WEBVTT - Battle Royale: Optimists vs Pessimists 0:00:00.880 --> 0:00:03.880 All right, everybody in Canada, we have a pretty big announcement. 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:06.480 We are finally going to do our first big, big 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:08.640 tour of Canada. We're going to announce the dates in. 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:11.239 The theaters in cities here first, and then we're going 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:13.360 to give you all the ticket info. Okay, how does 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:13.760 that sound? 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:15.840 It sounds great, Chuck. Where are we going to go? 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:16.239 First? 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.120 On June twenty fifth, we're going to be in Montreal 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.640 at the Olympia Des Montreal. The next night, on the 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:24.239 twenty six we're going to be going to Ottawa the 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.160 Hard Rock Live Ottawa and then on the twenty seventh, 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.720 finish up in Toronto at Massey Hall. 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.000 And then we're going to walk to the next shows. 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:33.840 So it's going to take us a few weeks. 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:34.480 That's right. 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:36.240 On July twenty third, we're going to be in Vancouver 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.440 at Queen Elizabeth Theater. Friday, the twenty fourth of July, 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.840 we're going to be in Calgary at Jacksinger Concert Hall 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:44.680 at Art Commons, and we're going to wind it up 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:47.760 in Winnipeg on the twenty fifth at Burton Cummings Theater. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.640 That's awesome, So tickets go on sale two day. Everybody 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.400 December sixteenth, starting at ten am Eastern time and going 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.880 all the way to Friday, December nineteenth at ten am 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.720 Local time. We're going to have an artist pre sale. 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:03.960 You can buy your tickets early. Just go to stuff 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:06.399 youshould Know dot com and click on the tour button 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:08.399 and then click on your city and when you go 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.160 to check out, use the promo code s YSK live. 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.200 And if you miss all that, don't worry. Tickets go 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.800 on general sale on Friday, December nineteenth at ten am 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.200 Eastern time. And again you can get all of the 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:23.080 tickets and info you need at stuff youshould Know dot 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.399 com and we will see you this summer Canada. 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:34.399 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:41.560 Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:44.560 there's Charles w Chuck Brian. We're just gonna do a 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.240 great job here today and Stuff you Should Know. 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:47.880 Hi. 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:52.360 Everybody feeling good, Chuck dealing great, lewis. 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:54.280 Looking great? 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:55.920 Lewis Uh? 0:01:57.360 --> 0:01:58.400 You want to hear something funny? 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:03.160 I do? Oh you hear? 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:03.280 That? 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:05.240 Is that your new windows? 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:05.680 No? 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.880 That is new windows? What does that mean? 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.840 That is we were not able to stay in our 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.519 home this week because, as you know, because I've told 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.359 you this, because we're getting our electric panel redone. So 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.920 I was not able to print out my stuff as usual. 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.720 And where we were staying, you know, at a friends. 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.799 They allowed me to print, but all they had was 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:34.520 card stock. So that is the sound of heavy duty research. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:36.560 Man, that's like half a tree right there. 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.120 I know, I feel pretty bad, but god, it feels 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:39.880 so good in my hand. 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:41.000 Oh well, is this. 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.560 Your new thing't? I could not justify that, but boy, 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.000 it feels good. Maybe for the live shows, because you know, 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.520 over the course of a tour, which is happening next year, everybody. 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:54.840 Oh that's a good one. Yeah, we're going out on 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.200 tour everyone soon, starting January, then April and then the 0:02:58.240 --> 0:02:59.160 summer for Canada. 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:00.000 That's right. 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:02.840 But yeah that you know how those that document gets 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.080 a little tattered over time, so I might card stock it. 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.520 I like that. I call that tour kisses. 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:12.600 I thought that was something else, like after the end 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:13.960 of the tour when we make out a little bit. 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.520 We don't talk about that, all right, we don't have 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:20.760 a name for that, No, Chuck, We're talking today, not 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:25.760 about tour kisses of any variety, but about optimism and pessimism, 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:28.720 and this one, yeah, I do too. This is Olivia 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.240 helped us with this, And this is one of those 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.040 ones where when you know it was I knew very 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:37.640 little about what it actually is compared to what I 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:39.520 thought I knew, and I love like that. 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:40.720 Yeah, same. 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:45.520 Optimism and pessimism as pretty much everyone knows. Is this 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.720 the idea that you have like a sunny disposition or 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:51.480 maybe you're gloomy and eoorish. 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:52.760 Yeah. 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:54.880 I was going back and reading some or quotes. Man, 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.280 that was great. If you want to entertain yourself, just 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.880 read AA Milne E or quotes and you'll be delighted. 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.480 But the upshot of this is that that's not really 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.560 the best description of optimism and pessimism. 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:09.960 That may be your earliest upshot by the way. 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:11.680 Oh is it? I need to break that. 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:12.480 Record next time? 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.000 Then yeah, I'll say hey, and welcome to the Upshot. 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:17.119 If you ever go solo, that'd be great to Josh 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:19.920 Clark only podcast The Upshot with Josh Clark, And. 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:22.040 If I need to break that, I can say upshot 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:27.640 and upshot to the Upshot at any rate. The long 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.000 and short of what I'm talking about is that our 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.200 views of optimism and pessimism aren't exactly right, at least 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.080 as far as psychology is concerned. And in that sense, 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.880 it kind of confounds things because I found some of 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:41.920 this stuff a little hard to wrap my brain around, 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:46.080 because my brain's been so ProMED by pop psychology to 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.119 think of these things as this when actually we're talking 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:49.919 about them like that. 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:51.520 Is that what it was? 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.839 Because I had the same thing where like, I spent 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:57.480 more time on this than things that were seemingly more 0:04:57.480 --> 0:04:58.599 difficult to understand. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:01.760 That's the only the explanation I can think of was 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:03.159 preconceived notions. 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:04.360 Yeah, I think you're right. 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:06.680 Shall we go back and just talk about the word 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:08.799 because I thought that was sort of interesting in itself. 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:09.400 Yeah? 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.760 Was that the original word comes from French. 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:19.039 Optimism optimismy that was coined in the early seventeen hundreds 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:24.160 by a philosopher named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz or I Guess Leibnitz. 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.160 And that's interesting enough, that's fine. 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.039 The idea was that God optimized the universe for good 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.359 and minimized evil. But what I thought was super interesting 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.560 was the word pessimism was literally made up just to 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:40.520 counter that, like as a straw man term for people 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:42.800 to write and say, well, now I don't really think so, 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.240 So they made up the word pessimism. 