1
00:00:00,880 --> 00:00:03,880
Speaker 1: All right, everybody in Canada, we have a pretty big announcement.

2
00:00:04,440 --> 00:00:06,480
Speaker 1: We are finally going to do our first big, big

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:08,640
Speaker 1: tour of Canada. We're going to announce the dates in.

4
00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:11,239
Speaker 2: The theaters in cities here first, and then we're going

5
00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:13,360
Speaker 2: to give you all the ticket info. Okay, how does

6
00:00:13,400 --> 00:00:13,760
Speaker 2: that sound?

7
00:00:13,880 --> 00:00:15,840
Speaker 3: It sounds great, Chuck. Where are we going to go?

8
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:16,239
Speaker 4: First?

9
00:00:16,560 --> 00:00:19,120
Speaker 1: On June twenty fifth, we're going to be in Montreal

10
00:00:19,239 --> 00:00:22,640
Speaker 1: at the Olympia Des Montreal. The next night, on the

11
00:00:22,680 --> 00:00:24,239
Speaker 1: twenty six we're going to be going to Ottawa the

12
00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:27,160
Speaker 1: Hard Rock Live Ottawa and then on the twenty seventh,

13
00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:29,720
Speaker 1: finish up in Toronto at Massey Hall.

14
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,000
Speaker 3: And then we're going to walk to the next shows.

15
00:00:32,040 --> 00:00:33,840
Speaker 3: So it's going to take us a few weeks.

16
00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:34,480
Speaker 2: That's right.

17
00:00:34,520 --> 00:00:36,240
Speaker 1: On July twenty third, we're going to be in Vancouver

18
00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:39,440
Speaker 1: at Queen Elizabeth Theater. Friday, the twenty fourth of July,

19
00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:42,840
Speaker 1: we're going to be in Calgary at Jacksinger Concert Hall

20
00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:44,680
Speaker 1: at Art Commons, and we're going to wind it up

21
00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:47,760
Speaker 1: in Winnipeg on the twenty fifth at Burton Cummings Theater.

22
00:00:48,120 --> 00:00:51,640
Speaker 3: That's awesome, So tickets go on sale two day. Everybody

23
00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:55,400
Speaker 3: December sixteenth, starting at ten am Eastern time and going

24
00:00:55,520 --> 00:00:58,880
Speaker 3: all the way to Friday, December nineteenth at ten am

25
00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,720
Speaker 3: Local time. We're going to have an artist pre sale.

26
00:01:01,720 --> 00:01:03,960
Speaker 3: You can buy your tickets early. Just go to stuff

27
00:01:03,960 --> 00:01:06,399
Speaker 3: youshould Know dot com and click on the tour button

28
00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:08,399
Speaker 3: and then click on your city and when you go

29
00:01:08,440 --> 00:01:11,160
Speaker 3: to check out, use the promo code s YSK live.

30
00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:14,200
Speaker 3: And if you miss all that, don't worry. Tickets go

31
00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:17,800
Speaker 3: on general sale on Friday, December nineteenth at ten am

32
00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 3: Eastern time. And again you can get all of the

33
00:01:20,240 --> 00:01:23,080
Speaker 3: tickets and info you need at stuff youshould Know dot

34
00:01:23,120 --> 00:01:25,399
Speaker 3: com and we will see you this summer Canada.

35
00:01:28,160 --> 00:01:34,399
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

36
00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:41,560
Speaker 3: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and

37
00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:44,560
Speaker 3: there's Charles w Chuck Brian. We're just gonna do a

38
00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:47,240
Speaker 3: great job here today and Stuff you Should Know.

39
00:01:47,720 --> 00:01:47,880
Speaker 4: Hi.

40
00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:52,360
Speaker 2: Everybody feeling good, Chuck dealing great, lewis.

41
00:01:53,720 --> 00:01:54,280
Speaker 3: Looking great?

42
00:01:54,360 --> 00:01:55,920
Speaker 4: Lewis Uh?

43
00:01:57,360 --> 00:01:58,400
Speaker 2: You want to hear something funny?

44
00:01:59,080 --> 00:02:03,160
Speaker 3: I do? Oh you hear?

45
00:02:03,200 --> 00:02:03,280
Speaker 1: That?

46
00:02:03,680 --> 00:02:05,240
Speaker 3: Is that your new windows?

47
00:02:05,640 --> 00:02:05,680
Speaker 4: No?

48
00:02:06,320 --> 00:02:08,880
Speaker 2: That is new windows? What does that mean?

49
00:02:09,040 --> 00:02:11,840
Speaker 1: That is we were not able to stay in our

50
00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:15,519
Speaker 1: home this week because, as you know, because I've told

51
00:02:15,520 --> 00:02:18,359
Speaker 1: you this, because we're getting our electric panel redone. So

52
00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:21,920
Speaker 1: I was not able to print out my stuff as usual.

53
00:02:22,720 --> 00:02:26,720
Speaker 1: And where we were staying, you know, at a friends.

54
00:02:26,760 --> 00:02:29,799
Speaker 1: They allowed me to print, but all they had was

55
00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:34,520
Speaker 1: card stock. So that is the sound of heavy duty research.

56
00:02:34,840 --> 00:02:36,560
Speaker 3: Man, that's like half a tree right there.

57
00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:39,120
Speaker 2: I know, I feel pretty bad, but god, it feels

58
00:02:39,160 --> 00:02:39,880
Speaker 2: so good in my hand.

59
00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:41,000
Speaker 3: Oh well, is this.

60
00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:45,560
Speaker 1: Your new thing't? I could not justify that, but boy,

61
00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:49,000
Speaker 1: it feels good. Maybe for the live shows, because you know,

62
00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:52,520
Speaker 1: over the course of a tour, which is happening next year, everybody.

63
00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:54,840
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one. Yeah, we're going out on

64
00:02:54,919 --> 00:02:58,200
Speaker 3: tour everyone soon, starting January, then April and then the

65
00:02:58,240 --> 00:02:59,160
Speaker 3: summer for Canada.

66
00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:00,000
Speaker 2: That's right.

67
00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:02,840
Speaker 1: But yeah that you know how those that document gets

68
00:03:02,840 --> 00:03:06,080
Speaker 1: a little tattered over time, so I might card stock it.

69
00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:08,520
Speaker 3: I like that. I call that tour kisses.

70
00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:12,600
Speaker 2: I thought that was something else, like after the end

71
00:03:12,600 --> 00:03:13,960
Speaker 2: of the tour when we make out a little bit.

72
00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:16,520
Speaker 3: We don't talk about that, all right, we don't have

73
00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:20,760
Speaker 3: a name for that, No, Chuck, We're talking today, not

74
00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:25,760
Speaker 3: about tour kisses of any variety, but about optimism and pessimism,

75
00:03:26,120 --> 00:03:28,720
Speaker 3: and this one, yeah, I do too. This is Olivia

76
00:03:28,760 --> 00:03:30,240
Speaker 3: helped us with this, And this is one of those

77
00:03:30,280 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 3: ones where when you know it was I knew very

78
00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:37,640
Speaker 3: little about what it actually is compared to what I

79
00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:39,520
Speaker 3: thought I knew, and I love like that.

80
00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:40,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, same.

81
00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:45,520
Speaker 3: Optimism and pessimism as pretty much everyone knows. Is this

82
00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:49,720
Speaker 3: the idea that you have like a sunny disposition or

83
00:03:49,760 --> 00:03:51,480
Speaker 3: maybe you're gloomy and eoorish.

84
00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:52,760
Speaker 2: Yeah.

85
00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 3: I was going back and reading some or quotes. Man,

86
00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:57,280
Speaker 3: that was great. If you want to entertain yourself, just

87
00:03:57,320 --> 00:04:00,880
Speaker 3: read AA Milne E or quotes and you'll be delighted.

88
00:04:01,480 --> 00:04:04,480
Speaker 3: But the upshot of this is that that's not really

89
00:04:04,520 --> 00:04:07,560
Speaker 3: the best description of optimism and pessimism.

90
00:04:07,920 --> 00:04:09,960
Speaker 2: That may be your earliest upshot by the way.

91
00:04:10,480 --> 00:04:11,680
Speaker 3: Oh is it? I need to break that.

92
00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:12,480
Speaker 2: Record next time?

93
00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:15,000
Speaker 3: Then yeah, I'll say hey, and welcome to the Upshot.

94
00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:17,119
Speaker 1: If you ever go solo, that'd be great to Josh

95
00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:19,920
Speaker 1: Clark only podcast The Upshot with Josh Clark, And.

96
00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:22,040
Speaker 3: If I need to break that, I can say upshot

97
00:04:22,080 --> 00:04:27,640
Speaker 3: and upshot to the Upshot at any rate. The long

98
00:04:27,720 --> 00:04:30,000
Speaker 3: and short of what I'm talking about is that our

99
00:04:30,120 --> 00:04:33,200
Speaker 3: views of optimism and pessimism aren't exactly right, at least

100
00:04:33,200 --> 00:04:36,080
Speaker 3: as far as psychology is concerned. And in that sense,

101
00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:39,880
Speaker 3: it kind of confounds things because I found some of

102
00:04:39,920 --> 00:04:41,920
Speaker 3: this stuff a little hard to wrap my brain around,

103
00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:46,080
Speaker 3: because my brain's been so ProMED by pop psychology to

104
00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:49,119
Speaker 3: think of these things as this when actually we're talking

105
00:04:49,120 --> 00:04:49,919
Speaker 3: about them like that.

106
00:04:50,839 --> 00:04:51,520
Speaker 2: Is that what it was?

107
00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:54,839
Speaker 1: Because I had the same thing where like, I spent

108
00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:57,480
Speaker 1: more time on this than things that were seemingly more

109
00:04:57,480 --> 00:04:58,599
Speaker 1: difficult to understand.

110
00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:01,760
Speaker 3: That's the only the explanation I can think of was

111
00:05:01,839 --> 00:05:03,159
Speaker 3: preconceived notions.

112
00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:04,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right.

113
00:05:05,080 --> 00:05:06,680
Speaker 1: Shall we go back and just talk about the word

114
00:05:06,680 --> 00:05:08,799
Speaker 1: because I thought that was sort of interesting in itself.

