Speaker 1: And if your hypothesis is that the situation causes the
Speaker 1: guards to behave brutally, which that's what it was. That
Speaker 1: was the hypothesis. You don't tell them to behave brutally,
Speaker 1: because then then your independent variable becomes your dependent variable.
Speaker 1: You are instructing them to behave the way you're predicting
Speaker 1: they're going to behave. It's not good research.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 3: It's an absolute pleasure and honor to have the legendary
Speaker 3: social psychologists Joshua and Elliott Aronson on the podcast. Elliot Aronson,
Speaker 3: who is Joshua's father, is ninety three years old and
Speaker 3: originator of the Jigsaw Classroom, a cooperative learning technique that
Speaker 3: facilitates learning while reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice. Doctor Elliott
Speaker 3: Aronson is the only person in American Psychological Association history
Speaker 3: who have won all all three of its major awards
Speaker 3: for writing, for teaching, and for research. In two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven, he received the William James Award for a
Speaker 3: Lifetime Achievement from the APA, in which he was cited
Speaker 3: as the scientist who quote fundamentally changed the way we
Speaker 3: look at everyday life. Elliott's son, Joshua is also a
Speaker 3: prominent social psychologist, conducting pioneering research on stereotype threat with
Speaker 3: his colleagues. Joshua is an Associate Professor of Applied Psychology
Speaker 3: at NYU and directs the Mindful Education Lab, a group
Speaker 3: of psychologists and neuroscientists dedicated to using research to improve
Speaker 3: the environments and psychological functioning and learning of people confronted
Speaker 3: with stress. Both Elliott and Joshua are co authors of
Speaker 3: the book The Social Animal, which is a classic textbook
Speaker 3: within psychology. It was a real honor and delight to
Speaker 3: chat with them about their life and work. So that
Speaker 3: further ado I bring you doctors Elliott and Joshua Aaronson. So,
Speaker 3: Elliott and josh so great to have you on this
Speaker 3: podcast on A long time admirer of both of your research.
Speaker 3: And you all are related, is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we are related. I'm the sun. I know
Speaker 2: he looks much younger than me, but I am.
Speaker 3: Yeah. How does that work? Yeah, Ellie, you agree. It's
Speaker 3: so great to have you on. And you guys have
Speaker 3: spent your whole lives, you'd build your whole lives to
Speaker 3: the field of social psychology. Can you just explain a
Speaker 3: little bit to our listeners, like what is social psycho
Speaker 3: what are the parameters around that?
Speaker 1: What is social psychology? It's the way people relate to
Speaker 1: each other. And the center of social psychology is social influence.
Speaker 1: How we influence each other? Uh and ways of influence.
Speaker 1: Even historical figures influence us. Parents influence us, teachers influence us.
Speaker 1: The media certainly influences us. And it determines prejudice, It
Speaker 1: determines love, it determines hate, It determines all the major
Speaker 1: aspects of human life and existence. And that's why I
Speaker 1: love it. I love doing research in this area because
Speaker 1: it's enlightening. How do people relate to each other? What
Speaker 1: causes prejudice? Can prejudice be reduced by any interventions? Can
Speaker 1: education help? These are really vital issues throughout history and
Speaker 1: certainly as vital today as they've ever been.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: I might add to that that at the center of
Speaker 2: social psychology has always been considered to be social influence.
Speaker 2: But I think that it also embodies if you look
Speaker 2: at all the research that just the question of what
Speaker 2: is the experience of being a human being in a
Speaker 2: social context? What did it feel like to walk into
Speaker 2: a room and be of a different race. What does
Speaker 2: it feel like to be to have everybody think you
Speaker 2: have a learning disability? What is it that kind of experience,
Speaker 2: whether whether the people are actually in the room with
Speaker 2: you or not. It's social psychology deals with the experience
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: It really also tells us a lot about how the
Speaker 1: human mind works. By studying social psychology, we understand how
Speaker 1: people think, how they feel, what makes them happy, what
Speaker 1: makes them sad, how they justify their own behavior, they
Speaker 1: justify their mistakes, how a great many people, especially those
Speaker 1: in politics, tend to justify their mistakes, and how that
Speaker 1: leads them to make deeper and deeper mistakes. The notion
Speaker 1: of staying the course sounds attractive, but the notion of
Speaker 1: digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole cognitively doesn't
Speaker 1: sound attractive. But it's the same process.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you wrote you put a lot of this
Speaker 3: research into the seminal book called The Social Animal. When
Speaker 3: was the first edition of The Social Animal, Eliot, you were.
Speaker 1: The nineteen seventy two it came out. I wrote it
Speaker 1: in seventy and seventy one, and it's now we're working
Speaker 1: on the thirteenth edition. Wow, it was a great experience
Speaker 1: to write it, and just a terrific experience to see
Speaker 1: how how long it's been a major text in the field.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really has been. And you're both co author.
Speaker 3: When you said we, it's the both of you are
Speaker 3: now co authors on it. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, Josh has been helping with me with it
Speaker 1: over the past, I don't know, fifteen twenty years or so.
Speaker 2: I think I started when it was yellow. The cover
Speaker 2: changes color. That's the only thing that changes about the
Speaker 2: outside of the appearance of the book. There's no same picture,
Speaker 2: just changes color. So what when did the yellow one
Speaker 2: come out? That was the first one I help editing.
Speaker 1: I think it came out when you were an undergraduate.
Speaker 1: That was the first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this book has been sort of in my This
Speaker 2: was the first. My first introduction to social psychology was
Speaker 2: hearing random words at the dinner table that didn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. Bestinger was a common for high frequency word dissonance,
Speaker 2: things like that. But then I when I got into college,
Speaker 2: I took his course and I got the book and
Speaker 2: it was like, Wow, this is what he's been up
Speaker 2: to all these years. This is really interesting, and it
Speaker 2: was Yeah, so that was what that was nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: Wow, well you mentioned Leon Festerer. There are a bunch
Speaker 3: of influences and mentors for both of you. From I
Speaker 3: have a little list here from Abraham Maslow, who's you know,
Speaker 3: influence on me too, fil Loombardo and mayhe rest in peace?
Speaker 3: Ram Das? How's Ramdas influenced you? Guys?
Speaker 1: Ramdas was a very close friend of mine. We were
Speaker 1: in graduate school together at Stanford. He was studying developmental
Speaker 1: psychology and I was studying social psychology. He was a
Speaker 1: couple of years ahead of me, and we became very
Speaker 1: close friends at Stanford, and then he got a job.
Speaker 1: His first job was teaching at Harvard, and two years
Speaker 1: later when I got my PhD, I also was offered
Speaker 1: a job at Harvard in social psychology, and we renewed
Speaker 1: our friendship at that time, and I was there. I
Speaker 1: started in nineteen fifty nine and I was there until
Speaker 1: sixty two or sixty three, right around the time that Ramdas,
Speaker 1: whose name was Dick Alfred at that time, hooked up
Speaker 1: with Tim Leary and they were supposedly doing a lot
Speaker 1: of research on psychedelics, mostly psilocybin and LSD, but they
Speaker 1: were having a very good time with it, and I
Speaker 1: was actually helping them design experiments on the effectiveness of
Speaker 1: those psychedelics. But Tim Leary and I didn't get along
Speaker 1: very well because he was hell bent on departing from
Speaker 1: the science. If they had done some really good research
Speaker 1: in the early days, we would have been a lot
Speaker 1: further along in the use of psychedelics for psychotherapy and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: They really got in the way.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a lot of science now though,
Speaker 3: you know, John.
