated and
Speaker 1: ambitious to that degree to want to do that because
Speaker 1: they don't clearly see a path a pathway to it. It
Speaker 1: It can be very demotivating. Yeah, totally, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it works both ways obviously. Well, you write about gender
Speaker 1: issues a bit. What are what are what are the
Speaker 1: what are the ones that are most on your mind
Speaker 1: these days? Well, I mean, yeah, so speaking of I
Speaker 1: mean gender issues, Like so, a major reason why we
Speaker 1: have is that a lot of people don't think women
Speaker 1: would make a good president, and the reason for that
Speaker 1: is that we've never had a female president. So when
Speaker 1: people think about presidents, they think about white men. And
Speaker 1: that's another example of how people really like to keep
Speaker 1: things the same and really like to uphold the norm.
Speaker 1: When you think about, like how could someone as qualified
Speaker 1: as Hillary Clinton lose to Trump? A lot of that
Speaker 1: could be explained by sexism, And a lot of why
Speaker 1: someone like Elizabeth Warren could lose to Biden can also
Speaker 1: be unfortunately explained by sexism. But sexism is a type
Speaker 1: of norm. My book doesn't explain literally everything in the world,
Speaker 1: but it does kind of You can see glimmers of
Speaker 1: this desire for conformity in current events too. When did
Speaker 1: we become so hateful toward outsiders that you put this
Speaker 1: within a historical context, which I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: How did we go from the whale party to fascism?
Speaker 1: So there's this debate among scholars about whether people were
Speaker 1: always xenophobic or whether that started kind of recently, And
Speaker 1: so there's like some interesting research on how like, actually,
Speaker 1: if you just let society do kind of whatever, right,
Speaker 1: if you just like let people hang out and chill
Speaker 1: and like not have money or work or rules, they'll
Speaker 1: just have a big whale party and like a big
Speaker 1: orgy where they just hang out and eat whale and
Speaker 1: like have sex with each other. I'm literally like talking
Speaker 1: about stuff that's been observed and so, but do whales
Speaker 1: taste good to these whale hunters? They do? I personally
Speaker 1: go and enjoy it. I have tried whale yeah, whale party. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know what, So what they found though, is
Speaker 1: that is that really sense of like I don't like
Speaker 1: people who are different from me. Started with farming, because
Speaker 1: farming is when you really started having tracks of land
Speaker 1: that were yours, you started having resources that were yours,
Speaker 1: and you had to kind of cultivate a little plot
Speaker 1: and take care of your own little tribe and your
Speaker 1: own little community. And you couldn't just have like random
Speaker 1: bands of humans traveling around together and like being chill
Speaker 1: and like having a whale party, because you had to
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't a whale party. It was a harvest,
Speaker 1: and it had to be coordinated and it could only
Speaker 1: you know, go towards so many people, and usually those
Speaker 1: people were going to be people who look like you.
Speaker 1: Part part of it due to history. But surely our
Speaker 1: tribal instincts run very deep, evolutionary wise and colded into
Speaker 1: our biology in a lot of ways to want to
Speaker 1: categorize things in that way. But this idea of being
Speaker 1: actively hateful towards outsiders because there's nothing to say that
Speaker 1: we have to be hateful towards our our group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but people historically are. I think there was
Speaker 1: one study that found that people have similar reactions to
Speaker 1: homeless people that they do to like a dirty bathroom.
Speaker 1: People just really really don't especially low what we would
Speaker 1: typicallyssociate with, like a low status person in society. People
Speaker 1: just have really negative reactions to outgroups like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we have this kind of build in bias, but
Speaker 1: then we also have all these more evolved capacities to
Speaker 1: override it and to see people in a more thoughtful way,
Speaker 1: in a more enlightened way, and a more holistic way.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with trying to understand the difference between those
Speaker 1: who immediately react to what their most subcortical structure is
Speaker 1: telling them without thinking it through it all or without
Speaker 1: thinking about and those who that actually activate that prefontal
Speaker 1: cortex and like, well, hold up, Like, maybe I'm actually
Speaker 1: overgeneralizing here in this moment. It's tough. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's really tough to do. I think
Speaker 1: people do overgeneralize, and it takes a lot of self
Speaker 1: control and sort of metacognition and to say to yourself like, wait,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong, Like you know about this like giant
Speaker 1: group that I fear, and you don't see a lot
Speaker 1: of that happening from either honestly, either political side, any
Speaker 1: kind of group. It tends to get very tribal very quickly,
Speaker 1: and people have very very negative feelings toward the opposite group.
