Speaker 1: Pushkin. I want you to think back to your school
Speaker 1: days for a second. What was the worst grade you
Speaker 1: ever got? How did it make you feel? And now
Speaker 1: think about the best grade. How is that grades? Even
Speaker 1: decades after graduation, we can still remember what those marks
Speaker 1: felt like. And it makes sense that grades affect us
Speaker 1: so deeply because they're important. I mean, they're kind of
Speaker 1: synonymous with education, aren't they. Well, it turns out not really.
Speaker 1: In fact, grades are a relatively new invention. For almost
Speaker 1: seven centuries, schools got by without them. As a professor myself,
Speaker 1: I find that incomprehensible. I mean, generation after generation of
Speaker 1: scholars completed their studies without anything akin to a grade
Speaker 1: point average. How could my predecessors tell students apart? How
Speaker 1: did they sort pupils who worked really, really hard from
Speaker 1: those who just phoned it in? Back in seventeen eighty five,
Speaker 1: all that changed, so we had the stuff that Karen
Speaker 1: found for us today. I recently went on a pilgrimage
Speaker 1: to a special spot at Yale where I teach, the
Speaker 1: Binnick Library, in order to see an important document, one
Speaker 1: that's kept alongside a copy of the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: and one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world.
Speaker 1: I wash my hands, but I can just open it.
Speaker 1: It's like not going to break it. I was able
Speaker 1: to hold the Diary of Ezra Styles, seventh President of
Speaker 1: Yale University. So cool. So the important part is right here.
Speaker 1: On April fifth, seventeen eighty five, he recorded the details
Speaker 1: of an exam he'd conducted that spring Tuesday with fifty
Speaker 1: eight of his students. My colleague Mike Morand pointed me
Speaker 1: to a short but revolutionary footnote twenty opt to me
Speaker 1: second Optimy twelve inferiories Bonnie ten and the unlikely event
Speaker 1: that you're someone who doesn't speak Latin, let me translate
Speaker 1: for you. Styles was splitting his students up into four
Speaker 1: different grades from Optimy best to pajoras worse. With this
Speaker 1: tiny footnote, just a few lines. It's argued that Styles
Speaker 1: invented the four point o grading system we still use today.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is amazing. It's like a single line,
Speaker 1: his handwritten text and the biggest thing in education that
Speaker 1: shaped our history. It's right there in my hand. I
Speaker 1: got to hold the first ever grades. Nowadays, we don't
Speaker 1: just have GPAs, we have SATs and gres in advanced
Speaker 1: placement tests and everything in between. It's estimated that the
Speaker 1: average American child takes more than one hundred standardized tests.
Speaker 1: But we don't just grade in education. We think ratings
Speaker 1: are a good incentive for all our behavior years, and
Speaker 1: that means we're constantly being evaluated, from the number of
Speaker 1: stars and our uber driver rating, to our positivity percentages
Speaker 1: on eBay to a performance review on the job. We
Speaker 1: seem to love being measured, and when we get good grades,
Speaker 1: it feels great. All those a pluses, the gold stars,
Speaker 1: those little smartphone vibrations when we hit our goal. They
Speaker 1: encourage us to become better, more virtuous people. Or do
Speaker 1: they are chasing? These incentives really as good for our
Speaker 1: happiness as we think. Our minds are constantly telling us
Speaker 1: what to do to be happy. But what if our
Speaker 1: minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
Speaker 1: leading us away from what will really make us happy.
Speaker 1: The good news is that understanding the science of the
Speaker 1: mind can point us all back in the right direction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: The first time I eboxed it, I felt kind of
Speaker 1: like a dweeb. This is Emma Lord, she writes for
Speaker 1: Bustle dot com. Back in twenty fourteen, she broke her foot.
