Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Bosses or business owners are like, well, let's because gen
Speaker 2: Z's too sensitive these days now, Like if you were eighteen,
Speaker 2: you would not want to be talked down to either.
Speaker 2: And I don't think young people are crazy for paying
Speaker 2: attention to the subtle ways in which they're being disrespected
Speaker 2: by authority figures.
Speaker 1: Psychology professor David Yaeger is an expert in adolescent development.
Speaker 1: He says, our cultural narrative about young people and they're
Speaker 1: developing brains is wrong, and he proposes a new framework.
Speaker 2: You can think of the adolescent brain as like this
Speaker 2: social R and D engine of our culture. Something that
Speaker 2: looks like risky and idiotic to us is maybe their
Speaker 2: way of creatively trying to solve the problem.
Speaker 1: On today's show, what the science actually says about the
Speaker 1: young mind and how we can help young people thrive.
Speaker 1: I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. David Yeager teaches
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas at Austin. His latest book
Speaker 1: is called Ten to twenty five The Science of Motivating
Speaker 1: Young People. These days, there are so many tropes circulating
Speaker 1: about young people. I wanted to talk to a scientist
Speaker 1: so we can learn the facts and together form the
Speaker 1: right cultural narrative. It turns out that we have a
Speaker 1: lot of misconceptions. It's true that young people's brains are underdeveloped,
Speaker 1: but that's not the only factor behind their decision making.
Speaker 1: It's also because they have different goals than adults. David
Speaker 1: argues that if we can better understand these goals, we
Speaker 1: can help bridge the gap between adults and adolescents. And so,
Speaker 1: if you've ever wondered how to better support the young
Speaker 1: people in your life, or if you're a young person
Speaker 1: wondering why on earth older people just can't seem to
Speaker 1: understand you, David has answers for you today. Because David
Speaker 1: is such an advocate for young people, I started our
Speaker 1: conversation by asking what his experience was like in school
Speaker 1: when he was a little kid.
Speaker 2: I mostly remember feeling like I was about to be
Speaker 2: in trouble because I was like super energetic and I
Speaker 2: was doing a million things. And in school, they want
Speaker 2: you to sit in a desk and turn in worksheets
Speaker 2: on time, and I wasn't that interested in.
Speaker 3: Turning things on time.
Speaker 2: And I was more interested in, I don't know, asking questions,
Speaker 2: but also trying to make people laugh in the class,
Speaker 2: and so it was fun for other kids in the class,
Speaker 2: but not that fun for the teachers.
Speaker 1: I wonder whether your experience as a kid did inform
Speaker 1: the work you ultimately explored as a psychologist, which was
Speaker 1: your focus on young people ages ten to twenty five, Like,
Speaker 1: is there a connection between your personal experience and ultimately
Speaker 1: being interested in this age group?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I would say that the the two weeks of
Speaker 2: the year I liked the most were my two weeks
Speaker 2: at summer camp. And it was mainly because finally adults
Speaker 2: liked me and thought I brought something to the table
Speaker 2: and I wanted to like figure out what they what
Speaker 2: did they do, like how did they treat me? And
Speaker 2: it was usually by like inspiring me and expecting me
Speaker 2: to do something that was harder than I thought I
Speaker 2: could do. And a camp, it's mundane stuff like jumping
Speaker 2: off the top of a telephone pole and grabbing rings,
Speaker 2: you know, two stories up. So you're facing your fears
Speaker 2: and you are think you're going to die, but there's
Speaker 2: a supportive adult below you and they're cheering you on,
Speaker 2: but you're the one who has to jump. The adult
Speaker 2: does not jump for you. Like that's also a metaphor
Speaker 2: for a lot of life that you have to climb
Speaker 2: up to something like metaphorically scary and jump on your own.
Speaker 2: But you've got adults around there, and if you do it,
Speaker 2: they're stoked for you. They're like that kicked ass. That's
Speaker 2: so awesome. And I guess if you wanted to bottle
Speaker 2: something about my program of research, it's like, how do
Speaker 2: we make more adults be that kind of person where again,
Speaker 2: you're not doing it for the kid. The kid has
Speaker 2: to jump, but you're supportive enough that they feel enough
Speaker 2: safety to take a risk that's beyond what they thought
Speaker 2: they could do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, we were all
Speaker 1: kids once and yet somehow when we become adults, we
Speaker 1: just feel this immediate disconnect with young people. Like what
Speaker 1: do you think is is it just skillful amnesia? Why
Speaker 1: is that we're forgetting as adults. We always think when
Speaker 1: we're growing up, I'll never be like my parents as
Speaker 1: a teenager, like I'll never talk to my teenage kid
Speaker 1: and the way my parents are talking to me. And
Speaker 1: then we all do the same thing, right.