Speaker 1: So while it's definitely possible to be enlightened and think like, well,
Speaker 1: they're not all like that. Maybe I can think about
Speaker 1: some good members of this group, most people, unfortunately, just
Speaker 1: don't do that. No, And you're seeing it all over
Speaker 1: the news in every direction right right. I've tweeted something
Speaker 1: the other day that social scientists are having a field
Speaker 1: day right now with seeing everything we've ever studied in
Speaker 1: our entire careers just playing itself out in a magnified
Speaker 1: way and in front of our TV screens. Tribal warfare,
Speaker 1: competitive this racism, discrimination, virtue signaling. I mean, so this
Speaker 1: goes on and on and on. It's fascinating to watch,
Speaker 1: and not just fascinating, but as a social scientist who cares,
Speaker 1: I want to see what I can do to actually
Speaker 1: change it. So let's just keep going down the list,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's lots of things that are along
Speaker 1: the lines of what we're talking about. You report some
Speaker 1: studies that show that Americans view immigrants who speak English
Speaker 1: more favorably than those who speak other languages. That's a
Speaker 1: sort of automatic reaction. Yeah, I mean, so this is
Speaker 1: sort of an extension of what I was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: which is that there's this kind of logical explanation for
Speaker 1: anti immigrant sentiment, which is, well, we want to protect
Speaker 1: American jobs. But in fact, people have more negative reactions
Speaker 1: when the immigrant is more culturally distant from American culture.
Speaker 1: So people tend to have more negative reactions toward Mexican
Speaker 1: immigrants than British immigrants because the Mexican immigrant is more
Speaker 1: culturally distinct from us, and it activates that kind of
Speaker 1: inner sense of like, you know, I don't like this,
Speaker 1: this person's different. That is super interesting. So that study,
Speaker 1: one of the studies you cited, specifically compared British immigrants
Speaker 1: to Mexican immigrants. No, that's just an example I used
Speaker 1: right now. I don't remember the two immigrant groups from
Speaker 1: that research in particular. But regardless that the study did
Speaker 1: compare English speaking two non English speaking immigrants. I believe that. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I would have to look that up later and let
Speaker 1: you know precisely what they compared. I believe it was
Speaker 1: the cultural distance that mattered, and I believe there was
Speaker 1: other research on language, but I would have to look
Speaker 1: that up. Okay, I'll look it up too. So loneliness,
Speaker 1: let's talk about loneliness. That's an another one that we
Speaker 1: we tend to kind of shun the lonely, and it
Speaker 1: seems to create this really unfortunate downward spiral for those
Speaker 1: individuals where they tend to be demotivated to even seek
Speaker 1: out for their interactions that may actually help them with
Speaker 1: their loneliness. Can you talk a little bit about that research.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot a lot done on this, but
Speaker 1: essentially kind of one of the tragic things about loneliness
Speaker 1: is that you would think that, you know, I'm feeling lonely,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm going to reach out and talk to others.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, people who feel lonely often don't do that
Speaker 1: because they kind of have more negative interactions with other
Speaker 1: people because of their loneliness. It's actually kind of like
Speaker 1: almost a persistent kind of negative state, and because of that,
Speaker 1: it can kind of exacerbate itself, like people, I think
Speaker 1: when one paper put it as like a piece of yarn,
Speaker 1: like unspooling from a sweater, where it kind of just
Speaker 1: gets worse and worse as it goes, because people who
Speaker 1: are lonely actually don't tend to reach out to others,
Speaker 1: and they don't tend to establish good connections with other
Speaker 1: people in their lives, and that can actually make the
Speaker 1: loneliness worse. Yeah, or they may seek out as you know,
Speaker 1: they may seek out other outlets. They're very detrimentally terrorism
Speaker 1: and radicalization, right yeah, yeah, that blew me away. Yeah yeah, no, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's like there's all these these studies on how
Speaker 1: people who unfortunately like some of the things that are
Speaker 1: attracting people to things like ISIS and other types of
Speaker 1: terror groups is just this feeling of not belonging in