Speaker 1: I couldn't run for a little while while I was
Speaker 1: waiting for a fracture to heal. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: how the whole thing started was I was pretty much
Speaker 1: told not to run for like six weeks, and to me,
Speaker 1: that kind of seemed like a nightmare. Emma was worried
Speaker 1: she wouldn't be able to stay in shape while she
Speaker 1: was injured, so her mom bought her a new step
Speaker 1: tracking device, a Fitbit, hoping it would make her feel
Speaker 1: better and keep moving while she healed. But I, you know,
Speaker 1: the first day I used it, it did that thing
Speaker 1: where it buzzed when I got to ten thousand steps,
Speaker 1: and I was like, ooh, like this is such a
Speaker 1: nice feeling. I just got instant validation from it, and
Speaker 1: then I was just kind of hooked. Emma quickly experienced
Speaker 1: what science shows happens when we start grading our performance
Speaker 1: with incentives like a fitbit buzz we humans are like
Speaker 1: little lab rats when it comes to external rewards. Those
Speaker 1: buzzes and good grades and gold stars work really well.
Speaker 1: They change our behavior quickly, but often more quickly than
Speaker 1: we expect. I guess after that first day, the baseline
Speaker 1: goal was to always hit the ten thousand steps, and
Speaker 1: then you know, it started getting to the threshold where
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, if I can do ten thousand, I
Speaker 1: could do fifteen. And that was when Emma started seeing
Speaker 1: the problem. External rewards like the buzz of a fitbit
Speaker 1: are so powerful that they often work a little too well.
Speaker 1: I think the first moment I felt myself becoming a
Speaker 1: little bit addicted to it was and I realized I
Speaker 1: was suddenly getting on the metro two hours before work
Speaker 1: just so I could get in the ten thousand steps
Speaker 1: before work, because I just wanted that validation, like really
Speaker 1: early in the day. So it was going to be
Speaker 1: like off my conscience, which is like such a weird
Speaker 1: thing to think about, because like nobody was gonna the
Speaker 1: police weren't going to come for me if I didn't
Speaker 1: hit ten thousand steps that day. But I just felt
Speaker 1: better after it had buzzed. The scary thing was at
Speaker 1: the fitbit wasn't just affecting Emma's happiness. It also started
Speaker 1: affecting Emma's relationships. When I got a new job once
Speaker 1: and there was a fitbit like leaderboard to see who
Speaker 1: had the best steps, and some guy in the office
Speaker 1: had like thirty thousand, and I went out that weekend
Speaker 1: and crushed it. And I came in the next day
Speaker 1: and I was like, I got thirty five thousand, and
Speaker 1: like nobody was pleased with me, and I was like,
Speaker 1: not the way to make friends. The level of competition
Speaker 1: emma experience with her fitbit was reminiscent of another time
Speaker 1: in her life when she felt super competitive back in school.
Speaker 1: I came from one of the most competitive school districts
Speaker 1: in the country, so it was like one of those
Speaker 1: things where everybody was like the hungry he was in there.
Speaker 1: So I definitely do think that this is related to
Speaker 1: that in some ways. I definitely was one of those
Speaker 1: kids who was very, very manic about my grades. In
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Emma shared her experiences in an article on
Speaker 1: Bustle entitled nineteen very real emotional struggles of having a
Speaker 1: Fitbit or does your Fitbit have you? I thought it
Speaker 1: would be relatable to other people who are kind of
Speaker 1: going through the motions on that too, and weirdly I
Speaker 1: got more response from that article than maybe anything I've
Speaker 1: written on this entire site, because you know, it is
Speaker 1: such a relatable kind of mania, especially because you know,
Speaker 1: I think people are so confused about where that compulsion
Speaker 1: is coming from that it's almost a relief to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not the only crazy one. But despite her own
Speaker 1: experiences with fitbit and the response to her piece years later,
Speaker 1: Emma's still tracking. You know, even after the foot injury healed.
Speaker 1: I found myself still counting, even when I was running,
Speaker 1: and that was like something I'd never really felt the
Speaker 1: need to count before, just to have that number there
Speaker 1: and to like know exactly how many steps I had
Speaker 1: in a day. I mean, it's been four years and
Speaker 1: I'm still doing it. Emma's experience shows that seemingly innocuous
Speaker 1: benchmarks can quickly change our behavior for the worse. But
Speaker 1: they're more insidious than we realize. Every external reward has
Speaker 1: the power to turn love into hate and virtue into vice.
Speaker 1: They can even relentlessly play on our most primal fears.