Speaker 1: Really starting right now, but there was a lot of
Speaker 1: negativity around that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to answer the Romdos question because
Speaker 2: I actually met him once in person, but I knew
Speaker 2: him through his books and stuff. But I got a
Speaker 2: taste of what he was like before I was born
Speaker 2: when I came across some of his papers. I was
Speaker 2: living in the Stanford Prison, not as a prisoner, but
Speaker 2: as Phil Dimbardo's research assistant at the time, and my
Speaker 2: office was in the Stanford Prison, and instead of commuting
Speaker 2: home sometimes I would I just there. It gave me
Speaker 2: a real insight into how awful those guys must have
Speaker 2: had it when they were locked up in that prison,
Speaker 2: because it was dreadful, and this was before you had
Speaker 2: a cell phone or a smartphone to entertain you, and
Speaker 2: the lights were hard. So one day there was a
Speaker 2: desk in there, and out of sheer boredom in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, I ripped open one of the
Speaker 2: drawers and there was a stack of letters, and it
Speaker 2: was like, why would they save these letters written by
Speaker 2: this I would call him like a brown nosing student,
Speaker 2: And I was like, God, by halfway through the letter,
Speaker 2: I did not like the writer of the letter. And
Speaker 2: then I looked at the signature and it was Richard
Speaker 2: Alpert no Way, who turned into Ramdas, who had really
Speaker 2: introduced me into meditation, and he kind of took me
Speaker 2: into that whole world which I now study in my lab.
Speaker 2: But to see that he had made this dramatic transfer
Speaker 2: in terms of his the way he looked at the
Speaker 2: world was just It was something I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: Incredible. What about Kinky Friedman? Uh? You know, how do
Speaker 3: you know him?
Speaker 2: Well? Kinky Friedman was my camp counselor when I was
Speaker 2: sent away to Jewish Boys camp in Curville, Texas. To
Speaker 2: be a jeer in Texas meant to be in a
Speaker 2: real minority. And so we all went away to camp
Speaker 2: in the summer, and this my camp counselor, was this
Speaker 2: guitar playing really charismatic fun to be a round guy.
Speaker 2: And everybody was calling him Kinky and his real name
Speaker 2: was Ritchie and he used to tell us stories at night.
Speaker 2: He was the first person outside of my family where
Speaker 2: there was somebody like my dad. It was like the
Speaker 2: first kars Madic jew in Texas that I ever encountered,
Speaker 2: and I saw. I just think he's influenced me because
Speaker 2: I think a big part of educating people is to
Speaker 2: be excellent around them, and he was just excellent, you know,
Speaker 2: exposed kids to excellent. That's one of the big problems
Speaker 2: with the achievement gap that I see is that kids
Speaker 2: don't meet people they want to be like. And I
Speaker 2: wanted to be like Kinky. And I ask students, how
Speaker 2: many of your teachers in school would you like to
Speaker 2: be like? And the answer is diminishingly small. It's going down.
Speaker 2: And so that to me is a real focus and
Speaker 2: built in creating schools.
Speaker 3: People are excellent, completely agree and yeah and inspired. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's the big key. I know we're jumping
Speaker 3: around topics a bit, but I want to return to
Speaker 3: the field of social psychology. Second, you know, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of topics that there are perennial favorites within
Speaker 3: any social psychology course. What would you say are some
Speaker 3: things that really haven't replicated over the years that you
Speaker 3: think we really should not include a staples anymore in
Speaker 3: a social psychology class.
Speaker 2: That's you know, that's a good question for us, because
Speaker 2: we revise every five years and we have to decide
Speaker 2: what is true, you know, what is currently considered true,
Speaker 2: And it's been wrenching to pull some of those great
Speaker 2: studies out.
Speaker 1: Some of the experiments can't be replicated for ethical reasons, like,
Speaker 1: for example, Stanley Milgrim's experiment on obedience. Nobody could replicate
Speaker 1: it the way Stanley did it, but somebody did do
Speaker 1: a version of that. But it's very hard to do ethically.
Speaker 1: But it is a great experiment. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: really a terrific It's not a great demonstration, but then
Speaker 1: evolved into an experimental procedure, and I think the results
Speaker 1: really do hold up because Milgrim himself did it a
Speaker 1: number of times while he could still get away with
Speaker 1: doing that. But another one is Phil Zimbardo's the Stanford
Speaker 1: prison experiment that Josh already mentioned, and that's I think
Speaker 1: that was an interesting idea, very very difficult to pull
Speaker 1: off experimentally, and it wasn't pulled off well, so that
Speaker 1: there are some serious methodological flaws in that experiment, and
Speaker 1: of course the ethics of it were extremely difficult because
Speaker 1: most experiments in social psychology. Even every once in a while,
Speaker 1: students are made uncomfortable in a social psychological experiment, but
Speaker 1: they only last for an hour, and then after the
Speaker 1: experiment is over, we explain to them exactly what was
Speaker 1: going on, and we spend a lot of time with
Speaker 1: the participants helping them feel good about it. And in
Speaker 1: the prison experiment it lasted for six days and six nights.
Speaker 1: You really can't do that to people, so ethically, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it should it has been forbidden, and it should be forbidden,
Speaker 1: and we don't do that in our textbook anymore because
Speaker 1: the results are very very shaky. Yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think that we had a tug of
Speaker 2: war about it, because I mean, I think that you know,
Speaker 2: some of the what you these are my dad's close
Speaker 2: friends in many cases, and to pull their study out
Speaker 2: of the narrative of the social animal was really really hard.
Speaker 2: Especially something that began the book. Phil s Embarno's book
Speaker 2: was it was that this is the power of the situation.
Speaker 2: But then when you find out that it wasn't it,
Speaker 2: you have to you have to take it out, and
Speaker 2: then the question is do you mention it with regard
Speaker 2: to ethics? And I just didn't think there was enough
Speaker 2: learned by the experiment. It was just that it was
Speaker 2: sort of a it was such a mess methodologically that
Speaker 2: it's not clear it's telling us anything human nature.
Speaker 1: Scott, that's a really good example of Josh influencing me,
Speaker 1: and he really did because I loved the idea of
Speaker 1: the experiment. I loved it what the hypothesis was, and
Speaker 1: I think it's the hype ofthesis is true, but the
Speaker 1: experiment didn't demonstrate that because it was deeply flawed. Because
Speaker 1: it's a very hard experiment to do. Phil Zimbardo was
Speaker 1: a very very close friend of mine, as you know,
Speaker 1: he died recently, just a few months ago, and it
Speaker 1: was difficult for me to see to see that the
Speaker 1: experiment should be taken out of our textbooks. But Josh
Speaker 1: convinced me of it, and I'm glad we did. It's
Speaker 1: not a good representative study, not because Phil is a
Speaker 1: bad researcher. He's done some excellent research, but this was
Speaker 1: a very difficult one to do, and I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone could have done it well. So Phil has done
Speaker 1: great research, but the prison experiment for which he became
Speaker 1: very famous was not one of his good research.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fair enough. Javan Bevel and Dominic Packer and their
Speaker 3: substact recently had a whole thing to stand for prison
Speaker 3: Experiment de bunking a pop war psychology myth. And what
Speaker 3: was really interesting to me is that they shared some
Speaker 3: of the audio recordings which we can now listen to
Speaker 3: and we can sort of try to make up our
Speaker 3: own mind about things. And I think one key key
Speaker 3: aspect that a lot of it was good acting, you know,
Speaker 3: which the which even full the experimenters, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, like not only full the experiments, the experimenters
Speaker 3: also asked them to act in certain ways, so they
Speaker 3: influenced the produce. You know, here's a quote, act as
Speaker 3: you picture the pigs reacting, you know, So there is
Speaker 3: that's social influence on the part of the experimenter right.
Speaker 2: Now, it's it's it just shifted into becoming the Milgrim experiment.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, well these prisoners people do what Phil
Speaker 2: Dimbardo tells them to do, even if that it's not
Speaker 2: the right thing. I mean, it just shifted over into
Speaker 2: becoming an algur experiment.
Speaker 1: That's right. And yeah, if your hypothesis is that the
Speaker 1: situation causes the guards to behave brutally, which that's what
Speaker 1: it was. That was the hypothesis. You don't tell them
Speaker 1: to behave brutally because you're independent variable becomes your dependent variable.