115
00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:09,400
Speaker 4: Yeah?

116
00:05:09,760 --> 00:05:12,760
Speaker 2: Was that the original word comes from French.

117
00:05:13,279 --> 00:05:19,039
Speaker 1: Optimism optimismy that was coined in the early seventeen hundreds

118
00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:24,160
Speaker 1: by a philosopher named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz or I Guess Leibnitz.

119
00:05:24,800 --> 00:05:27,160
Speaker 2: And that's interesting enough, that's fine.

120
00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:31,039
Speaker 1: The idea was that God optimized the universe for good

121
00:05:31,279 --> 00:05:34,359
Speaker 1: and minimized evil. But what I thought was super interesting

122
00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:37,560
Speaker 1: was the word pessimism was literally made up just to

123
00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:40,520
Speaker 1: counter that, like as a straw man term for people

124
00:05:40,560 --> 00:05:42,800
Speaker 1: to write and say, well, now I don't really think so,

125
00:05:42,800 --> 00:05:44,240
Speaker 1: So they made up the word pessimism.

126
00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:46,680
Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought that was interesting too, Although if you

127
00:05:46,720 --> 00:05:48,640
Speaker 3: look at it from you know, this whole thing finds

128
00:05:48,680 --> 00:05:51,840
Speaker 3: its roots in philosophy. It's not surprising because philosophers love

129
00:05:51,920 --> 00:05:54,160
Speaker 3: to make up stuff to tear one another's arguments apart.

130
00:05:54,240 --> 00:05:55,320
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, good point.

131
00:05:55,400 --> 00:05:58,960
Speaker 3: I read that Voltaire wrote Candide to mock Leibnitz and

132
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:01,360
Speaker 3: his idea of the opti universe because you thought it

133
00:06:01,400 --> 00:06:06,120
Speaker 3: was so preposterous. Interesting, but you hit on something here, like,

134
00:06:06,200 --> 00:06:09,719
Speaker 3: are the entire concept of optimism and pessimism is rooted

135
00:06:09,760 --> 00:06:14,560
Speaker 3: in philosophy not psychology. Yeah, and there's pessimism kind of

136
00:06:14,600 --> 00:06:17,960
Speaker 3: went on to have its own career Aside from optimism,

137
00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:23,880
Speaker 3: Schopenhauer came up with philosophical pessimism, which is the basis

138
00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:27,640
Speaker 3: of all life is suffering. Everybody's heard that one and

139
00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:30,520
Speaker 3: or experienced it. And then there are a couple other

140
00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:34,080
Speaker 3: versions of philosophical pessimism that I thought were pretty interesting.

141
00:06:34,200 --> 00:06:37,600
Speaker 3: The most the one that grabbed me the most is

142
00:06:37,640 --> 00:06:40,960
Speaker 3: this idea that there's more evil in the world than good.

143
00:06:41,040 --> 00:06:45,000
Speaker 3: So evil exists in greater quantities, but it's also of

144
00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:48,800
Speaker 3: greater quality too, So a small amount of evil can

145
00:06:48,839 --> 00:06:50,640
Speaker 3: spoil a very large amount of good.

146
00:06:51,120 --> 00:06:53,320
Speaker 2: Oh, I agree with that. I think I do too.

147
00:06:53,360 --> 00:06:55,680
Speaker 3: I thought of a good example is, let's say you

148
00:06:55,680 --> 00:06:58,520
Speaker 3: have an executive who works at a charity and they

149
00:06:58,520 --> 00:07:01,920
Speaker 3: get caught stealing money from that charity. Well, when word

150
00:07:01,960 --> 00:07:03,880
Speaker 3: gets out, a lot of people probably are going to

151
00:07:03,960 --> 00:07:06,520
Speaker 3: stop giving to that charity, and then the good that

152
00:07:06,640 --> 00:07:08,920
Speaker 3: charity was doing for other people is going to dry

153
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:12,440
Speaker 3: up all because of the one act of that one person. Yeah.

154
00:07:12,960 --> 00:07:16,480
Speaker 1: Or let's say you throw a birthday party for your

155
00:07:16,560 --> 00:07:19,920
Speaker 1: kid and the whole day goes great, and at the end,

156
00:07:20,040 --> 00:07:24,040
Speaker 1: some some little jerk kid spoils it all by doing

157
00:07:24,280 --> 00:07:27,600
Speaker 1: just this one thing like smashes your kid's face in

158
00:07:27,640 --> 00:07:28,440
Speaker 1: the cake or something.

159
00:07:28,760 --> 00:07:34,040
Speaker 3: Oh Man, talk about an upshot, right, But.

160
00:07:34,560 --> 00:07:37,320
Speaker 1: I think the long and short of this sort of

161
00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:40,600
Speaker 1: the early philosophical stuff was it was way more sort

162
00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:44,680
Speaker 1: of broad as like, you know, the whole morality of

163
00:07:44,720 --> 00:07:49,120
Speaker 1: the universe, And since then we've really narrowed it down

164
00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:53,000
Speaker 1: more to like, like you're just very personal outlook on stuff.

165
00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:56,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's kind of even more kind of refined

166
00:07:56,520 --> 00:08:03,080
Speaker 3: than that, the idea that we should use or seek optimism,

167
00:08:03,160 --> 00:08:06,960
Speaker 3: we should optimize our optimistic outlook. Right, it's pretty old.

168
00:08:06,960 --> 00:08:11,760
Speaker 3: William James, who essentially founded modern psychology as a field

169
00:08:11,800 --> 00:08:15,559
Speaker 3: the late nineteenth early twentieth century, he was basically talking

170
00:08:15,600 --> 00:08:18,720
Speaker 3: about that very issue too. It got picked up about

171
00:08:18,800 --> 00:08:21,800
Speaker 3: fifty years later by Abraham Maslow, who came up with

172
00:08:21,840 --> 00:08:25,480
Speaker 3: the hierarchy of needs. He also said, hey, yeah, we're

173
00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:28,920
Speaker 3: really into this abnormal psychology because it's really interesting, but

174
00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:33,400
Speaker 3: we should focus on optimizing people's happiness. We'll call it

175
00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:37,000
Speaker 3: positive psychology. And I remember that. Do you remember when

176
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,560
Speaker 3: we started writing at How Stuff Works, and like every

177
00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:44,040
Speaker 3: third article we wrote was about happiness. Yeah, there's like

178
00:08:44,040 --> 00:08:47,680
Speaker 3: a whole happiness craze that came out of Maslow's whole

179
00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:50,800
Speaker 3: positive psychology thing being picked up and dusted off in

180
00:08:50,840 --> 00:08:51,760
Speaker 3: the late nineties.

181
00:08:52,320 --> 00:08:54,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I remember even in the eighties and nineties.

182
00:08:54,960 --> 00:08:56,640
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this came from. And we're

183
00:08:56,640 --> 00:08:59,160
Speaker 1: going to talk a lot about this guy, Martin Seligman.

184
00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:02,040
Speaker 1: He was in the nineties. He was the president of

185
00:09:02,120 --> 00:09:07,040
Speaker 1: the American Psychological Association. He talked a lot about positive psychology,

186
00:09:07,040 --> 00:09:10,360
Speaker 1: but I remember a lot about just PMA, your positive

187
00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:13,720
Speaker 1: mental attitude mm hm, and improving your PMA, and that

188
00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:15,280
Speaker 1: was just sort of the key to everything. Man, if

189
00:09:15,320 --> 00:09:17,800
Speaker 1: you can just if you can just get your head

190
00:09:17,840 --> 00:09:20,000
Speaker 1: right in that PMA, right, like, everything's going to fall

191
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:20,640
Speaker 1: into place for you.

192
00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:21,440
Speaker 4: Yeah.

193
00:09:21,480 --> 00:09:24,640
Speaker 3: And I mean I remember thinking Martin Seligman, I thought

194
00:09:24,679 --> 00:09:27,040
Speaker 3: he came up with positive psychology, didn't realize it was

195
00:09:27,080 --> 00:09:30,439
Speaker 3: an already existing thing, but that was so pushed and

196
00:09:30,559 --> 00:09:33,040
Speaker 3: pedaled what you just described around two thousand and eight,

197
00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:35,280
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine that I thought this guy was

198
00:09:35,320 --> 00:09:37,920
Speaker 3: a total fruit loop. But then looking into this stuff,

199
00:09:38,160 --> 00:09:40,760
Speaker 3: his research on optimism and pessimism, I'm like, Oh, it's

200
00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:44,520
Speaker 3: actually this dude's pretty pretty with it. And I guess

201
00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:48,720
Speaker 3: maybe being grown up, a little less cynical, certainly less

202
00:09:48,760 --> 00:09:50,360
Speaker 3: cigarette smoky, right.

203
00:09:50,480 --> 00:09:50,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

204
00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:53,880
Speaker 3: In that kind of hindsight, I'm like, I think there's

205
00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:57,559
Speaker 3: actually nothing wrong with trying to figure out how to

206
00:09:57,880 --> 00:10:00,360
Speaker 3: how people can be as happy as possible. There's a

207
00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:02,640
Speaker 3: problem with foisting it on people and seeing you have

208
00:10:02,679 --> 00:10:04,160
Speaker 3: to be happy. There's something wrong with you that you're

209
00:10:04,240 --> 00:10:06,839
Speaker 3: not happy. That's not what these people are talking about.

210
00:10:07,040 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 3: They're just trying to figure out things that people can

211
00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:11,079
Speaker 3: do to make themselves happier if they feel like they

212
00:10:11,080 --> 00:10:12,360
Speaker 3: need to make themselves happier.

213
00:10:12,800 --> 00:10:13,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

214
00:10:13,800 --> 00:10:15,800
Speaker 1: And as we'll see, you know, we'll get to like

215
00:10:15,880 --> 00:10:19,880
Speaker 1: studies and stuff, but there's definitely plenty of benefits to

216
00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:23,720
Speaker 1: trying to be positive, positive and have an optimistic outlook

217
00:10:24,679 --> 00:10:26,679
Speaker 1: as far as I mean, we'll get to all the

218
00:10:26,679 --> 00:10:29,960
Speaker 1: different things, including like real health outcomes, right, but there

219
00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:34,040
Speaker 1: are also some positives to pessimism, as we'll learn, which

220
00:10:34,120 --> 00:10:36,120
Speaker 1: was not surprising, but once I read it, it kind of

221
00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:37,520
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of that makes a lot of

222
00:10:37,559 --> 00:10:38,000
Speaker 1: sense to me.