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:46.680 Yeah. I thought that was interesting too, Although if you 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:48.640 look at it from you know, this whole thing finds 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.840 its roots in philosophy. It's not surprising because philosophers love 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.160 to make up stuff to tear one another's arguments apart. 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:55.320 Right, Yeah, good point. 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.960 I read that Voltaire wrote Candide to mock Leibnitz and 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:01.360 his idea of the opti universe because you thought it 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:06.120 was so preposterous. Interesting, but you hit on something here, like, 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.719 are the entire concept of optimism and pessimism is rooted 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:14.560 in philosophy not psychology. Yeah, and there's pessimism kind of 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.960 went on to have its own career Aside from optimism, 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:23.880 Schopenhauer came up with philosophical pessimism, which is the basis 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.640 of all life is suffering. Everybody's heard that one and 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.520 or experienced it. And then there are a couple other 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.080 versions of philosophical pessimism that I thought were pretty interesting. 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.600 The most the one that grabbed me the most is 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.960 this idea that there's more evil in the world than good. 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:45.000 So evil exists in greater quantities, but it's also of 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.800 greater quality too, So a small amount of evil can 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:50.640 spoil a very large amount of good. 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.320 Oh, I agree with that. I think I do too. 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:55.680 I thought of a good example is, let's say you 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.520 have an executive who works at a charity and they 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:01.920 get caught stealing money from that charity. Well, when word 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:03.880 gets out, a lot of people probably are going to 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.520 stop giving to that charity, and then the good that 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:08.920 charity was doing for other people is going to dry 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.440 up all because of the one act of that one person. Yeah. 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:16.480 Or let's say you throw a birthday party for your 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.920 kid and the whole day goes great, and at the end, 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:24.040 some some little jerk kid spoils it all by doing 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.600 just this one thing like smashes your kid's face in 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:28.440 the cake or something. 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:34.040 Oh Man, talk about an upshot, right, But. 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.320 I think the long and short of this sort of 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.600 the early philosophical stuff was it was way more sort 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:44.680 of broad as like, you know, the whole morality of 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:49.120 the universe, And since then we've really narrowed it down 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.000 more to like, like you're just very personal outlook on stuff. 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.520 Yeah, And it's kind of even more kind of refined 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:03.080 than that, the idea that we should use or seek optimism, 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.960 we should optimize our optimistic outlook. Right, it's pretty old. 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:11.760 William James, who essentially founded modern psychology as a field 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.559 the late nineteenth early twentieth century, he was basically talking 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.720 about that very issue too. It got picked up about 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.800 fifty years later by Abraham Maslow, who came up with 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.480 the hierarchy of needs. He also said, hey, yeah, we're 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.920 really into this abnormal psychology because it's really interesting, but 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:33.400 we should focus on optimizing people's happiness. We'll call it 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.000 positive psychology. And I remember that. Do you remember when 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.560 we started writing at How Stuff Works, and like every 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:44.040 third article we wrote was about happiness. Yeah, there's like 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.680 a whole happiness craze that came out of Maslow's whole 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.800 positive psychology thing being picked up and dusted off in 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:51.760 the late nineties. 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:54.880 Yeah, And I remember even in the eighties and nineties. 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:56.640 And I don't know if this came from. And we're 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.160 going to talk a lot about this guy, Martin Seligman. 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.040 He was in the nineties. He was the president of 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:07.040 the American Psychological Association. He talked a lot about positive psychology, 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:10.360 but I remember a lot about just PMA, your positive 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:13.720 mental attitude mm hm, and improving your PMA, and that 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:15.280 was just sort of the key to everything. Man, if 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.800 you can just if you can just get your head 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.000 right in that PMA, right, like, everything's going to fall 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:20.640 into place for you. 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:21.440 Yeah. 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.640 And I mean I remember thinking Martin Seligman, I thought 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.040 he came up with positive psychology, didn't realize it was 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:30.439 an already existing thing, but that was so pushed and 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.040 pedaled what you just described around two thousand and eight, 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.280 two thousand and nine that I thought this guy was 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.920 a total fruit loop. But then looking into this stuff, 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.760 his research on optimism and pessimism, I'm like, Oh, it's 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.520 actually this dude's pretty pretty with it. And I guess 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.720 maybe being grown up, a little less cynical, certainly less 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:50.360 cigarette smoky, right. 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:50.800 Yeah. 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:53.880 In that kind of hindsight, I'm like, I think there's 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.559 actually nothing wrong with trying to figure out how to 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.360 how people can be as happy as possible. There's a 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.640 problem with foisting it on people and seeing you have 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:04.160 to be happy. There's something wrong with you that you're 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.839 not happy. That's not what these people are talking about. 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.000 They're just trying to figure out things that people can 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.079 do to make themselves happier if they feel like they 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:12.360 need to make themselves happier. 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:13.600 Yeah, for sure. 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:15.800 And as we'll see, you know, we'll get to like 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.880 studies and stuff, but there's definitely plenty of benefits to 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:23.720 trying to be positive, positive and have an optimistic outlook 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:26.679 as far as I mean, we'll get to all the 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.960 different things, including like real health outcomes, right, but there 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:34.040 are also some positives to pessimism, as we'll learn, which 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.120 was not surprising, but once I read it, it kind of 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:37.520 you know, a lot of that makes a lot of 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:38.000 sense to me. 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:39.120 Bravo, babe. 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.959 One big thing if you look at the like the 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:46.160 how psychology. 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.920 Really views it today, and this is sort of true 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.160 across a lot of psychology is sort of a nature 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.120 nurture thing, or in this case they refer to as 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:59.200 state versus trait state, meaning like are you feeling that 0:10:59.240 --> 0:10:59.920 way right now? 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:00.360 Mm hm? 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.360 Or is it generally your trait. 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:05.800 As a person of like, oh, nothing good ever happens 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:07.800 to me, and it's not just like I'm having a 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:08.679 bad day or something. 