Speaker 1: You are you are instructing them to behave the way
Speaker 1: you're predicting they're going to behave. It's not good research.
Speaker 2: Phil, you know. I was Phil Lombardo's TA and and
Speaker 2: and research assistant at at Stanford for a year and
Speaker 2: it's it's a little bit of a shame to me
Speaker 2: that he's known for the prison experiment, because there was
Speaker 2: a brilliance in his approach to doing experiments that I
Speaker 2: took to my graduate work and it helped me, like
Speaker 2: the things that were never written down about how to
Speaker 2: do a cognitive dissonance research experiment. Phil Limbardo was a
Speaker 2: master of that stuff and I think he got hot
Speaker 2: the I think he got ambitious. He wanted to be
Speaker 2: he wanted to do something like Milgram and so, and
Speaker 2: they had their space in the basement, and he said,
Speaker 2: well why not. Yeah, yes, but I think that if
Speaker 2: you look at if you want to appreciate how great
Speaker 2: he was, read the research that experiments he was doing
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties, prior to the prior to the
Speaker 2: prison experiment. It's absolutely brilliant experiment experimentation. It really is
Speaker 2: absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 3: And after I mean his work on evil, just his
Speaker 3: thoughts and his writings, his book wrote more recently and
Speaker 3: on heroes. I just I find that work incredibly fascinating
Speaker 3: and rich. Yeah, what about research replications that hit more
Speaker 3: closer to home in terms of it's your actual research, Josh,
Speaker 3: So what about research?
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, So if I were still teaching, I
Speaker 2: always brought into my class the latest critique of my
Speaker 2: of stereotype threat because well, I would say, that's my
Speaker 2: That's one thing I'd really attribute to my dad, which is,
Speaker 2: you don't treat your projects or your theories like children.
Speaker 2: You make a clear distinction that these are not your children,
Speaker 2: to be protected at all costs from all directions. And
Speaker 2: I met psychology who treated their theories that way, and
Speaker 2: they're like in the latest rally between them and it's
Speaker 2: like spen ten years and they're defending this thing. No,
Speaker 2: you've got it all wrong and this meta analysis is right,
Speaker 2: and you left out this variable. And I saw that
Speaker 2: and I was just like, I'm not going to be
Speaker 2: this way. I'm going to be more like Dad, which
Speaker 2: is to say, oh, I'm curious about what your criticism
Speaker 2: is and not to fight. And so I bring that
Speaker 2: to my students because they need to have. That's the
Speaker 2: mindset I want to have. That's the growth mindset. In fact,
Speaker 2: in its best form is to say, give me the
Speaker 2: negative stuff about my work. So I don't If we're
Speaker 2: getting closer to the truth, I'm happy. If we're getting
Speaker 2: farther from the truth, I'm not happy. And I don't
Speaker 2: know if we're getting closer than the truth. I think
Speaker 2: that a lot of this is scholarly brinksmanship and it's
Speaker 2: hard to see exactly where the truth lies. So this,
Speaker 2: for me, the replication crisis. For me, it underscored the
Speaker 2: importance of doing applied work because that's where it really matters.
Speaker 2: Does my understanding stereotype threat help me help that kid
Speaker 2: over there. It's either useful or not. And what I So,
Speaker 2: there are some senses in which the gender gap study
Speaker 2: is just totally not replicated, and I don't know what
Speaker 2: that means. And that's really a better question for the
Speaker 2: people that want the gender gaps.
Speaker 3: Tell people what the gender gap study is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it made it. It was sensational. It was
Speaker 2: It showed that if you just described a test as
Speaker 2: not showing gender differences, magically the gender gap would disappear.
Speaker 2: Even when we were at Stanford and looking at that
Speaker 2: data before is published, we had Claude, had a bunch
Speaker 2: of students trying to replicate it all over and I
Speaker 2: would get lots of calls, this just doesn't work. And
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to say because it wasn't my
Speaker 2: research that but I noticed that from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: I think the race one is supposedly stronger. You know
Speaker 2: that it's more robust, it's held up, But I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just don't know. And I'm curious
Speaker 2: about if we're getting closer to the truth or not.
Speaker 2: And what I do know for sure is that people
Speaker 2: going into schools like Jeffrey Cohen, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've had him on your podcast.
Speaker 3: I know him. Yeah I know, but yeah.
Speaker 2: So he he does, he doesn't what it's called an
Speaker 2: affirmation in thing. So basically the idea is you write
Speaker 2: about really central values to you and that bolsters you
Speaker 2: against the little threats that you may suffer in that context.
Speaker 2: What he's found in study after study is that kids
Speaker 2: that do that score better in grades, they feel better
Speaker 2: in the classroom, they feel their self esteem is more
Speaker 2: well grounded in that situation. But it mainly works when
Speaker 2: you measure stereotype threat and you find out that it's
Speaker 2: a threatening environment. So I don't know what we mean
Speaker 2: by does the stereotype threat effect work. Maybe it doesn't
Speaker 2: work in all the experiments, but it's provided wisdom that
Speaker 2: now unlocks this other situation. So it brings me back
Speaker 2: to the value of a theory is like, the theory
Speaker 2: is useful if it helps you understand and remediate different situations,
Speaker 2: even though one of the studies or two of the
Speaker 2: studies that it involved in creating that theory may be
Speaker 2: flawed and not replicate. That's how I would say it.
Speaker 1: It's a wisdom that's well put by the way, I
Speaker 1: just want to disagree a little bit about one of
Speaker 1: the things you said. I agree with everything you said.
Speaker 1: You said the really important part of it is if
Speaker 1: it's applied research. I agree that that's really important, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it's any more important than research, basic
Speaker 1: research about replication and about getting it right, because if
Speaker 1: you get it wrong and it looks good, then you're
Speaker 1: leading other people down a wrong path, and you you
Speaker 1: really can't do that. Now. I love what you tell
Speaker 1: your students about the importance of getting at the truth
Speaker 1: and how important it is not to get too wedded
Speaker 1: to your own theory or your own hypothesis in a
Speaker 1: particular experiment. But what I used to do with my
Speaker 1: students in addition to that, is put the fear of
Speaker 1: God in them by saying, Okay, let's really look at
Speaker 1: this procedure, and let's look at how we carried it out,
Speaker 1: and let's find whatever flaws we can find before we
Speaker 1: write it out. Yeah, Because and the bottom line was,
Speaker 1: would you rather discover things wrong with it? Or would
Speaker 1: you rather somebody who doesn't like you will discover something
Speaker 1: that's wrong with it after it's published? And then that
Speaker 1: is I think that keeps people it keeps honest people
Speaker 1: even more honest, because that's the negative aspect of it.
Speaker 1: You don't want to lead people astray. And I'm very
Speaker 1: pleased that I've been doing research I don't know for
Speaker 1: fifty years and I've done maybe one hundred and fifty experiments,
Speaker 1: and one or two were difficult to replicate, and a
Speaker 1: couple of times I didn't replicate. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: almost everything I've done where people have tried to replicate
Speaker 1: it have been replicated. And for me, that's a tribute
Speaker 1: to the students I've had, the training I had on
Speaker 1: experimentation with Leon Festinger, who was a master and by
Speaker 1: the way, is somebody I disagreed with in terms of
Speaker 1: the theory and actually revised it a little. And Leon,
Speaker 1: to his credit, early on, was a nose at me
Speaker 1: because he felt I was narrowing his theory a little
Speaker 1: too much. But sooner or later he came around, but
Speaker 1: it took him four or five years, but he came
Speaker 1: around and said it was a good change, it was
Speaker 1: a valuable change, and that was high phrase coming.
Speaker 3: I think you need a lot of humility, especially in
Speaker 3: social psychology, because you have the stack. It's stacked against you,
Speaker 3: the odds are stacked against you compared to personality psychology.
