Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brained 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 Seon Bylock on the podcast. Sion
Speaker 1: began her tenure as Barnard College President in July twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen after spending twelve years at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: where she served on the faculty as the Stella M.
Speaker 1: Raley Professor of Psychology, Executive Vice Provost, and an officer
Speaker 1: of the University. Her work as a cognitive scientist revolves
Speaker 1: around performance anxiety and reveals simple psychological strategies that can
Speaker 1: be used to ensure success in everything from test taking
Speaker 1: in public speaking to athletics and job interviews. In twenty ten,
Speaker 1: she wrote the critically acclaimed book Choke, and in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen she wrote How the Body Knows Its Mind. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, she won the troll And Award from the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Sciences, and her recent TED talk has
Speaker 1: been viewed more than two million times. Sion, so great
Speaker 1: to finally chat with you today. Oh, it's great to
Speaker 1: be here. So I thought we'd start talking a little
Speaker 1: about your very interesting career journey. Serious academic. You're still
Speaker 1: a serious academic, but I'm still serious, but kind of
Speaker 1: like serious academic exclusively. You know, to college president, this
Speaker 1: is incredible, you know this journey. Can can you talk
Speaker 1: about how that transformation happened. It's interesting because it wasn't
Speaker 1: planned in any way, shape or form, and it really
Speaker 1: is an assistant professor, even as sociate professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago, I so focused on my lab in
Speaker 1: my department. I'm not even trying I could have said
Speaker 1: what division my department was in at the college. But
Speaker 1: it was shortly after I got tenure that I was
Speaker 1: on them. I got voted onto our faculty Senate, and
Speaker 1: then a smaller group of individuals. It was twelve people
Speaker 1: who had lunch with the president and provost every two weeks,
Speaker 1: twelve faculty at Chicago and really advised them and talked
Speaker 1: about the university, and it was the first time that
Speaker 1: I really realized there was this whole institution out there,
Speaker 1: and that it wasn't just a research or a faculty
Speaker 1: member or a lab. It was all of those things
Speaker 1: operating within an institution. And I kind of fell in
Speaker 1: love with this idea that you could affect change at
Speaker 1: a higher level on that you could help raise the
Speaker 1: voices of so many smart, interesting people inside. And that's
Speaker 1: when I became interested in an administration, and from there
Speaker 1: I stepped into a vice provost role at Chicago, and
Speaker 1: then executive vice provost, and then the presidency at Barne.
Speaker 1: It does seem like even in your early research, you
Speaker 1: really always had this interest in practical application in the
Speaker 1: real world. Yeah. I mean, and I always thought it
Speaker 1: was never either or that you could publish in serious
Speaker 1: academic journals and also ask questions about aspects of performance
Speaker 1: that people cared about. But I will say that I
Speaker 1: think it's becoming more and more acceptable in academia. But
Speaker 1: when I went up from tenure, I actually didn't put
Speaker 1: on my dossier that I had a book contract, and
Speaker 1: my chair at the time came back to me and said,
Speaker 1: I want some way to talk about all of this
Speaker 1: sort of public speaking you've done and the practical applications
Speaker 1: of your work. And I said, well, actually, I have
Speaker 1: this book contract to write popular audience book for Simon
Speaker 1: and Schuster, and he was like, well, of course we
Speaker 1: have to talk about this. This is really important. And
Speaker 1: I really credit a senior colleague for sort of normalizing
Speaker 1: it for me, because I think that was a special
Speaker 1: thing to happen at Chicago, and I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: would have happened everywhere. Grad school, I remember telling people
Speaker 1: I want to write a book someday. They were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to have the wait forty years to get tenure,
Speaker 1: and then you get tenure plus and then you get whatever.
Speaker 1: I think it does a disservice to the field to
Speaker 1: put this druxtaposition in. I mean, if we're not writing
Speaker 1: about the work that's happening in science, someone else is
Speaker 1: going to. And it doesn't mean that everyone has to
Speaker 1: do it or but you know the work that you do,
Speaker 1: Scott and so many other sort of people. That crossover
Speaker 1: I think is so important. I mean, we have the
Speaker 1: tools and the knowledge to interpret what's happening in science,
Speaker 1: and frankly, I think it's some of our responsibility to
Speaker 1: do so. Yeah, I've always thought that was the case,
Speaker 1: you know, the part of our responsibility. And it surprised
Speaker 1: me that academics didn't. I mean, my mentor and undergraduate
Speaker 1: Herb Simon, very straight laced, serious, rigorous, you know, decision making,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? That seems that seem straightly
Speaker 1: for some reason, doesn't it's decision making, you know, information processing.