Speaker 3: I think it's a.
Speaker 2: Really profound question, and I don't think we have an open,
Speaker 2: shut answer, but I think about it a lot. One
Speaker 2: hypothesis is that our cultural narrative about young people like
Speaker 2: selectively influences our memory of us when we were young,
Speaker 2: and our cultural narrative is you do dumb stuff that
Speaker 2: you're later embarrassed by that.
Speaker 3: Was, you know, not wise.
Speaker 2: So if you talk to someone about their college years
Speaker 2: and now they're thirty and forty, they're like, well, we
Speaker 2: would to this party and got super drunk, or we
Speaker 2: you know, when on this crazy road trip and that
Speaker 2: was irresponsible, or you know, people tell stories about how
Speaker 2: you're responsible they were in a given age group, as
Speaker 2: though the college years, for example, are years where you're
Speaker 2: an idiot, And then we can't access that feeling of
Speaker 2: like indignation when you're mistreated, or humiliation if you've like
Speaker 2: bombed in front of people whose opinions you care about,
Speaker 2: or the thrill of pride for impressing someone who you
Speaker 2: cared about, and we're stuck in this older view of
Speaker 2: we were idiots when we were young.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talked about this cultural narrative that we have
Speaker 1: around young people. The counter to that is the biological narrative. Right,
Speaker 1: we have a pretty pervasive misconception about young people's brains.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if you can tell me a bit
Speaker 1: more about that.
Speaker 2: Let me just come into this anecdotally. So my wife
Speaker 2: is a pediatric nurse and at some point she moved
Speaker 2: over to the neuphrology clinic and it's wonderful clinic. They're
Speaker 2: the best at kidney transplants for kids. And I talked
Speaker 2: to the one of the doctors and he's like, look,
Speaker 2: these kids are not taking their meds, and it's a
Speaker 2: problem because if you don't take the anti rejection matter
Speaker 2: more medicines like that, then your body rejects the kidney
Speaker 2: in like two days. And so it's a huge problem
Speaker 2: because then you go on dialysis and no one wants that,
Speaker 2: and it's miserable. But also you've wasted a kidney and
Speaker 2: it's so rare and hard to get a kidney, and
Speaker 2: it's a huge issue. And the doctor I talked to,
Speaker 2: who was a wonderful person, said, I cannot fathom what
Speaker 2: they're thinking. It's like they just don't have a prefernal cortex.
Speaker 2: They just cannot think about the consequences of their actions.
Speaker 2: We can't trust them or rely on them. And then
Speaker 2: he concludes by saying, asking a teenager to remember to
Speaker 2: take their medicine when they lack a prefernal cortex is
Speaker 2: like asking someone with no biceps or triceps to do
Speaker 2: push ups.
Speaker 3: And I fully see where this.
Speaker 2: Is coming from. And he had seen a talk on
Speaker 2: the latest supposed neuroscience of adolescence and it's making its
Speaker 2: way out there and lots of important settings where the
Speaker 2: punchline is teenagers lack of prefernal cortex and therefore we
Speaker 2: can't trust them to do anything. I call that the
Speaker 2: neurobiological incompetence model. That the main contribution of it is,
Speaker 2: to say, teenagers' brains because of a combination of the
Speaker 2: explosion of hormones combined with under development of the prefrontal regions,
Speaker 2: leads to this all gas, no breaks mentality that they're
Speaker 2: just impulsively following whatever desire they want and not thinking
Speaker 2: about the future. And that idea is out there now
Speaker 2: and it's kind of been codified in neuroscience and there's
Speaker 2: a reason why they did that, and the reason was
Speaker 2: around criminal justice. Teenagers who committed serious crimes like violent crimes,
Speaker 2: were being sentenced to life without parole or the death penalty,
Speaker 2: because the argument went, if they were so evil that
Speaker 2: they could commit these heinous crimes even while fourteen fifteen sixteen,
Speaker 2: then they would only get worse, or they certainly wouldn't
Speaker 2: get better, so better to not have them in our society.
Speaker 2: These are like the bad apples. Let's get rid of them.
Speaker 2: And what the neuroscientists argued is that actually you're still changing.
Speaker 2: We don't know that you're stuck being an evil, heinous
Speaker 2: monster for life at fourteen fifteen sixteen because you're highly
Speaker 2: sensitive to impulses because your brain is incompetent, basically, and
Speaker 2: they successfully argue to the Supreme Court in a very
Speaker 2: important way that at huge justice consequences and I would
Speaker 2: no way diminish the contribution.
Speaker 3: Of that work.