223
00:10:38,280 --> 00:10:39,120
Speaker 3: Bravo, babe.

224
00:10:41,480 --> 00:10:43,959
Speaker 2: One big thing if you look at the like the

225
00:10:44,520 --> 00:10:46,160
Speaker 2: how psychology.

226
00:10:45,559 --> 00:10:48,920
Speaker 1: Really views it today, and this is sort of true

227
00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:51,160
Speaker 1: across a lot of psychology is sort of a nature

228
00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:54,120
Speaker 1: nurture thing, or in this case they refer to as

229
00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:59,200
Speaker 1: state versus trait state, meaning like are you feeling that

230
00:10:59,240 --> 00:10:59,920
Speaker 1: way right now?

231
00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:00,360
Speaker 3: Mm hm?

232
00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:03,360
Speaker 2: Or is it generally your trait.

233
00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:05,800
Speaker 1: As a person of like, oh, nothing good ever happens

234
00:11:05,800 --> 00:11:07,800
Speaker 1: to me, and it's not just like I'm having a

235
00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:08,679
Speaker 1: bad day or something.

236
00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:11,120
Speaker 3: Right, You can kind of think of states as moods

237
00:11:11,160 --> 00:11:14,200
Speaker 3: and traits as your personality. Yeah, exact one's way more

238
00:11:14,240 --> 00:11:17,200
Speaker 3: stable than the other. And psychology tends to focus more

239
00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:19,240
Speaker 3: on the trait side because they want to figure out

240
00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:23,920
Speaker 3: what it is that makes people actually adopt or or

241
00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:27,439
Speaker 3: grow up or be bestowed genetically. Who knows with an

242
00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:31,000
Speaker 3: outlook on life that's way more positive than somebody else

243
00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:34,959
Speaker 3: who may even have been like in the womb with them,

244
00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:37,600
Speaker 3: but raised in a different, different house, you know. Like,

245
00:11:37,679 --> 00:11:43,000
Speaker 3: twin studies have shown there's actually huge variations in pessimism

246
00:11:43,080 --> 00:11:45,880
Speaker 3: and optimism among twins who were separated at Perth.

247
00:11:46,320 --> 00:11:50,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, those studies are always really telling to me because

248
00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:54,880
Speaker 1: that's probably not the hugest cohort, but I think it

249
00:11:55,000 --> 00:11:56,720
Speaker 1: just speaks a lot to a lot of different things.

250
00:11:56,760 --> 00:11:59,079
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a lot of really unethical studies that

251
00:11:59,120 --> 00:12:01,079
Speaker 3: were carried out with twins too.

252
00:12:01,320 --> 00:12:03,079
Speaker 2: Like I imagine splitting them up, right.

253
00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:06,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I think there was a researcher

254
00:12:06,200 --> 00:12:08,840
Speaker 3: at some point in the seventies maybe who specifically was

255
00:12:08,880 --> 00:12:12,280
Speaker 3: splitting up twins to study them.

256
00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:16,679
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm gonna put on my optimist cap and

257
00:12:17,160 --> 00:12:19,000
Speaker 1: just think that everything worked out great for them because

258
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:20,240
Speaker 1: they were eventually reunited.

259
00:12:20,400 --> 00:12:21,080
Speaker 3: That's wonderful.

260
00:12:23,080 --> 00:12:26,440
Speaker 1: So when you talk about the psychology side of things,

261
00:12:27,120 --> 00:12:28,760
Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways that they like to look

262
00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:34,439
Speaker 1: at it, which is which are dispositional and attributional. Dispositional

263
00:12:34,520 --> 00:12:38,720
Speaker 1: is how we predict future events, and attributional obviously is

264
00:12:38,760 --> 00:12:42,240
Speaker 1: like basically saying like this happened because of this, assigning

265
00:12:42,400 --> 00:12:45,240
Speaker 1: either credit or blame for the reason that something good

266
00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:46,120
Speaker 1: or bad happened to you.

267
00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:51,440
Speaker 3: Right, And those two are trait based, Yeah, optimistic or

268
00:12:51,440 --> 00:12:54,760
Speaker 3: pessimistic views. It's not We're no longer talking about state

269
00:12:54,800 --> 00:12:56,959
Speaker 3: and trait. These are all traits from what we're talking about,

270
00:12:57,000 --> 00:12:59,200
Speaker 3: like this is how you view life, right.

271
00:12:59,640 --> 00:12:59,920
Speaker 4: Yeah.

272
00:13:00,440 --> 00:13:02,560
Speaker 3: One of the first tests of this that has proven

273
00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:06,559
Speaker 3: to be really viable and valid. It's called the Life

274
00:13:06,600 --> 00:13:10,360
Speaker 3: Orientation Test, the LOT That was in nineteen eighty five,

275
00:13:10,400 --> 00:13:12,520
Speaker 3: and I think of the mid nineties they revised it,

276
00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:16,280
Speaker 3: so it's the LOT DASH R. Yeah, Lot DASH revised.

277
00:13:17,360 --> 00:13:19,800
Speaker 2: Is that what it stands for? I kind of figured,

278
00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:21,280
Speaker 2: but that didn't bother looking.

279
00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:23,920
Speaker 3: Sure, anytime you see the R with it something like that,

280
00:13:23,960 --> 00:13:26,720
Speaker 3: it almost certainly is revised. Yeah, yeah, Well it could

281
00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:27,679
Speaker 3: also be revved.

282
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:30,880
Speaker 2: Up, I guess, yeah, or really the right test.

283
00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:35,320
Speaker 3: Right, The other letters are just kind of implied.

284
00:13:35,400 --> 00:13:36,319
Speaker 2: Yeah.

285
00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:40,000
Speaker 1: The lot was conceived by two dudes named Michael Schier

286
00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:43,520
Speaker 1: and Charles Carber. And what they were trying to do,

287
00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:45,400
Speaker 1: and I did a pretty good job of it, I think,

288
00:13:45,480 --> 00:13:49,319
Speaker 1: was measure you know, I talked about dispositional which is

289
00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:52,760
Speaker 1: how we predict future events. They're trying to measure dispositional

290
00:13:52,800 --> 00:13:55,280
Speaker 1: optimism and pessimism with this test.

291
00:13:56,280 --> 00:13:59,439
Speaker 3: Yeah. So what they found is that, like I said, that,

292
00:13:59,559 --> 00:14:01,880
Speaker 3: the test is actually really reliable. That was the word

293
00:14:01,920 --> 00:14:04,120
Speaker 3: I was looking for before. Yeah, because if you take

294
00:14:04,160 --> 00:14:07,760
Speaker 3: this test, you know, at fifty you take it again

295
00:14:07,800 --> 00:14:09,920
Speaker 3: on a totally different day, in a totally different state

296
00:14:10,040 --> 00:14:13,880
Speaker 3: and a totally different state of mind. Yeah, at fifty

297
00:14:13,920 --> 00:14:17,200
Speaker 3: five you're probably going to get roughly the same score, right,

298
00:14:17,240 --> 00:14:20,200
Speaker 3: So it is a very reliable test. Interestingly, what they

299
00:14:20,240 --> 00:14:24,000
Speaker 3: found is that over the course of life, optimism tends

300
00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:27,920
Speaker 3: to rise and pessimism tends to fall from young adulthood

301
00:14:27,960 --> 00:14:30,880
Speaker 3: to middle age. Yeah, and then it starts to decline,

302
00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:33,800
Speaker 3: which I can tell you firsthand that is totally true.

303
00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:39,200
Speaker 2: Uh. Oh, I don't want to self reflect too much

304
00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:39,800
Speaker 2: on this one.

305
00:14:40,240 --> 00:14:42,520
Speaker 3: Well, something that I'm really hanging on too, is I've

306
00:14:42,520 --> 00:14:45,960
Speaker 3: been told that, like your forties are far and away

307
00:14:45,960 --> 00:14:46,840
Speaker 3: your worst decade.

308
00:14:47,040 --> 00:14:48,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard that.

309
00:14:48,040 --> 00:14:50,680
Speaker 3: Almost across the board. You've got way more responsibility, Like

310
00:14:50,720 --> 00:14:52,720
Speaker 3: you're not as young anymore. Your body's starting to change,

311
00:14:52,760 --> 00:14:55,200
Speaker 3: Like it's just a bad decade, fifties. It starts to

312
00:14:55,200 --> 00:14:57,400
Speaker 3: pick up. But I remember we talked about this before.

313
00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:00,640
Speaker 3: In your sixties, your happiness starts to go so back

314
00:15:00,720 --> 00:15:02,920
Speaker 3: up to levels that it was when you were younger.

315
00:15:03,760 --> 00:15:05,960
Speaker 3: So I'm really holding out for my sixties, man, I'll

316
00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:06,440
Speaker 3: tell you that.

317
00:15:07,160 --> 00:15:10,480
Speaker 2: Well, I'm closer than you that for once. It's a benefit.

318
00:15:10,760 --> 00:15:11,600
Speaker 3: I know I'm jelly.

319
00:15:12,400 --> 00:15:15,640
Speaker 1: So the lot are, which I guess it could stand

320
00:15:15,680 --> 00:15:20,359
Speaker 1: for reliable. Yeah, so the lot are comes along.

321
00:15:20,640 --> 00:15:23,960
Speaker 2: The revised test. It is ten questions, six of them

322
00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:26,720
Speaker 2: are scored, four of them are fillers, and the scored

323
00:15:26,760 --> 00:15:27,880
Speaker 2: wins are things like.

324
00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:32,040
Speaker 1: I think Olivia found these exact questions and uncertain times.