Speaker 3: And let me explain what I mean by that. With
Speaker 3: psychology you get a lot of chances at it, it's
Speaker 3: called reliability analysis. Social psychology you get like one hour
Speaker 3: chance to find an effect, you know, in some in
Speaker 3: a lot of cases. And so you really need to
Speaker 3: be humble and not. I mean, and and there are
Speaker 3: some psychologist I mean, I have deep respect for John Barges,
Speaker 3: but bar you know, at Yale, and but you know,
Speaker 3: and you know some of that research, you know, touching
Speaker 3: the hot coffee, you know, and and how he claimed
Speaker 3: it affects you, it hasn't really replicated that well. And
Speaker 3: it's not really his fault. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 3: it's not personal. It's just it's hard to it's hard
Speaker 3: to find long lasting generalizable effects when individual differences matter
Speaker 3: as well, you know, And.
Speaker 2: I want to I want to. I think that that
Speaker 2: John Barges and that style of research is a really
Speaker 2: good example of why it was great to be able
Speaker 2: to work with my dad on the on the social animal,
Speaker 2: because I bring him a study like that and I go, Dad,
Speaker 2: if you just hold a cup of coffee and it's warm,
Speaker 2: your your view of human nature changes, and and and
Speaker 2: he was like what it was just it set off
Speaker 2: his bullshit to get there. And and I really feel
Speaker 2: like that he was vindicated by the fact that most
Speaker 2: of that stuff fell away, like it just shattered like
Speaker 2: cheap glass when when put to the test. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying John Barge's stuff in particular, there was just
Speaker 2: a wave of that story. It was it was who
Speaker 2: can out cute each other with a with a cute
Speaker 2: finding if there's an American flag in the room, you'll
Speaker 2: you'll you know it does this. It was very seductive
Speaker 2: for a while to find the minimal and.
Speaker 1: Mind you were not saying that John Barges or anyone
Speaker 1: else intentionally. Uh no, I mean these things can happen
Speaker 1: by accident. Happened doing the experiment in a way that
Speaker 1: is not airtight and allows bias to come in. I
Speaker 1: remember when Chud Mills and I did the experiment showing
Speaker 1: that if people go through a severe initiation in order
Speaker 1: to get into a group, they liked that group better
Speaker 1: than the people who the control condition, that where people
Speaker 1: were randomly assigned to a condition where they only went
Speaker 1: through a mild initiation, because people are reducing distance by
Speaker 1: convincing themselves that the fact that they went through hell
Speaker 1: and high water makes them want to like the group
Speaker 1: better in order to demonstrate that they weren't foolish or
Speaker 1: stupid by having done that. Now that experiment, In that
Speaker 1: experiment I did, I ran the subject, put them through
Speaker 1: the initiation, and then jud Mills interviewed them and gave
Speaker 1: them a question in to fill out without knowing what
Speaker 1: condition the subjects were in. And after each subject, I
Speaker 1: asked him to guess which condition the subjects were in,
Speaker 1: and he was worse than chance, not significantly worse than chance,
Speaker 1: but slightly worse than chance. He couldn't figure out whether
Speaker 1: they were in the mild condition or the severe condition.
Speaker 1: And then we knew that we had a firewall between
Speaker 1: the independent variable, which is the manipulation, the important manipulation,
Speaker 1: and the dependent variable, which is how much they liked
Speaker 1: the group. So he couldn't buy his tone of voice
Speaker 1: or the way he asked the questions. He couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: influence subjects in the direction of the hypothesis because he
Speaker 1: didn't know which condition they were in. That is fundamental
Speaker 1: experimentation one oh one but a lot of people neglect
Speaker 1: to do that, and that isn't out of uh, out
Speaker 1: of trying to make the day to come out the
Speaker 1: way you wanted to, just because people tend not to
Speaker 1: dot every I in crusts every T unless they're well
Speaker 1: trained to do that.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, this is all true. But there's also a
Speaker 3: human human element to this. I mean, as researchers, we
Speaker 3: are still human, and we do get excited when we've
Speaker 3: got a significant finding. You know, we we take it personally,
Speaker 3: we say, well, God, look how cool that is. And
Speaker 3: I'm the experimenter here. We can't we can't ignore that.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think this is a nice segue
Speaker 3: into growth mindset theory I had. I had a really
Speaker 3: wonderful chat with Carol dwek on my podcast. Our listeners
Speaker 3: can listen to the whole chat, and I went, you know,
Speaker 3: study by study, and I talked about some of the
Speaker 3: newer meta analysis the effects suggest that it's not as
Speaker 3: ground you know, groundbreaking or as you know, completely transformative
Speaker 3: of our entire lives as she has worded it in
Speaker 3: some of her books. And I asked, Carol, I said,
Speaker 3: you know, doctor dwek Uh, given these findings. I just
Speaker 3: told you, do you still stand by this quote? And
Speaker 3: I quoted her saying, you know, growth mindset effects and
Speaker 3: pervades every aspect of your life and is the most
Speaker 3: important thing out of everything. She says, yes, I still
Speaker 3: stand by that, And I think it's interesting, you know,
Speaker 3: like I don't know what to do with that. I
Speaker 3: have deep, deep respect for her and her research, but
Speaker 3: what at what point do we start to kind of
Speaker 3: revise some of the narratives we have around the pervasiveness
Speaker 3: of our of our constructs.
Speaker 2: I think, when I think, what point I think when
Speaker 2: you know, I don't, I don't. I can't account for
Speaker 2: Carol's maintaining that position or you know, despite all of that,
Speaker 2: except for the fact that I think all of us
Speaker 2: have difficulty letting go of ideas that we cherished. And
Speaker 2: that's why I say, you got to be really careful
Speaker 2: about distinguishing your ideas from your children, because you really
Speaker 2: should not mistake the two of them. And what I
Speaker 2: have found is that growth mindset is an interesting thing
Speaker 2: to talk about, interesting language. I think I did a
Speaker 2: couple of really good studies on it, and I mostly
Speaker 2: left it behind because I tend to get bored, and
Speaker 2: I don't. I think I got tired of reviewing papers
Speaker 2: of people doing things that I had been planning to do.
Speaker 2: And so when you're in a big when you're in
Speaker 2: a field that's really hot, and both stereotype threat and
Speaker 2: growth mindset got really hot. And I have dyslexia and
Speaker 2: I can't read quickly and stuff like that. It just
Speaker 2: sort of I realized that I couldn't follow every study
Speaker 2: that came out and be the person that knew all
Speaker 2: of it. What was more interesting to me was to
Speaker 2: go into schools and to see if I could use
Speaker 2: this and how what I what I feel like happened
Speaker 2: with that work is that and this also happened with
Speaker 2: the affirmation work too, is that the demonstration got confused
Speaker 2: for the concept, and so it'd be like if so
Speaker 2: what what? I often found myself getting attacked for well,
Speaker 2: how dare you do this? And and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: not doing this in schools. I'm not the idea should
Speaker 2: be in school. So, for example, I don't believe that
Speaker 2: all because Jeff Cohen showed that writing down your strong
Speaker 2: values shows that affirmations can reduce stereotype threat, I don't
Speaker 2: believe that it's the answer to all of our educational problems.
Speaker 2: That's such a far leap. What I do think it
Speaker 2: means is that the relationship between the teacher and the
Speaker 2: student matters greatly. And growth mindset and an affirming relationship
Speaker 2: and a relationship with the teacher who believes in your
Speaker 2: growth capability very important. But those are two very different things.
Speaker 2: What you want is an elegant solution that combines all
Speaker 2: the things that kids need. And this is the way
Speaker 2: I think of my dad's Jigsaw work, which is, you
Speaker 2: know how I came up with the idea of the
Speaker 2: elegant solution because of Jigsaw, which is the elegant solution
Speaker 2: takes three or four problems and it solves them with
Speaker 2: one really neat trick, as they say on the Internet.