Speaker 2: But very soon that argument is used to say, well,
Speaker 2: teenagers shouldn't have control over their sex lives or their contraception,
Speaker 2: or they shouldn't be asked, you know, to think about
Speaker 2: politics or to lobby against the gun policies. You're just
Speaker 2: an idiotic teenager who doesn't understand the future and what
Speaker 2: I'd want to argue is that if we start from
Speaker 2: that incompetence model, then so many other problematic ways of
Speaker 2: interacting with young people make sense to us, and we
Speaker 2: do them almost by default. For instance, if we view
Speaker 2: young people as a problem that's about to get out
Speaker 2: of control, then we need to use very strong punishments
Speaker 2: or rewards to control their behavior and kind of save
Speaker 2: them from themselves. And also if we view them as
Speaker 2: incompetent and therefore incapable of doing anything impressive, then we
Speaker 2: shouldn't ask them to do anything. We need to protect them,
Speaker 2: in fact, from the stresses of the world until their
Speaker 2: brains are fully cooked. And I think when adults behave
Speaker 2: in those ways, though young people rebel, They field looked
Speaker 2: down on. They feel like I felt as a kid.
Speaker 2: And I want to argue that the incompetence model is
Speaker 2: not fixed reality, that the science is a little more complicated,
Speaker 2: and that there's a different way to look at it.
Speaker 2: And if you look at it that different way, then
Speaker 2: a different set of behaviors for the adults make sense.
Speaker 2: And those behaviors I think can lead us to engage
Speaker 2: young people more effectively.
Speaker 1: And what is that different way so help us update
Speaker 1: our mental models like, how should we think about the
Speaker 1: young adult brain?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the brain is continuing to develop in many
Speaker 2: cases until the mid to late twenties. So Audrona Galvaan
Speaker 2: who's at UCLA, is a well known neuroscientist, and she
Speaker 2: describes the changes as basically sensitizing the brain to social
Speaker 2: experiences and emotions like shame, pride, humiliation, earning, prestige, things
Speaker 2: like that, and Aedrona's catchphrases like the prefrontal region is
Speaker 2: for goal directed behavior, and teenagers are great at goal
Speaker 2: directed behavior, it's just not the goals that adults often
Speaker 2: want them to be doing. So adults want them to
Speaker 2: factor endless worksheets of trino meals and stead quietly in
Speaker 2: their desks, right, But kids are like, I want to
Speaker 2: look awesome. Yeah, And so the adults are saying, you're
Speaker 2: not thinking about the future in your income, but it's
Speaker 2: because they're saying factor trino meals now, so that next
Speaker 2: year you can get into geometry, and eventually you'll get
Speaker 2: into calculus, so you could get into a good college,
Speaker 2: and then you can get a good job so that
Speaker 2: by your thirties you can barely afford a mortgage and
Speaker 2: it's like, that's not a compelling argument for a lot
Speaker 2: of young people. But it doesn't mean that they're incapable
Speaker 2: of thinking about the future or planning ahead. They're great
Speaker 2: at planning ahead. For instance, just look at any kid
Speaker 2: who wants to sneak out of the house to go
Speaker 2: to a party.
Speaker 3: They're like, who do I have to lie to?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Who do I like?
Speaker 2: What? They're laying traps weeks in advance. They've got like
Speaker 2: a map of the sewers, like they're they thought.
Speaker 1: Their siblings into it. They're bartering like I'll keep your
Speaker 1: secret if you keep my secret.
Speaker 3: It's elaborate.
Speaker 2: And but that's the negative example or just the po
Speaker 2: this summer was the Olympics and how many of our
Speaker 2: heroes were like fifteen year olds that clearly displayed tons
Speaker 2: of self control and strategic behavior over time in order
Speaker 2: to develop valued skills that would be useful in the future.
Speaker 2: So once you realize what Audrina and the rest of
Speaker 2: the Center on the Developing Adolescent has been arguing, then
Speaker 2: you realize the real task is to figure out what
Speaker 2: do they want to direct their attention to? What are
Speaker 2: those sets of goals that will capture their attention. It's
Speaker 2: the experiences of status and respect. But it's not just
Speaker 2: like frivolous stuff. It's the deep, meaningful sense that you
Speaker 2: can make a contribution and that other people who are
Speaker 2: judging you and who you care, that they're judging you,
Speaker 2: that they think you have value. That's what status and
Speaker 2: respect is. And you don't just get that by virtue
Speaker 2: of the days going by. It's something you have to
Speaker 2: earn in front of others, and so often that means
Speaker 2: doing something that's a little bold and a little risky
Speaker 2: and a little hard.
Speaker 1: So given this, David, take me back to that scenario
Speaker 1: involving the teenagers with kidney transplants who weren't taking their medications.
Speaker 1: What were their doctors getting wrong?
Speaker 2: There are two social things that they've generally failed to consider.
Speaker 3: I learned.