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:11.120 Right, You can kind of think of states as moods 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:14.200 and traits as your personality. Yeah, exact one's way more 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.200 stable than the other. And psychology tends to focus more 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:19.240 on the trait side because they want to figure out 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:23.920 what it is that makes people actually adopt or or 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.439 grow up or be bestowed genetically. Who knows with an 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:31.000 outlook on life that's way more positive than somebody else 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:34.959 who may even have been like in the womb with them, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.600 but raised in a different, different house, you know. Like, 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:43.000 twin studies have shown there's actually huge variations in pessimism 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:45.880 and optimism among twins who were separated at Perth. 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:50.920 Yeah, those studies are always really telling to me because 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:54.880 that's probably not the hugest cohort, but I think it 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:56.720 just speaks a lot to a lot of different things. 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.079 Yeah, and there's a lot of really unethical studies that 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:01.079 were carried out with twins too. 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:03.079 Like I imagine splitting them up, right. 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.160 Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I think there was a researcher 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.840 at some point in the seventies maybe who specifically was 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:12.280 splitting up twins to study them. 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.679 All Right, I'm gonna put on my optimist cap and 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.000 just think that everything worked out great for them because 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:20.240 they were eventually reunited. 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:21.080 That's wonderful. 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.440 So when you talk about the psychology side of things, 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:28.760 there's a couple of ways that they like to look 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:34.439 at it, which is which are dispositional and attributional. Dispositional 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.720 is how we predict future events, and attributional obviously is 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:42.240 like basically saying like this happened because of this, assigning 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.240 either credit or blame for the reason that something good 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:46.120 or bad happened to you. 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:51.440 Right, And those two are trait based, Yeah, optimistic or 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.760 pessimistic views. It's not We're no longer talking about state 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:56.959 and trait. These are all traits from what we're talking about, 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.200 like this is how you view life, right. 0:12:59.640 --> 0:12:59.920 Yeah. 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:02.560 One of the first tests of this that has proven 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:06.559 to be really viable and valid. It's called the Life 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.360 Orientation Test, the LOT That was in nineteen eighty five, 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:12.520 and I think of the mid nineties they revised it, 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.280 so it's the LOT DASH R. Yeah, Lot DASH revised. 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:19.800 Is that what it stands for? I kind of figured, 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:21.280 but that didn't bother looking. 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:23.920 Sure, anytime you see the R with it something like that, 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:26.720 it almost certainly is revised. Yeah, yeah, Well it could 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:27.679 also be revved. 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:30.880 Up, I guess, yeah, or really the right test. 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:35.320 Right, The other letters are just kind of implied. 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:36.319 Yeah. 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:40.000 The lot was conceived by two dudes named Michael Schier 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.520 and Charles Carber. And what they were trying to do, 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:45.400 and I did a pretty good job of it, I think, 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:49.319 was measure you know, I talked about dispositional which is 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:52.760 how we predict future events. They're trying to measure dispositional 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.280 optimism and pessimism with this test. 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.439 Yeah. So what they found is that, like I said, that, 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:01.880 the test is actually really reliable. That was the word 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.120 I was looking for before. Yeah, because if you take 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.760 this test, you know, at fifty you take it again 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:09.920 on a totally different day, in a totally different state 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.880 and a totally different state of mind. Yeah, at fifty 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.200 five you're probably going to get roughly the same score, right, 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:20.200 So it is a very reliable test. Interestingly, what they 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:24.000 found is that over the course of life, optimism tends 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.920 to rise and pessimism tends to fall from young adulthood 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.880 to middle age. Yeah, and then it starts to decline, 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.800 which I can tell you firsthand that is totally true. 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:39.200 Uh. Oh, I don't want to self reflect too much 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:39.800 on this one. 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.520 Well, something that I'm really hanging on too, is I've 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.960 been told that, like your forties are far and away 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:46.840 your worst decade. 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:48.040 Yeah, I've heard that. 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:50.680 Almost across the board. You've got way more responsibility, Like 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:52.720 you're not as young anymore. Your body's starting to change, 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.200 Like it's just a bad decade, fifties. It starts to 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:57.400 pick up. But I remember we talked about this before. 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.640 In your sixties, your happiness starts to go so back 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:02.920 up to levels that it was when you were younger. 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:05.960 So I'm really holding out for my sixties, man, I'll 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:06.440 tell you that. 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:10.480 Well, I'm closer than you that for once. It's a benefit. 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:11.600 I know I'm jelly. 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.640 So the lot are, which I guess it could stand 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:20.359 for reliable. Yeah, so the lot are comes along. 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.960 The revised test. It is ten questions, six of them 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.720 are scored, four of them are fillers, and the scored 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:27.880 wins are things like. 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.040 I think Olivia found these exact questions and uncertain times. 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:35.200 I usually expect the best. If something can go wrong 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.760 for me, it will, And you're responding to how much 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.040 you agree with something, and they score it in a 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:44.440 pretty straightforward way, where from zero to twenty four, where 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:48.400 zero is very low optimism and high pessimism and twenty four, man, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.040 you are maxed out optimist. 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.160 I know, yeah, you got a permagrin, right, I guess. 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:57.160 So I took that test. I actually found the test 0:15:57.240 --> 0:15:59.840 that like a clinician would give to like a patient. 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:03.520 It had like all the explanations and all that stuff 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:03.720 on it. 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:05.560 Yeah, you're going to reveal your score. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:07.880 So out of twenty four, I scored eleven, and I 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.400 was like, that doesn't sound very good. And I looked 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.600 at the explanation and scoring and it says below thirteen 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.240 is lower than typical optimism and may warrant clinical attention. 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:20.440 So I got really upset about this because that's like 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.880 basically the test scoring academic version of going. 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:28.760 Oh, yeah, I want to take that test, So. 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:29.680 Send that to me, Leah. 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:30.920 You should, I'll send it to you. 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:31.360 Okay. 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:33.760 But I went on, I guess a bit of a tailspin. 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:35.680 So I tried to make myself feel better. I went 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.880 and listened to some Kenny G to brighten my mood, 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:41.320 and I was just sitting there. I realized I was 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:43.560 just sitting there waiting for him to screw up eventually, 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.280 so I stopped listening to trinny G. Then I went, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.880 I'm going to have to alone again, naturally, and then 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:50.160 everything was all right again. 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:51.200 Okay, that's good. 