325
00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:35,200
Speaker 1: I usually expect the best. If something can go wrong

326
00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:38,760
Speaker 1: for me, it will, And you're responding to how much

327
00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:41,040
Speaker 1: you agree with something, and they score it in a

328
00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:44,440
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward way, where from zero to twenty four, where

329
00:15:44,560 --> 00:15:48,400
Speaker 1: zero is very low optimism and high pessimism and twenty four, man,

330
00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:50,040
Speaker 1: you are maxed out optimist.

331
00:15:50,400 --> 00:15:54,160
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, you got a permagrin, right, I guess.

332
00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:57,160
Speaker 3: So I took that test. I actually found the test

333
00:15:57,240 --> 00:15:59,840
Speaker 3: that like a clinician would give to like a patient.

334
00:16:00,840 --> 00:16:03,520
Speaker 3: It had like all the explanations and all that stuff

335
00:16:03,520 --> 00:16:03,720
Speaker 3: on it.

336
00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:05,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to reveal your score.

337
00:16:05,680 --> 00:16:07,880
Speaker 3: So out of twenty four, I scored eleven, and I

338
00:16:07,920 --> 00:16:10,400
Speaker 3: was like, that doesn't sound very good. And I looked

339
00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:13,600
Speaker 3: at the explanation and scoring and it says below thirteen

340
00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:17,240
Speaker 3: is lower than typical optimism and may warrant clinical attention.

341
00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:20,440
Speaker 3: So I got really upset about this because that's like

342
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:23,880
Speaker 3: basically the test scoring academic version of going.

343
00:16:24,800 --> 00:16:28,760
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I want to take that test, So.

344
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:29,680
Speaker 2: Send that to me, Leah.

345
00:16:29,760 --> 00:16:30,920
Speaker 3: You should, I'll send it to you.

346
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:31,360
Speaker 2: Okay.

347
00:16:31,520 --> 00:16:33,760
Speaker 3: But I went on, I guess a bit of a tailspin.

348
00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:35,680
Speaker 3: So I tried to make myself feel better. I went

349
00:16:35,720 --> 00:16:38,880
Speaker 3: and listened to some Kenny G to brighten my mood,

350
00:16:39,600 --> 00:16:41,320
Speaker 3: and I was just sitting there. I realized I was

351
00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:43,560
Speaker 3: just sitting there waiting for him to screw up eventually,

352
00:16:43,680 --> 00:16:46,280
Speaker 3: so I stopped listening to trinny G. Then I went,

353
00:16:46,320 --> 00:16:48,880
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to alone again, naturally, and then

354
00:16:48,960 --> 00:16:50,160
Speaker 3: everything was all right again.

355
00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:51,200
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good.

356
00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:56,800
Speaker 1: Attributional optimism or pessimism is what we mentioned earlier is

357
00:16:56,840 --> 00:16:58,560
Speaker 1: the other side of that coin. And that's when you're

358
00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:01,680
Speaker 1: either saying, like this thing that was good in my

359
00:17:01,760 --> 00:17:06,000
Speaker 1: life is happened because of this good thing only, or

360
00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:08,440
Speaker 1: this bad thing that happened happened because of this bad

361
00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:13,359
Speaker 1: thing only. It's basically assigning blame to what happens in

362
00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:15,600
Speaker 1: your life. And if you're you know, some of this

363
00:17:15,600 --> 00:17:18,639
Speaker 1: stuff is kind of no brainer. If you're optimistic, you

364
00:17:18,720 --> 00:17:22,040
Speaker 1: are much more prone to attribute negative events to a

365
00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:24,800
Speaker 1: specific thing, like, hey, things usually work out for me,

366
00:17:24,840 --> 00:17:27,520
Speaker 1: and this didn't just because of this, Whereas if you're

367
00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:30,439
Speaker 1: a pessimist, it's like, no, this happened to me just

368
00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:32,119
Speaker 1: because this kind of stuff always.

369
00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:32,439
Speaker 2: Happens to me.

370
00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in the same vein, if you're a pessimist

371
00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:37,240
Speaker 3: and something good happens to here, like that was just

372
00:17:37,440 --> 00:17:41,160
Speaker 3: one million chants, it makes me so sad, it is,

373
00:17:41,200 --> 00:17:44,160
Speaker 3: But that's that's usually how it works. On this test,

374
00:17:44,200 --> 00:17:48,080
Speaker 3: the attributional Style Questionnaire, I looked at that one too.

375
00:17:48,119 --> 00:17:52,600
Speaker 3: That's a Martin Seligman joint, huh, And it's twelve questions

376
00:17:52,680 --> 00:17:56,560
Speaker 3: twelve situations actually, where it says, so, for example, one

377
00:17:56,600 --> 00:17:58,320
Speaker 3: of them will say a friend compliment to you on

378
00:17:58,359 --> 00:18:00,760
Speaker 3: your appearance, and then I ask you to write in

379
00:18:00,800 --> 00:18:03,959
Speaker 3: what the cause was, right, like you got some new

380
00:18:04,040 --> 00:18:08,080
Speaker 3: duds or something like that, and then I've gotten even better. Example,

381
00:18:08,119 --> 00:18:10,359
Speaker 3: there's one that said you've been looking for a job

382
00:18:10,480 --> 00:18:13,320
Speaker 3: unsuccessfully for a long time. Then you'd write in the cause,

383
00:18:13,920 --> 00:18:16,240
Speaker 3: say you said it was a bad economy, or you

384
00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:19,560
Speaker 3: even said I'm not good at interviewing. Then it says

385
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:22,440
Speaker 3: okay to ask you questions about the cause, like how

386
00:18:22,520 --> 00:18:27,159
Speaker 3: much of that is due to the actions of yourself

387
00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:30,720
Speaker 3: versus other causes? And so you might say like, well,

388
00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:34,439
Speaker 3: I'm going through a bad spell right now, so you

389
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:37,560
Speaker 3: know it's probably me and my gloomy nature right now.

390
00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:39,760
Speaker 3: And then they'll say, well, how likely is it that

391
00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:41,560
Speaker 3: the issue is going to be present the next time,

392
00:18:41,760 --> 00:18:44,399
Speaker 3: say you interview. You can say, well, I expect to

393
00:18:44,480 --> 00:18:46,719
Speaker 3: be feeling a lot better next time, so maybe I'll

394
00:18:46,720 --> 00:18:48,600
Speaker 3: be doing a little better. And then how much does

395
00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:52,680
Speaker 3: it extend to other parts of your life. So there's

396
00:18:52,720 --> 00:18:55,760
Speaker 3: twelve of those, and from that, apparently you can glean

397
00:18:55,880 --> 00:19:00,399
Speaker 3: quite clearly whether somebody leans pessimists or optimist based on

398
00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:04,359
Speaker 3: their responses, because again it's do things happen because you

399
00:19:04,440 --> 00:19:07,840
Speaker 3: screwed up right or because you are capable of achieving

400
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:11,359
Speaker 3: good things? Is it always that way? If things go

401
00:19:11,440 --> 00:19:13,399
Speaker 3: wrong for you? Is that just par for the course.

402
00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:15,679
Speaker 3: And then if something goes wrong for you, does your

403
00:19:15,680 --> 00:19:19,040
Speaker 3: whole life just get disrupted? Like those things he figured

404
00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:21,520
Speaker 3: out are actually really predictive and it makes a lot

405
00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:21,920
Speaker 3: of sense.

406
00:19:22,359 --> 00:19:25,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's interesting. It's almost like someone who is

407
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:30,720
Speaker 1: like a self actualized person as opposed to someone who

408
00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:32,600
Speaker 1: feels like they're just sort of a victim in life.

409
00:19:34,080 --> 00:19:36,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you know, for sure.

410
00:19:37,119 --> 00:19:41,800
Speaker 1: So Martin Seligman, once again he put forth this idea

411
00:19:41,840 --> 00:19:45,000
Speaker 1: that though there was an antidote to this idea of

412
00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:48,920
Speaker 1: learned helplessness, which is this, I imagine it's awful, this really

413
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:53,280
Speaker 1: draining thought that I just can't control anything that happens,

414
00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:55,080
Speaker 1: and all these negative things that happened to me, like

415
00:19:55,080 --> 00:19:58,600
Speaker 1: I can't do anything about that. He put forth the

416
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:02,280
Speaker 1: idea of learned optimism. But that has to go on

417
00:20:02,320 --> 00:20:06,200
Speaker 1: the assumption that optimism and pessimism aren't just these fixed

418
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:08,399
Speaker 1: things in your life, and it's more of a strategy

419
00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:09,040
Speaker 1: that you employ.

420
00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:12,679
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is really significant because I think it's easy

421
00:20:12,760 --> 00:20:16,400
Speaker 3: for people who say are like have a generally gloomy

422
00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:19,560
Speaker 3: outlook to forget that there's plenty of times where they

423
00:20:19,560 --> 00:20:21,879
Speaker 3: are excited about the future, where they do expect something

424
00:20:21,920 --> 00:20:26,320
Speaker 3: good to comfort down the road for them. It's just

425
00:20:26,400 --> 00:20:28,160
Speaker 3: easy to get caught up in that sort of look

426
00:20:28,160 --> 00:20:30,639
Speaker 3: at them as like, No, this isn't like just your

427
00:20:30,680 --> 00:20:33,800
Speaker 3: genes like making you move and walk like Master Blaster

428
00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:38,880
Speaker 3: from Mad Max. Right, this is just you not even

429
00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:41,720
Speaker 3: being aware that you're adopting these things as strategies to

430
00:20:41,800 --> 00:20:44,399
Speaker 3: kind of negotiate life, because this is the strategy you

431
00:20:44,520 --> 00:20:47,080
Speaker 3: learn based on all these other different events in your

432
00:20:47,080 --> 00:20:49,800
Speaker 3: life that led up to this, which means chuck, and

433
00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:51,840
Speaker 3: this is the most hopeful thing of all. You can

434
00:20:52,119 --> 00:20:55,600
Speaker 3: learn and unlearn strategies that you're not aware you're using

435
00:20:55,640 --> 00:20:57,560
Speaker 3: by recognizing them as strategies.

436
00:20:58,040 --> 00:20:59,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

437
00:20:59,080 --> 00:21:02,000
Speaker 1: And by the way, I just I cannot say that

438
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:04,679
Speaker 1: movie character named from the Mad Max without saying it

439
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:09,520
Speaker 1: like Tina Turner, I could only say Masta blasta.