Speaker 1: You know. He told me gave me advice when he said,
Speaker 1: you know, a good scientist really sticks to the science,
Speaker 1: you know, really just does pure science leave the rest
Speaker 1: to someone else. And I was just like, inside, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was this little, like, you know, nineteen year old,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I'm not sure about that. Inside.
Speaker 1: I didn't challenge him, but he isn't amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: he won the Nobel Prize, so there is something to
Speaker 1: be that. I didn't win the Nobel Prize yet, so
Speaker 1: maybe he did have a point. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: it exemplifies that there's different ways to be a good scientist,
Speaker 1: is what I would say. So, your your first book
Speaker 1: was about choking under pressure. Yeah, is there a personal
Speaker 1: reason why you got interest in that topic at all?
Speaker 1: Did you did you have like anxiety in school as
Speaker 1: a kid or something like that that sort of Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always talk this is another sort of coming back
Speaker 1: to what you are and aren't supposed to do as
Speaker 1: a scientist. I always talk about the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of mesearch in this, it's not just research.
Speaker 1: I think I also heard that as a scientist, like
Speaker 1: you're supposed to separate yourself from the work that you're doing,
Speaker 1: and that's the only way to be objective. But I
Speaker 1: think it's okay for you to have interest in the
Speaker 1: kind of work that you're doing as a scientist, and
Speaker 1: I think it provides a passion that can propel people.
Speaker 1: And so I was as an undergraduate, I was a
Speaker 1: cognitive science major at UC San Diego, which I was
Speaker 1: just absolutely in love with the whole program. And I
Speaker 1: remember we read so many interesting articles and books about
Speaker 1: people operating at high levels, like how learning occurs, you know,
Speaker 1: we read stuff by Herb Simon and others about what
Speaker 1: it takes to be a really great performer, what happens
Speaker 1: in the brain as you learn and acquire skills, And
Speaker 1: there just wasn't that much that I was reading about
Speaker 1: what happens when you fail, right, and especially when you
Speaker 1: are at a high skill level. And I was an
Speaker 1: athlete growing up. I played soccer at a pretty high level,
Speaker 1: and I always was wondered why sometimes I didn't perform
Speaker 1: as well as I could in those situations where there
Speaker 1: was a lot on the line. And it seemed counterintuitive
Speaker 1: to me because I wanted to perform really well. And
Speaker 1: so there was a really element for me of trying
Speaker 1: to understand what happened in high pressure situations and whether
Speaker 1: or not there were tools that we all could use
Speaker 1: to perform better. I was wondering, is there a continuum
Speaker 1: like is flow in the opposite end of choking? Can
Speaker 1: you be in flow and still choke? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? I mean, I think it depends on how
Speaker 1: like what you define as flow. I think in some
Speaker 1: sense you could talk about a continuum if you define
Speaker 1: flow as performing at an optimal level, like with ease, right,
Speaker 1: and so choking could be on the other end of that.