Speaker 1: their new in their new country. So if they move
Speaker 1: from you know, a predominantly Muslim country to Finland or something,
Speaker 1: you would think like, oh great, I'm in Finland, I
Speaker 1: get free healthcare or whatever. But sometimes the social stresses
Speaker 1: of being different from everyone around you, of being lonely,
Speaker 1: of being isolated, of being misunderstood. It can be so
Speaker 1: severe that it actually attracts people to those like in
Speaker 1: groupy fraternity like settings where they can be with other
Speaker 1: people like them. If you note that overt social exclusion
Speaker 1: can leave a terrible mark on people who break gender
Speaker 1: norms directions happens with females or male traditionally male dominated fields,
Speaker 1: it can apply to males trying to enter traditionally female
Speaker 1: dominated fields. What are some what are some other examples
Speaker 1: that you had in mind when you were ranging about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of interesting research on prejudice that
Speaker 1: gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender people experience and
Speaker 1: negative health outcomes, both mental health and physical health. So
Speaker 1: in one study, for example, gay lesbian and bisexual people
Speaker 1: who experienced homophobic language got more headaches and chronic diseases,
Speaker 1: and they were in worse overall health. So it just
Speaker 1: goes to show that this feeling of like being ostracized
Speaker 1: and being told that you're less than or that you
Speaker 1: don't belong can actually have really severe mental and physical
Speaker 1: impacts on the person. Actually, this also plays out in
Speaker 1: racial disparities and health. So one reason why African Americans
Speaker 1: tend to have poorer health outcomes and various domains is
Speaker 1: because of racism. An increasing number of scholars find so,
Speaker 1: like the stress of racism can actually impact the body
Speaker 1: and cause you to, for example, be more likely to
Speaker 1: give birth earlier, prematurely, more likely to have high blood pressure,
Speaker 1: more likely to have all these negative health outcomes that
Speaker 1: then can tribute to racial disparities and health. So when
Speaker 1: we think about racial disparities, we usually assume that the
Speaker 1: problem is the person who's like living the life, but
Speaker 1: it could actually be all the other people around them
Speaker 1: treating them differently and worse. Yeah, so those are fascinating findings.
Speaker 1: I also wonder, because I want to look at the
Speaker 1: nittigrade details of those studies. Do they also show that
Speaker 1: perceptions of racism can also affect you mentally to the
Speaker 1: point where it can make you sick as well, even
Speaker 1: if there isn't actual overt racism in your environment. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering about that as well, like sort of a just
Speaker 1: a sense of pervasis you're in a society where you
Speaker 1: don't feel safe and just constantly having that on your mind.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, so
Speaker 1: I didn't look at that specifically like perceived versus real treatment.
Speaker 1: It was all Usually these studies are like self report,
Speaker 1: so people will say like, yes, I feel discriminated against
Speaker 1: and I have a lot of headaches or something, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That's an interesting question, and I
Speaker 1: think the perceptions might be just as important in this
Speaker 1: case because ultimately, like, it's your perception that matters with
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's not necessarily people could be thinking racist
Speaker 1: thoughts about you all the time, but if they don't
Speaker 1: tell you, then you're not going to necessarily be aware
Speaker 1: of that. But if you pick up on that and
Speaker 1: you think about it, and you you know it bothers you,
Speaker 1: then it can impact you. Yeah, just thinking about it's
Speaker 1: got to affect you, being the vice versa. I think
Speaker 1: of the opposite case. You know, you're you're in an
Speaker 1: environment where you feel really welcomed and really like people
Speaker 1: by default you just assume accept you for who you
Speaker 1: are and are not discriminate against you. As a whole,
Speaker 1: different kind of mindset associated with it, thinking you know
Speaker 1: you're in that kind of environment. So it's trying to
Speaker 1: link it to that research, Well, should we move into
Speaker 1: my favorite topic, creativity. I really love that stuff, and
Speaker 1: I was really excited to see you mention the work
Speaker 1: of my friend Erotica Damien one of my favorite studies.