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:56.800 Attributional optimism or pessimism is what we mentioned earlier is 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:58.560 the other side of that coin. And that's when you're 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.680 either saying, like this thing that was good in my 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:06.000 life is happened because of this good thing only, or 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.440 this bad thing that happened happened because of this bad 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:13.359 thing only. It's basically assigning blame to what happens in 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:15.600 your life. And if you're you know, some of this 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.639 stuff is kind of no brainer. If you're optimistic, you 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:22.040 are much more prone to attribute negative events to a 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.800 specific thing, like, hey, things usually work out for me, 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.520 and this didn't just because of this, Whereas if you're 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.439 a pessimist, it's like, no, this happened to me just 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:32.119 because this kind of stuff always. 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:32.439 Happens to me. 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.080 Yeah, And in the same vein, if you're a pessimist 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.240 and something good happens to here, like that was just 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:41.160 one million chants, it makes me so sad, it is, 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.160 But that's that's usually how it works. On this test, 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:48.080 the attributional Style Questionnaire, I looked at that one too. 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:52.600 That's a Martin Seligman joint, huh, And it's twelve questions 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.560 twelve situations actually, where it says, so, for example, one 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:58.320 of them will say a friend compliment to you on 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.760 your appearance, and then I ask you to write in 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.959 what the cause was, right, like you got some new 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.080 duds or something like that, and then I've gotten even better. Example, 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.359 there's one that said you've been looking for a job 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.320 unsuccessfully for a long time. Then you'd write in the cause, 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:16.240 say you said it was a bad economy, or you 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.560 even said I'm not good at interviewing. Then it says 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.440 okay to ask you questions about the cause, like how 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:27.159 much of that is due to the actions of yourself 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.720 versus other causes? And so you might say like, well, 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.439 I'm going through a bad spell right now, so you 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.560 know it's probably me and my gloomy nature right now. 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:39.760 And then they'll say, well, how likely is it that 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:41.560 the issue is going to be present the next time, 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.399 say you interview. You can say, well, I expect to 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:46.719 be feeling a lot better next time, so maybe I'll 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:48.600 be doing a little better. And then how much does 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.680 it extend to other parts of your life. So there's 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:55.760 twelve of those, and from that, apparently you can glean 0:18:55.880 --> 0:19:00.399 quite clearly whether somebody leans pessimists or optimist based on 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:04.359 their responses, because again it's do things happen because you 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.840 screwed up right or because you are capable of achieving 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.359 good things? Is it always that way? If things go 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:13.399 wrong for you? Is that just par for the course. 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:15.679 And then if something goes wrong for you, does your 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.040 whole life just get disrupted? Like those things he figured 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.520 out are actually really predictive and it makes a lot 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:21.920 of sense. 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.919 Yeah, it's it's interesting. It's almost like someone who is 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:30.720 like a self actualized person as opposed to someone who 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:32.600 feels like they're just sort of a victim in life. 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.359 Yeah, for sure, you know, for sure. 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:41.800 So Martin Seligman, once again he put forth this idea 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.000 that though there was an antidote to this idea of 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.920 learned helplessness, which is this, I imagine it's awful, this really 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:53.280 draining thought that I just can't control anything that happens, 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:55.080 and all these negative things that happened to me, like 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.600 I can't do anything about that. He put forth the 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.280 idea of learned optimism. But that has to go on 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:06.200 the assumption that optimism and pessimism aren't just these fixed 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:08.399 things in your life, and it's more of a strategy 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:09.040 that you employ. 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.679 Yeah, which is really significant because I think it's easy 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:16.400 for people who say are like have a generally gloomy 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.560 outlook to forget that there's plenty of times where they 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.879 are excited about the future, where they do expect something 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:26.320 good to comfort down the road for them. It's just 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:28.160 easy to get caught up in that sort of look 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:30.639 at them as like, No, this isn't like just your 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.800 genes like making you move and walk like Master Blaster 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:38.880 from Mad Max. Right, this is just you not even 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.720 being aware that you're adopting these things as strategies to 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.399 kind of negotiate life, because this is the strategy you 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:47.080 learn based on all these other different events in your 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.800 life that led up to this, which means chuck, and 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:51.840 this is the most hopeful thing of all. You can 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.600 learn and unlearn strategies that you're not aware you're using 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:57.560 by recognizing them as strategies. 0:20:58.040 --> 0:20:59.040 Yeah. 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.000 And by the way, I just I cannot say that 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:04.679 movie character named from the Mad Max without saying it 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:09.520 like Tina Turner, I could only say Masta blasta. 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:14.639 It sounds like it sounds like Tim Curry doing Tina Turner. 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.440 Wow, all right, yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:18.880 that too. 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:21.000 How's Tim Curry doing these days? 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:21.440 Uh? 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:23.679 You know, I actually saw something recently where he was 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:27.800 interviewed and he has recovered from his stroke such that 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:32.600 he can can speak, and you know, I mean, I 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:34.280 think he's doing as well as he can be for 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:36.680 you know, such a I think it's a pretty massive stroke. 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:38.720 But the interview I saw was like he had a 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:42.120 sense of humor and was engaged and people really really 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:43.119 loved hearing from him. 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:45.320 Again, that's wonderful, I'm glad, I asked. 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:45.520 Then. 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:48.200 Yeah, I just saw that kind of recently too. That's funny. 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:49.959 You must be in my algorithm. 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:51.320 I'm all up in there. 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:54.560 Should we take a break or should we go through 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:55.120 this last bit? 0:21:57.119 --> 0:21:58.880 We should go through last bit? 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:02.359 Okay, So here's something that's probably not surprising. Is it 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:06.240 dispositional and attributional optimism or really correlated to one another? 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:11.000 And really no surprise there. Also, I was about to say comorbid, 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:16.720 but that always sounds bad, but correlated to high self esteem, 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.760 positive affect, feeling like you're in control of your life 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.800 and your outcomes, and obviously negatively correlated with feeling depressed 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.000 or stressed or alienated or having anxiety or hopelessness. 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:33.280 Yeah, And as far as Big five personality traits goes, 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.680 it's most closely related to emotional stability optimism is Yeah. 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:40.960 So essentially, if you put all that together, that's the 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:43.440 kid from your high school that you hated because everybody 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:44.879 loved him and he was in a great mood all 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:45.879 the time and he loved you. 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.200 Yeah that was kind of me. Oh no, oh really yeah, sort. 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:52.080 Of Mine was Scott Galvin or Tony. 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.000 Appy Man, Tony Appy, that guy. 