Speaker 1: You know. One thing I think is really interesting is
Speaker 1: that when people talk about flow, they talk about this
Speaker 1: characteristic of being like not over attentive or not focusing
Speaker 1: on the details of what you're doing, and sometimes not
Speaker 1: even having a memory for what you've done. And you know,
Speaker 1: we in my work and others, we've shown that when
Speaker 1: one of the reasons people can choke under pressure is
Speaker 1: they actually pay too much attention to aspects of their
Speaker 1: their skills that should just be on autopilot. So I
Speaker 1: think there are some ways to put it on and continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because whenever I think of the opposite of choking, I
Speaker 1: just keep thinking of like Michael Jordan, I keep think
Speaker 1: of like, you know, when they're on the court and
Speaker 1: they're like they have these these deadly instincts, you know,
Speaker 1: where they're just like they're so in the zone and so,
Speaker 1: but they still missshots. And something that's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is that is some of this framing as well. Could
Speaker 1: some of the things we do we say, oh, I
Speaker 1: totally choked in that situation, whereas someone else may have
Speaker 1: the same exact situation and be like, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: know just went off. The ball just went off like
Speaker 1: a couple inches to the right. You know, next time,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm going to do, and they don't
Speaker 1: even think about it in like that way. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Is there individual differences and just like
Speaker 1: even framing of the situation. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. And there is this individual difference in
Speaker 1: what we even consider pressure situations. Right, So if I
Speaker 1: have to give a talk, and my mom likes to
Speaker 1: sometimes come to my talks wherever I am, and she
Speaker 1: makes me so nervous, right, but my mom's probably not
Speaker 1: going to make you nervous. Even how you interpret the
Speaker 1: situation can be different, and what one person finds to
Speaker 1: be a pressure situation, another person might not. And I
Speaker 1: think what you're talking about framing is also how we
Speaker 1: react to the situation. I mean, we all have performance
Speaker 1: ups and downs. I wouldn't call that choking. When I
Speaker 1: talk about choking, I'm talking about a situation where you
Speaker 1: feel pressure to perform at a high level, you want
Speaker 1: to perform at a high level, and then you perform
Speaker 1: worse than expected given your skill level. I think framing
Speaker 1: it as you know, this is what happened poorly, whether
Speaker 1: it's luck or technique, and here's what I'm going to
Speaker 1: do differently next time, we actually know is one way
Speaker 1: to prevent choking. Moving forward, thinking about how you're going
Speaker 1: to control the situation next time, or how you're going
Speaker 1: to succeed, rather than dwelling on the failure because it's
Speaker 1: just fascinating me. Like, I watched some of these high
Speaker 1: level sports performers and they miss a lot of shots.
Speaker 1: I mean, they miss a lot of they keep you know,
Speaker 1: but but they're just they just keep going back and
Speaker 1: then over the long run, they tend to have more,
Speaker 1: you know, they think in the terms of the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: in terms of Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's actually
Speaker 1: really important, and it's not the more you can take
Speaker 1: sort of your identity and your feelings of success out
Speaker 1: of one individual instance, you know, the more you might
Speaker 1: be buffered from feeling nervous about that instance. And I
Speaker 1: will say that, you know, you mentioned Michael Jordan, who
Speaker 1: was an amazing basketball player, but I think he's a
Speaker 1: really great example of how being successful in one thing
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're inoculated from choking in others. I mean,
Speaker 1: he had a real hard time hitting a baseball, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's important to keep in mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I was wondering how this relates to your research
Speaker 1: on women's career success. Yeah. I mean one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I'm so interested, so excited to be at Barnard,
Speaker 1: which is I'm now my fourth year, which is like unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I have been really interested in situations where people might
Speaker 1: be worried about their ability to perform because of historically
Speaker 1: health stereotypes, or because they're worried about being evaluated based
Speaker 1: on who they are. You know. I've had an interest
Speaker 1: in math and science and especially for women and girls.
Speaker 1: And some of my research has looked very early showing
Speaker 1: that young girls can pick up on anxiety about their
Speaker 1: ability to perform in math and science based on their
Speaker 1: teachers and their parents, and that that carries out into
Speaker 1: success even later in life. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a very clear relationship for me parents sort of
Speaker 1: feedback and responses to so what do you speak? Examples? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we've shown, for example that when if you look across,
Speaker 1: for example, college majors, do you know what the college
Speaker 1: major with the most math anxiety is? Do you have
Speaker 1: a guess? It's not math? It's not math, not a
Speaker 1: math major. No, it's not. Okay, let me guess. Let
Speaker 1: me guess. So it's like a major where they have
Speaker 1: the math component to it? Is that right? No? Or
Speaker 1: any if you survey college majors, Okay, like about how
Speaker 1: anxious they are. Oh okay, so what's the major? Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm going to be just like stereotype and
Speaker 1: I'll just go for like music. Yeah, well, it turns
Speaker 1: out it's education, oh, which literally women uh dominated? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so we've actually shown that like over ninety percent
Speaker 1: of first and second grade teachers, for example, in the
Speaker 1: US are women, and they have very high levels of
Speaker 1: math anxiety. And we've shown that when students are in
Speaker 1: classes with teachers who are high in math anxiety, by
Speaker 1: the end of the school year, they learn less math
Speaker 1: and there are also more are likely to be anxious
Speaker 1: about their own ability. That's really interesting. I probably should
Speaker 1: have thought that through. I just I literally just choke
Speaker 1: on your on your the question that you asked me,
Speaker 1: because why would someone who's a math major have math anxiety?