Speaker 1: Can you can you maybe talk little about the methodology
Speaker 1: of that study and how weird experiences can make us
Speaker 1: more creative? Yeah, totally. So Rodica's work is really interesting.
Speaker 1: So she kind of what she did is put people
Speaker 1: in so we already know that people who are weird,
Speaker 1: so there's all these negative effects of being weird. But
Speaker 1: then I talk about positive things that come with being different,
Speaker 1: and so we already know that people who are ostracized
Speaker 1: actually can sometimes be more creative. But she also actually
Speaker 1: put people an unusual situation, so she would have them
Speaker 1: do like a VR exercise where things like fell up
Speaker 1: instead of down. So kind of the rules of society
Speaker 1: were kind of mixed up for you in these in
Speaker 1: these situations, and that actually ended up boosting creativity as well.
Speaker 1: So it's not just being a person. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: just a total average Joe, but you transport yourself to
Speaker 1: a situation where you are weird, or you just kind
Speaker 1: of you know, travel somewhere you just find you know,
Speaker 1: are in an unusual experience. It can help boost this
Speaker 1: thing called cognitive flexibility, or the ability to come up
Speaker 1: with lots of different kinds of solutions to problems. So
Speaker 1: I really love that because it suggests that, like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be like an immigrant in order to
Speaker 1: be creative. You can also just do something, do mushrooms
Speaker 1: or something. The suggestion I give is something that's just simple,
Speaker 1: as simple as putting milk in your cereal first before
Speaker 1: you put in the cereal. A lot of people put
Speaker 1: in their cereal first and then the milk. I believe
Speaker 1: that was one of when I looked at her study,
Speaker 1: that was one of the actual things they had people
Speaker 1: do with something as simple as that is, just change
Speaker 1: up the way they make their morning cereal actually change
Speaker 1: their flex cognitive flexibility. But mushrooms, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: rolling that one out. Yeah, you could stop at cereal.
Speaker 1: I guess you don't need to go to mushrooms if
Speaker 1: you're but but it's but she could, but she could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about truth a little bit. Oh okay, being
Speaker 1: different can help you stand out in a positive way.
Speaker 1: People that you talk about in your book illustrate doing
Speaker 1: something different can help you find your true calling, your
Speaker 1: true self, and even true love. So can you give
Speaker 1: an example of finding your true self and then example
Speaker 1: of finding your true love. This was a really interesting
Speaker 1: chapter to write. Another thing that I noticed with so
Speaker 1: I kind of started with interviewing all these people who
Speaker 1: are different, so I didn't necessarily start with the findings
Speaker 1: and try to find people to plug them into. But
Speaker 1: what I noticed is that people who were different were
Speaker 1: like really all about whatever they were doing. So they
Speaker 1: were like very sure they wanted to be in their
Speaker 1: profession or living where they lived, or married to who
Speaker 1: they were married. Like they were like totally set on
Speaker 1: it to a degree that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: other people struggle with. Like I think other people are
Speaker 1: maybe a little more ambivalent. So one guy that I
Speaker 1: talked to was a Mormon missionary in Bulgaria, and he
Speaker 1: was pretty miserable. He was from California, he was in Bulgaria.
Speaker 1: Bulgarians were not open to being Mormons. They were not
Speaker 1: interested at all. He was getting like rejected all day
Speaker 1: every day. He was like the only Mormon around. He
Speaker 1: had no friends. His job was to like not on
Speaker 1: people's doors and get yelled that all day. It was
Speaker 1: terrible for him, not saying the Mormon missionary experience is terrible.
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of other Mormon missionaries who
Speaker 1: had a great experience, but for this guy, it was
Speaker 1: just really bad. But it really helped shape what he
Speaker 1: thought about himself. Like after that, he felt really confident
Speaker 1: about quitting the Mormon Church, which was the right move
Speaker 1: for him. He started going down this road of trying
Speaker 1: to become a police officer, and he actually ended up
Speaker 1: quitting because it reminded him too much of the Mormon
Speaker 1: missionary experience and made him more certain that he didn't
Speaker 1: want to do it. Even before he kind of really
Speaker 1: wasted too much time and energy trying to become a cop.