Speaker 1: The happiness lab will be right back. Where do you
Speaker 1: stand on Obamacare? It's one of the most bitterly divisive
Speaker 1: issues in US politics today. I bet you have a
Speaker 1: pretty strong opinion about it. So what do you think
Speaker 1: it would take to shift that opinion significantly? Would you
Speaker 1: believe me if I said I could manipulate your view
Speaker 1: with some arbitrary incentive, like giving you a fake grade.
Speaker 1: Let me explain. Back in nineteen sixty one, Robert Bostrom
Speaker 1: and his colleagues surveyed more than two hundred students on
Speaker 1: a couple hot button issues. They asked whether America should
Speaker 1: legalize gambling and if the nation should adopt socialized medicine.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, all the participants were assigned to
Speaker 1: write essays about these issues. But, and this is crucial,
Speaker 1: they were asked to defend the very view they had
Speaker 1: staunchly opposed. People who viewed gambling as an evil had
Speaker 1: to write in support of casino owners. Those who saw
Speaker 1: socialized medicine as creeping communism were told to act as
Speaker 1: its cheerleaders. The scientists collected the essays, but didn't even
Speaker 1: bother reading them. Bosterm and colleagues knew that the simple
Speaker 1: act of writing about the opposite view was likely to
Speaker 1: soften everyone's opinions, changing their minds slightly. But what effect
Speaker 1: would smacking an arbitrary grade on those essays have? The
Speaker 1: next day, the researchers handed them back randomly, giving a
Speaker 1: third of them an A, a third of them a D,
Speaker 1: and a third no grade at all. After seeing their marks,
Speaker 1: students took the original survey again. So what happened. Students
Speaker 1: who got no grade or a bad grade A D
Speaker 1: changed their minds a bit, But something much more incredible
Speaker 1: happened to the group that got inn A. Remember, the
Speaker 1: grades were given totally randomly. The A graded essays weren't
Speaker 1: better or more thoroughly researched than the others. Nevertheless, students
Speaker 1: who got that fake A shifted their views more significantly
Speaker 1: than those who got a bad grade. The simple act
Speaker 1: of getting that A cause students to change their core beliefs,
Speaker 1: isn't that chilling views we hold? Deer can be swayed
Speaker 1: by the simple act of evaluation, even if that evaluation
Speaker 1: is totally bogus. Let's play a little game. It's called
Speaker 1: Unscrambled the Letters. I'm going to give you a series
Speaker 1: of letters, and you need to turn them into an
Speaker 1: English word. Here's an easy one, just three letters, ready,
Speaker 1: k O A. Time's up? Did you get it? The
Speaker 1: answer is oak. Here's a harder one, five letters, ready
Speaker 1: c L P A E, Time's up the answer place.
Speaker 1: And now an even harder one. It's got nine letters
Speaker 1: ready O n V O t U I l E.
Speaker 1: Time's up the answer evolution. Think about how much you
Speaker 1: enjoyed playing this game. Unless you're a huge puzzle fiend,
Speaker 1: the last one with nine letters might have been a
Speaker 1: bit taxing. The first one with three letters probably wasn't
Speaker 1: that great either. It was a little too easy to
Speaker 1: be fun. I bet the one in the middle was
Speaker 1: just right. When playing a game like this, we prefer
Speaker 1: puzzles that are hard but doable. Those are the ones
Speaker 1: we tend to enjoy the most. The same holds for
Speaker 1: little kids. Back in the seventies, child psychologists Susan Harder
Speaker 1: tested sixth graders on Anna Gramps just like this. She
Speaker 1: gave them super easy ones with just three letters, and
Speaker 1: ones with six letters that were pretty tough for children
Speaker 1: their age. What did she find? Overall, the kids were
Speaker 1: happiest when pushing the boundaries of their abilities. They even
Speaker 1: smiled almost twice as much when doing the harder puzzles.
Speaker 1: But what happens when you throw grades into the mix
Speaker 1: To test that Harder told a different group of sixth
Speaker 1: graders that the puzzles were part of a school exercise
Speaker 1: and that they would be graded on their performance. The result,
Speaker 1: it's actually heartbreaking. Here's how Harder described it. Children working
Speaker 1: for grades chose significantly easier anagrams to perform. Not only
Speaker 1: did subjects respond below their optimal level, but they manifested
Speaker 1: less pleasure and verbalized more anxiety. When working for grades.