Speaker 1: That didn't make any sense. I didn't really think that through. See,
Speaker 1: I was like nervous, just to show we all know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I literally in so many situations, I just colossally choked
Speaker 1: on your question. Okay, but yeah, no, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Now I think this through, And yeah,
Speaker 1: education doesn't have high math requirements, right, I don't even
Speaker 1: think statistics. It's interesting when our first article came out,
Speaker 1: I got some emails from math professors at different universities
Speaker 1: saying that there'd been a lot of pressure from their
Speaker 1: administrators to actually reduce the math requirements for education majors
Speaker 1: because it would they thought that would help, and they
Speaker 1: were probably right attract undergrads to the institution, right if
Speaker 1: you were looking for an education major with less math.
Speaker 1: And so it's a really interesting I thought that was
Speaker 1: quite interesting in that how you know policy or thinking
Speaker 1: about an entity at such a high level, like how
Speaker 1: many undergrads you can enroll at a university. This has
Speaker 1: implications for who we're training in terms of who's teaching
Speaker 1: for sure, and a lot of this translates into representation
Speaker 1: in the STEM fields, right, and you know, ultimately educators
Speaker 1: are not trying to be represented in the STEM fields.
Speaker 1: Is it necessarily a bad thing that the educators are
Speaker 1: afraid of math? Like maybe math majors are afraid of education,
Speaker 1: you know, like, if we think about this, zoom out
Speaker 1: for a second, is that necessarily a bad thing? Well?
Speaker 1: I do think that if we have young or if
Speaker 1: we have teachers who are focused mostly on elementary school
Speaker 1: who are worried about math. What we're doing is we
Speaker 1: are potentially hurting a population of students who would go
Speaker 1: on and succeed in those areas. I mean, remember, an
Speaker 1: elementary school tature is not specializing. And actually what you
Speaker 1: find is in a lot of more wealthy schools they
Speaker 1: often have math specialists. Right, So now we start getting
Speaker 1: into achievement gaps where people in wealthier school districts have
Speaker 1: access students to additional math teaching or help, where they're
Speaker 1: getting different inputs, and I think they're I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a scary. It's a serious and scary problem because
Speaker 1: you could imagine a student, and especially female students yere
Speaker 1: over a year, who are getting compounding input about whether
Speaker 1: you know, they are a math person or not, which
Speaker 1: we know is not a thing, and also whether or
Speaker 1: not they can succeed in it. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's bad for society if our goal is to put
Speaker 1: as many people as possible at the table to succeed
Speaker 1: in areas that they have potential in. It seems like
Speaker 1: the Mathew effects concept is relevant here. You know that
Speaker 1: that rich get rich, your poor get poor idea A
Speaker 1: little small, little changes and really compound. If you're if
Speaker 1: you're just slightly taller and you get picked for the
Speaker 1: basketball team when you're young, you get picked, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to get picked for the next one, more likely
Speaker 1: to get and they just compounds. And then we say
Speaker 1: you're so talented, you know ten years later you know,
Speaker 1: to the person. Yeah, so yeah, it seems like these things,
Speaker 1: these things certainly kind of compound. And I've written articles
Speaker 1: as well and why is there such underrepresentation of men
Speaker 1: in the caring professions, you know, trying to understand. There's
Speaker 1: some actually really cool research trying to examine that as well,
Speaker 1: and just try to understand all those different ways that
Speaker 1: we have these stereotypes in our society that are limiting
Speaker 1: the full potential of all humans. And I really like
Speaker 1: the work you're doing and I think it's really important. Thanks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what advice do you have for listeners then, who
Speaker 1: are early in their careers? Maybe if it's women listeners
Speaker 1: particularly interested in this conversation, they don't feel particularly confident
Speaker 1: about certain abilities, but they clearly have the abilities. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you say? I mean? First of all, I
Speaker 1: would say that something that I think this is particularly
Speaker 1: true for women and there's research that shows this is
Speaker 1: that it's okay to feel uncomfortable in the situation. Right,
Speaker 1: So we know that women are less likely to apply
Speaker 1: for a job if they don't have all the criteria
Speaker 1: compared to men, or if they get to be in
Speaker 1: a class or less likely to predict they can go
Speaker 1: on to the next level of the class relative to men.