Speaker 1: So it was one of those like clarifying moments of like,
Speaker 1: this is who I am, this is what I believe.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, I actually also heard that from Mormon missionaries
Speaker 1: who had a positive experience that they were like this
Speaker 1: made me more committed to the Mormon Church. It made
Speaker 1: me more sure that I'm a Mormon, because when you're
Speaker 1: constantly questioning, like is this really the right thing to
Speaker 1: be doing, like you come to a definite yes or no.
Speaker 1: So that was I thought really cool. And then the
Speaker 1: true love example were the people who were like some
Speaker 1: of the first people to do online dating. They found
Speaker 1: each other through Match dot Com in the nineties. It
Speaker 1: was very adorable. They went to like a Cranberry's concert together,
Speaker 1: but it was funny because every person around them was like,
Speaker 1: you're crazy, Like you're gonna get axe murdered. This is
Speaker 1: like weird and bad. But they just because they had
Speaker 1: this strong connection because there were like five people on
Speaker 1: Match at the time, they felt like fate was bringing
Speaker 1: them together and they felt so like they had this
Speaker 1: special bond. They could read all these like emails they
Speaker 1: were sending each other. You know. It almost like made
Speaker 1: it more special that people thought that it was strange,
Speaker 1: So it helped them find each other and they're still married.
Speaker 1: Good for that. Yeah, I can I can totally see
Speaker 1: some early hesitation around online dating. Now we're like the
Speaker 1: tender level where it's like, are you around in the
Speaker 1: next five minutes? I'm not in touch with them, But
Speaker 1: they've been married since the nineteen ninety four. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: actually kind of beautiful. Can we talk a little about
Speaker 1: how to be different? Someone's listening to this and they're
Speaker 1: hearing all these great things that can come along from
Speaker 1: being different, that doesn't all have to be bad. You're
Speaker 1: talking a little bit. Maybe I was thinking about starting
Speaker 1: with the philosopher Christina Bicarini. I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: pronounce her name, and I like like a lots of
Speaker 1: such with her, so I didn't get to ask her.
Speaker 1: But Christina basically found that people have different thresholds of
Speaker 1: other people that they need in order to do something,
Speaker 1: usually something weird, in order to do with themselves. So
Speaker 1: if you think about burning Man, like, some people will
Speaker 1: be like the second guy and burning Man like he's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I'll go to the desert and like,
Speaker 1: you know whatever erect attent and live off generosity or
Speaker 1: whatever they're doing. Some people need, like you know, the
Speaker 1: CEOs of a fortune five hundred company to go to
Speaker 1: burning band before they'll really consider it. They are not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to be the first or second person to
Speaker 1: do something. They're going to be kind of at the
Speaker 1: tail end. So the people who are these norm breakers,
Speaker 1: who are you know, like the people who did match
Speaker 1: dot com in the nineties, are people with very low thresholds,
Speaker 1: like they will do something experimental even if nobody's really
Speaker 1: doing it. So her work basically just shows that people
Speaker 1: have different thresholds, and if you're someone who's a norm violator,
Speaker 1: you might have a threshold of like one or two
Speaker 1: instead of like one hundred. Fair enough, and you and
Speaker 1: these trend centers tend to have comfort with discomfort? Is
Speaker 1: that another characteristic? So something that I noticed among the
Speaker 1: people that I interviewed is that they have this ability
Speaker 1: to not really care what other people thought of them
Speaker 1: or just like two. Yeah, essentially I call it comfort
Speaker 1: with discomfort. So one example from that section is this
Speaker 1: woman who I gave a student and in in my believe
Speaker 1: they gave her the pseudonym Ozma. But she grew up
Speaker 1: as a as a Muslim, black Muslim in a very
Speaker 1: kind of small southern town and it was really tough.
Speaker 1: Everybody was Christian. Even though there were other black kids,
Speaker 1: they were not Muslim. People kind of had strange reactions
Speaker 1: to her, and she kind of decided that that was okay.