440
00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:14,639
Speaker 3: It sounds like it sounds like Tim Curry doing Tina Turner.

441
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:18,440
Speaker 2: Wow, all right, yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like

442
00:21:18,520 --> 00:21:18,880
Speaker 2: that too.

443
00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:21,000
Speaker 3: How's Tim Curry doing these days?

444
00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:21,440
Speaker 4: Uh?

445
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:23,679
Speaker 1: You know, I actually saw something recently where he was

446
00:21:23,720 --> 00:21:27,800
Speaker 1: interviewed and he has recovered from his stroke such that

447
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:32,600
Speaker 1: he can can speak, and you know, I mean, I

448
00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:34,280
Speaker 1: think he's doing as well as he can be for

449
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:36,680
Speaker 1: you know, such a I think it's a pretty massive stroke.

450
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:38,720
Speaker 1: But the interview I saw was like he had a

451
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:42,120
Speaker 1: sense of humor and was engaged and people really really

452
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:43,119
Speaker 1: loved hearing from him.

453
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:45,320
Speaker 3: Again, that's wonderful, I'm glad, I asked.

454
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:45,520
Speaker 4: Then.

455
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:48,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just saw that kind of recently too. That's funny.

456
00:21:48,280 --> 00:21:49,959
Speaker 2: You must be in my algorithm.

457
00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:51,320
Speaker 3: I'm all up in there.

458
00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:54,560
Speaker 2: Should we take a break or should we go through

459
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:55,120
Speaker 2: this last bit?

460
00:21:57,119 --> 00:21:58,880
Speaker 3: We should go through last bit?

461
00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:02,359
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's something that's probably not surprising. Is it

462
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 1: dispositional and attributional optimism or really correlated to one another?

463
00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:11,000
Speaker 1: And really no surprise there. Also, I was about to say comorbid,

464
00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:16,720
Speaker 1: but that always sounds bad, but correlated to high self esteem,

465
00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 1: positive affect, feeling like you're in control of your life

466
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:25,800
Speaker 1: and your outcomes, and obviously negatively correlated with feeling depressed

467
00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 1: or stressed or alienated or having anxiety or hopelessness.

468
00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:33,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as far as Big five personality traits goes,

469
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:38,680
Speaker 3: it's most closely related to emotional stability optimism is Yeah.

470
00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:40,960
Speaker 3: So essentially, if you put all that together, that's the

471
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:43,440
Speaker 3: kid from your high school that you hated because everybody

472
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:44,879
Speaker 3: loved him and he was in a great mood all

473
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:45,879
Speaker 3: the time and he loved you.

474
00:22:46,600 --> 00:22:50,200
Speaker 2: Yeah that was kind of me. Oh no, oh really yeah, sort.

475
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 3: Of Mine was Scott Galvin or Tony.

476
00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 2: Appy Man, Tony Appy, that guy.

477
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:57,399
Speaker 3: So I say we take a break.

478
00:22:57,480 --> 00:22:59,680
Speaker 1: Okay, well take a break. We're going to think about

479
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:01,840
Speaker 1: her and where this podcast is headed. And I'm feeling

480
00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:02,560
Speaker 1: pretty good about it.

481
00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 2: Not theimistic. We'll be right back.

482
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 4: Stop you know, stop stop stop here. Shouldn't know no,

483
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:35,480
Speaker 4: stop you know, stop stop stop here, shouldn't know stop

484
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 4: you should know?

485
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:37,400
Speaker 2: All right.

486
00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 1: So the thing that was on my mind, and I'm

487
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:43,239
Speaker 1: glad she included this bit Olivia did, is like, you know,

488
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:45,199
Speaker 1: is this stuff nature or nurture? Like are we kind

489
00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:47,040
Speaker 1: of born this way? Or are we made this way,

490
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:50,360
Speaker 1: and no surprise, it's a bit of both. I think

491
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 1: generally speaking, they've come to a consensus at about twenty

492
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 1: five And anytime you hear percentages like this, this sort

493
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: of take take it with a grain of salt, but

494
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:02,760
Speaker 1: about twenty five percent genetic and the rest is a

495
00:24:02,840 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 1: mix of like your childhood and the environment that you

496
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 1: were raised in obviously, and then stuff that happened to

497
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 1: you since then.

498
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of it's pretty intuitional, right yeah, intuitive, sure, Yes,

499
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 3: that's why I was like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah,

500
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,560
Speaker 3: Like if you are a developmental psychologist, you would say, well,

501
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:25,719
Speaker 3: your early life experiences and being raised in a family

502
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:29,359
Speaker 3: that neglected you or abused you or criticized you constantly,

503
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 3: you're going to develop negative patterns of thinking and they're

504
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,679
Speaker 3: going to frame the way that you look at the world.

505
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah, so I mean it makes sense of jobs.

506
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 3: It's not one of these things. It's like this one

507
00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 3: subgroup in psychology is working on optimism and pessimism and

508
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 3: having to try to do all these mental gymnastics to

509
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,959
Speaker 3: reverse shoehorn it into other stuff. Yeah, it just fits

510
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,120
Speaker 3: with other concepts. So it's very clear that there are

511
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 3: there's something too. Optimism and pessimism. They do exist as

512
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 3: a thing psychologically speaking, and stuff like that just backs

513
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 3: it up.

514
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

515
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 1: There was a study this year, actually pretty robust, where

516
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: they had two hundred thousand adults. And this one's good

517
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 1: because it was spread out over twenty two different countries.

518
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about a little bit of the bias

519
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:17,560
Speaker 1: of just studying sort of western countries with optimism and stuff.

520
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:19,400
Speaker 2: But they compare their levels of.

521
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:23,919
Speaker 1: Optimism with how they remember their childhood and across all

522
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: the geographies, and again, no surprise, people who had positive

523
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: relationships in their family with their parents and siblings, they

524
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: had better financial status, better health outcomes, and obviously were

525
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:40,239
Speaker 1: more optimistic. Interestingly, if you had frequent religious attendance when

526
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: you were a kid, they associate that with optimism, but

527
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 1: most strongly in more secular countries, which I thought was

528
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:47,720
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating.

529
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 4: Yeah.

530
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:49,840
Speaker 3: I was trying to figure that out, and the best

531
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 3: I could come up with is that they just they

532
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 3: stood out more because they were fewer and farther between.

533
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:57,640
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, I don't know, or maybe in more

534
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,199
Speaker 1: religious countries you're just sort of more expected to be

535
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:03,879
Speaker 1: dragged to church and it wasn't like a conscious choice

536
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:04,439
Speaker 1: you made to go.

537
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:07,119
Speaker 2: I don't know that's a better interpretation, okay.

538
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,639
Speaker 3: And also, like I was saying, divorce, abuse, feeling like

539
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:15,880
Speaker 3: an outsider in your family all associated with lower optimism. Yeah,

540
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 3: and they did say, like, Okay, there is possibly something

541
00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 3: we should mention here. It's possible that these people who

542
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 3: are recalling their childhood are the optimists are recalling their

543
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 3: childhood in more favorable terms, and the pessimist are recalling

544
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 3: them in less favorable terms. And there has to be

545
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:36,400
Speaker 3: like a word for when the thing you're studying acts

546
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 3: as a confounding factor in the study of itself. Yeah,

547
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 3: could not find it to save the life of me.

548
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:44,320
Speaker 3: So if you're a researcher other and you know what

549
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 3: that is, tell me because I've been dying. But that's

550
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 3: essentially what they were saying. They still said, now this

551
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 3: study still stands, but they at least did acknowledge that

552
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 3: it's possible it was the thing being studied optimism was

553
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 3: influencing the study itself.

554
00:26:57,720 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, there's got to be a

555
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 2: certain it's like a blank bias, you.

556
00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 3: Know, blank bias.

557
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: Good enough if you're wondering about the brain itself, like

558
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: just your physical brain, you're noodle. As they say, they

559
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:15,920
Speaker 1: have found differences obviously in optimists and pessimist brain and

560
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 1: how they're built, like your gray matter volume, but also

561
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: how they activate. There was a study again from this

562
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: year in twenty twenty five where and I thought, this

563
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting where optimists share patterns like there the

564
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: wonder machine lights up in kind of the same way

565
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: when optimists imagine future events, whereas when pessimists imagine future events,

566
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: they may all be imagining something negative, but it's all

567
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:43,399
Speaker 1: individual to that person.

568
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:45,120
Speaker 2: And how the MRI machine lights up.

569
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 3: I think this is maybe the most interesting thing that

570
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:50,200
Speaker 3: has been turned up about this so far.

571
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:51,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.

572
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,959
Speaker 1: It's just like groupthink versus like, no, I have a

573
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 1: personal negative outlook that's only mine.

574
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I saw somebody point out like, maybe

575
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:04,679
Speaker 3: this is why some people click with other people, like

576
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:07,639
Speaker 3: they share a literal brain pattern in the way that

577
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 3: they think about the future outlook on life. Whereas you know,

578
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 3: people who are like have lower optimism or higher pessimism

579
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:18,200
Speaker 3: tend to think be thought of as like moby alienated

580
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 3: off by themselves. So they can't even connect with one

581
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 3: another because they have varying brain patterns. It's not like

582
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 3: optimists all have one brain pattern and pessimists all have

583
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 3: one brain pattern. Optimists are the only ones that share

584
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 3: the brain pattern. I find that super fascinating.

585
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: No, totally, And it also sort of lends itself to like,

586
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:40,000
Speaker 1: if you're pessimistic, you may have a harder time finding

587
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:43,040
Speaker 1: a community because it's your own and not one that

588
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: you share. Yeah, as you know, we're talking about health outcomes.

589
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 1: If you read, you know, especially like when you were saying,

590
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: like the earlier two thousands, when it was all this

591
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: happiness stuff, like it makes it seem like optimism is

592
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: basically just the key to life across every single factor

593
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:04,080
Speaker 1: from health to your finances, everything your focus and your

594
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 1: decision making and your motivations.

595
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 2: And a lot of that. It's true to a certain degree.