Speaker 1: And I think something we talk a lot about at
Speaker 1: Barnard is sort of it's being uncomfortable and taking that
Speaker 1: extra step and even being okay not succeeding right or
Speaker 1: not succeeding the first time around. And so I would say,
Speaker 1: you know that it's it's really important to try and
Speaker 1: push yourself into those situations where you don't have it
Speaker 1: already all figured out, and where you might not have
Speaker 1: one hundred percent confidence in your abilities. The goal is
Speaker 1: to get some help and to ask questions and ask around.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also a place where there sometimes
Speaker 1: can be gender differences and sort of the ability to
Speaker 1: ask for help in certain situations or the ability to
Speaker 1: think you have to do it all on your own.
Speaker 1: I suffered from terrible test anxiety as a kid. I
Speaker 1: wish I could have asked you this next question when
Speaker 1: I was, you know, in senior in high school. But
Speaker 1: you know, what's a way that you can prepare yourself
Speaker 1: mentally for a high stake situation, whether it's a big presentation, job, interview,
Speaker 1: athletic event, major test, or interviewing a college president on
Speaker 1: a podcast. I mean, I the biggest technique, I think
Speaker 1: the most important one is to practice under the kinds
Speaker 1: of conditions you're going to perform under. So I would say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, all your times interviewing really important people more
Speaker 1: important than me, has gotten you ready for this, And
Speaker 1: I think it's something that is true in so many
Speaker 1: different areas, Like you know, what's the biggest predictor of
Speaker 1: how well you do on standardized tests? One of them
Speaker 1: is how many times you've taken the test before right
Speaker 1: or tests like it. And in athletics, you know, we
Speaker 1: often practice free throws or penalty kicks when no one's watching,
Speaker 1: but that's not how you take them. So the goal
Speaker 1: is to create situations as close as possible that mimic
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in the real do or die.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean you have to practice in front
Speaker 1: of a crowd. But if you're going to give a
Speaker 1: talk or a presentation in class. Are you are you
Speaker 1: practicing in front of other people? Are you getting used
Speaker 1: to those feelings of you know, dread that you might
Speaker 1: feel even if no one's watching. Can you videotape yourself?
Speaker 1: How do you mimic the kinds of conditions you're going
Speaker 1: to feel in the real moment. That's really good advice.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk about Barnard a little bit. Why
Speaker 1: do you think Barnard College is unique in the academic
Speaker 1: even compared to like Colombia. I mean, I think Barnard
Speaker 1: is singular. There's no place like it in the country
Speaker 1: or the world. It's an institution focused on empowering young women,
Speaker 1: and it does this in this small, tight knit environment,
Speaker 1: but with the larger resources of this major university, so
Speaker 1: you have, I think the best of both worlds. And
Speaker 1: I think, really what makes it so special or the faculty.
Speaker 1: You know, our faculty, as you know, are all tenured
Speaker 1: at Barnard and Columbia, but they're so devoted to working
Speaker 1: with students and being part of the research and we've
Speaker 1: ADJUNCTO yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think it's just
Speaker 1: it makes for this really compelling atmosphere, and you combine
Speaker 1: that with a focus, a real explicit focus on bringing
Speaker 1: voices that are sometimes marginalized to the table, and I
Speaker 1: think it it does. It sets students up to have
Speaker 1: a voice. And I'm sure you've seen that big time
Speaker 1: in terms of the students. I mean, they come out
Speaker 1: really special. I'm a little biased. I have to say
Speaker 1: I'm biased, but I really do believe. No, I think
Speaker 1: they're they're amazing. I really do. I am. You know,
Speaker 1: A big part of the course I taught, they're the
Speaker 1: science of living well is self actualization and you know,
Speaker 1: helping any student whatever they want to do in their lives,
Speaker 1: to really help them like focus on their values and
Speaker 1: qualify their values, clarify their vision. Some of these students'
Speaker 1: visions are a lot I would say a lot of
Speaker 1: the students' visions are remarkable. You know, how they want
Speaker 1: to like completely change the world, you know, for the better. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's heartwarming. Yeah, I mean I think our students really
Speaker 1: give me hope, and we do. We talk about that
Speaker 1: a lot, how we're setting Barnard women up to go
Speaker 1: out and change the world. And there's lots of examples
Speaker 1: how our graduates have done that. Yeah, And I can't
Speaker 1: think of a more important thing to be doing right now.