Speaker 2: One is why the young person would not want to
Speaker 2: take their meds. And the adults think, if only we
Speaker 2: explain the consequences of your behavior more clearly, then you
Speaker 2: would come around. Adults are almost like if an American
Speaker 2: doesn't speak a foreign language, goes overseas and then they
Speaker 2: can't talk to someone in like Italian or whatever, and
Speaker 2: then they just yell English louder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at that.
Speaker 1: Person slower, as though that will make a difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like that's that's most doctors, nurses, parents approach to
Speaker 2: teenagers when they don't their medical advice. And that is
Speaker 2: a social experience because it is disrespectful. You're talking down
Speaker 2: to them. It humiliating for the young person, and that
Speaker 2: that means they're not being afforded respect as an adult
Speaker 2: like person who's contributing. The second thing, though, is that
Speaker 2: I heard this from a lot of kids. Before you
Speaker 2: have your kidney, you feel very different and weird because
Speaker 2: you have to go to dialysis all the time, and
Speaker 2: so you're like, I mean it's like biblical, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like you're out in the desert alone, you know,
Speaker 2: a day of the week, two days out of the
Speaker 2: week where you're just ostracized from your community. And once
Speaker 2: they get the kidney, they don't have to do that anymore,
Speaker 2: and so they're like making up for lost time of
Speaker 2: feeling like a normal person around their friends. And so
Speaker 2: if they go like to the beach and bring enough
Speaker 2: meds for one day, but all the other friends are like,
Speaker 2: we're going to stay at extra night and say some
Speaker 2: kids are like Okay, I'm not driving back to Oakland
Speaker 2: to go get my other dose. These are like real
Speaker 2: stories from Stanford patients, and.
Speaker 3: Like you get it.
Speaker 2: I mean like they have to choose between listening to
Speaker 2: the grown ups who talked down to them and yelled
Speaker 2: at them and treated them like a child and think
Speaker 2: that they have no proofernal cortex, or hang out with
Speaker 2: the cool people who are treating them like a normal
Speaker 2: kid for the first time in their lives. Or a
Speaker 2: related thing is especially if kids have steroids that they
Speaker 2: have to take. The pills are huge, so the kids
Speaker 2: would have like two fistfuls of steroid pills bulging in
Speaker 2: their pockets, and you're at a party with your friends,
Speaker 2: and if you take those, first of all that you
Speaker 2: can't drink, you also get bad breath, you get like
Speaker 2: a rectile problems. So like you already feel weird that
Speaker 2: you have two pocketfuls of steroid pills, but then you're
Speaker 2: basically like taking away a lot of stuff you want
Speaker 2: to do at a party, which is like talk closely
Speaker 2: to someone with the opposite sex and make out and
Speaker 2: all these other things. And so again you have to
Speaker 2: choose between listening to grown ups. But with social death
Speaker 2: or threat of physical death, but social life. And so
Speaker 2: you can think of the adolescent brain as like this
Speaker 2: social R and D engine of our culture. Something that
Speaker 2: looks like risky and idiotic to us is maybe their
Speaker 2: way of creatively trying to solve the problem of having
Speaker 2: more of the thing that brings you social success and
Speaker 2: fewer of the things that bring you social failure. But
Speaker 2: because every generation has its own microculture of what counts
Speaker 2: for status, you don't want a brain that decides too
Speaker 2: early to only do one kind of behavior to gain status.
Speaker 2: Because in our culture, things are changing so fast, right, professionally,
Speaker 2: socially in terms of big ideas or crises that we're facing.
Speaker 2: So it's not underdeveloped, it's that it's still adapting to
Speaker 2: the complex and ambiguous and ever changing environment that we're in.
Speaker 1: That it is underdeveloped, right some dimensions.
Speaker 2: You're right, There are some areas in which just basic,
Speaker 2: exactly basic decision making stuff is less developed.
Speaker 1: The reason, sorry, the reason I'm pushing on this is
Speaker 1: I don't want listeners to leave this conversation thinking, Ah,
Speaker 1: their prefunal courteses are basically the same as ours in
Speaker 1: terms of what they're capable of and so we can
Speaker 1: entirely ascribe differences to what their goals are, because I
Speaker 1: think that would almost create unfairly high standards for the
Speaker 1: young adult brain.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The bad version of that is young people are as
Speaker 2: capable of great decision making as every adult, and so
Speaker 2: if they make a bad decision, it's because they didn't
Speaker 2: want to and therefore they are bad people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or they don't care.
Speaker 1: Or they had, you know, goals that we would see
Speaker 1: deemed superficial or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, You're absolutely right that the meta narrative of they're
Speaker 2: just as smart as every other adult and therefore they're
Speaker 2: to blame if they make a dumb decision is problematic
Speaker 2: because then we would end up condemning lots of kids,
Speaker 2: which is what we're trying to avoid.