Speaker 2: And in the case of Jigsaw, you had kids beating
Speaker 2: each other up because you're mixing races together. You have
Speaker 2: the underachievement of the black and Latino kids who are
Speaker 2: being now busted into nice white neighborhoods. They're really frustrated,
Speaker 2: and so the superintendent cries for help to his social
Speaker 2: psych professor, who was Elliot Arens and says, well, you
Speaker 2: bragged a lot about the power of social psychology and
Speaker 2: class can you help us out now that the kids
Speaker 2: are beating each other up? And they were mainly trying
Speaker 2: to get the kids to stop beating each other up.
Speaker 2: He developed this cooperative education thing and it solved like
Speaker 2: three problems at once, and it didn't do it by saying, oh,
Speaker 2: self esteem is important, Let's give them self esteem boost.
Speaker 2: He said, let's build a system that increases self esteem, empathy,
Speaker 2: and achievement all in one thing. And I love that
Speaker 2: because education suffers from the same problem that nutrition does.
Speaker 2: They find out, oh, growth mindset is good, so let's
Speaker 2: focus all on this one little thing. It'd be like saying,
Speaker 2: vitamin C is good, let's make a pill instead. There's
Speaker 2: an elegant solution. It's called an apple. You eat it
Speaker 2: and you get fiber and vitamin C and all of
Speaker 2: those things. That's the Jigsaw classroom. It gives a lot
Speaker 2: of nutrients to what kids need, and it's not that
Speaker 2: one little manipulation. It's a sort of an elegant solution.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: It makes a lot of sense. I love a systems approach,
Speaker 3: and I think that's what you're hinting at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah. I think when you have ten different psychologists
Speaker 2: promoting what they found in the lab rushing in the schools,
Speaker 2: teachers are just confused. They're just confused.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I'm trying to address their learning style
Speaker 2: and induce a growth mindset, but not have too much comped.
Speaker 2: It's just very there's too many. It's like taking a
Speaker 2: bunch of different vitamin pills when what you should do
Speaker 2: is eat a good meal.
Speaker 3: Yes, can tell me some more of the elements of
Speaker 3: this meal that you're doing with the school that you're starting.
Speaker 3: So what do you see some of the core elements
Speaker 3: and tell me a little bit about how you're incorporating
Speaker 3: them to this new school.
Speaker 2: Josh, thank you for asking that, because I think I
Speaker 2: mentioned Jigsaw just in passing and what I grew up
Speaker 2: in that system of being in a school that was
Speaker 2: just frustrating all my needs, and Jigsaw came in and
Speaker 2: made it good for some of the kids. I was
Speaker 2: kind of in the control group, so it was louthy
Speaker 2: in my in my control group, kids in the in
Speaker 2: Jigsaw were learning to like each other, learning to respect
Speaker 2: each other, see across racial lines and get along and
Speaker 2: interact even outside the classroom, and so that was like
Speaker 2: an entry into my ledger of Oh my god, if
Speaker 2: you just organize things differently, you can bring out much
Speaker 2: nicer qualities in children. So my school it's a it's
Speaker 2: actually the oldest boarding school in America, and we bought
Speaker 2: it because it was struggling and the vision was to
Speaker 2: take the world's poorest children and mix them together with
Speaker 2: the world's wealthiest children. And this is my I have
Speaker 2: a billionaire friend who is making this all happen, and
Speaker 2: so he's asked me to help him design this school.
Speaker 2: And it's really a school based on social psychological principles,
Speaker 2: and Jigsaw gave me the confidence that it would work.
Speaker 2: So in social psyche, I think of there being a
Speaker 2: bunch of social motives and we all see them in
Speaker 2: front of us. It's like, you want to belong, you
Speaker 2: want to understand what's going on and have an understanding
Speaker 2: with people. You want to be in control of your environment,
Speaker 2: so you don't want to be pushed around, and you
Speaker 2: want to be able to trust the people around you,
Speaker 2: and you want to have a sense that you matter
Speaker 2: that if you weren't there, people would miss you. All
Speaker 2: of those things and the work you're doing makes a difference.
Speaker 2: Most schools frustrate most of those motives, and that's why
Speaker 2: we're seeing a lot of the problems. You go into
Speaker 2: a school where everybody feels like they belong, they understand
Speaker 2: what the work they're doing, and they understand why they're
Speaker 2: doing it. In other words, they understand the importance of
Speaker 2: what they're doing. If they feel like they trust their teachers,
Speaker 2: they get some autonomy but also connectedness to other people.
Speaker 2: In this one school I worked with, the school went
Speaker 2: from the absolute bottom of the test score distribution to
Speaker 2: the top in about four years because they got a
Speaker 2: new principal who had been trained in psychology. Wow, and
Speaker 2: it just and I mean, these were dirt poor kids.
Speaker 2: So that's I gave a talk about this, and the
Speaker 2: billionaire heard the talk and he brought me in to
Speaker 2: help build this school. That that model, I think is
Speaker 2: really important. So what it's the elegant solution to that
Speaker 2: problem is like Jigsaw, is that you get kids working
Speaker 2: together on not just learning some material, but by producing
Speaker 2: a three dimensional something that serves another human being. So
Speaker 2: in the in the case of the school that I
Speaker 2: was studying, kids learn math by raising chickens and there
Speaker 2: is so much math involved in raising a chicken that
Speaker 2: you wouldn't get from a worksheet. You have to figure
Speaker 2: out how much the feed costs, how much hues can
Speaker 2: sell the eggs for repairs, and then at the end
Speaker 2: of it, you deliver eggs to poor people. So kids
Speaker 2: are learning math, but they're also learning that they matter
Speaker 2: in the world, and they understand why they're doing it,
Speaker 2: why math is important. And this is the kids that
Speaker 2: get the highest test scores and go on to be
Speaker 2: go to college. And the chicken now they keep the
Speaker 2: chickens as pets, and the chickens lay the eggs. I
Speaker 2: have lots of pictures of kids. Anytime in this school
Speaker 2: that you're upset, you can go out into the place
Speaker 2: around and pick up a chicken and hold it. And
Speaker 2: there's other animals too, and and so that that's what's
Speaker 2: truly exciting, is that the when I said before that
Speaker 2: theories are really great, and when our theories are challenged
Speaker 2: by replications, that's when I want to go into the
Speaker 2: schools and say, hey, does growth my if I really
Speaker 2: believe in this kid, will it really help them? Because
Speaker 2: that's where that's where I think that's the final arbiter
Speaker 2: of whether something's useful or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very good. And I think that a big
Speaker 3: message of a lot of the growth mindset research, which
Speaker 3: I talked about with doctor deuec All my podcast, is
Speaker 3: that the greatest effects happen in the kids who need
Speaker 3: it the most. And I think that a big message
Speaker 3: of yours as well, Josh. You know, if you if
Speaker 3: you average out, you know, in the general population, and
Speaker 3: you find a small effect, it's it's covering up some
Speaker 3: of the most important nuance, you know, like underprivileged kids,
Speaker 3: kids in poor neighborhoods. I mean growth, you know, developing,
Speaker 3: cultivating growth and mindset in face in the face of challenges,
Speaker 3: and that's particularly important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Scott. And you're talking you're not You're kind
Speaker 2: of talking about children too, of the sort that I'm
Speaker 2: used to working with. And a lot of these kids
Speaker 2: learn from their parents will tell them that they're stupid.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the reasons that this school in
Speaker 2: Appalachia was so successful is that they their teachers had
Speaker 2: so much influence on them because their parents were so dysfunctional.
Speaker 2: It's I've never seen poverty be such an advantage in
Speaker 2: my life, but it was because the teachers were just
Speaker 2: such stable characters that believed in the kids, and often
Speaker 2: the parents were in jail and telling the kids that
Speaker 2: they're stupid, and so growth mindset for these kids is
Speaker 2: a revelation, you know, like I can really be something
Speaker 2: that that I think is the beautiful side of it.