Speaker 1: So are you do you teach a freshman seminar? I don't.
Speaker 1: I haven't yet. What I do is I for our
Speaker 1: first years under normal years during orientation, we have a
Speaker 1: program called Barnard Reads where many faculty do a seminar.
Speaker 1: It's a one time seminar with students. So I usually
Speaker 1: have about one hundred students and we read one of
Speaker 1: my papers actually written with a graduate student who went
Speaker 1: to Barnard, a former graduate student. And but I haven't,
Speaker 1: you know, my first several years, I've just been so busy.
Speaker 1: But I give guest lectures and do other things, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I get some chances to interact with
Speaker 1: the students. Then, So if you if you did teach
Speaker 1: a full freshman seminar, what what would like your ultimate
Speaker 1: topic be? Yeah, I mean that's the court. I think
Speaker 1: it would maybe not so surprisingly. You know, the psychology
Speaker 1: of human performance, and I think it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: we're all inherently interested in. I mean, we all have
Speaker 1: times where we don't perform up to our potential, and
Speaker 1: we don't we spend a lot of time talking about
Speaker 1: you know, how you learn and what tools you need
Speaker 1: to be successful, but we don't spend as much time
Speaker 1: talking about the mental aspects of this. You know, what
Speaker 1: are the tips and tools in the moment you can
Speaker 1: use to pull off your best performance and what do
Speaker 1: you do if you've failed? And and that's really why
Speaker 1: I wrote Choke, you know, to give people sort of
Speaker 1: a toolbox of techniques that are research based that can
Speaker 1: drive and help our best performance. Would you ever a
Speaker 1: guest lecture in my class on this, Yes, I would
Speaker 1: love to. You haven't asked me yet. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: I'm just like realizing that right now, Like I try to, like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to bother you, but I'm just like
Speaker 1: thinking i'd be happy. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just thinking, like, wow,
Speaker 1: Like the students were really amazingly benefit from that. Actually
Speaker 1: have gone in a couple of times, for in Dina
Speaker 1: Meyer's OKEM class, and I give them study tips because
Speaker 1: you know, organic chemistry, I think many of us experience
Speaker 1: was a really difficult class. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I guess you touched on earlier is you know, oftentimes
Speaker 1: people walk out of a class or a test and
Speaker 1: they're like oh my god, I choked. And it could
Speaker 1: very well be they choked, or it could be that
Speaker 1: they actually didn't know the material and didn't know they
Speaker 1: didn't know, and like our ability to understand what we know,
Speaker 1: which we often talk about as metacognition, is not always
Speaker 1: great and not always correlated with accuracy. So part of
Speaker 1: what I talked about with the students were taking practice tests,
Speaker 1: getting in study groups, and you know, figuring out ways
Speaker 1: to assess what you know before you have to perform.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, you're really helpful advice for me as well,
Speaker 1: So thank you. This is really great. So are you
Speaker 1: seeing a increase in political activism on the campus right now?