Speaker 1: You know, the premise of your book, David, is if
Speaker 1: we can better empathize with what's going on in the
Speaker 1: young mind, then we can also understand how to better
Speaker 1: engage with that young mind, right in ways that just
Speaker 1: lead to better outcomes. Right, This is not just a
Speaker 1: principled stance. This is about trying to just get better
Speaker 1: outcomes for all parties involved.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, make your life easier, that's totally fine with me.
Speaker 1: Fewer fights with your kid actually get to do their homework. Whatever,
Speaker 1: the thing is, right, So tell me about what you
Speaker 1: consider to be a good way and a bad way
Speaker 1: to deliver feedback to a kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's We wanted to do a study where
Speaker 2: in one condition, you talk to a young adult in
Speaker 2: a way that's disrespectful, and in another condition, talk to
Speaker 2: them in a way that's respectful, and see if their
Speaker 2: rates of taking their medicine are higher in the respectful group.
Speaker 2: And we pick medicine apart because of the adherence issues
Speaker 2: I described, but also because I think it's a good
Speaker 2: stand in for a lot of other things where adult,
Speaker 2: you know, asking you to do your homework is more
Speaker 2: or less like saying take your medicine. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: you can't do a study with actual kidney transplant patients,
Speaker 2: and so we had to make up a medicine that's
Speaker 2: plausibly useful but not actually harmful if you don't take it,
Speaker 2: but needs to be inconvenient and unpleasant. And so the
Speaker 2: medicine we use in our study was a spoonful of vegemite,
Speaker 2: which is the Australian supplement. It's like if you brewed
Speaker 2: a barrel of beer and there was a bunch of
Speaker 2: yeast at the bottom and then you put that on toast.
Speaker 3: So that's vegemite.
Speaker 1: And just to clarify, is the vegemite being framed as
Speaker 1: something that is healthy, like it's going to help their nutrition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't tell what was VEGEMI.
Speaker 2: We were like, this is a new nutritional supplement that
Speaker 2: could be healthy for you, but also as a part
Speaker 2: of an experiment, we're studying it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what was respectful versus non respectful language?
Speaker 2: So people try the vegemite, they realized the don't like it,
Speaker 2: and then and then they watch a video and in
Speaker 2: the disrespectful condition, which we wrote with real doctors, we're like,
Speaker 2: what do you guys say to people? And it's things
Speaker 2: like I'm a doctor, so I know what's good for you,
Speaker 2: and if you want to do the right thing, then
Speaker 2: you'll listen to me and you'll take this medicine. They'd
Speaker 2: say things like it has an unpleasant taste, try to
Speaker 2: ignore that. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. In general,
Speaker 2: it diminishes the young person, treats them as though they
Speaker 2: don't have agency, Like it doesn't like respect their thinking
Speaker 2: or decision making, and then in the respectful condition, we
Speaker 2: tell them I think you're gonna understand the real reason
Speaker 2: why we want you to do this. Let me explain
Speaker 2: it to you. So they explain the real rationale. We
Speaker 2: say things like it's got an unpleasant taste. Try to
Speaker 2: think of that as you doing your part to help
Speaker 2: others and yourself for the future can help science, and
Speaker 2: then once we have science, then science will help the world.
Speaker 2: So kind of framing the unpleasantness as a sign of
Speaker 2: respect and contribution. And then we grant agencies so like,
Speaker 2: I hope you might consider this rather than you should
Speaker 2: do this, and we say, you know, thanks for considering it.
Speaker 2: Stuff like that, And we find pretty important differences in
Speaker 2: the rates at which young people in our experiment took
Speaker 2: the vega might if they were asked respectfully, depending on
Speaker 2: the analysis, up to twice as likely. Often people think
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how I ask a young person, It
Speaker 2: just matters that I asked them. And if I asked
Speaker 2: you in whatever way I considered was good and they
Speaker 2: didn't do what I said, then they're rere calcil trant,
Speaker 2: they're rebellious, they're short sighted, they're a problem. But the
Speaker 2: view I'm trying to argue is that young people, when
Speaker 2: their status is in question, they're they're reading between the lines.
Speaker 2: They're not just listening to what said, They're listening to
Speaker 2: the unsaid parts. And that makes a big difference in
Speaker 2: terms of whether they presume that the adults or the
Speaker 2: mentor has their best interests at heart. And because so
Speaker 2: many young people are treated poorly and they're treated as
Speaker 2: though they're incompetent, then their default presumption will be that
Speaker 2: this is yet another adult telling me what to do,
Speaker 2: and you gonna yell at me and blame.
Speaker 3: Me if I don't do it.