Speaker 1: Like all through college, all through like you know, being
Speaker 1: a kid in that town, all through college of like
Speaker 1: you know, going to Kegers and not drinking or you know,
Speaker 1: not having sex. She kind of just decided that like
Speaker 1: she was totally comfortable with her choices. People could judge her,
Speaker 1: but she was going to be fine with that, and
Speaker 1: ultimately that's that's okay. I don't know, I thought that
Speaker 1: was like a very cool kind of attitude. Definitely not
Speaker 1: my attitude a lot of the time. If you can
Speaker 1: cultivate that, you know, that helps you kind of be different,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can kind of brush that
Speaker 1: stuff off. Absolutely. I just love people who self actualize
Speaker 1: in the way that's right for them, obviously not causing
Speaker 1: harm to others. But if as long as they're not
Speaker 1: causing harm others, I'm all for it. I support you,
Speaker 1: and you just you go just go, yeah, well cool,
Speaker 1: let's just end this chat. This is really interesting chat
Speaker 1: today talking about this question that you ponder at the
Speaker 1: end of your book, which is, well, what choice would
Speaker 1: make should we stay different or find your own kind?
Speaker 1: Or is there an in between level here? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's different for everyone. I don't like instruct
Speaker 1: people to do one or the other. I kind of
Speaker 1: profile people who picked one of the different paths. I
Speaker 1: think I ultimately ended up kind of in between. Like
Speaker 1: I don't really consider myself totally American but I also don't.
Speaker 1: I went back to Russia and described that experience in
Speaker 1: the book and it was like hilariously bad. So I
Speaker 1: definitely don't feel Russian anymore either. So yeah, so some people,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that I talk to are
Speaker 1: just kind of like, yeah, I am like totally different,
Speaker 1: and that's that's okay, that's like that's how who I am,
Speaker 1: and it's that's the right thing. Well, you say, the
Speaker 1: weirder you are, the fewer and more precious are the
Speaker 1: people who truly accept you. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: price that you pay for being weird or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that this was like in
Speaker 1: the part where I was talking with another Russian immigrant
Speaker 1: woman about our grandmas who are both in poor health
Speaker 1: person unfortunately past and mine is in poor health, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just like we were both reflecting
Speaker 1: on like how hard it is to find those people
Speaker 1: who are like you're great. If like you're you're completely
Speaker 1: different from everyone else. You don't have that natural you
Speaker 1: don't have a sorority sisters, because you weren't an authority.
Speaker 1: So so it's you know, so treasured those people who
Speaker 1: are help you be your best self. Oh, I love
Speaker 1: that treasure, treasure of these people. Yeah, I have even
Speaker 1: greater appreciation for the people in your life if you're
Speaker 1: weird exactly you talk about nonconformists, which is high overlap
Speaker 1: with creative, creative people as well as weird people as all.
Speaker 1: Then diagram you say, what you've learned about a lot
Speaker 1: of nonconformists is that they're driven by a desire to
Speaker 1: improve the lot of others. I really like this. After
Speaker 1: being picked on, marginalized, and sometimes outright and solded, they
Speaker 1: reflected their hurt feelings back as positive change in small ways,
Speaker 1: making life better for others helped nonconformists ameliorate their their
Speaker 1: own exclusion. There's a lot in that. You actually got
Speaker 1: me thinking, because some people talk about how hurt people
Speaker 1: hurt people who but I don't think we talk often
Speaker 1: enough about I was saying about write a article out
Speaker 1: of this some day. We don't don't. We don't talk
Speaker 1: enough about the opposite. There are plenty of people who
Speaker 1: hurt it but use that for pro social you know,
Speaker 1: means to help prevent others from going through what they
Speaker 1: had to go through. A very high proportion of people
Speaker 1: show the opposite effect then the hurt people hurt saying
Speaker 1: So I like that you illustrated that, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh you're welcome. Yeah. No, I think that's super important
Speaker 1: and something that I found not just for the book,
Speaker 1: but like in my reporting as well. Like I report
Speaker 1: a lot on poverty and people who have grown up
Speaker 1: in really difficult conditions, and like, honestly, the thing that
Speaker 1: they most often say is like, I want to start
Speaker 1: a nonprofit. So this kind of thing doesn't happen to
Speaker 1: other people, like it's it's usually you know, they want
Speaker 1: to pay it forward in a positive way instead of
Speaker 1: in a negative way. Thank you so much for writing
Speaker 1: this book and chatting with me today and the promoting
Speaker 1: weirdness in the world. Yeah, totally, Yeah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me on. This was super fun. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also,
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