Speaker 1: I mean it was already pretty high, a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of activists on campus, but are you seeing
Speaker 1: an increase in this cultural moment we're having with a
Speaker 1: reckoning of race tensions in America. I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: question that I think college campuses are really important place
Speaker 1: to have these conversations, and I think, as you know,
Speaker 1: we're one of the only institutions that really made a
Speaker 1: intentional focus on the curriculum around these issues. So for
Speaker 1: all first years this year are taking a new course
Speaker 1: called Big Problems making sense of twenty twenty, where we
Speaker 1: have activists and others in giving lectures on what they're
Speaker 1: doing in this environment, and students are in groups talking
Speaker 1: about it. And we also have a new co curricular
Speaker 1: program called Third Space where students are getting to learn
Speaker 1: from activists and practitioners in their own hometowns about what
Speaker 1: they're doing to affect change. And I think where colleges
Speaker 1: and universities can help and support students into funneling their
Speaker 1: interest and their distress into two ways to affect change
Speaker 1: is where we can be really important, where we can
Speaker 1: have a real important impact. Do you see as part
Speaker 1: of that curriculum do you see a discussion at all
Speaker 1: how much one should bring in science, you know, into
Speaker 1: the work to make sure their activism is grounded on
Speaker 1: a very firm basis of reality. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: I hope those discussions are going on. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of discussion about how we interpret the
Speaker 1: news media and how the news media interprets the data,
Speaker 1: and how important it is for students to be good
Speaker 1: consumers of that information. Barnard is one of the few
Speaker 1: schools where everyone has a statistics requirement or in acquirement
Speaker 1: where they have to take a class where they have
Speaker 1: to think empirically. And I think that's so important. I mean,
Speaker 1: just through the whole COVID pandemic and through the racial
Speaker 1: unrest that we've seen recently. I'm just always so amazed
Speaker 1: how easy it is to present data that I don't
Speaker 1: think as a reader reflects actuality, right, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: with numbers of COVID cases, when you know, you talk
Speaker 1: about things going up five hundred percent, it matters what
Speaker 1: the baseline is. Yeah, I completely agree, And it just
Speaker 1: seems like it's such as it's good kids met for
Speaker 1: aspiring activists also learn about statistics, you know, for instance,
Speaker 1: or to learn about so they can be good consumers,
Speaker 1: like you said, of information and make sure they're activisms
Speaker 1: on a on a solid basis. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that the two aren't incompatible at all. I mean, and
Speaker 1: I talk, you know, I often when I talk about Parnard,
Speaker 1: I talk about getting you know, an education across the
Speaker 1: arts and sciences. There's not this either or I think
Speaker 1: the liberal arts is a term from research. We know
Speaker 1: that people don't even understand what it means. And I
Speaker 1: think the you know, an education across the arts and
Speaker 1: sciences is what we're providing our students, you know, we're teaching.
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about how we're teaching them how
Speaker 1: to think, not what to think, you know. I think
Speaker 1: it's so important to have different political views represented on
Speaker 1: campus and in the classroom. And I think students should
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable in challenging their own views, especially in the classroom.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, you know, make it known that it's a
Speaker 1: safe space to challenge the views, you know, like you can,
Speaker 1: you can do so and not be condemned if people
Speaker 1: disagree with you. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I it's interest
Speaker 1: because I feel like the word safe space, I don't.
Speaker 1: It's like again, to some people, it's yeah, and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I don't. It doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, right,
Speaker 1: And I do think there are spaces, and certainly spaces
Speaker 1: on college campuses, where people should feel free to get
Speaker 1: to people get together with people who have the same
Speaker 1: lived experiences, who look like them, who believe what they believe.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an important aspect of a living right
Speaker 1: to be around people that you feel really unguarded with.
Speaker 1: But I don't actually see that being what should happen
Speaker 1: in the classroom, and I think you know there should
Speaker 1: you should be challenge of course, you should be challenged
Speaker 1: in a way where you're free to give your point
Speaker 1: of view and you don't feel condemned for it. But
Speaker 1: I think it's okay to feel uncomfortable in lots of situations,
Speaker 1: and it's not something we always like, but it leads
Speaker 1: to better thinking and better ideas. I agree with that
Speaker 1: very much. So let's just briefly just touch on how
Speaker 1: the body knows its mind or your more recent book,
Speaker 1: The Surprise, using power the physical environment to influence how
Speaker 1: you think that you love these titles, Yeah, the Shocking Truth.
Speaker 1: It's like, let's talk about body language. That's very very
Speaker 1: interesting to me. How can gestures help us learn? No,
Speaker 1: I think you know my whole the whole tent you like.