596
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: It's not a magic pill, but there's no doubt that

597
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: optimism is linked to better like literal health outcomes, better

598
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: heart health, lower inflammation, better immune responses, sleeping, better overall

599
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: mortality rates. One suggestion is like, yeah, because you know,

600
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: you're not as stressed out and stress as the cause

601
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:32,400
Speaker 1: of a lot of that stuff, So that just sort

602
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: of makes sense.

603
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have less inflammation, which is a big one.

604
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 3: I mean, that could explain it right there as far

605
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 3: as health out outcomes. But also they're like, well hold on,

606
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 3: I mean, like optimists. One of the things that defines

607
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 3: optimists is that they are undeterred in seeking their goals

608
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:52,239
Speaker 3: because they generally believe they're going to be successful. Right,

609
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:55,080
Speaker 3: whether all odds are against it or not, doesn't matter.

610
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 3: They're just going to go and do their thing because

611
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 3: they think it's going to be fine. So that would

612
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 3: include things like quitting smoking, exercising, eating right. Having goals

613
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 3: and then just working toward them is almost always aligned

614
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 3: with better health and like having better health habits too,

615
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 3: so that would definitely explain one reason why they are

616
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 3: probably healthier.

617
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some big caveats that Lvia was keen

618
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: to point out, and a lot of these studies that

619
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, tie between being optimistic and having

620
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:33,720
Speaker 1: good health. It gets ticked down quite a bit when

621
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: they look into the details of like someone's I don't

622
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: know bank account and they're like, oh, well, yeah, this

623
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: person that's got loads of money. Yeah, Yeah, they're more

624
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: optimistic and so yeah, they're healthier because a lot of

625
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 1: that just financial stress and all that stuff goes out

626
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: the door. And you know, when you're stressed out about

627
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 1: money like that may lead to like drinking more or

628
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: starting smoking, and so you really have to sort of

629
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: caveat that to death, you know.

630
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 3: Yeah. And similarly, these studies are usually just taking a

631
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:08,479
Speaker 3: snapshot of what that person's like, right then, Right, so

632
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 3: you score very high on an optimistic the life orientation test. Right,

633
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 3: and you also say, like, I don't smoke, I eat

634
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 3: five servings of vegetables every day. Yeah, it's not clear

635
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 3: from that study they're correlated. But is it that people

636
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 3: who eat better and don't smoke tend to have a

637
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 3: more positive outlook? Do you not smoke and eat better

638
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 3: because you have a positive outlook? There's a whole chicken

639
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 3: in the egg thing. I just coined that phrase, but

640
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 3: I think it's gonna stick around.

641
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 1: Then there's something called optimism bias, which I thought was

642
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. As a human race, we have an optimism bias.

643
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: They've studied it to death and they found that just

644
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: for the general population, the default is about eighty percent

645
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 1: of people are generally optimistic. Ten percent are generally pessimistic

646
00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: and about ten percent can go either way, or maybe

647
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: you're neutral. And there was a psychologist named Neil Weinstein.

648
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: I think this is in the very early nineteen eighties. Yeah,

649
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty was his initial study where he was the

650
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,640
Speaker 1: first guy to say, yeah, I mean, we're pretty much

651
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: biased toward being optimist. And you know, one reason may

652
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: be because it's so shoved down your throat that that's

653
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: the key to everything good in life.

654
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, maybe what Weinstein. I'm going with Weinstein,

655
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 3: but I get Weinstein too. Yeah, I think one thing

656
00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 3: that his study, it was a landmark study from what

657
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 3: I could tell. In nineteen eighty, he tested two hundred

658
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 3: students and said, Okay, of these positive things and of

659
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 3: these negative things, was the likelihood it all happened to you?

660
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 3: And was the likelihood it all happened to your classmates?

661
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,800
Speaker 3: And just across the board, students said that positive things

662
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 3: were much more likely to happen to them than to

663
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 3: their classmates. Negative things were much more likely to happen

664
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,480
Speaker 3: to their classmates than to them. And we're talking things

665
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 3: like liking your post graduation job, or your house doubling

666
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 3: in value in five years, or this one, I love

667
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 3: this one, your achievements being written up in the newspaper,

668
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 3: like all those things were much likelier to happen to

669
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 3: the test taker than they were to their fellow students.

670
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 3: And that kind of gets to the basis of this

671
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 3: optimism bias that everyone thinks that they're above average in

672
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 3: a lot of different ways, which is of course impossible

673
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 3: because there have to be people who that isn't true for,

674
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 3: or else there wouldn't be an average. We'd all be

675
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 3: above average. It's not possible. And so here's where we

676
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 3: get to stop talking about optimists as if they're the

677
00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 3: greatest thing that ever happened, because one of the big

678
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 3: problems with optimism is this bias and making terrible predictions

679
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 3: about the outcomes of events.

680
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

681
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 1: Well, there was another study that kind of tied into

682
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: that is from Tali Sharrat, who's a cognitive neuroscientist at

683
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 1: the University College of London and kind of took that

684
00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:08,920
Speaker 1: experiment and ran with it and said, all right, I'm

685
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: going to ask you about the likelihood of something good

686
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:14,359
Speaker 1: or bad happening in your life. Get that answer, and

687
00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: then they say, well, here's actually the average likelihood of

688
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:20,879
Speaker 1: that kind of thing happening, and now let me ask

689
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: you again. And they found that people change their answers

690
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:27,360
Speaker 1: more in response in the positive way than in the

691
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:30,200
Speaker 1: negative way, which I thought was sort of counterintuitive.

692
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 3: It is, because you'd think if you've said, like, what's

693
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:35,439
Speaker 3: your chances of winning the lottery tomorrow and somebody said

694
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 3: eighty percent, and then the people said, actually it's ninety percent,

695
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 3: they go, great, what's say one hundred percent for me? Right,

696
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:45,959
Speaker 3: So that's what people would do. But if the researchers said,

697
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 3: actually it's more like twenty percent, they'd be like, no,

698
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:50,839
Speaker 3: eighty percent for me. And that's what I was talking about.

699
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 3: People tend to think that good things are likely to

700
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 3: happen for them.

701
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, even in.

702
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:02,239
Speaker 3: Knowing that statistically speaking, right overall, it's very unlikely to

703
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 3: happen just anybody. But they're not just anybody. This is

704
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 3: the optimism bias that's been turned up and reinforced the

705
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 3: year after year every year. Yeah, it's an annual thing.

706
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 1: Well, and uh, speaking of reinforce, it seems that optimism

707
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: reinforces optimism if you. When they have they've studied this

708
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,239
Speaker 1: that positive life events just tend to make you even

709
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 1: more optimistic, which makes a lot of sense. But if

710
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: you have something negative that happens, it doesn't generally all

711
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: of a sudden make you more pessimistic.

712
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:32,200
Speaker 2: It's just like, well, that happened.

713
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 3: Yeah. Some other examples are when you expect things to

714
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:38,920
Speaker 3: be easy for you. A lot of people do that.

715
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:40,719
Speaker 3: I understand that one too, it could be bad, and

716
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 3: that you'll be more successful then then you would, I

717
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 3: mean again, just statistically speaking, And then also that we

718
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 3: spend a lot more time thinking about good things that

719
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 3: are coming down the pike than bad ones, so I

720
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 3: also can associate with I mean it. It just seems

721
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 3: unusual for the average person to sit around and be like, well,

722
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 3: I'm probably going to get a flat tire in the

723
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:08,320
Speaker 3: next like year and a half. Statistically speaking, I should

724
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 3: probably think about that for a little while.

725
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

726
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 3: But there is some sort of like I guess, prophylactic

727
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,719
Speaker 3: influence of that, which is you might go make sure

728
00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 3: that your spare tire is doing okay, And that kind

729
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,920
Speaker 3: of belies this. I'm not sure if I'm using that

730
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 3: word correctly, but that goes to show that the optimist

731
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 3: bias can actually be harmful in some ways because it

732
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 3: will prevent you from doing something like going to check

733
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 3: your spare tire, because of course you're not going to

734
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:42,839
Speaker 3: get a spare tire because that wouldn't happen to you.

735
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Emily and I talk a lot about it,

736
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: like the Pollyanna thing. That doesn't seem to serve people

737
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: well because then you're all of a sudden ignoring, or

738
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: maybe not ignoring, but at least not putting as much

739
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:01,360
Speaker 1: weight into the things you do and the decisions you

740
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: make day to day that might have a bad outcome,

741
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:06,759
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're caught unaware when that

742
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: bad outcome happens. Which is it's bad enough when you're

743
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: just an individual, but if you're a corporation or a

744
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: friggin government and you're caught unaware because you thought something

745
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: was going to go too well, or you didn't put

746
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: the budget or the time into something that you should

747
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: have because you just thought it was a no brainer,

748
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,360
Speaker 1: or something like that, that can be really destructive to

749
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: a business or to a nation.

750
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:34,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like just believing that artificial intelligence will

751
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 3: be great with no downsides, you're worth considering. Is it

752
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 3: good excellent example of what you're just talking about.

753
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

754
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 3: So you might say, okay, well, then if eighty percent

755
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 3: of people are optimistic, that kind of suggests that this

756
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 3: is like maybe humanity's default setting, and that tessimism is

757
00:37:55,719 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 3: like maybe malfunction. Even the the thing about that is

758
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 3: that it doesn't really make sense that it would be

759
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 3: evolutionarily favorable for us to be optimistic because of this

760
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 3: optimism bias that can get us into trouble. But you

761
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 3: can look at it a certain way and say, like, actually,

762
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 3: it does make a lot of sense, because if we

763
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:22,319
Speaker 3: didn't have an optimistic bias, we might not go try

764
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 3: new things, we might not make it out of the

765
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:27,800
Speaker 3: cave and learn to make fire ourselves, or kind of

766
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,839
Speaker 3: put differently, if you have a problem that's life or death,

767
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 3: and you throw a bunch of people at it, and

768
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 3: all of them are kind of pre tuned to expect

769
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:41,399
Speaker 3: their attempt at being successful to work. The ones who

770
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 3: die trying don't get to reproduce. The ones that succeed

771
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 3: do get to live to reproduce. And not only do

772
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 3: they get to live to reproduce and pass on that

773
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 3: optimism bias, it's reinforced because they were successful, and they

774
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 3: think all the more, now I can successfully predict my future,

775
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 3: and I'll be successful in that future.