Speaker 1: That is beautiful. And Josh, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I got out of your the description as
Speaker 1: you told it, she's really quite beautiful, is the importance
Speaker 1: of having a billionaire sit in one of your lange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was so envious, Like, I think, how come
Speaker 1: I never had a billionaire. And the reason it's so
Speaker 1: important for education is that, as you know as well
Speaker 1: as I do, schools are very slow to change, very
Speaker 1: slow to innovate. Maybe it's prob because there's so many
Speaker 1: people out there with innovations to sell or to give
Speaker 1: away that they get overwhelmed by that. But they're very
Speaker 1: conservative places.
Speaker 2: And change slow.
Speaker 1: But they have a billionaire building with school for you
Speaker 1: where you can do things like that. It's marvelous.
Speaker 2: It's even if it's even slow then though, because you're
Speaker 2: you're turning around, trying to turn around a culture and
Speaker 2: trying to change people who've been you know, all of
Speaker 2: us have been indoctrinated into a model of schooling that
Speaker 2: we'd be very afraid to depart from. So what in
Speaker 2: in my search is to build the perfect school. I've
Speaker 2: visited hundreds of them, and some of the most the
Speaker 2: best working schools you most parents, most parents would never
Speaker 2: put their kids in because they're so radical. But those
Speaker 2: are the schools that have changed my mind about education
Speaker 2: because they're so radical. Yeah, so I can tell I
Speaker 2: could go on forever about it, but this is really
Speaker 2: I this is really what. So I know you wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about the science of this stuff, and so.
Speaker 3: Oh no too, this is great too, because well you
Speaker 3: have a whole lab on the mindful. Mindfulness is the
Speaker 3: particular focus of yours as well in the schools, Is
Speaker 3: that right, Josh?
Speaker 2: It is because you know, you just you travel through
Speaker 2: schools and you wait for a certain feeling. So you
Speaker 2: know that. I don't know if this is published, but
Speaker 2: somebody did a study that most people can tell whether
Speaker 2: they'd want their kid in a school within like ten
Speaker 2: seconds of entering the school. You know, like, we're very
Speaker 2: attuned to what's good for our kids and what safety
Speaker 2: and things like that. So I looked around to find
Speaker 2: a certain feeling, and the feeling is God, I wish
Speaker 2: my kids could go to school here. This is just
Speaker 2: so nice. And I'd often find that feeling in the
Speaker 2: most unlikely places, you know, like in Appalachia, for example,
Speaker 2: where the kids are really poor, or but the coolest
Speaker 2: was the school where the kids don't have any classes.
Speaker 2: My favorite student that I've ever met in my life
Speaker 2: all my years of teaching, had one math class in
Speaker 2: her whole life and one English class in her whole life.
Speaker 2: She was self taught in everything, and meeting her changed
Speaker 2: everything about my ideas about education. And so I'm glad
Speaker 2: I had that. I couldn't recreate her experience, because nobody
Speaker 2: wants to go to send their kids to a school
Speaker 2: where there's no classes. But we have to open our
Speaker 2: minds to the fact that we may have gotten human
Speaker 2: nature wrong.
Speaker 3: I love that. Well, your lab is called the mindful
Speaker 3: Educational Lab. Yes, why do you think mindfulness is so
Speaker 3: important for kids?
Speaker 2: Well, so it's not called the It's called the mindful
Speaker 2: education Lab. So mindfulness is part of what we do,
Speaker 2: but it's really in the broadest sense, we approach educational
Speaker 2: problems mindfully. So what we do free of charge for
Speaker 2: any school who calls me up with a problem. I
Speaker 2: put my students to work on it. We figure out
Speaker 2: can this problem be solved by looking at the literature
Speaker 2: and saying, yep, you've got an X problem. We're going
Speaker 2: to give you X solution, or is it a problem
Speaker 2: that we need to do research on And so that
Speaker 2: it's a sort of need driven, service driven laboratory. And
Speaker 2: it's been wonderful because my students and the needs of
Speaker 2: the community determine what we work on. We have a
Speaker 2: research agenda that sort of trots along in the background.
Speaker 2: But the really exciting things are when I get a
Speaker 2: call from the school and they say, doctor Aaronson, thirty
Speaker 2: percent of our boys are suicidal. What can we do?
Speaker 2: And then we go in and talk to the boys
Speaker 2: and figure out what's going on with them and my
Speaker 2: students and I learn an incredible amount that way. It's
Speaker 2: so much better than when I had a research agenda
Speaker 2: like confirm growth mindset right, Yeah, you know that it's
Speaker 2: it doesn't It didn't. That didn't produce the happiness or
Speaker 2: the understanding that I was looking for. Sure, But we
Speaker 2: do teach children mindfulness because it's the the best classroom
Speaker 2: I ever saw in my life, was it must have been.
Speaker 2: There were kids from every different background. It was a
Speaker 2: magnet school in New Haven. There were black kids from
Speaker 2: the ghetto. There were kids girls and he jobs. There
Speaker 2: were Chinese kids, Japanese kids, and they were lovely to
Speaker 2: each other, and just I was like, what is going
Speaker 2: on here? And they were doing mindfulness and I remember
Speaker 2: just to drop my jaw and I was just like,
Speaker 2: this is Martin Luther King's dream. These kids are being
Speaker 2: so supportive. And I remember them talking about the awful
Speaker 2: things that happened to them in their daily life, like
Speaker 2: at home in New Haven, and they'd bring it in.
Speaker 2: Here were eleven year olds like acting like they were
Speaker 2: in some kind of support group. And it was all
Speaker 2: because they did this mindfulness stuff together. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I've been I helped schools put in mindfulness programs by
Speaker 2: getting to know what works. And so that's what we do,
Speaker 2: is we mindfully approach their educational problem. And sometimes I
Speaker 2: tell them don't do mindfulness. That's the mindful solution is
Speaker 2: to say don't do mindfulness. It's not going to work.
Speaker 3: It's not the answer in all situations. I'm really glad
Speaker 3: you said no, I'm really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it was Maslow who said, wasn't it. Maslow said,
Speaker 2: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like
Speaker 2: a nail. Yeah, that's so. That's so describes academic academics
Speaker 2: who want to go into the field, have theory, will travel,
Speaker 2: have intervention, will travel. I just don't. I don't think
Speaker 2: our kids deserve that.
Speaker 3: They don't. I want to now just transition a little
Speaker 3: into what makes a good teacher because both of you
Speaker 3: have won teaching awards and are considered very esteemed wonderful teachers.
Speaker 3: So I think you're in a good position to kind
Speaker 3: of inspire other teachers out there. So what do you
Speaker 3: think makes a good teacher?
Speaker 1: Well? Teaching at a university, there are I think three
Speaker 1: kinds of teaching that we do, and they all require
Speaker 1: They each require a different set of skills. Their stand
Speaker 1: up teaching when you're lecturing to a group primarily, and
Speaker 1: I used to do a lot of that. Like at
Speaker 1: the University of Texas, I taught an introductory social psychology
Speaker 1: class that had six hundred students in him and I
Speaker 1: taught that year after year. Then there's what I call
Speaker 1: sit down teaching, which is a seminar where the skill
Speaker 1: involved is mostly shutting up, not talking, and asking good
Speaker 1: questions and helping a student hone their answer to the
Speaker 1: question to bring them closer and closer to a full
Speaker 1: understanding of all of the ramifications of the question that
Speaker 1: was asked. So the first one is you have to
Speaker 1: be an interesting person if you want to hold the
Speaker 1: attention of six hundred people. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: aspects to that. And it's not a matter of standing
Speaker 1: up and telling jokes like a stand up comedian. It's
Speaker 1: a matter of talking about something that you think would
Speaker 1: be interesting to those students. This story. It could be funny,
Speaker 1: but not a joke just to warm up the audience.