Speaker 1: The kids did worse, felt worse, and aimed lower. Grades
Speaker 1: can take experiences that our minds normally find really enjoyable
Speaker 1: and turn them into a source of dread. My earliest
Speaker 1: memory of this was actually when I was in seventh grade.
Speaker 1: This is Tracy George. She spent her whole career advising
Speaker 1: students suffering from severe academic stress. She's seen firsthand how
Speaker 1: grad can become a dangerous obsession, how they robbed students
Speaker 1: of joy and even worse. I was going to a
Speaker 1: private middle school outside of Cleveland, Ohio, where I'm from,
Speaker 1: and one day a girl I know was crying at
Speaker 1: her locker. Right It was in the middle of class.
Speaker 1: She kind of snuck out. I'd left to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and she was there alone crying, and I
Speaker 1: asked her what was going on, and she said she
Speaker 1: had gotten her first to be and she was so
Speaker 1: worried she would not be able to get into the
Speaker 1: school she wanted to go to, and she had already
Speaker 1: picked whatever IVY league she wanted to go to at
Speaker 1: that time, at eleven or twelve. And it was really
Speaker 1: hard to see that that she was so distraught and
Speaker 1: so worried about and really terrified. I mean she was
Speaker 1: crying and almost like shaking about what this would mean
Speaker 1: for her future. And it was the first time I
Speaker 1: realized I really wanted to help people and students, growing
Speaker 1: adults learn what is important to them today. Tracy is
Speaker 1: the founding director of the Good Life Center at Yale University.
Speaker 1: Tracy and I teamed up to develop this new resource
Speaker 1: on campus in order to improve student well being. Note
Speaker 1: the irony here. The very college where GPAs were invented
Speaker 1: now employs Tracy as well as a host of other
Speaker 1: staff members to deal with the fallout of that two
Speaker 1: hundred year old system At Yale. There's a long, long
Speaker 1: wait list to see a mental health counselor here, and
Speaker 1: that's really one of the purposes of the Good Life
Speaker 1: Centers to create a space for this overflow of where
Speaker 1: does students go when they need to learn how to
Speaker 1: manage this daily fear or the daily stress, the daily anxiety.
Speaker 1: And this isn't just an Ivy League problem or a
Speaker 1: Yale problem. This is the thing that colleges are seeing
Speaker 1: nationwide right right, absolutely, this is an American thing. This
Speaker 1: is our country and how we are approaching education, and
Speaker 1: it's really detrimental and is breaking students down. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to feel a little stressed about getting your first
Speaker 1: b or to get a bit neurotic about missing your
Speaker 1: fitbit buzz, but that's not what we're talking about. College
Speaker 1: mental health centers aren't just dealing with a few obsessive,
Speaker 1: stressed out students. We are facing a real epidemic. In
Speaker 1: a national survey, more than four percent of college students
Speaker 1: reported they're too depressed to function. More than half of
Speaker 1: current students say they feel hopeless a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: more than sixty percent said they experienced overwhelming anxiety, and
Speaker 1: more than one in ten say they've seriously considered suicide
Speaker 1: in the last year. And these are not numbers that
Speaker 1: we should be seeing in this young population. This is
Speaker 1: when their brains are continuing to form, They're starting to
Speaker 1: figure out who they are, what they want to do
Speaker 1: in the world. This isn't just a surface level amount
Speaker 1: of stress or worry. It's really this fear based reaction,
Speaker 1: just like I had experienced in seventh grade, This fear
Speaker 1: about what it will mean for your future really far
Speaker 1: down the line. What's most disturbing about all this fear
Speaker 1: and stress isn't how it's making students feel. It's affecting
Speaker 1: students physical health, the basic way their bodies function. And
Speaker 1: so this constant, low level stress has a trickle down
Speaker 1: effect of physical effects like our higher blood pressure, higher
Speaker 1: heart rate, quicker breathing, which is the activation of our
Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system that was designed to help us fight
Speaker 1: off an animal or flight run away from an animal
Speaker 1: in a very direct way with our evolution, like a
Speaker 1: tiger is attacking us basics right right, there is a
Speaker 1: tiger in the bush, and we need to respond. So
Speaker 1: our muscles tense as if we're actually getting ready to
Speaker 1: hit something or runaway. Our heart rate goes up, our
Speaker 1: blood pressure goes up in order to get the blood
Speaker 1: to our muscles to activate those muscles, and a lot
Speaker 1: of functions decrease that we don't need for immediate survival,
Speaker 1: like we don't need digestion, we don't need reproduction, we
Speaker 1: don't need a lot of major systems to survive in
Speaker 1: the moment. And there's a ton of research that shows
Speaker 1: regular fight or flight response causes chronic stress in the
Speaker 1: body and has a trickle down effect of health impacts.