776
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

777
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:06,320
Speaker 1: And you know I mentioned the caveat about the Western

778
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 1: societies being the most studied. A lot of these are

779
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: definitely you know, slanted toward you know, the American way

780
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: of life or the Western way of life, and thought

781
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 1: they're really.

782
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 2: Not super sure about sort of worldwide.

783
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: There is some evidence that like in Japan, that like

784
00:39:24,440 --> 00:39:28,040
Speaker 1: they might not anticipate positive outcomes as much for their

785
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 1: own selves like we do here in the United States, Right,

786
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,359
Speaker 1: But they also make the point like, well we're also

787
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 1: you know, all of these things are people self reporting.

788
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 1: So in places like the United States or Australia, they

789
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,440
Speaker 1: may just be more likely to say out loud that

790
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: they're optimistic, whereas in another country they may feel that

791
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 1: way but just you know, no WAMIs kind of style,

792
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 1: or maybe they just are not as outwardly optimistic, but

793
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 1: they really feel it, they just don't want to say it.

794
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not cool to be optimistic in those countries. Yeah,

795
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 3: you want to take a break and then come back

796
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 3: and talk about some variations on this theme.

797
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 2: Let's do it.

798
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:28,320
Speaker 4: Okay, stop, you know, stop stop stop. He shouldn't know no, stop,

799
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 4: you know, stop stop stop. He shouldn't know stop you

800
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:35,319
Speaker 4: should know.

801
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,600
Speaker 3: Okay, Chuck. We said we're going to talk about some variations,

802
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 3: and I think one thing we should point out is

803
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 3: that optimism itself is almost a variation on a theme.

804
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:49,879
Speaker 3: When people say like like somebody's just happy all the time,

805
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 3: there's going through life, they have like the best attitude,

806
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 3: that's actually not optimism. Optimism is either, like we said,

807
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:59,279
Speaker 3: you are expecting good things to happen down the pike,

808
00:40:59,880 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 3: or or you assume that you can overcome obstacles. You

809
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 3: don't blame other people for your issues. Like that's optimism

810
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 3: with the other thing that I just mentioned is positive affect,

811
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 3: which is more enjoying the present, and optimism is thinking

812
00:41:15,520 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 3: about the future essentially.

813
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good thing to point out for sure.

814
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:23,359
Speaker 1: Some of these variations that you mentioned we were going

815
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:26,240
Speaker 1: to talk about. I thought all these were pretty interesting.

816
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:29,359
Speaker 1: One is called depressive realism, and I think they all

817
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: have their place. Depressive realism is this idea that if

818
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:35,800
Speaker 1: you're you know, maybe a little depressed or moderately depressed,

819
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: then you're actually a realist and you have a way

820
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: more accurate view of the real world around you. In

821
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,399
Speaker 1: other words, you're not that Pollyanna, You're a realist. And

822
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:48,879
Speaker 1: this came from a study in the nineteen seventies by

823
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: psychologist Lauren Eloy and lynn Yvonne Abramson where it's kind

824
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:57,239
Speaker 1: of a funky study, but they had participants push a

825
00:41:57,280 --> 00:42:01,560
Speaker 1: button and then judged how a fel that might be

826
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 1: for causing a light to go on, Like I'm going

827
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:06,319
Speaker 1: to press this button, but I don't think it's going

828
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: to do anything, right.

829
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 2: Or man, this room's going to light up when I

830
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 2: press this button.

831
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 3: Right exactly, And they said that people with depression tended

832
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 3: to more accurately predict whether that button was going to

833
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 3: turn the light on or not, right, yeah, And so

834
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:22,239
Speaker 3: they extrapolated that to say, like, well, you know, that

835
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:26,839
Speaker 3: means that people with depression or depressive symptoms are they

836
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:31,840
Speaker 3: have just a greater handle on the reality of reality. Basically,

837
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 3: they're less likely to make wild predictions about their success

838
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:39,799
Speaker 3: and so they understand reality better. And this was a

839
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 3: landmark study that people just immediately put into the pop

840
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 3: psychology grind because it's just so contrary and it's delicious. Yeah,

841
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:51,239
Speaker 3: and it's also one of those landmark studies that people

842
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 3: have loved to kind of try to take shots at.

843
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 3: And apparently it's not very well replicated. So yeah, I

844
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:00,719
Speaker 3: don't know its status right now, but it seems like

845
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 3: it's it hasn't been debunked, and it's not unfounded as

846
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 3: far as the feel psychology is concerned, but it doesn't

847
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 3: seem like it's as golden as it once.

848
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 2: Was to like a dented landmark. Yeah, I think.

849
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:18,760
Speaker 3: That's a great one, like that ball of foil. That's right.

850
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:23,879
Speaker 2: There's another variation called defensive pessimism. I like this one.

851
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:26,359
Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't really me, but I think there's

852
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: a lot of validity here and that if you have

853
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:32,320
Speaker 1: lower expectations and you're sort of planning for the worst,

854
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: that's almost the same as being optimistic in a way

855
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 1: as far as it helping you in life, because it

856
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: can really help manage your anxiety. It can make you

857
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 1: feel like you have some sense of control and you're not.

858
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:47,840
Speaker 1: You know, like during COVID, they found that if you

859
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,279
Speaker 1: were a defensive pessimist, then that correlated with taking more

860
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: precautions and being safer and I E.

861
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 2: I guess being healthier.

862
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you ever put two words to go to

863
00:43:57,360 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 3: describe me, it's defensive pessimist.

864
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure I could see that, and I think.

865
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 3: There's no greater description than this. But defensive pessimists don't

866
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 3: focus as much on pursuing happiness. They focus more on

867
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:12,839
Speaker 3: avoiding regret, which is I mean, they can still have

868
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 3: the same outcome, but it's it's what you're chasing is different.

869
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 3: You're avoiding a negative outcome rather than pursuing a positive outcome,

870
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:21,480
Speaker 3: but the outcomes still the same.

871
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 2: You succeeded because you're pursuing something.

872
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're Actually it's based on the idea that you

873
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 3: can change your fate, right Like, you can take actions

874
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 3: to affect this outcome and make it as close to

875
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,359
Speaker 3: the outcome you want as possible. That's the same thing

876
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 3: as optimism, it's just coming at it a different way. Yeah.

877
00:44:42,239 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: I really like that idea because I mean, it's not me,

878
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,319
Speaker 1: but I love it for you because it's not like, well,

879
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:48,919
Speaker 1: this is just going to happen to me no matter

880
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: what it's like. Boy, I have a bad feeling that

881
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:53,399
Speaker 1: this is going to happen to me unless I take

882
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: these steps, right.

883
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,759
Speaker 3: The only downside of it is like you won't let

884
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 3: yourself think about the future being good because you'll chank

885
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 3: it essentially.

886
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Jinxing's a whole of their uh for sure,

887
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:07,359
Speaker 1: part of this thing.

888
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:10,399
Speaker 3: So what you just described, though, is what I think

889
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 3: is the worst one, fatalistic pessimism, which is right, everything's

890
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:17,839
Speaker 3: wrong and I can't do anything to change it. That

891
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 3: is a sad, sad disposition that I like to think

892
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 3: that is not set in stone. It's just because of

893
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,839
Speaker 3: like circumstances, or it's a particular low point in your life.

894
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I don't like to think that

895
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 3: anyone out there is at their base of fatalistic pessimists.

896
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:35,840
Speaker 3: That's just sad.

897
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:37,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed.

898
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 1: On the flip side of that coin, you have toxic positivity.

899
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:43,880
Speaker 1: I mean, we almost don't even need to say anything

900
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 1: else because I think everyone knows what that is. It

901
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: can lead to bad things because like that's sort of

902
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: the Pollyanna thing I was talking about.

903
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:53,240
Speaker 2: You're ignoring anything.

904
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: Negative to like basically you're delusional about that, and so

905
00:45:57,200 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 1: you're not gonna attempt to improve things because you're just like, no,

906
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 1: it's it all gonna work out.

907
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 2: It's gonna be great.

908
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 3: One of the ways that this pops up, I think

909
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 3: for people, and they don't really recognize that that's what

910
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 3: they're doing, is when somebody shares their feelings or confides

911
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 3: in you that they're afraid of something or anxious about something,

912
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:13,919
Speaker 3: and you just say, oh, it's all gonna work out.

913
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 3: You're being toxically positive right there. You're actually dismissing their fears.

914
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 4: Yeah.

915
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 3: You're probably doing it because you're uncomfortable, right then. You

916
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:24,879
Speaker 3: don't know what else to say, so you're just going on, well,

917
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 3: I can't go wrong by being positive. You actually can,

918
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:29,240
Speaker 3: and that's toxic positivity.

919
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's I mean true in all relationships, supporting

920
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: a spouse or a friend, but also a lot with parenting,

921
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: Like that's not a great road to go down with

922
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:41,840
Speaker 1: a kid because you're teaching them the wrong things. I

923
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: feel like you should be saying like, well, hey, let's

924
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 1: think about this and maybe if you take these steps

925
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 1: you can help affect the outcome, rather than like it's

926
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 1: gonna be fine, you're gonna be great, yeah, because you're

927
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: not always gonna be great.

928
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 3: No, that is a good thing to teach a kid

929
00:46:56,320 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 3: for sure. Yeah, there's also tragic optimism. Yeah. It was

930
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:03,400
Speaker 3: coined by a guy named Victor Frankel who is a

931
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 3: psychologist or sorry, psychiatrist who actually did He was interned

932
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 3: in a Nazi concentration camp and lost essentially everyone he knew,

933
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 3: and he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning

934
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 3: from that and it's like a seminal book and search

935
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:21,880
Speaker 3: for the meaning of life. But he coined tragic optimism

936
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:24,839
Speaker 3: to basically say, this is the mindset where you are

937
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:28,440
Speaker 3: aware that in life you're going to suffer pain, guilt, loss,

938
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:31,920
Speaker 3: and that you can accept that that's true and still

939
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 3: seek the most positive outcomes you can get. I like

940
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 3: that one too, Try to be happy even knowing that.