Speaker 1: I love that. I think what you what you would
Speaker 1: talk about is a story about real life that you
Speaker 1: think might grab their attention, but is about something that
Speaker 1: you're going to lecture on some social psychological principles and
Speaker 1: research that will stand as the underpinning to that story,
Speaker 1: so that when they leave the lecture hall, and in
Speaker 1: many cases twenty or thirty or forty years later, when
Speaker 1: I get letters from former students of mine, they'll remember
Speaker 1: the story and will remember the principles of social psychology
Speaker 1: that undergirded the story. The linkage of the complex abstract
Speaker 1: idea with research to the story is what is what
Speaker 1: helps it become embedded in their consciousness. And I love
Speaker 1: that notion because my aim for students who are taking
Speaker 1: a large introductory class with me is not just to
Speaker 1: teach them some social psychology, not just to hope they
Speaker 1: all get a's in the cost because they really know
Speaker 1: that stuff. To teach them something about themselves and about
Speaker 1: life that may stay with them for their entire lives.
Speaker 1: And that that is a very ambitious goal, but it's
Speaker 1: one that I have and I still have, and I
Speaker 1: get information from my students that that in many cases
Speaker 1: I've achieved that. Now. The sit down kind of teaching,
Speaker 1: or when it's a seminar, is to bring out ideas
Speaker 1: from students and to help them hone their ideas so
Speaker 1: that they may it may be kind of a somewhat
Speaker 1: sloppy idea to begin with, but if you continue to
Speaker 1: ask the right questions, you can get them to create
Speaker 1: the answers. And the third kind of teaching, of course,
Speaker 1: is being a mentor to taking a graduate student under
Speaker 1: your wing and really training him to do the things
Speaker 1: and to be excited about stuff that you yourself think
Speaker 1: is important, and that you reach a common interest with
Speaker 1: the students so that it's something that he or she
Speaker 1: finds important and it's something that you yourself are excited about.
Speaker 1: And those three skills are very different and yet very
Speaker 1: important and require sensitivity to the student.
Speaker 3: I see why you Yeah, I see why you've won
Speaker 3: so many awards, Elliott. That was really well put. In fact,
Speaker 3: I do want to say you are the only I
Speaker 3: don't know if you know this, you're the only person
Speaker 3: in the one hundred and twenty year history of the
Speaker 3: APA to have won all three of its major awards
Speaker 3: for writing, for teaching, and for research. So if this
Speaker 3: was the NBA, you would be Michael Jordan.
Speaker 1: I just do what I do, and it's so exciting
Speaker 1: for me. My mentor, Leon Festigo, when he wanted me
Speaker 1: to do a research project with him before I was
Speaker 1: leaving Stanford to take my first teaching job, and I
Speaker 1: said no, I'm sorry, I can't do it. I could
Speaker 1: use the money, but I really need to start preparing
Speaker 1: my course I'm teaching in the fall. He said, what
Speaker 1: you're going to prepare for teaching with your skills as
Speaker 1: a researcher, why you know, why do you want to
Speaker 1: spend time preparing? And you know, that was one of
Speaker 1: the few things I disagreed with him on, and that
Speaker 1: was I took the teaching very seriously as a major
Speaker 1: part of my job, and I devoted a lot of
Speaker 1: time and energy to it. Leon didn't agree with that,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, finally comes out Lee infesting imperfect human.
Speaker 3: But you are, but you are, You're perfect.
Speaker 2: You're a perfect child of Maslow infesting her. If they
Speaker 2: could have gotten together and had a baby, it'd.
Speaker 1: Be a well, that is a great compliment. And by
Speaker 1: the way, it's the Maslow influence in me that made
Speaker 1: me want to go into psychology. Maslow was my mentor
Speaker 1: when I was an undergraduate, and we really hit it
Speaker 1: off together, and he was an inspirational guy and his idea.
Speaker 1: He was a lousy scientist. He didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do science, and I didn't know at the time that
Speaker 1: he didn't know. He was a philosopher, more of a
Speaker 1: philosopher and anything else. But he was inspirational and his
Speaker 1: belief was that psychology can and should be used to
Speaker 1: improve the human condition. And that's that's why I went
Speaker 1: into graduate school. When I was in graduate school, I
Speaker 1: met this guy, Leon Festinger, who didn't give a fig
Speaker 1: about applying what we know to the real world. What
Speaker 1: he was interested in, and only what he was interested in,
Speaker 1: was discovering how the human mind works and how you
Speaker 1: how you can how you can improve the how you
Speaker 1: can improve experimentation. So I started laugh going into psychology
Speaker 1: because I wanted to do good. And then I met Festinger,
Speaker 1: and what I learned from him and got really excited about,
Speaker 1: was how to do good research, how to do good experiments.
Speaker 1: And then, Josh, when you talk about the jigsaw classroom,
Speaker 1: that to me is a combination of doing good and
Speaker 1: doing good research. And I think what we discussed earlier,
Speaker 1: very early in this discussion, Scott, is why it's important
Speaker 1: to get it right when you're doing it, not to
Speaker 1: not to publish the damn thing and not to become famous,
Speaker 1: but to do the experiment in a very careful way
Speaker 1: and get it right so that people who want to
Speaker 1: follow up on the research you do can expand on
Speaker 1: it and to prove you wrong if you happen to
Speaker 1: be wrong with it, and that can happen to and
Speaker 1: then when you really know it's right, Yeah, to bring
Speaker 1: it into the real world, to bring it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for this wisdom, Josh. Do you want
Speaker 3: to add anything quickly about teaching? What makes a good
Speaker 3: teacher from your perspective?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting listening to my dad talk about
Speaker 2: the three kinds of teaching, and I agree with that.
Speaker 2: I try to combine all of those into every course
Speaker 2: I teach because students need it. That I became a
Speaker 2: much better teacher. I was already pretty good, but when
Speaker 2: I started studying schools that worked and how they worked,
Speaker 2: I started applying some of these the lessons of kindergarten
Speaker 2: and first grade to my colleagues class and it started
Speaker 2: working really well. And the thing that I learned about
Speaker 2: these great schools was that they try to learn everything
Speaker 2: they can about each student, and then knowing them makes
Speaker 2: a better teacher for them. And so I would I
Speaker 2: would get my students to fill out surveys with their
Speaker 2: favorite music and stuff like that, and I would listen
Speaker 2: to the songs that they were listening to. So I
Speaker 2: felt like I was preparing for a role. You know,
Speaker 2: like I need to know, because, especially as I'm getting older,
Speaker 2: these students are getting more and more different, and so
Speaker 2: I ask them questions like what problems do you lie
Speaker 2: away at night thinking about? And what problems would you
Speaker 2: like to be able to solve with psychology? And so
Speaker 2: I I then I write my lectures around their concerns.
Speaker 2: Me harder because you know, half of my students think
Speaker 2: about why don't more people like K pop? You know?
Speaker 2: And I don't know how to you know, empathize with
Speaker 2: that so much? How do you like? Okay, well, you're
Speaker 2: lucky to have such, you know, such problems to worry about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's really challenging now to teach. And what
Speaker 2: I try to do is provoke my students and model
Speaker 2: the way to be as a human being. And I
Speaker 2: would say the most important thing I do is I
Speaker 2: try to get them to define what the good life
Speaker 2: is and then show and show them that social psychology
Speaker 2: has a tremendous amount to say about living a good life.
Speaker 2: Like you said, fame and fortune are not the answers
Speaker 2: to being happy. We know that because of social psychologists
Speaker 2: have studied that. So what should be the good life?
Speaker 2: And what would you what. I asked them, what what
Speaker 2: reminder would you tattoo onto your body to remind you
Speaker 2: who you are and what your purpose is. And by
Speaker 2: the end of the course, I want you to have
Speaker 2: a well thought out tattoo.
Speaker 3: I love that. And you're talking about economic fortune. I
Speaker 3: personally feel like I have so much social fortune in
Speaker 3: my life that is is just It's like it makes
Speaker 3: my life so meaningful, like I have. I just I
Speaker 3: love my friends like you like you guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah to me, that that's what you were. Some people
Speaker 2: learn that too late in life, that it's not about
Speaker 2: the money.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For For the last part of today's interview, I'd
Speaker 3: like talking about death a little bit. Josh. You had
Speaker 3: a year of living deathly, and I just talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about what that, what that means.