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:57.399 So I say we take a break. 0:22:57.480 --> 0:22:59.680 Okay, well take a break. We're going to think about 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:01.840 her and where this podcast is headed. And I'm feeling 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:02.560 pretty good about it. 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:04.720 Not theimistic. We'll be right back. 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:28.480 Stop you know, stop stop stop here. Shouldn't know no, 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:35.480 stop you know, stop stop stop here, shouldn't know stop 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:36.159 you should know? 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:37.400 All right. 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:39.840 So the thing that was on my mind, and I'm 0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:43.239 glad she included this bit Olivia did, is like, you know, 0:23:43.400 --> 0:23:45.199 is this stuff nature or nurture? Like are we kind 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:47.040 of born this way? Or are we made this way, 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:50.360 and no surprise, it's a bit of both. I think 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:53.280 generally speaking, they've come to a consensus at about twenty 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:55.960 five And anytime you hear percentages like this, this sort 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:58.480 of take take it with a grain of salt, but 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:02.760 about twenty five percent genetic and the rest is a 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:06.600 mix of like your childhood and the environment that you 0:24:06.600 --> 0:24:09.359 were raised in obviously, and then stuff that happened to 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:10.040 you since then. 0:24:10.200 --> 0:24:16.480 Yeah, and a lot of it's pretty intuitional, right yeah, intuitive, sure, Yes, 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:19.520 that's why I was like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah, 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:22.560 Like if you are a developmental psychologist, you would say, well, 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:25.719 your early life experiences and being raised in a family 0:24:25.760 --> 0:24:29.359 that neglected you or abused you or criticized you constantly, 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:33.280 you're going to develop negative patterns of thinking and they're 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:35.679 going to frame the way that you look at the world. 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:38.320 Of course. Yeah, so I mean it makes sense of jobs. 0:24:38.359 --> 0:24:40.640 It's not one of these things. It's like this one 0:24:41.280 --> 0:24:44.960 subgroup in psychology is working on optimism and pessimism and 0:24:45.000 --> 0:24:47.600 having to try to do all these mental gymnastics to 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:50.959 reverse shoehorn it into other stuff. Yeah, it just fits 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:54.120 with other concepts. So it's very clear that there are 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:58.280 there's something too. Optimism and pessimism. They do exist as 0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:01.600 a thing psychologically speaking, and stuff like that just backs 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:01.960 it up. 0:25:02.440 --> 0:25:03.119 Yeah, for sure. 0:25:03.640 --> 0:25:06.440 There was a study this year, actually pretty robust, where 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:09.040 they had two hundred thousand adults. And this one's good 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:11.200 because it was spread out over twenty two different countries. 0:25:11.640 --> 0:25:13.320 And we'll talk about a little bit of the bias 0:25:13.359 --> 0:25:17.560 of just studying sort of western countries with optimism and stuff. 0:25:17.600 --> 0:25:19.400 But they compare their levels of. 0:25:19.359 --> 0:25:23.919 Optimism with how they remember their childhood and across all 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:26.800 the geographies, and again, no surprise, people who had positive 0:25:26.840 --> 0:25:30.200 relationships in their family with their parents and siblings, they 0:25:30.200 --> 0:25:34.520 had better financial status, better health outcomes, and obviously were 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:40.239 more optimistic. Interestingly, if you had frequent religious attendance when 0:25:40.280 --> 0:25:43.520 you were a kid, they associate that with optimism, but 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:46.879 most strongly in more secular countries, which I thought was 0:25:46.880 --> 0:25:47.720 pretty fascinating. 0:25:47.960 --> 0:25:48.160 Yeah. 0:25:48.160 --> 0:25:49.840 I was trying to figure that out, and the best 0:25:49.840 --> 0:25:52.080 I could come up with is that they just they 0:25:52.119 --> 0:25:55.040 stood out more because they were fewer and farther between. 0:25:55.080 --> 0:25:57.640 I'm not sure, I don't know, or maybe in more 0:25:57.640 --> 0:26:00.199 religious countries you're just sort of more expected to be 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:03.879 dragged to church and it wasn't like a conscious choice 0:26:03.880 --> 0:26:04.439 you made to go. 0:26:04.640 --> 0:26:07.119 I don't know that's a better interpretation, okay. 0:26:07.560 --> 0:26:10.639 And also, like I was saying, divorce, abuse, feeling like 0:26:10.680 --> 0:26:15.880 an outsider in your family all associated with lower optimism. Yeah, 0:26:15.920 --> 0:26:20.080 and they did say, like, Okay, there is possibly something 0:26:20.080 --> 0:26:23.040 we should mention here. It's possible that these people who 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:27.040 are recalling their childhood are the optimists are recalling their 0:26:27.119 --> 0:26:30.480 childhood in more favorable terms, and the pessimist are recalling 0:26:30.520 --> 0:26:33.000 them in less favorable terms. And there has to be 0:26:33.040 --> 0:26:36.400 like a word for when the thing you're studying acts 0:26:36.440 --> 0:26:40.840 as a confounding factor in the study of itself. Yeah, 0:26:40.960 --> 0:26:42.560 could not find it to save the life of me. 0:26:42.600 --> 0:26:44.320 So if you're a researcher other and you know what 0:26:44.359 --> 0:26:46.680 that is, tell me because I've been dying. But that's 0:26:46.760 --> 0:26:49.359 essentially what they were saying. They still said, now this 0:26:49.400 --> 0:26:52.320 study still stands, but they at least did acknowledge that 0:26:52.440 --> 0:26:55.720 it's possible it was the thing being studied optimism was 0:26:55.760 --> 0:26:57.280 influencing the study itself. 0:26:57.720 --> 0:26:59.600 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, there's got to be a 0:26:59.600 --> 0:27:01.480 certain it's like a blank bias, you. 0:27:01.400 --> 0:27:02.560 Know, blank bias. 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:06.600 Good enough if you're wondering about the brain itself, like 0:27:06.680 --> 0:27:10.760 just your physical brain, you're noodle. As they say, they 0:27:10.800 --> 0:27:15.920 have found differences obviously in optimists and pessimist brain and 0:27:15.960 --> 0:27:19.280 how they're built, like your gray matter volume, but also 0:27:19.320 --> 0:27:21.520 how they activate. There was a study again from this 0:27:21.600 --> 0:27:24.520 year in twenty twenty five where and I thought, this 0:27:24.560 --> 0:27:28.800 is pretty interesting where optimists share patterns like there the 0:27:28.920 --> 0:27:31.040 wonder machine lights up in kind of the same way 0:27:31.640 --> 0:27:38.560 when optimists imagine future events, whereas when pessimists imagine future events, 0:27:38.600 --> 0:27:42.080 they may all be imagining something negative, but it's all 0:27:42.200 --> 0:27:43.399 individual to that person. 0:27:43.440 --> 0:27:45.120 And how the MRI machine lights up. 0:27:45.240 --> 0:27:48.399 I think this is maybe the most interesting thing that 0:27:48.600 --> 0:27:50.200 has been turned up about this so far. 0:27:51.080 --> 0:27:51.959 Yeah, it is. 0:27:52.080 --> 0:27:55.959 It's just like groupthink versus like, no, I have a 0:27:56.000 --> 0:27:58.480 personal negative outlook that's only mine. 0:27:58.640 --> 0:28:01.840 Yeah, I mean I saw somebody point out like, maybe 0:28:01.840 --> 0:28:04.679 this is why some people click with other people, like 0:28:04.720 --> 0:28:07.639 they share a literal brain pattern in the way that 0:28:07.680 --> 0:28:11.399 they think about the future outlook on life. Whereas you know, 0:28:11.560 --> 0:28:15.000 people who are like have lower optimism or higher pessimism 0:28:15.480 --> 0:28:18.200 tend to think be thought of as like moby alienated 0:28:18.280 --> 0:28:21.040 off by themselves. So they can't even connect with one 0:28:21.040 --> 0:28:24.119 another because they have varying brain patterns. It's not like 0:28:24.400 --> 0:28:27.119 optimists all have one brain pattern and pessimists all have 0:28:27.200 --> 0:28:29.880 one brain pattern. Optimists are the only ones that share 0:28:29.880 --> 0:28:32.680 the brain pattern. I find that super fascinating. 0:28:33.280 --> 0:28:36.040 No, totally, And it also sort of lends itself to like, 0:28:36.080 --> 0:28:40.000 if you're pessimistic, you may have a harder time finding 0:28:40.040 --> 0:28:43.040 a community because it's your own and not one that 0:28:43.080 --> 0:28:47.280 you share. Yeah, as you know, we're talking about health outcomes. 0:28:47.280 --> 0:28:50.080 If you read, you know, especially like when you were saying, 0:28:50.120 --> 0:28:52.160 like the earlier two thousands, when it was all this 0:28:52.240 --> 0:28:56.440 happiness stuff, like it makes it seem like optimism is 0:28:56.480 --> 0:28:59.640 basically just the key to life across every single factor 0:29:00.440 --> 0:29:04.080 from health to your finances, everything your focus and your 0:29:04.160 --> 0:29:06.800 decision making and your motivations. 0:29:07.080 --> 0:29:09.680 And a lot of that. It's true to a certain degree. 0:29:09.760 --> 0:29:13.840 It's not a magic pill, but there's no doubt that 0:29:13.920 --> 0:29:18.480 optimism is linked to better like literal health outcomes, better 0:29:18.520 --> 0:29:23.560 heart health, lower inflammation, better immune responses, sleeping, better overall 0:29:23.600 --> 0:29:28.160 mortality rates. One suggestion is like, yeah, because you know, 0:29:28.200 --> 0:29:30.720 you're not as stressed out and stress as the cause 0:29:30.720 --> 0:29:32.400 of a lot of that stuff, So that just sort 0:29:32.400 --> 0:29:32.920 of makes sense. 0:29:33.000 --> 0:29:35.160 Yeah, you have less inflammation, which is a big one. 0:29:35.200 --> 0:29:36.800 I mean, that could explain it right there as far 0:29:36.840 --> 0:29:39.640 as health out outcomes. But also they're like, well hold on, 0:29:39.760 --> 0:29:42.720 I mean, like optimists. One of the things that defines 0:29:42.800 --> 0:29:48.640 optimists is that they are undeterred in seeking their goals 0:29:48.720 --> 0:29:52.239 because they generally believe they're going to be successful. Right, 0:29:52.320 --> 0:29:55.080 whether all odds are against it or not, doesn't matter. 0:29:55.160 --> 0:29:58.040 They're just going to go and do their thing because 0:29:58.080 --> 0:30:01.040 they think it's going to be fine. So that would 0:30:01.080 --> 0:30:06.280 include things like quitting smoking, exercising, eating right. Having goals 0:30:06.360 --> 0:30:09.680 and then just working toward them is almost always aligned 0:30:09.720 --> 0:30:14.120 with better health and like having better health habits too, 0:30:14.200 --> 0:30:17.680 so that would definitely explain one reason why they are 0:30:17.720 --> 0:30:18.640 probably healthier. 