Speaker 1: Sort of premise of that book was that our thinking
Speaker 1: and our ability to function in the environment isn't just
Speaker 1: something that happens in our head. Our environment matters. I
Speaker 1: think we all experience this in different ways, especially when
Speaker 1: we've been cooped up, Like being able to look out
Speaker 1: in nature or be outside or take a break can
Speaker 1: affect our well being and our mental health, and it
Speaker 1: can affect how we think. And just as our environment matters,
Speaker 1: so does our body. And so this idea that we
Speaker 1: can use our fingers and our body to index to
Speaker 1: help hold information. You know, people don't talk about a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's actually true. Like this idea that kids counting
Speaker 1: on their fingers, that's an important way to offload mental demands, right,
Speaker 1: cognitive effort, and at some point you want to get
Speaker 1: away from that. But this idea that you start on
Speaker 1: your fingers is totally fine. Or you know, for me,
Speaker 1: the way I remember things is to have lots of
Speaker 1: little piles in my office that the things I'm working on.
Speaker 1: I definitely think that's an external memory aid that I
Speaker 1: use to remind myself of what is happening. And it's
Speaker 1: powerful to use the body in this way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's the whole sense of movement right now. Do give
Speaker 1: any advice for people who are just so sedentary? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's advice that I need to take myself.
Speaker 1: But I think we have to really force ourselves to
Speaker 1: get up and away from our screens. You know, all
Speaker 1: those little places where we would move to go down
Speaker 1: to the lunch room or to walk to work or
Speaker 1: wherever like, if those are not available to us, we
Speaker 1: have to really do things to keep it up because
Speaker 1: it's so easy to just not leave your house or
Speaker 1: to not get up and move around. And we know
Speaker 1: that an active body is so important for physical health
Speaker 1: and mental health and in green scenery. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: some great work by a colleague of a former colleague
Speaker 1: of mine at the University of Chicago that really shows
Speaker 1: that being out in nature can change how we think
Speaker 1: and our ability to attend and even looking out in nature.
Speaker 1: And I've heard from so many people during the pandemic
Speaker 1: that they're really cognizant of being able to go outside
Speaker 1: and when they can and how much they appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and those little things matter. And then how can you
Speaker 1: use the Alexander technique to eliminate physical tension? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think just this idea that we have to really be
Speaker 1: aware of our body, how we're moving it, how we sit,
Speaker 1: stretching is so important. Anything that helps us really sort
Speaker 1: of release the tension that we have everywhere can be
Speaker 1: so important for success. Do you want to like go
Speaker 1: into like a couple of minute like an exercise for
Speaker 1: our listeners. I don't want to do that. I know
Speaker 1: you have a link here at Alexander Technique dot com.
Speaker 1: We can just direct them to that website. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's like anything from body centered
Speaker 1: meditation to you know, getting out and moving like. I
Speaker 1: think these are all things that as we maybe have
Speaker 1: a little more time on our hands, maybe some of
Speaker 1: us don't, but they're really important to look into. You
Speaker 1: even suggest taking an acting class, yeah, as a way
Speaker 1: to get used to being uncomfortable, right, getting used to
Speaker 1: embodying different people. I think all of these things can
Speaker 1: be really great for reducing stress. I mean, just like
Speaker 1: you read a good book or watch a TV show
Speaker 1: to sort of of take that step and lose yourself,
Speaker 1: Having a class like that, you know, can help you
Speaker 1: step away. Well, do you have any any final tips
Speaker 1: or anything you want to say that I didn't, I will.
Speaker 1: I will just say that you know, how we move
Speaker 1: and how we think about our situations really matter, and
Speaker 1: so we often tend to just discard our mental states, right,
Speaker 1: And but there's a lot of psychological research out there
Speaker 1: showing how important it is that we attend to them
Speaker 1: as well, and there are things that we can do
Speaker 1: to feel better even in this crazy and often horrible
Speaker 1: time where we don't feel like we have control over anything.
Speaker 1: We can control some of what we're doing, whether we
Speaker 1: step outside, get up and move, How we think about
Speaker 1: the future as something that we can conquer or something
Speaker 1: that's filled with dread, like our mindset really matters. Absolutely well,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. A lot of people are going
Speaker 1: to really find this episode helpful for them, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you coming on the Psychology Podcast. Oh well,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in
Speaker 1: some way to something you heard, I encourage you to
Speaker 1: join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a
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