Speaker 1: The problem is we see this system activated, and students
Speaker 1: see these little lines and tigers and bears behind every
Speaker 1: bush in their daily modern lives. So it's not a line,
Speaker 1: a tiger, or a bear, it's an exam or a
Speaker 1: transcript or an application that's actually causing the same reaction.
Speaker 1: So when you talk to students and you ask about
Speaker 1: their stress responses, especially chronic stress responses, they often talk
Speaker 1: about headaches, muscle tension, digestive issues, even reproductive or sexual issues,
Speaker 1: and they don't realize until they're getting this process, this
Speaker 1: biological process explaining that it's actually chronic stress causing this
Speaker 1: trickle down effect of physical issues. It's really problematic, especially
Speaker 1: because I see the most that students are wrapping up
Speaker 1: their sense of value and purpose as a human in
Speaker 1: their grades. They're not just being graded in their classrooms.
Speaker 1: They're being graded with everything you know, from their Instagram
Speaker 1: likes to their what their fitbit is telling them. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I've heard some students just in the hallways going like,
Speaker 1: why didn't this picture get enough likes? Or why did
Speaker 1: this like I stopped getting likes after so many days
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, any app that is designed to
Speaker 1: support us in a certain activity, like a running app,
Speaker 1: and even meditation apps, right, so even that's become even
Speaker 1: meditation apps are competitive now. Yeah, it's totally crazy. Actually
Speaker 1: haven't opened a meditation app in a while because of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, even students who come back to my class,
Speaker 1: the mindfulness class that I teach here at Yale, are
Speaker 1: talking about themselves as being quote unquote bad meditators. Tracy
Speaker 1: and I have had lots of conversations about what we
Speaker 1: can do to fix things, but we both worry it's
Speaker 1: going to take more than a wellness center. It's going
Speaker 1: to take major structural changes to how we and our
Speaker 1: institutions think about external rewards. The culture the system has
Speaker 1: to change as well, especially for the school that invented
Speaker 1: this four point grading scale. We invented this process. We
Speaker 1: are in a great position to try to untangle that
Speaker 1: a little bit and to give a new generation of
Speaker 1: students of fighting chance at being functional and happy and successful.
Speaker 1: But that kind of change is really hard. We might
Speaker 1: even need to abandon the ways we've educated students since
Speaker 1: the time of Ezra Styles. All right, let's get started.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to Psychology and the Good Life today. What
Speaker 1: we're going to go through is just a quick introduction
Speaker 1: to the course. If you've been listening to the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab for a while, you know I teach a class
Speaker 1: at Yale called Psychology and the Good Life, an entire
Speaker 1: class devoted to teaching students how to be happier. Over
Speaker 1: a thousand students enrolled the first time I taught it.
Speaker 1: This gets back to the reason why I want to
Speaker 1: teach this class, which is that I actually want to
Speaker 1: help you. I also want you to find ways to
Speaker 1: overcome the stress, because it's not healthy. But even an
Speaker 1: Ivy League class devoted to making students happier had to
Speaker 1: include the one thing that I knew would make my
Speaker 1: students the most miserable. These are the things, by the way,
Speaker 1: that you are graded on. If we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about our grades are stupid and you shouldn't worry about them,
Speaker 1: but I have to give you one because y'all, college
Speaker 1: you one let me teach this scourse if I didn't,
Speaker 1: and I wish I didn't have to grade you, but
Speaker 1: I do. That's right. Despite everything I just told you,
Speaker 1: I still had to grade my students, and while showing
Speaker 1: them the research that grades don't work the way we think,
Speaker 1: but I still tried to give them a way out.
Speaker 1: Like ya, college one let me teaches clad. It was like,
Speaker 1: what are they greeted on? Like methic because they don't
Speaker 1: get any grades like and they're like, no, you haven't.