0:30:19.520 --> 0:30:23.600 Yeah, there are some big caveats that Lvia was keen 0:30:23.640 --> 0:30:26.680 to point out, and a lot of these studies that 0:30:27.040 --> 0:30:30.280 sort of, you know, tie between being optimistic and having 0:30:30.320 --> 0:30:33.720 good health. It gets ticked down quite a bit when 0:30:33.720 --> 0:30:36.560 they look into the details of like someone's I don't 0:30:36.600 --> 0:30:40.480 know bank account and they're like, oh, well, yeah, this 0:30:40.960 --> 0:30:44.400 person that's got loads of money. Yeah, Yeah, they're more 0:30:44.480 --> 0:30:48.320 optimistic and so yeah, they're healthier because a lot of 0:30:48.360 --> 0:30:50.760 that just financial stress and all that stuff goes out 0:30:50.760 --> 0:30:53.560 the door. And you know, when you're stressed out about 0:30:53.600 --> 0:30:56.600 money like that may lead to like drinking more or 0:30:56.880 --> 0:31:00.360 starting smoking, and so you really have to sort of 0:31:00.760 --> 0:31:02.200 caveat that to death, you know. 0:31:02.440 --> 0:31:05.600 Yeah. And similarly, these studies are usually just taking a 0:31:05.600 --> 0:31:08.479 snapshot of what that person's like, right then, Right, so 0:31:08.680 --> 0:31:14.680 you score very high on an optimistic the life orientation test. Right, 0:31:15.320 --> 0:31:19.440 and you also say, like, I don't smoke, I eat 0:31:19.680 --> 0:31:23.440 five servings of vegetables every day. Yeah, it's not clear 0:31:23.480 --> 0:31:26.720 from that study they're correlated. But is it that people 0:31:26.760 --> 0:31:29.400 who eat better and don't smoke tend to have a 0:31:29.400 --> 0:31:33.280 more positive outlook? Do you not smoke and eat better 0:31:33.360 --> 0:31:36.080 because you have a positive outlook? There's a whole chicken 0:31:36.120 --> 0:31:38.440 in the egg thing. I just coined that phrase, but 0:31:38.480 --> 0:31:39.840 I think it's gonna stick around. 0:31:42.720 --> 0:31:45.760 Then there's something called optimism bias, which I thought was 0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:52.160 pretty interesting. As a human race, we have an optimism bias. 0:31:52.440 --> 0:31:55.280 They've studied it to death and they found that just 0:31:55.320 --> 0:31:58.200 for the general population, the default is about eighty percent 0:31:58.240 --> 0:32:03.800 of people are generally optimistic. Ten percent are generally pessimistic 0:32:03.840 --> 0:32:06.800 and about ten percent can go either way, or maybe 0:32:06.840 --> 0:32:10.360 you're neutral. And there was a psychologist named Neil Weinstein. 0:32:11.120 --> 0:32:13.640 I think this is in the very early nineteen eighties. Yeah, 0:32:13.680 --> 0:32:16.200 nineteen eighty was his initial study where he was the 0:32:16.200 --> 0:32:19.640 first guy to say, yeah, I mean, we're pretty much 0:32:19.680 --> 0:32:23.200 biased toward being optimist. And you know, one reason may 0:32:23.200 --> 0:32:26.480 be because it's so shoved down your throat that that's 0:32:26.520 --> 0:32:27.840 the key to everything good in life. 0:32:27.840 --> 0:32:32.760 You know, Yeah, maybe what Weinstein. I'm going with Weinstein, 0:32:32.800 --> 0:32:36.080 but I get Weinstein too. Yeah, I think one thing 0:32:36.120 --> 0:32:38.400 that his study, it was a landmark study from what 0:32:38.400 --> 0:32:41.560 I could tell. In nineteen eighty, he tested two hundred 0:32:41.560 --> 0:32:45.480 students and said, Okay, of these positive things and of 0:32:45.520 --> 0:32:48.160 these negative things, was the likelihood it all happened to you? 0:32:48.200 --> 0:32:50.480 And was the likelihood it all happened to your classmates? 0:32:50.960 --> 0:32:54.800 And just across the board, students said that positive things 0:32:54.840 --> 0:32:57.360 were much more likely to happen to them than to 0:32:57.440 --> 0:33:00.680 their classmates. Negative things were much more likely to happen 0:33:00.720 --> 0:33:03.480 to their classmates than to them. And we're talking things 0:33:03.520 --> 0:33:09.040 like liking your post graduation job, or your house doubling 0:33:09.040 --> 0:33:11.480 in value in five years, or this one, I love 0:33:11.520 --> 0:33:15.000 this one, your achievements being written up in the newspaper, 0:33:15.520 --> 0:33:17.720 like all those things were much likelier to happen to 0:33:17.760 --> 0:33:20.720 the test taker than they were to their fellow students. 0:33:21.600 --> 0:33:24.040 And that kind of gets to the basis of this 0:33:24.160 --> 0:33:31.600 optimism bias that everyone thinks that they're above average in 0:33:31.680 --> 0:33:34.680 a lot of different ways, which is of course impossible 0:33:34.800 --> 0:33:38.120 because there have to be people who that isn't true for, 0:33:38.440 --> 0:33:40.280 or else there wouldn't be an average. We'd all be 0:33:40.320 --> 0:33:43.320 above average. It's not possible. And so here's where we 0:33:43.360 --> 0:33:45.520 get to stop talking about optimists as if they're the 0:33:45.520 --> 0:33:48.600 greatest thing that ever happened, because one of the big 0:33:48.640 --> 0:33:52.960 problems with optimism is this bias and making terrible predictions 0:33:52.960 --> 0:33:54.440 about the outcomes of events. 0:33:55.600 --> 0:33:56.160 Yeah. 0:33:56.240 --> 0:33:58.600 Well, there was another study that kind of tied into 0:33:58.640 --> 0:34:03.440 that is from Tali Sharrat, who's a cognitive neuroscientist at 0:34:03.480 --> 0:34:06.200 the University College of London and kind of took that 0:34:06.280 --> 0:34:08.920 experiment and ran with it and said, all right, I'm 0:34:08.920 --> 0:34:11.480 going to ask you about the likelihood of something good 0:34:11.560 --> 0:34:14.359 or bad happening in your life. Get that answer, and 0:34:14.400 --> 0:34:18.160 then they say, well, here's actually the average likelihood of 0:34:18.160 --> 0:34:20.879 that kind of thing happening, and now let me ask 0:34:20.920 --> 0:34:24.560 you again. And they found that people change their answers 0:34:24.960 --> 0:34:27.360 more in response in the positive way than in the 0:34:27.360 --> 0:34:30.200 negative way, which I thought was sort of counterintuitive. 0:34:30.680 --> 0:34:33.160 It is, because you'd think if you've said, like, what's 0:34:33.200 --> 0:34:35.439 your chances of winning the lottery tomorrow and somebody said 0:34:35.480 --> 0:34:38.279 eighty percent, and then the people said, actually it's ninety percent, 0:34:38.400 --> 0:34:40.719 they go, great, what's say one hundred percent for me? Right, 0:34:42.719 --> 0:34:45.959 So that's what people would do. But if the researchers said, 0:34:45.960 --> 0:34:47.960 actually it's more like twenty percent, they'd be like, no, 0:34:48.480 --> 0:34:50.839 eighty percent for me. And that's what I was talking about. 0:34:50.880 --> 0:34:54.440 People tend to think that good things are likely to 0:34:54.520 --> 0:34:55.120 happen for them. 0:34:55.200 --> 0:34:56.200 Yeah, even in. 0:34:57.680 --> 0:35:02.239 Knowing that statistically speaking, right overall, it's very unlikely to 0:35:02.280 --> 0:35:05.200 happen just anybody. But they're not just anybody. This is 0:35:05.200 --> 0:35:08.279 the optimism bias that's been turned up and reinforced the 0:35:08.400 --> 0:35:11.080 year after year every year. Yeah, it's an annual thing. 0:35:11.560 --> 0:35:15.440 Well, and uh, speaking of reinforce, it seems that optimism 0:35:15.480 --> 0:35:19.640 reinforces optimism if you. When they have they've studied this 0:35:19.840 --> 0:35:23.239 that positive life events just tend to make you even 0:35:23.280 --> 0:35:26.279 more optimistic, which makes a lot of sense. But if 0:35:26.280 --> 0:35:29.000 you have something negative that happens, it doesn't generally all 0:35:29.000 --> 0:35:30.719 of a sudden make you more pessimistic. 0:35:30.719 --> 0:35:32.200 It's just like, well, that happened. 0:35:32.520 --> 0:35:36.160 Yeah. Some other examples are when you expect things to 0:35:36.200 --> 0:35:38.920 be easy for you. A lot of people do that. 0:35:39.000 --> 0:35:40.719 I understand that one too, it could be bad, and 0:35:40.760 --> 0:35:44.200 that you'll be more successful then then you would, I 0:35:44.239 --> 0:35:48.759 mean again, just statistically speaking, And then also that we 0:35:49.080 --> 0:35:51.759 spend a lot more time thinking about good things that 0:35:51.800 --> 0:35:54.480 are coming down the pike than bad ones, so I 0:35:54.520 --> 0:35:59.200 also can associate with I mean it. It just seems 0:35:59.280 --> 0:36:02.480 unusual for the average person to sit around and be like, well, 0:36:03.320 --> 0:36:05.239 I'm probably going to get a flat tire in the 0:36:05.280 --> 0:36:08.320 next like year and a half. Statistically speaking, I should 0:36:08.320 --> 0:36:10.080 probably think about that for a little while. 0:36:10.680 --> 0:36:12.080 Yeah, yeah, for sure. 0:36:12.120 --> 0:36:15.120 But there is some sort of like I guess, prophylactic 0:36:16.760 --> 0:36:19.719 influence of that, which is you might go make sure 0:36:19.719 --> 0:36:23.040 that your spare tire is doing okay, And that kind 0:36:23.120 --> 0:36:26.920 of belies this. I'm not sure if I'm using that 0:36:26.960 --> 0:36:31.680 word correctly, but that goes to show that the optimist 0:36:32.200 --> 0:36:35.600 bias can actually be harmful in some ways because it 0:36:35.640 --> 0:36:38.640 will prevent you from doing something like going to check 0:36:38.640 --> 0:36:40.520 your spare tire, because of course you're not going to 0:36:40.520 --> 0:36:42.839 get a spare tire because that wouldn't happen to you. 0:36:43.600 --> 0:36:45.680 Yeah, it's Emily and I talk a lot about it, 0:36:45.719 --> 0:36:49.680 like the Pollyanna thing. That doesn't seem to serve people 0:36:49.760 --> 0:36:54.840 well because then you're all of a sudden ignoring, or 0:36:54.920 --> 0:36:58.040 maybe not ignoring, but at least not putting as much 0:36:58.040 --> 0:37:01.360 weight into the things you do and the decisions you 0:37:01.440 --> 0:37:04.160 make day to day that might have a bad outcome, 0:37:04.560 --> 0:37:06.759 and all of a sudden you're caught unaware when that 0:37:06.840 --> 0:37:09.920 bad outcome happens. Which is it's bad enough when you're 0:37:09.960 --> 0:37:14.000 just an individual, but if you're a corporation or a 0:37:14.040 --> 0:37:18.640 friggin government and you're caught unaware because you thought something 0:37:18.719 --> 0:37:21.120 was going to go too well, or you didn't put 0:37:21.120 --> 0:37:23.600 the budget or the time into something that you should 0:37:23.600 --> 0:37:25.120 have because you just thought it was a no brainer, 0:37:25.239 --> 0:37:28.360 or something like that, that can be really destructive to 0:37:28.560 --> 0:37:30.000 a business or to a nation. 0:37:30.320 --> 0:37:34.279 Yeah, I feel like just believing that artificial intelligence will 0:37:34.280 --> 0:37:36.880 be great with no downsides, you're worth considering. Is it 0:37:37.000 --> 0:37:39.400 good excellent example of what you're just talking about. 0:37:39.800 --> 0:37:40.440 Yeah, for sure. 0:37:41.680 --> 0:37:44.960 So you might say, okay, well, then if eighty percent 0:37:45.000 --> 0:37:50.719 of people are optimistic, that kind of suggests that this 0:37:50.800 --> 0:37:55.680 is like maybe humanity's default setting, and that tessimism is 0:37:55.719 --> 0:38:01.520 like maybe malfunction. Even the the thing about that is 0:38:01.520 --> 0:38:04.719 that it doesn't really make sense that it would be 0:38:05.400 --> 0:38:10.400 evolutionarily favorable for us to be optimistic because of this 0:38:10.560 --> 0:38:14.520 optimism bias that can get us into trouble. But you 0:38:14.560 --> 0:38:16.960 can look at it a certain way and say, like, actually, 0:38:17.000 --> 0:38:19.400 it does make a lot of sense, because if we 0:38:19.480 --> 0:38:22.319 didn't have an optimistic bias, we might not go try 0:38:22.440 --> 0:38:24.160 new things, we might not make it out of the 0:38:24.200 --> 0:38:27.800 cave and learn to make fire ourselves, or kind of 0:38:27.800 --> 0:38:30.839 put differently, if you have a problem that's life or death, 0:38:31.080 --> 0:38:33.520 and you throw a bunch of people at it, and 0:38:33.719 --> 0:38:37.080 all of them are kind of pre tuned to expect 0:38:37.520 --> 0:38:41.399 their attempt at being successful to work. The ones who 0:38:41.880 --> 0:38:46.000 die trying don't get to reproduce. The ones that succeed 0:38:46.200 --> 0:38:48.840 do get to live to reproduce. And not only do 0:38:48.920 --> 0:38:51.360 they get to live to reproduce and pass on that 0:38:51.960 --> 0:38:55.960 optimism bias, it's reinforced because they were successful, and they 0:38:56.000 --> 0:38:59.480 think all the more, now I can successfully predict my future, 0:38:59.680 --> 0:39:01.560 and I'll be successful in that future. 