Speaker 2: And so you have to be extra transparent, like clearer
Speaker 2: than you think you need to be, which often I
Speaker 2: say that, and then bosses or you know, business owners
Speaker 2: are like, well, let's because gen Z's too sensitive these days,
Speaker 2: And I think no, Like, if you were eighteen, you
Speaker 2: would not want to be talked down to either, and
Speaker 2: you would have complained if people were disrespectful to you.
Speaker 2: And I don't think young people are crazy for paying
Speaker 2: attention to the subtle ways in which they're being disrespected
Speaker 2: by authority.
Speaker 3: Figures.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans, the more respectful feedback approach that you just
Speaker 1: articulated as part of what you call a mentor mindset.
Speaker 1: Talk to me a bit more about the tenants of
Speaker 1: this mindset. So you alluded to transparency, what are other
Speaker 1: core features?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I write about this concept of a mentor mindset,
Speaker 2: which I define simply as someone having very high standards
Speaker 2: slash expectations, but also being supportive enough so that the
Speaker 2: young person can meet those like legitimately high expectations. So
Speaker 2: you kind of first need to have this belief that
Speaker 2: young people could be properly motivated under the right conditions,
Speaker 2: with the right environmental supports.
Speaker 3: And if you believe that, then it's like, Okay, I can.
Speaker 2: Push them and challenge them, but I need to figure
Speaker 2: out the way to support them so that they're open
Speaker 2: to that challenge and can succeed through it. So in
Speaker 2: the book, I found examples of mentor mindset leaders and
Speaker 2: a bunch of different disciplines coaching, management, teaching, etc. And
Speaker 2: there's a handful of practices that they all do. So
Speaker 2: one is questioning and I was struck by this, like
Speaker 2: you'd think that a great tutor, for example, would just
Speaker 2: be awesome at explaining physics, that they have the best
Speaker 2: metaphor and the right way of clarifying and misunderstanding, and
Speaker 2: they're just a very good explainer. But Mark Lepper is
Speaker 2: the Stanford Social Psychologists spent years watching expert tutors and
Speaker 2: found that ninety percent or more of what they say.
Speaker 3: Is a question.
Speaker 2: It's not an explanation. So a student would try a
Speaker 2: problem and the tutor, and the tutor would be like.
Speaker 3: Huh, is that right?
Speaker 2: Like they wouldn't say it's wrong, and they wouldn't explain it.
Speaker 2: They would go say the obvious linguistic implication is not right,
Speaker 2: and the student knows that, but the tutors don't say that.
Speaker 2: But it invites the student to then think about why
Speaker 2: it might be wrong. And it's because the tutor wants
Speaker 2: the student to own the thinking after the tutoring session.
Speaker 2: You don't just want the one hour where the tutor
Speaker 2: and because then the only problem set the student can
Speaker 2: do is the ones they did in that one hour.
Speaker 2: Which you really want is the student to be able
Speaker 2: to go out and do all their problem sets using
Speaker 2: critical thinking and open ended and self interrogation, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So in general, mentor mindset exemplars do a version of
Speaker 2: that kind of questioning, and it's everything from parents to
Speaker 2: get their kids to stop fighting with each other to
Speaker 2: how Chip England, the NBA's best shooting coach, would get
Speaker 2: Kawhi Leonard or Tony Parker to fix their shot and
Speaker 2: go on to win championships. Now, questioning is not a
Speaker 2: universal good in the sense that not all questions are
Speaker 2: created equal. So asking a young person what were you thinking.
Speaker 1: He has so stupid probably not a great question because
Speaker 1: the implications.
Speaker 3: They weren't thinking. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But what the linguists have taught us is that there's
Speaker 2: a kind of question that they call authentic questions with uptake,
Speaker 2: and authentic just means that I'm actually curious what the
Speaker 2: answer is. So if I ask you why you solve
Speaker 2: the physics problem this way, I'm actually kind of curious
Speaker 2: where your mistake came from.
Speaker 3: And then uptake is.
Speaker 2: That your follow up questions involve information you just got
Speaker 2: from them, And that's respectful because it means like it
Speaker 2: actually it mattered to me that you shared your true opinions.