Speaker 1: They get on something. But you have a mechanism to
Speaker 1: thwart this because you can't say, aha, provisitudos has to
Speaker 1: de gree me on something. I'm going to take the
Speaker 1: class Credit D. Credit D is the Yale version of
Speaker 1: pass fail. You get a grade, but there are no
Speaker 1: A minuses and B plus, just credit or no credit.
Speaker 1: But I still couldn't force students to give up their grades.
Speaker 1: They had to elect to take my class Credit D
Speaker 1: of their own accord. I did a lot to try
Speaker 1: to convince them, why do I care? Because everything we're
Speaker 1: going to learn the course suggests that grades are really dune.
Speaker 1: You learn less, you're more anxious, and you're less happy
Speaker 1: because everything this course is supposed to play against what
Speaker 1: I have to provide you a degree. So just in
Speaker 1: the class credit D. Like, seriously, I know how many
Speaker 1: students actually took the class credit D. I don't know
Speaker 1: because professors at Yale aren't allowed to know. It's still
Speaker 1: considered a stigma for a student to choose to take
Speaker 1: a class without a letter grade, so they get to
Speaker 1: keep it a secret. Two hundred years after Yale, President
Speaker 1: Ezra Styles created grades. This is how deep his beliefs go.
Speaker 1: They're so entrenched, they're like a religion. I was starting
Speaker 1: to lose faith in this system. But to find a
Speaker 1: path forward, I had to talk to one of the
Speaker 1: few true heretics who are willing to raise their voices
Speaker 1: and fight. But if you're asking, should we just get
Speaker 1: rid of grades? Yes, I mean grades poison everything they touch.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Writer
Speaker 1: Alfi Khan has been America's fiercest critic of our grading
Speaker 1: obsession for decades. This could be revolutionary. You have to
Speaker 1: change the way you think about parenting because how many
Speaker 1: of you out there have offered bribes to get your
Speaker 1: kids to stop crying. His stark warnings about the dangers
Speaker 1: of external rewards got him invited on Oprah twice in
Speaker 1: one year back in the nineties. You think kids are
Speaker 1: being punished by the rewards in the long run, right,
Speaker 1: But in the short run it works. Alvie's classic book,
Speaker 1: Punished by Rewards was just reprinted to markets twenty fifth anniversary,
Speaker 1: twenty five years longer than my college students have been alive.
Speaker 1: Alfie's been railing against the creed of ezra styles for
Speaker 1: more than a quarter of a century. Grades are problematic
Speaker 1: because of a larger phenomenon of using extrinsic inducements doggy biscuits,
Speaker 1: carrots and sticks. Choose your metaphor to try to make
Speaker 1: students perform, rather than authentically engaging students in dealing with questions, problems,
Speaker 1: and projects that they find interesting and worth their curiosity.
Speaker 1: And the three effects of graves overall are one. They
Speaker 1: undermine student's interest in learning. To the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: every study that has ever paired students with and without
Speaker 1: grades in terms of their excitement about the learning has
Speaker 1: found a negative effect from grades. The second effect is
Speaker 1: that grades lead students to try to avoid challenging tasks.
Speaker 1: If they have an opportunity to do that, they will
Speaker 1: then pick the shortest book or the most familiar topic
Speaker 1: for their project. That's not because they're lazy, it's not
Speaker 1: because they're snow flakes. It's because this system has led
Speaker 1: them to respond rationally to an irrational demand. I mean,
Speaker 1: if the point is to get an A, of course,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to do that if you're doing something easier.