0:39:02.239 --> 0:39:02.960 Yeah, for sure. 0:39:04.080 --> 0:39:06.320 And you know I mentioned the caveat about the Western 0:39:06.440 --> 0:39:10.319 societies being the most studied. A lot of these are 0:39:10.360 --> 0:39:13.480 definitely you know, slanted toward you know, the American way 0:39:13.480 --> 0:39:15.560 of life or the Western way of life, and thought 0:39:16.840 --> 0:39:17.640 they're really. 0:39:17.400 --> 0:39:19.600 Not super sure about sort of worldwide. 0:39:19.719 --> 0:39:24.160 There is some evidence that like in Japan, that like 0:39:24.440 --> 0:39:28.040 they might not anticipate positive outcomes as much for their 0:39:28.080 --> 0:39:30.759 own selves like we do here in the United States, Right, 0:39:31.400 --> 0:39:34.359 But they also make the point like, well we're also 0:39:34.520 --> 0:39:37.000 you know, all of these things are people self reporting. 0:39:37.160 --> 0:39:40.839 So in places like the United States or Australia, they 0:39:40.880 --> 0:39:43.440 may just be more likely to say out loud that 0:39:43.440 --> 0:39:47.000 they're optimistic, whereas in another country they may feel that 0:39:47.040 --> 0:39:50.080 way but just you know, no WAMIs kind of style, 0:39:50.320 --> 0:39:53.440 or maybe they just are not as outwardly optimistic, but 0:39:53.520 --> 0:39:55.160 they really feel it, they just don't want to say it. 0:39:55.320 --> 0:39:59.040 Yeah, it's not cool to be optimistic in those countries. Yeah, 0:39:59.160 --> 0:40:00.560 you want to take a break and then come back 0:40:00.600 --> 0:40:02.560 and talk about some variations on this theme. 0:40:03.160 --> 0:40:03.680 Let's do it. 0:40:03.719 --> 0:40:28.320 Okay, stop, you know, stop stop stop. He shouldn't know no, stop, 0:40:29.040 --> 0:40:34.840 you know, stop stop stop. He shouldn't know stop you 0:40:34.880 --> 0:40:35.319 should know. 0:40:35.920 --> 0:40:38.600 Okay, Chuck. We said we're going to talk about some variations, 0:40:39.160 --> 0:40:41.239 and I think one thing we should point out is 0:40:41.280 --> 0:40:44.160 that optimism itself is almost a variation on a theme. 0:40:44.400 --> 0:40:49.879 When people say like like somebody's just happy all the time, 0:40:49.880 --> 0:40:52.200 there's going through life, they have like the best attitude, 0:40:52.480 --> 0:40:55.800 that's actually not optimism. Optimism is either, like we said, 0:40:56.160 --> 0:40:59.279 you are expecting good things to happen down the pike, 0:40:59.880 --> 0:41:04.080 or or you assume that you can overcome obstacles. You 0:41:04.080 --> 0:41:07.640 don't blame other people for your issues. Like that's optimism 0:41:07.880 --> 0:41:10.440 with the other thing that I just mentioned is positive affect, 0:41:10.840 --> 0:41:15.520 which is more enjoying the present, and optimism is thinking 0:41:15.520 --> 0:41:17.080 about the future essentially. 0:41:17.880 --> 0:41:20.200 Yeah, that's a good thing to point out for sure. 0:41:21.040 --> 0:41:23.359 Some of these variations that you mentioned we were going 0:41:23.400 --> 0:41:26.240 to talk about. I thought all these were pretty interesting. 0:41:26.320 --> 0:41:29.359 One is called depressive realism, and I think they all 0:41:29.360 --> 0:41:32.960 have their place. Depressive realism is this idea that if 0:41:33.000 --> 0:41:35.800 you're you know, maybe a little depressed or moderately depressed, 0:41:35.800 --> 0:41:39.680 then you're actually a realist and you have a way 0:41:39.680 --> 0:41:43.160 more accurate view of the real world around you. In 0:41:43.160 --> 0:41:46.399 other words, you're not that Pollyanna, You're a realist. And 0:41:46.560 --> 0:41:48.879 this came from a study in the nineteen seventies by 0:41:49.000 --> 0:41:54.960 psychologist Lauren Eloy and lynn Yvonne Abramson where it's kind 0:41:54.960 --> 0:41:57.239 of a funky study, but they had participants push a 0:41:57.280 --> 0:42:01.560 button and then judged how a fel that might be 0:42:01.719 --> 0:42:04.279 for causing a light to go on, Like I'm going 0:42:04.320 --> 0:42:06.319 to press this button, but I don't think it's going 0:42:06.400 --> 0:42:09.520 to do anything, right. 0:42:08.440 --> 0:42:10.080 Or man, this room's going to light up when I 0:42:10.160 --> 0:42:11.080 press this button. 0:42:11.080 --> 0:42:14.080 Right exactly, And they said that people with depression tended 0:42:14.120 --> 0:42:17.000 to more accurately predict whether that button was going to 0:42:17.000 --> 0:42:19.400 turn the light on or not, right, yeah, And so 0:42:19.480 --> 0:42:22.239 they extrapolated that to say, like, well, you know, that 0:42:22.360 --> 0:42:26.839 means that people with depression or depressive symptoms are they 0:42:26.840 --> 0:42:31.840 have just a greater handle on the reality of reality. Basically, 0:42:32.680 --> 0:42:35.640 they're less likely to make wild predictions about their success 0:42:36.239 --> 0:42:39.799 and so they understand reality better. And this was a 0:42:39.920 --> 0:42:43.560 landmark study that people just immediately put into the pop 0:42:43.600 --> 0:42:48.600 psychology grind because it's just so contrary and it's delicious. Yeah, 0:42:47.920 --> 0:42:51.239 and it's also one of those landmark studies that people 0:42:51.320 --> 0:42:54.319 have loved to kind of try to take shots at. 0:42:54.480 --> 0:42:58.360 And apparently it's not very well replicated. So yeah, I 0:42:58.440 --> 0:43:00.719 don't know its status right now, but it seems like 0:43:00.760 --> 0:43:05.440 it's it hasn't been debunked, and it's not unfounded as 0:43:05.480 --> 0:43:08.120 far as the feel psychology is concerned, but it doesn't 0:43:08.120 --> 0:43:11.040 seem like it's as golden as it once. 0:43:11.000 --> 0:43:14.520 Was to like a dented landmark. Yeah, I think. 0:43:14.440 --> 0:43:18.760 That's a great one, like that ball of foil. That's right. 0:43:19.239 --> 0:43:23.879 There's another variation called defensive pessimism. I like this one. 0:43:24.040 --> 0:43:26.359 I mean, this isn't really me, but I think there's 0:43:26.400 --> 0:43:29.000 a lot of validity here and that if you have 0:43:29.200 --> 0:43:32.320 lower expectations and you're sort of planning for the worst, 0:43:32.920 --> 0:43:35.680 that's almost the same as being optimistic in a way 0:43:35.760 --> 0:43:38.200 as far as it helping you in life, because it 0:43:38.239 --> 0:43:40.640 can really help manage your anxiety. It can make you 0:43:40.680 --> 0:43:44.239 feel like you have some sense of control and you're not. 0:43:44.480 --> 0:43:47.840 You know, like during COVID, they found that if you 0:43:47.880 --> 0:43:51.279 were a defensive pessimist, then that correlated with taking more 0:43:51.400 --> 0:43:53.799 precautions and being safer and I E. 0:43:53.920 --> 0:43:54.880 I guess being healthier. 0:43:55.400 --> 0:43:57.239 Yeah, if you ever put two words to go to 0:43:57.360 --> 0:43:59.360 describe me, it's defensive pessimist. 0:44:00.120 --> 0:44:02.680 Yeah, for sure I could see that, and I think. 0:44:02.560 --> 0:44:05.680 There's no greater description than this. But defensive pessimists don't 0:44:05.680 --> 0:44:08.759 focus as much on pursuing happiness. They focus more on 0:44:08.840 --> 0:44:12.839 avoiding regret, which is I mean, they can still have 0:44:12.920 --> 0:44:15.880 the same outcome, but it's it's what you're chasing is different. 0:44:15.920 --> 0:44:19.640 You're avoiding a negative outcome rather than pursuing a positive outcome, 0:44:19.640 --> 0:44:21.480 but the outcomes still the same. 0:44:21.520 --> 0:44:24.600 You succeeded because you're pursuing something. 0:44:24.840 --> 0:44:27.960 Yeah, you're Actually it's based on the idea that you 0:44:28.200 --> 0:44:31.480 can change your fate, right Like, you can take actions 0:44:31.520 --> 0:44:34.880 to affect this outcome and make it as close to 0:44:34.920 --> 0:44:37.359 the outcome you want as possible. That's the same thing 0:44:37.719 --> 0:44:42.200 as optimism, it's just coming at it a different way. Yeah. 0:44:42.239 --> 0:44:44.560 I really like that idea because I mean, it's not me, 0:44:44.680 --> 0:44:47.319 but I love it for you because it's not like, well, 0:44:47.360 --> 0:44:48.919 this is just going to happen to me no matter 0:44:48.960 --> 0:44:51.520 what it's like. Boy, I have a bad feeling that 0:44:51.600 --> 0:44:53.399 this is going to happen to me unless I take 0:44:53.440 --> 0:44:54.200 these steps, right. 0:44:55.120 --> 0:44:57.759 The only downside of it is like you won't let 0:44:57.800 --> 0:45:01.600 yourself think about the future being good because you'll chank 0:45:01.760 --> 0:45:02.440 it essentially. 0:45:03.000 --> 0:45:06.680 Yeah, yeah, Jinxing's a whole of their uh for sure, 0:45:06.719 --> 0:45:07.359 part of this thing. 0:45:07.880 --> 0:45:10.399 So what you just described, though, is what I think 0:45:10.440 --> 0:45:14.640 is the worst one, fatalistic pessimism, which is right, everything's 0:45:14.680 --> 0:45:17.839 wrong and I can't do anything to change it. That 0:45:18.000 --> 0:45:22.040 is a sad, sad disposition that I like to think 0:45:22.080 --> 0:45:24.640 that is not set in stone. It's just because of 0:45:24.680 --> 0:45:27.839 like circumstances, or it's a particular low point in your life. 0:45:27.880 --> 0:45:29.440 I don't know, but I don't like to think that 0:45:29.560 --> 0:45:34.759 anyone out there is at their base of fatalistic pessimists. 0:45:34.800 --> 0:45:35.840 That's just sad. 0:45:36.560 --> 0:45:37.280 Yeah, agreed. 0:45:37.880 --> 0:45:40.600 On the flip side of that coin, you have toxic positivity. 0:45:41.680 --> 0:45:43.880 I mean, we almost don't even need to say anything 0:45:43.880 --> 0:45:46.960 else because I think everyone knows what that is. It 0:45:47.000 --> 0:45:50.040 can lead to bad things because like that's sort of 0:45:50.080 --> 0:45:51.640 the Pollyanna thing I was talking about. 0:45:51.640 --> 0:45:53.240 You're ignoring anything. 0:45:52.880 --> 0:45:57.040 Negative to like basically you're delusional about that, and so 0:45:57.200 --> 0:45:59.680 you're not gonna attempt to improve things because you're just like, no, 0:45:59.800 --> 0:46:00.600 it's it all gonna work out. 0:46:00.600 --> 0:46:01.319 It's gonna be great. 0:46:01.560 --> 0:46:03.160 One of the ways that this pops up, I think 0:46:03.200 --> 0:46:05.319 for people, and they don't really recognize that that's what 0:46:05.320 --> 0:46:09.320 they're doing, is when somebody shares their feelings or confides 0:46:09.480 --> 0:46:11.960 in you that they're afraid of something or anxious about something, 0:46:12.160 --> 0:46:13.919 and you just say, oh, it's all gonna work out. 0:46:14.640 --> 0:46:18.440 You're being toxically positive right there. You're actually dismissing their fears. 0:46:18.920 --> 0:46:19.160 Yeah. 0:46:19.200 --> 0:46:22.080 You're probably doing it because you're uncomfortable, right then. You 0:46:22.120 --> 0:46:24.879 don't know what else to say, so you're just going on, well, 0:46:24.920 --> 0:46:27.520 I can't go wrong by being positive. You actually can, 0:46:27.640 --> 0:46:29.240 and that's toxic positivity. 0:46:29.920 --> 0:46:34.239 Yeah, and that's I mean true in all relationships, supporting 0:46:34.360 --> 0:46:37.320 a spouse or a friend, but also a lot with parenting, 0:46:37.360 --> 0:46:39.680 Like that's not a great road to go down with 0:46:39.760 --> 0:46:41.840 a kid because you're teaching them the wrong things. I 0:46:41.840 --> 0:46:44.080 feel like you should be saying like, well, hey, let's 0:46:44.080 --> 0:46:46.040 think about this and maybe if you take these steps 0:46:47.320 --> 0:46:50.560 you can help affect the outcome, rather than like it's 0:46:50.600 --> 0:46:53.080 gonna be fine, you're gonna be great, yeah, because you're 0:46:53.080 --> 0:46:54.040 not always gonna be great. 