Speaker 2: So the other big thing that all the mental mindset
Speaker 2: leaders did in the NBA shooting coach Chip England. This
Speaker 2: is the first thing he told me was he said, David,
Speaker 2: you have to sell your vision. That general idea is
Speaker 2: something we've used a lot in our experiments with adolescence. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, in a classic set of studies, we took
Speaker 2: ninth graders who were in like an algebra class, and
Speaker 2: we didn't say, if you learn algebra, then you can
Speaker 2: get good grades. You get good grades, you get good college,
Speaker 2: good college, good job. We instead said, can you tell
Speaker 2: us about problems with the world, things that you find
Speaker 2: infuriating or unfair or unjust, And turns out kids are
Speaker 2: great at answering that question. Adults are often surprised with
Speaker 2: the study that kids write anything, but over ninety percent
Speaker 2: of kids write honest answers on a survey about an
Speaker 2: injustice in the world, and they're talking about political instability,
Speaker 2: economic insecurity, wars like the Senate, like it's really you know,
Speaker 2: they're frustrated by a bunch of stuff. And then we say,
Speaker 2: all right, well, how could a stronger brain help you
Speaker 2: do something about these issues? And kids can answer that,
Speaker 2: but they've never been asked that question. For the most part,
Speaker 2: they come up with things like, oh, well, if I
Speaker 2: study in English, then I can understand logic. I understand logic,
Speaker 2: then I can make arguments. If I can make arguments,
Speaker 2: then I can change policies stuff like that. And it
Speaker 2: kind of doesn't matter how accurate they are in coming
Speaker 2: up with that. It just matters that they convince themselves
Speaker 2: that a stronger brain could help them make a difference.
Speaker 2: And then in some experiments we give them like boring math.
Speaker 2: This is a task developed by Angela Duckworth and Sydney
Speaker 2: Demelo and others, And so they have a choice. They
Speaker 2: could either do math or they could goof off on
Speaker 2: the internet like play tetrists or watch YouTube videos.
Speaker 3: And we're secretly tracking what they're doing on the back end.
Speaker 2: And what we find is that if we made an
Speaker 2: argument it's pure self interest. We don't see a big
Speaker 2: benefit of thinking about a reason for learning. But if
Speaker 2: it's like stronger brain helps you change the world, then
Speaker 2: we see kids doing more of the kind of tedious
Speaker 2: math and goofing off less on the internet. And the
Speaker 2: way we interpret that is that they can visual argument
Speaker 2: is do you delay gratification now to matter in some
Speaker 2: ambiguous distant future. But I think of it like, if
Speaker 2: you were gonna volunteer to make lunch bags for the homeless,
Speaker 2: you'd feel like a good person while you're packing the lunch,
Speaker 2: But a homeless person hasn't eaten that sandwich yet, Like
Speaker 2: the impact on the person hasn't happened. But you know
Speaker 2: that your contributions right now are a part of something meaningful.
Speaker 2: This beyond the self transcendent purpose I think, becomes a
Speaker 2: powerful tool for promoting engagement and learning, but we hardly
Speaker 2: ever tap into it. I think because we think young
Speaker 2: people just are fundamentally incapable of making contributions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or just inherently selfish, like that they don't care
Speaker 1: about these pro social outcomes when they do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what does.
Speaker 1: This look like in practice? So imagine I'm a teacher.
Speaker 1: What are the traits that I must exhibit in order
Speaker 1: to really embrace the mentor mindset?
Speaker 2: I'll tell them extreme example, which I'm not saying everyone
Speaker 2: needs to do this, just want to be clear, But
Speaker 2: for two years I sat in the back of Uri
Speaker 2: Triesman's calculus class. So Uri Triesman won the MacArthur for
Speaker 2: being the greatest calculus professor in America in the early nineties.
Speaker 2: When he won the MacArthur. He had been running these
Speaker 2: calculus support programs at Berkeley for fifteen twenty years, and
Speaker 2: he's very famous as a reformer. But no psychologists had
Speaker 2: really watched what he did. And so after I got tenure,
Speaker 2: I spent two years retaking freshman calculus at the University
Speaker 2: of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 2: The first day of class, he says, this class will
Speaker 2: be so hard that some of you will cry and
Speaker 2: wonder why you're here. In fact, everyone here will have
Speaker 2: such a hard time that they will question themselves. It's
Speaker 2: not a question of whether that will happen, it's when
Speaker 2: it will happen. Now, that sounds like someone who's trying
Speaker 2: to get everyone to drop the class, right, Yeah, like
Speaker 2: a readout class.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm not even in the class anymore.
Speaker 1: I've run out. David, this is the first thing he said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, and he's like, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, at the time, he's like a seventy one year
Speaker 2: old Jewish guy from the Bronx, And this is a
Speaker 2: very diverse group of students coming from you know, border
Speaker 2: areas of Texas and like good and bad high school,
Speaker 2: all this stuff. It's the first thing he says. But
Speaker 2: then he says, and more of you will get a's
Speaker 2: in this class than any other calculus class at the university,
Speaker 2: and in fact, more of you will go on to
Speaker 2: careers in professional mathematics and do masters in PhDs in
Speaker 2: quantitative fields than any other calculus class in the entire
Speaker 2: ut system. And then he'll say things like you know,
Speaker 2: after your first all nighter, And then the students are like,
Speaker 2: wait a second, first, like there's gonna be multiple all
Speaker 2: nighters in this class. And what he actually does is
Speaker 2: the first problem set. It's like he gives out on
Speaker 2: the second day of class. It's like proving theorems that
Speaker 2: other in other classes you memorize or that you don't
Speaker 2: even touch, because he's teaching them how to do like
Speaker 2: real analysis on the first day of calculus, and students
Speaker 2: is like, there's five problems, so they think they can
Speaker 2: start at the last second. So then no one even
Speaker 2: opens the assignment till like midnight. And then he's told
Speaker 2: them I'll be available for office hours as long as
Speaker 2: you need me, so all night, and so he and
Speaker 2: his tas are in the math building and one by
Speaker 2: one the students trickle in like between twelve and two.