Speaker 1: And then we turn around and blame the students for
Speaker 1: not being motivated or when the grading system has elicited
Speaker 1: a very predictable response. And the third effect of grades
Speaker 1: is that it leads students to think in a shallower
Speaker 1: or more superficial way. They're less likely to really press
Speaker 1: to say, how do we know that's true? Or isn't
Speaker 1: that contradictory to what we did last week? They're more
Speaker 1: likely to say, do we have to know this? Is
Speaker 1: this going to be on the test? And again, the
Speaker 1: problem is not with the students, it's with the fact
Speaker 1: of giving grades. Research finds that when you get rid
Speaker 1: of things like grades and indeed all rewards, kids spontaneously
Speaker 1: pick harder things to do. So you can't improve the
Speaker 1: system by merely tweaking the way grades are done. You've
Speaker 1: got to get rid of it, which a number of
Speaker 1: schools have done, including some colleges and high schools, and
Speaker 1: even more middle schools and elementary schools. When I first
Speaker 1: met Alfie at his home in Massachusetts, I took him
Speaker 1: at present a photocopy of the Ezra style's diary entry
Speaker 1: I saw back at Yale, the first grades ever. I
Speaker 1: thought he might get a kick out of seeing it.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize how strong his reaction would be. This
Speaker 1: is like showing me the first paddle that was used
Speaker 1: to hurt a kid. This is something I look at frowning.
Speaker 1: This is not something I treat as a as a
Speaker 1: cherished relic. As an educator. That's a tough thing to hear.
Speaker 1: Alphia is placing the grades I give my students on
Speaker 1: a spectrum that includes the horrifying practice of corporal punishment
Speaker 1: beating my students. That's one thing I've learned from studying
Speaker 1: this topic for thirty years is that rewards, like punishments,
Speaker 1: are ultimately about power. If I threaten you with a punishment,
Speaker 1: you do this or I'm going to make you suffer.
Speaker 1: It's obvious I'm trying to control you. But if I say,
Speaker 1: if you jump through these hoops, here's the goodie I'll
Speaker 1: give you, it should be obvious. But it isn't always
Speaker 1: that that's just as much about control because it's treatily,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's dipped in sugar syrup. We often
Speaker 1: don't realize this is just as much about doing two
Speaker 1: rather than working with Alphie argues that we tend to
Speaker 1: see motivation as a single entity, when in reality, there
Speaker 1: are two distinct forces which drive us, one intrinsic, the
Speaker 1: other extrinsic. The first is a hero, but the second
Speaker 1: is somewhat of a villain. Intrinsic motivation in general just
Speaker 1: means you get a kick out of whatever is you're doing.
Speaker 1: It means you enjoy doing something for its own sake,
Speaker 1: and that can be reading a book, solving a problem,
Speaker 1: writing code, painting a picture, helping someone who needs to
Speaker 1: help anything. Extrinsic motivation means you do something that's for
Speaker 1: something extrinsic to or outside of the task itself, such
Speaker 1: as getting a reward, and that reward could be money,
Speaker 1: a grade, a certificate. It could be praise, good job
Speaker 1: that's just a verbal doggy biscuit, or fear of punishment,
Speaker 1: which is another kind of extrinsic motivation. So the question
Speaker 1: I mean because you could see someone who really wanted
Speaker 1: to motivate kids thinking, well, if they are already interested
Speaker 1: in learning, why don't I add an additional reward on
Speaker 1: top of that. You know, like two rewards should be
Speaker 1: better than one, right, right. The problem is that, first
Speaker 1: of all, you can't motivate someone other than yourself, and
Speaker 1: the more you try, the more you paradoxically undermine the
Speaker 1: very thing you're trying to promote. So, for example, about
Speaker 1: a half dozen studies have found that children who are
Speaker 1: rewarded or praised are less generous than their peers. When
Speaker 1: you say, good job, I really like how you shared
Speaker 1: your brownie with Diane. You're so generous. Good for you.
Speaker 1: That kid just became a little more selfish because you
Speaker 1: taught her that Diane's feelings are irrelevant. What matters is
Speaker 1: what you'll get from helping, in this case, a patronizing
Speaker 1: pat on the head. If you wanted to destroy a
Speaker 1: child's interest in reading, you should give the kid a prize.
Speaker 1: For reading a book A that's manipulative, and people don't
Speaker 1: like to be manipulated. B It intrinsically devalues the thing
Speaker 1: for which you got the reward. Now the kid figures
Speaker 1: while reading must suck. If it's something they have to
Speaker 1: bribe me to do, you have reframed it in the
Speaker 1: person's head. That's why it's so remarkable to watch little
Speaker 1: kids who have not yet been graded and rated and
Speaker 1: ranked and so on, following their interests. You're looking at
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation in its undiluted form, where little kids can't
Speaker 1: wait to figure out how to make sense of those
Speaker 1: squiggles on the restaurant menu. They want to know, as
Speaker 1: my daughter asked, are their bones in my tummy? They
Speaker 1: keep asking us until we give them doggy biscuits for
Speaker 1: successful answering the question, and then they start asking a
Speaker 1: different question, which is do we have to know this?