941
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I like that.

942
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:42,400
Speaker 3: And then what's the last one.

943
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:48,319
Speaker 1: Chuck, Cultural pessimism. I'm not going to editorialize here. That's

944
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: basically just like the belief that the society was better

945
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 1: at a different time. You know, decades ago everything was

946
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,720
Speaker 1: great in this country and everything is just going straight

947
00:47:57,760 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 1: down the toilet today.

948
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:00,919
Speaker 3: It's called getting old.

949
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 1: It's interesting in that you have a tendency, in this

950
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 1: case toward optimism bias about your own life while also

951
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:13,919
Speaker 1: at the same time being pessimistic about society as a whole,

952
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:15,480
Speaker 1: which I think is super fascinating.

953
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 3: It is, for sure, especially when you talk about, like,

954
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,280
Speaker 3: my economic outlook is sunny, but not for the country.

955
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 2: Yeah.

956
00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:27,279
Speaker 3: I've also seen it called declinism too. Oh, so let's

957
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 3: say you're like, all right, nuts to all this pessimistic

958
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 3: outlook that I've got. I want to be an optimist.

959
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:36,319
Speaker 3: I'm even willing to try to navigate optimistic bias. That's

960
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,359
Speaker 3: how bad I want to be optimistic. There's actually some

961
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 3: stuff that they figured out that you can do to

962
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 3: essentially shift your outlook some I don't think anyone saying

963
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 3: like this is going to rewire your genetic code or

964
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:54,880
Speaker 3: anything like that, but there are some proven interventions you

965
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 3: can take to help that along. I think probably it's

966
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 3: based on your willingness to want to change too.

967
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 2: Yeah.

968
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,879
Speaker 1: I think intervention is a good word because it's like, hey,

969
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:09,719
Speaker 1: this is happening, let me use this specific technique to

970
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: stop it in its tracks. In the first case is

971
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:16,239
Speaker 1: the ABC technique. Our ol buddy Martin Seligman came up

972
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 1: with this one to use a lot in CBT, cognitive

973
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy and the A is the antecedent or adversity,

974
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:27,680
Speaker 1: so you encounter something difficult. Olivia used a great example

975
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:29,319
Speaker 1: of like you, you know, like you flunk a test.

976
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:32,880
Speaker 1: Maybe then you have your belief and behavior, which in

977
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:34,759
Speaker 1: this case might be like I just I can't pass

978
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 1: this test, I can't understand this stuff.

979
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:36,680
Speaker 2: I'm too dumb.

980
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:40,840
Speaker 1: And then the consequence is the C, which is because

981
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: you have that fatalistic attitude I'm just too dumb to

982
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 1: pass this test, you don't study and you fall further behind.

983
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: And the key here, you know, according to Seligman, is

984
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: you got to get in there between the difficult situation,

985
00:49:54,680 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 1: the thing that happens, and the B thing between the

986
00:49:57,239 --> 00:50:01,680
Speaker 1: A and B and change the attribute. So in other words,

987
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: don't go to like, oh, I'm too dumb to do this,

988
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: go to like, now that happened because I've been really

989
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: stressed out. I didn't put the time in that I

990
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: needed to to study. I was really had my priorities

991
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:17,240
Speaker 1: it priorities out of whack. I didn't sleep well that week.

992
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 1: And that's an immediate intervention where you're putting the attribution

993
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 1: on something that was temporary that happened.

994
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 2: And this is how I.

995
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 3: Am right, and that you can also change too exactly.

996
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:32,880
Speaker 3: And then conversely too, you can also say, like I

997
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 3: got a good grade, it wasn't just because you know

998
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 3: I was lucky. You tell yourself, I got a good

999
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 3: grade because I worked really hard, I got good sleep

1000
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 3: this week, and I paid attention. I found this interesting.

1001
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 3: You can do the same thing too, the opposite too,

1002
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 3: to achieve the same goal. I think you probably have

1003
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:51,400
Speaker 3: to do both to tell you the truth.

1004
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then this is also a good thing to

1005
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: remember when you're parenting, because when your kids are in

1006
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:59,919
Speaker 1: school and they maybe get a bad grade, the first

1007
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:02,759
Speaker 1: question I think you should say is, well, why do

1008
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: you think you got a bad grade? And see what

1009
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:07,360
Speaker 1: they say, and then just kind of go from there, right.

1010
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 3: And then if they get a really good grade, you say, well,

1011
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 3: why didn't you get.

1012
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:12,240
Speaker 2: A hundred exactly.

1013
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:15,800
Speaker 3: So there's another one that's even better than the ABC technique.

1014
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:18,840
Speaker 3: That's called the best Possible self for BPS intervention, And

1015
00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 3: apparently everybody loves this one. There's a way of dealing

1016
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 3: with trauma that they used to have. It's called trauma writing,

1017
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 3: where you would write out essentially like the worst stuff

1018
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:32,800
Speaker 3: that happened to you and it would make you feel

1019
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,239
Speaker 3: better having gotten it out on paper. It would also

1020
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,880
Speaker 3: be pretty traumatic to do, right, Yes, the whole basis

1021
00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:41,320
Speaker 3: of that trauma well, Laura King back in two thousand

1022
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:44,480
Speaker 3: and one said, let's try something different. Let's write out

1023
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:48,560
Speaker 3: this sketch of yourself down the road in the future

1024
00:51:48,560 --> 00:51:51,279
Speaker 3: where you've achieved everything you wanted to achieve it was

1025
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 3: through hard work. Write that version out and it's less traumatizing,

1026
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 3: but it also has the same effect, like it improved

1027
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:02,440
Speaker 3: your sense of well being and apparently increases your optimistic

1028
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 3: outlook on things.

1029
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:06,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's the idea, that sort of hippie

1030
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:08,720
Speaker 1: dippy thing where you know, close your eyes and envision

1031
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,840
Speaker 1: your future where you're strong and you're not doing the

1032
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:13,879
Speaker 1: things that you're doing now that are holding you back.

1033
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:16,359
Speaker 1: And it sounds kind of corny, but I think when

1034
00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 1: you write it down, there's something to that, just the

1035
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:21,759
Speaker 1: same as trauma writing. It's different than just sort of

1036
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 1: mentally visualizing good things happening.

1037
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 3: Way different. There's something about writing that's definitely yeah, a

1038
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:31,160
Speaker 3: step plus, you know. Yeah, And then so just real quick,

1039
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:34,840
Speaker 3: there are some benefits to pessimism too. It's not just

1040
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,959
Speaker 3: you know, being optimistic, Like, if you are pessimistic, there's

1041
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 3: some upsides to it. But also even if you're optimistic,

1042
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:44,400
Speaker 3: there's maybe a little pessimism you should adopt too, Like,

1043
00:52:44,400 --> 00:52:47,479
Speaker 3: if you want to enact social change, that usually doesn't

1044
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 3: happen through optimistic leaders. It happens through people who are

1045
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:55,120
Speaker 3: skeptical and are not following for the false advertising or

1046
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 3: false promises essentially, right, Like, you can't really be optimistic

1047
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:03,280
Speaker 3: and good social change, I think yeah. And then also,

1048
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 3: if you are a group that wants to spur social change,

1049
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 3: it's probably because you're unhappy with your current situation. And

1050
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 3: then lastly, this one's always stood out to me. If

1051
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 3: everyone's looking on the positive side of things, then the

1052
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 3: people who are doing negative stuff are much likelier to

1053
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 3: get away with it. Oh interesting, So I feel like

1054
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 3: if you have the ability to shift between pessimism and

1055
00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:30,920
Speaker 3: optimism as the situation calls for it, that's probably ideal.

1056
00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:32,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

1057
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: Or you know, if you're a defensive pessimist, it's not

1058
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:40,279
Speaker 1: about aiming low, it's about not expecting too high. And

1059
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:42,680
Speaker 1: then if you have and it sounds bad to have,

1060
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 1: like you should have low expectations it's more like realistic

1061
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:48,960
Speaker 1: expectations and then you outperform those like That's got to

1062
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:50,880
Speaker 1: feel great to a Pessimi, for sure.

1063
00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 3: It's like planning for the worst but hoping for the best.

1064
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, that old T shirt. Isn't there a cat hanging

1065
00:53:58,160 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 2: from a tree or something?

1066
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:03,240
Speaker 3: I think that's hanging in baby. Okay, you got anything else?

1067
00:54:03,680 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 2: I got nothing else that. That was a good one.

1068
00:54:05,760 --> 00:54:06,279
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it.

1069
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:09,839
Speaker 3: Agreed, well, Chuck enjoyed this one, which means he automatically

1070
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 3: unlocked listener mail.

1071
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:15,120
Speaker 1: You know what, I don't have a great listener mail

1072
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 1: preps for today, So let's just mention once again that

1073
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: we are going on tour again next year. We are

1074
00:54:19,239 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: super excited. We got shows lined up in January out

1075
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:27,839
Speaker 1: West Ish, in the Midwest in April, and then we're

1076
00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 1: finally going all across Canada. You guys, we're reaching out

1077
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:35,320
Speaker 1: with an Olive branch such weird times between our countries

1078
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, don't boycott us, we want to come

1079
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:40,840
Speaker 1: visit you. We're going to Montreal, We're going to places

1080
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:42,799
Speaker 1: we've never been before, and.

1081
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:44,960
Speaker 2: Tickets are on sale now and we'd love to see everybody.

1082
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, starting out we're going to be in Denver and

1083
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 3: then Seattle and then San Francisco on January twenty seventh,

1084
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:55,920
Speaker 3: twenty eighth, and twenty ninth. Yeah, and for those tickets

1085
00:54:55,960 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 3: and all tickets as they come on sale, you can

1086
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 3: just go to Stuff you Should Know dot click on

1087
00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:03,360
Speaker 3: the tour button and it will take you where you

1088
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:03,960
Speaker 3: need to go.

1089
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 2: That's right. Can't wait to see everybody.

1090
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:09,520
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, Hey, And if you want to get in

1091
00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 3: touch with this in the meantime and send us an email,

1092
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 3: we would love that. You can send it off to

1093
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:19,320
Speaker 3: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

1094
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,360
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

1095
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1096
00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.