Speaker 2: They're doing calculus proofs from like two to six in
Speaker 2: the morning, and then they they all finish it and
Speaker 2: then they walk out of the class like bleary eyed
Speaker 2: looking at the sun, you know, and pass out. And
Speaker 2: he only has to do that once for them to
Speaker 2: know he's totally serious about the standard and he's a
Speaker 2: lunatic about the support.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. He's saying through that like, I believe each
Speaker 1: of you can do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he walks the walk, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that kind of stuff is awesome to me
Speaker 2: because at his funeral there will be thousands of people
Speaker 2: who talk about how he believed in them at a
Speaker 2: time when they did not believe in themselves, but not
Speaker 2: by lowering standards.
Speaker 3: And to me, that's the power of the mentor mindset.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean when you say mentor mindset, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's not just for people who are playing the
Speaker 1: role of formal mentors, right, I think it's for anyone
Speaker 1: who interacts in any kind of coachy role. So it
Speaker 1: could be a parent, or a sports coach or just
Speaker 1: a friend.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And the other important thing is that I don't even
Speaker 1: think this just applies to young people what you're putting
Speaker 1: forth here seems so universally applicable and appealing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that. So two things.
Speaker 2: One is I did not call the book the mentor mindset.
Speaker 2: I don't think people rushing around through the airport looking
Speaker 2: at books are like, Oh, I want another book to
Speaker 2: give me more homework to do, like another role. I
Speaker 2: need to have another thing I could feel like I'm
Speaker 2: failing at. And that's how I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people look at mentoring. They think, Oh, it's a responsibility
Speaker 2: that I begrudgingly take on to have coffee with someone
Speaker 2: on Thursdays and fire hose them with career advice or
Speaker 2: something like that. But that's not what I'm writing about.
Speaker 2: What I'm writing about is a mindset in which every
Speaker 2: interaction with someone might be that one status and respect
Speaker 2: sensitive interaction that could turn them off from your field
Speaker 2: or their future, or could be that inspirational moment. And
Speaker 2: so it's a mindset that might play out over multiple
Speaker 2: years or in a complex relationship. But in a lot
Speaker 2: of examples I write about in the book, sometimes it's
Speaker 2: like one conversation, Yeah, and the right amount of respect
Speaker 2: and status at the right time from the right mentor
Speaker 2: can I think, in my opinion, change your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying is we
Speaker 1: actually all have these implicit mentorship moments throughout each and
Speaker 1: every day, and we might not code them as such,
Speaker 1: but they potentially are serving that role.
Speaker 2: You know, if we just have a life philosophy where
Speaker 2: we're just serious, we take other people seriously, and we
Speaker 2: are supportive and we're understanding. If that's our philosophy, then
Speaker 2: there will be you know, hundreds or thousands of moments
Speaker 2: where maybe they'll remember the fact that.
Speaker 3: We influence them, or maybe they won't.
Speaker 2: But I kind of want to live in a world
Speaker 2: where most funerals are people standing up to say this
Speaker 2: person has no idea that they changed my life.
Speaker 3: And here's what they did.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Join me next week
Speaker 1: when I speak to Sophia Sinclair, a writer and award
Speaker 1: winning poet who grew up in a Rastafari family. Her
Speaker 1: father was the head of the household, and he made
Speaker 1: Sophia and her siblings follow a strict interpretation of Rastafari.
Speaker 1: But as Sophia grew older, living under her father's rules
Speaker 1: became suffocating.
Speaker 4: And I thought, no that's not the future that I
Speaker 4: want for myself, and I want to decide for myself
Speaker 4: the woman that I am going to be, and so
Speaker 4: I need to cut this future completely out of me
Speaker 4: and out of my life entirely.
Speaker 1: That's next week on A Slight Change of Plans. I'll
Speaker 1: see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
Speaker 1: family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer Kate
Speaker 1: Parkinson Morgan, our producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer Ericawang.
Speaker 1: Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries, so a big thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 1: on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker. See you next week.