Speaker 1: And we're continuing to treat our children, our students, our employees,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even ourselves in effect like lab animals. It's
Speaker 1: not just dehumanieing. The research shows it's counterproductive, not merely ineffective.
Speaker 1: The students I teach at Yale are far removed from
Speaker 1: the innocent children. Alfie describes, after years of a's and b's,
Speaker 1: they have internalized the pursuit of grades as the prime
Speaker 1: motivation for paying attention in class. I worry the idea
Speaker 1: that they should learn because it brings them pleasure and
Speaker 1: stimulation is long forgotten. They are way down a path
Speaker 1: leading them away from their own happiness. The question is
Speaker 1: not how much achievement do they have under their belts,
Speaker 1: what's happened to their souls? It's what's happened to the
Speaker 1: desire to figure stuff out that all human beings start with.
Speaker 1: Many of them are joyless. So we're in this situation
Speaker 1: where most educational systems are using grades. What's the solution.
Speaker 1: If you're an individual teacher, you do what you can
Speaker 1: in the long run by organizing and mobilizing your peers
Speaker 1: to change the structure, rather than treating grades as a
Speaker 1: fact of nature, like the weather that's just always going
Speaker 1: to be with us and we have to cope with it.
Speaker 1: Is not it's a political decision. And there are plenty
Speaker 1: of pilot projects and schools showing that you not only
Speaker 1: can do without grades, but that students do much better
Speaker 1: without them. As I talked to Alphie. More and more,
Speaker 1: I started to believe it is possible to go back
Speaker 1: to a world without grades, to what education was like
Speaker 1: before Ezra Style started this new creed. Alphie understands that
Speaker 1: it's a long road ahead, but he believes the revolution
Speaker 1: is worth it. He even thinks are fundamental values goals
Speaker 1: like equality and intrinsic worth depend on it. I think
Speaker 1: your primary goal should be to help everyone to succeed.
Speaker 1: If you had to use grades, then you would want
Speaker 1: everyone to get aids. The idea that there is a
Speaker 1: little normal distribution. A bell curve sits in the head
Speaker 1: of a lot of instructors, even when they're not creating
Speaker 1: on a curve. Greating on a curve is immoral. There's
Speaker 1: no other word for it. To say that, no matter
Speaker 1: how well everyone does, some of you cannot get the
Speaker 1: best grade. Suggest that it's a war of all against all.
Speaker 1: The more we tend to see life in adversarial terms,
Speaker 1: where I can succeed only if you fail, the more
Speaker 1: all of us are dragged down to failure. Even the
Speaker 1: winners ultimately lose. So what should you take away from
Speaker 1: this episode? First, the external rewards aren't all They're cracked
Speaker 1: up to be Adding in a grade or a fitbit
Speaker 1: buzz might change your performance in the short term, but
Speaker 1: it'll cost you dearly. Pursuing success on those terms can
Speaker 1: rob you of the joy you may experience in your studies, hobbies,
Speaker 1: or even career, and that means we need to find
Speaker 1: ways to return to our internal rewards. Run because you
Speaker 1: enjoy the sensation, not to beat some arbitrary number on
Speaker 1: an app, take a class to satisfy your intellectual curiosity,
Speaker 1: not to get on the honor roll and make a
Speaker 1: podcast us for the fun of it, not to tap
Speaker 1: the charts. As people and as a society, we need
Speaker 1: to find ways to reduce these systems of external rewards
Speaker 1: that we've surrounded ourselves with. It's the only way to
Speaker 1: return to our childlike joy of learning just for learning sake,
Speaker 1: just because it's fun, just because we dig it. And
Speaker 1: if you want a completely grade free way to learn
Speaker 1: about the other lives of your mind, then I really
Speaker 1: hope you'll come back for the next season of The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show
Speaker 1: is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, checking by Joseph Friedman, and our original music
Speaker 1: was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Mia LaBelle,
Speaker 1: Carly mcgliori, Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and me Doctor Laurie Sanders