0:46:54.120 --> 0:46:56.239 No, that is a good thing to teach a kid 0:46:56.320 --> 0:47:01.480 for sure. Yeah, there's also tragic optimism. Yeah. It was 0:47:01.520 --> 0:47:03.400 coined by a guy named Victor Frankel who is a 0:47:03.440 --> 0:47:07.400 psychologist or sorry, psychiatrist who actually did He was interned 0:47:07.400 --> 0:47:11.560 in a Nazi concentration camp and lost essentially everyone he knew, 0:47:12.280 --> 0:47:14.520 and he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning 0:47:14.760 --> 0:47:18.640 from that and it's like a seminal book and search 0:47:18.680 --> 0:47:21.880 for the meaning of life. But he coined tragic optimism 0:47:21.920 --> 0:47:24.839 to basically say, this is the mindset where you are 0:47:24.920 --> 0:47:28.440 aware that in life you're going to suffer pain, guilt, loss, 0:47:29.040 --> 0:47:31.920 and that you can accept that that's true and still 0:47:33.040 --> 0:47:37.120 seek the most positive outcomes you can get. I like 0:47:37.160 --> 0:47:39.200 that one too, Try to be happy even knowing that. 0:47:39.960 --> 0:47:41.359 Yeah, yeah, I like that. 0:47:41.400 --> 0:47:42.400 And then what's the last one. 0:47:42.320 --> 0:47:48.319 Chuck, Cultural pessimism. I'm not going to editorialize here. That's 0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:51.719 basically just like the belief that the society was better 0:47:51.920 --> 0:47:55.200 at a different time. You know, decades ago everything was 0:47:55.200 --> 0:47:57.720 great in this country and everything is just going straight 0:47:57.760 --> 0:47:59.960 down the toilet today. 0:48:00.040 --> 0:48:00.919 It's called getting old. 0:48:04.920 --> 0:48:06.960 It's interesting in that you have a tendency, in this 0:48:07.040 --> 0:48:11.040 case toward optimism bias about your own life while also 0:48:11.239 --> 0:48:13.919 at the same time being pessimistic about society as a whole, 0:48:13.920 --> 0:48:15.480 which I think is super fascinating. 0:48:15.560 --> 0:48:17.799 It is, for sure, especially when you talk about, like, 0:48:17.880 --> 0:48:21.280 my economic outlook is sunny, but not for the country. 0:48:21.840 --> 0:48:22.520 Yeah. 0:48:22.560 --> 0:48:27.279 I've also seen it called declinism too. Oh, so let's 0:48:27.280 --> 0:48:29.640 say you're like, all right, nuts to all this pessimistic 0:48:29.680 --> 0:48:31.960 outlook that I've got. I want to be an optimist. 0:48:32.040 --> 0:48:36.319 I'm even willing to try to navigate optimistic bias. That's 0:48:36.320 --> 0:48:39.359 how bad I want to be optimistic. There's actually some 0:48:39.360 --> 0:48:41.840 stuff that they figured out that you can do to 0:48:44.640 --> 0:48:48.319 essentially shift your outlook some I don't think anyone saying 0:48:48.320 --> 0:48:51.520 like this is going to rewire your genetic code or 0:48:51.600 --> 0:48:54.880 anything like that, but there are some proven interventions you 0:48:54.920 --> 0:48:58.759 can take to help that along. I think probably it's 0:48:58.800 --> 0:49:01.520 based on your willingness to want to change too. 0:49:02.320 --> 0:49:02.680 Yeah. 0:49:02.760 --> 0:49:05.879 I think intervention is a good word because it's like, hey, 0:49:05.920 --> 0:49:09.719 this is happening, let me use this specific technique to 0:49:09.719 --> 0:49:12.680 stop it in its tracks. In the first case is 0:49:12.719 --> 0:49:16.239 the ABC technique. Our ol buddy Martin Seligman came up 0:49:16.280 --> 0:49:19.799 with this one to use a lot in CBT, cognitive 0:49:19.880 --> 0:49:24.120 behavioral therapy and the A is the antecedent or adversity, 0:49:24.800 --> 0:49:27.680 so you encounter something difficult. Olivia used a great example 0:49:27.719 --> 0:49:29.319 of like you, you know, like you flunk a test. 0:49:29.360 --> 0:49:32.880 Maybe then you have your belief and behavior, which in 0:49:32.880 --> 0:49:34.759 this case might be like I just I can't pass 0:49:34.760 --> 0:49:36.080 this test, I can't understand this stuff. 0:49:36.080 --> 0:49:36.680 I'm too dumb. 0:49:37.400 --> 0:49:40.840 And then the consequence is the C, which is because 0:49:40.840 --> 0:49:43.080 you have that fatalistic attitude I'm just too dumb to 0:49:43.080 --> 0:49:47.200 pass this test, you don't study and you fall further behind. 0:49:47.680 --> 0:49:51.160 And the key here, you know, according to Seligman, is 0:49:51.160 --> 0:49:54.600 you got to get in there between the difficult situation, 0:49:54.680 --> 0:49:57.200 the thing that happens, and the B thing between the 0:49:57.239 --> 0:50:01.680 A and B and change the attribute. So in other words, 0:50:02.120 --> 0:50:04.200 don't go to like, oh, I'm too dumb to do this, 0:50:05.280 --> 0:50:09.560 go to like, now that happened because I've been really 0:50:09.600 --> 0:50:11.680 stressed out. I didn't put the time in that I 0:50:11.719 --> 0:50:14.680 needed to to study. I was really had my priorities 0:50:14.719 --> 0:50:17.240 it priorities out of whack. I didn't sleep well that week. 0:50:17.960 --> 0:50:22.160 And that's an immediate intervention where you're putting the attribution 0:50:22.320 --> 0:50:25.480 on something that was temporary that happened. 0:50:25.480 --> 0:50:26.680 And this is how I. 0:50:26.640 --> 0:50:30.000 Am right, and that you can also change too exactly. 0:50:30.040 --> 0:50:32.880 And then conversely too, you can also say, like I 0:50:32.920 --> 0:50:35.759 got a good grade, it wasn't just because you know 0:50:35.840 --> 0:50:38.600 I was lucky. You tell yourself, I got a good 0:50:38.640 --> 0:50:41.080 grade because I worked really hard, I got good sleep 0:50:41.160 --> 0:50:43.960 this week, and I paid attention. I found this interesting. 0:50:44.640 --> 0:50:47.000 You can do the same thing too, the opposite too, 0:50:47.239 --> 0:50:49.920 to achieve the same goal. I think you probably have 0:50:50.000 --> 0:50:51.400 to do both to tell you the truth. 0:50:52.080 --> 0:50:54.080 Yeah, And then this is also a good thing to 0:50:54.120 --> 0:50:56.560 remember when you're parenting, because when your kids are in 0:50:56.600 --> 0:50:59.919 school and they maybe get a bad grade, the first 0:51:00.200 --> 0:51:02.759 question I think you should say is, well, why do 0:51:02.840 --> 0:51:05.200 you think you got a bad grade? And see what 0:51:05.239 --> 0:51:07.360 they say, and then just kind of go from there, right. 0:51:07.239 --> 0:51:09.080 And then if they get a really good grade, you say, well, 0:51:09.120 --> 0:51:09.920 why didn't you get. 0:51:09.760 --> 0:51:12.240 A hundred exactly. 0:51:12.640 --> 0:51:15.800 So there's another one that's even better than the ABC technique. 0:51:15.800 --> 0:51:18.840 That's called the best Possible self for BPS intervention, And 0:51:18.880 --> 0:51:22.920 apparently everybody loves this one. There's a way of dealing 0:51:22.960 --> 0:51:26.520 with trauma that they used to have. It's called trauma writing, 0:51:26.560 --> 0:51:30.120 where you would write out essentially like the worst stuff 0:51:30.160 --> 0:51:32.800 that happened to you and it would make you feel 0:51:32.800 --> 0:51:35.239 better having gotten it out on paper. It would also 0:51:35.280 --> 0:51:38.880 be pretty traumatic to do, right, Yes, the whole basis 0:51:38.880 --> 0:51:41.320 of that trauma well, Laura King back in two thousand 0:51:41.320 --> 0:51:44.480 and one said, let's try something different. Let's write out 0:51:45.040 --> 0:51:48.560 this sketch of yourself down the road in the future 0:51:48.560 --> 0:51:51.279 where you've achieved everything you wanted to achieve it was 0:51:51.320 --> 0:51:55.120 through hard work. Write that version out and it's less traumatizing, 0:51:55.160 --> 0:51:58.560 but it also has the same effect, like it improved 0:51:58.600 --> 0:52:02.440 your sense of well being and apparently increases your optimistic 0:52:02.480 --> 0:52:03.440 outlook on things. 0:52:04.200 --> 0:52:06.240 Yeah, you know, it's the idea, that sort of hippie 0:52:06.239 --> 0:52:08.720 dippy thing where you know, close your eyes and envision 0:52:08.760 --> 0:52:11.840 your future where you're strong and you're not doing the 0:52:11.880 --> 0:52:13.879 things that you're doing now that are holding you back. 0:52:13.960 --> 0:52:16.359 And it sounds kind of corny, but I think when 0:52:16.360 --> 0:52:19.080 you write it down, there's something to that, just the 0:52:19.080 --> 0:52:21.759 same as trauma writing. It's different than just sort of 0:52:22.200 --> 0:52:24.520 mentally visualizing good things happening. 0:52:24.200 --> 0:52:27.040 Way different. There's something about writing that's definitely yeah, a 0:52:27.120 --> 0:52:31.160 step plus, you know. Yeah, And then so just real quick, 0:52:31.160 --> 0:52:34.840 there are some benefits to pessimism too. It's not just 0:52:35.239 --> 0:52:38.959 you know, being optimistic, Like, if you are pessimistic, there's 0:52:39.000 --> 0:52:41.480 some upsides to it. But also even if you're optimistic, 0:52:41.560 --> 0:52:44.400 there's maybe a little pessimism you should adopt too, Like, 0:52:44.400 --> 0:52:47.479 if you want to enact social change, that usually doesn't 0:52:47.560 --> 0:52:50.560 happen through optimistic leaders. It happens through people who are 0:52:50.600 --> 0:52:55.120 skeptical and are not following for the false advertising or 0:52:56.000 --> 0:52:59.759 false promises essentially, right, Like, you can't really be optimistic 0:52:59.760 --> 0:53:03.280 and good social change, I think yeah. And then also, 0:53:03.920 --> 0:53:06.520 if you are a group that wants to spur social change, 0:53:06.520 --> 0:53:10.680 it's probably because you're unhappy with your current situation. And 0:53:10.719 --> 0:53:14.160 then lastly, this one's always stood out to me. If 0:53:14.200 --> 0:53:17.719 everyone's looking on the positive side of things, then the 0:53:17.760 --> 0:53:20.680 people who are doing negative stuff are much likelier to 0:53:20.719 --> 0:53:23.200 get away with it. Oh interesting, So I feel like 0:53:24.000 --> 0:53:27.040 if you have the ability to shift between pessimism and 0:53:27.080 --> 0:53:30.920 optimism as the situation calls for it, that's probably ideal. 0:53:31.440 --> 0:53:32.240 Yeah, for sure. 0:53:32.520 --> 0:53:36.160 Or you know, if you're a defensive pessimist, it's not 0:53:36.160 --> 0:53:40.279 about aiming low, it's about not expecting too high. And 0:53:40.320 --> 0:53:42.680 then if you have and it sounds bad to have, 0:53:42.719 --> 0:53:45.600 like you should have low expectations it's more like realistic 0:53:45.680 --> 0:53:48.960 expectations and then you outperform those like That's got to 0:53:49.000 --> 0:53:50.880 feel great to a Pessimi, for sure. 0:53:51.320 --> 0:53:54.640 It's like planning for the worst but hoping for the best. 0:53:55.480 --> 0:53:58.120 Yeah, that old T shirt. Isn't there a cat hanging 0:53:58.160 --> 0:53:59.200 from a tree or something? 0:53:59.239 --> 0:54:03.240 I think that's hanging in baby. Okay, you got anything else? 0:54:03.680 --> 0:54:05.680 I got nothing else that. That was a good one. 0:54:05.760 --> 0:54:06.279 I enjoyed it. 0:54:06.640 --> 0:54:09.839 Agreed, well, Chuck enjoyed this one, which means he automatically 0:54:09.920 --> 0:54:11.080 unlocked listener mail. 0:54:13.160 --> 0:54:15.120 You know what, I don't have a great listener mail 0:54:15.160 --> 0:54:17.440 preps for today, So let's just mention once again that 0:54:17.480 --> 0:54:19.239 we are going on tour again next year. We are 0:54:19.239 --> 0:54:23.680 super excited. We got shows lined up in January out 0:54:23.719 --> 0:54:27.839 West Ish, in the Midwest in April, and then we're 0:54:27.840 --> 0:54:30.719 finally going all across Canada. You guys, we're reaching out 0:54:30.719 --> 0:54:35.320 with an Olive branch such weird times between our countries 0:54:35.360 --> 0:54:38.680 and saying, hey, don't boycott us, we want to come 0:54:38.760 --> 0:54:40.840 visit you. We're going to Montreal, We're going to places 0:54:40.840 --> 0:54:42.799 we've never been before, and. 0:54:42.800 --> 0:54:44.960 Tickets are on sale now and we'd love to see everybody. 0:54:45.400 --> 0:54:49.520 Yeah, starting out we're going to be in Denver and 0:54:49.520 --> 0:54:52.960 then Seattle and then San Francisco on January twenty seventh, 0:54:53.000 --> 0:54:55.920 twenty eighth, and twenty ninth. Yeah, and for those tickets 0:54:55.960 --> 0:54:58.560 and all tickets as they come on sale, you can 0:54:58.640 --> 0:55:01.000 just go to Stuff you Should Know dot click on 0:55:01.040 --> 0:55:03.360 the tour button and it will take you where you 0:55:03.440 --> 0:55:03.960 need to go. 0:55:04.320 --> 0:55:05.920 That's right. Can't wait to see everybody. 0:55:06.000 --> 0:55:09.520 Hey, yeah, Hey, And if you want to get in 0:55:09.520 --> 0:55:11.680 touch with this in the meantime and send us an email, 0:55:11.760 --> 0:55:13.880 we would love that. You can send it off to 0:55:13.920 --> 0:55:19.320 stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. 0:55:19.480 --> 0:55:22.360 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For 0:55:22.440 --> 0:55:26.640 more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:55:26.760 --> 0:55:28.600 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.