Speaker 2: So I was invited to give advice about how to
Speaker 2: about the good life, and it was like a Janue thing,
Speaker 2: and so there were rabbis talking about, you know, reading
Speaker 2: a year of reading, and I thought living deathfully because
Speaker 2: I've studied. I studied with a Buddhist teacher who I
Speaker 2: caught just at the right time, right after Trump was elected.
Speaker 2: NYU was like you could have it was like a
Speaker 2: bomb had been dropped on the place and my students
Speaker 2: didn't show up to class. I found myself in a
Speaker 2: Buddhism class that like the day after, and the Buddhist
Speaker 2: teacher goes, I understand how you were all feeling. I
Speaker 2: have felt this way in my life, but I don't
Speaker 2: feel that way now, even though I wanted a different outcome.
Speaker 2: And he goes. You want to know why he goes
Speaker 2: because every day I spend ten minutes thinking about how
Speaker 2: all this is going away. It's just temporary. Everything you
Speaker 2: think is is permanent. It's going away. So get used
Speaker 2: to that feeling. And I felt myself getting lighter when
Speaker 2: I and so every day after my meditation, I spent
Speaker 2: five minutes going, this may be the last day of
Speaker 2: my life. Wow, this may be the last time I
Speaker 2: pet my dog, kiss my wife, call my father. It
Speaker 2: lends an incredible poignancy to life and I it's weird
Speaker 2: because social psych was wrong on this one. It didn't
Speaker 2: capture what the Buddhists and the Stoics were telling us
Speaker 2: about contemplating your death. It was going mortality salience. This
Speaker 2: makes assholes other people and I that I don't There
Speaker 2: may be some truth to that experimentally. But for me,
Speaker 2: in the mindset of appreciate every moment, there's nothing like
Speaker 2: death to remind you of that that you're mortal, and
Speaker 2: so it takes away a lot of the fears that
Speaker 2: I had, and a lot of the worries about trivial stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think that's that's something that I try to
Speaker 2: give to my students, even though the idea that they're
Speaker 2: contemplating death at their young age is it really works
Speaker 2: better when you're older, Yeah, and you truly feel that
Speaker 2: the time is running out.
Speaker 3: Our mutual friend Abraham Maslow talked about this, you know,
Speaker 3: the post mortem life. He said, I wish everyone could
Speaker 3: live a post mortem life, which is what he experienced
Speaker 3: after his first heart attack and he still lived. He said, Wow,
Speaker 3: I wish everyone could experience this kind of transcendence. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this transcend state of a very day consciousness. Elliott, can
Speaker 3: you give me some reflections here on death?
Speaker 1: I hope so. I don't know. I I don't know
Speaker 1: where to start. I grew I had a brother who
Speaker 1: was two and a half years older than I am,
Speaker 1: and he died of cancer when he was thirty two
Speaker 1: years old. And my father died when he was in
Speaker 1: his forties, and so I came out of both of
Speaker 1: those experiences really with the belief that I might not
Speaker 1: have a long time to live. And so it made
Speaker 1: me very conscious of dying. And I had a young
Speaker 1: family at the time that my brother died. I had
Speaker 1: Josh was just gone right around the time that my
Speaker 1: brother was dying, and I have four kids, and I was,
Speaker 1: thank God, how much time do I have left? And
Speaker 1: it really focused me on exactly what Josh just was
Speaker 1: talking about, and you might not have much time left.
Speaker 1: Really enjoy what you're doing, and what do you enjoy doing?
Speaker 1: And it was being with my family, telling the kids'
Speaker 1: bedtime stories, being with my wife and really enjoying her,
Speaker 1: and teaching and doing research. And so I did everything
Speaker 1: I had been doing, but with more awareness and more intensity.
Speaker 1: Now I'm ninety three years old. I never expected to
Speaker 1: live this long. I've lived almost three times as long
Speaker 1: as my brother, who was my first mentor live. Wow,
Speaker 1: So I'm really feeling I'm really feeling it. And you're
Speaker 1: long enough, you'll live long enough. And your friends keep dying.
Speaker 1: Leon Festinger died, Abe Maslow died, Ned Jones died Phil Zimbato,
Speaker 1: Lee Ross. I'm a lot of them, and I've been
Speaker 1: giving an awful people who aren't famous but who are old,
Speaker 1: good friends of mine. And I've given a lot of
Speaker 1: eulogies in the past ten years. And there's one nice
Speaker 1: thing about giving a eulogy. It makes you really think
Speaker 1: about another person's life and reflect back and think of
Speaker 1: your own. When I hit ninety, when a couple of
Speaker 1: my kids asked me, well, what should we do for
Speaker 1: your ninetieth birthday? That's a milestone. I thought about that
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know what, every time I give
Speaker 1: a eulogy, people would come back to me and say
Speaker 1: something like, Gee, what a great eulogy. It's too bad
Speaker 1: Ned wasn't alive, but you have to say about them.
Speaker 1: It's too bad that Leon wasn't alive to hear what
Speaker 1: you have to say about him, et cetera. And I thought,
Speaker 1: what I want is a living eulogy. What I want
Speaker 1: is for all of you to sit down and write
Speaker 1: a eulogy as if I had just died. Tell me
Speaker 1: what I meant to you, Tell me what was important
Speaker 1: about me to you. And then my daughter in law,
Speaker 1: one of my daughters in law she's a very active,
Speaker 1: very powerful person. Wrote to all of my friends, to
Speaker 1: some of my students, and they all wrote things are
Speaker 1: made videos and stuff like that. And I've seen a
Speaker 1: blogy now every once in a while and it's really
Speaker 1: an exciting process. Every time I'm feeling down, the eulogies
Speaker 1: perked me up and make me much more conscious and
Speaker 1: much more aware of what's important to me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love this well. I hope this episode as
Speaker 3: well is a tribute to you you you know and
Speaker 3: uh and really offers that purpose as well to our listeners.
Speaker 3: You know, A big part of living a good death.
Speaker 3: A big part of good death is a good life.
Speaker 3: You've you've certainly lived and are still living a very
Speaker 3: good life. And a big part of good life is
Speaker 3: having transcendence. And sometimes that takes the form of beautiful children.
Speaker 3: So tell me a little bit about about Are you
Speaker 3: proud of your son, Elliot.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of I'm proud of Josh a lot. And
Speaker 1: Josh is the only one of my sons who became
Speaker 1: a social psychologist. And a lot of people said, oh,
Speaker 1: that but a courageous thing to do. I never thought
Speaker 1: of it as courageous, but I thought of it as difficult,
Speaker 1: and Josh has done some beautiful work. I love his
Speaker 1: attitude toward research. I love his attitude toward teaching. I've
Speaker 1: seen him teach, I've heard him lecture at convention. He's terrific,
Speaker 1: and his research has been very, very good. And I
Speaker 1: like what I love what he's doing.
Speaker 2: Now, thanks for the urergy man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I have four kids, and I love what
Speaker 1: each of them does. And the one thing they have
Speaker 1: in common that it just makes me bubble over with
Speaker 1: happiness is that none of them think that money and
Speaker 1: fame is really important. None of them believe in that shit.
Speaker 1: Both of them. They're all doing things that are good
Speaker 1: for humanity. Yeah, I'm touched by all of them.
Speaker 3: That's a big part tresidents, Josh, in thirty seconds or less,
Speaker 3: just send us off. You're telling us what you're proud
Speaker 3: of about your father.
Speaker 2: I'm proud that he could have become one of those
Speaker 2: those celebrity academics, and he always resisted it, and so
Speaker 2: I teach that to my students. I go two questions
Speaker 2: that people automatically say yes to that they should think,
Speaker 2: can I have more money? And do you want to?
Speaker 2: Do you want more money, or do you want more fame?
Speaker 2: If you really look at it, you should think very
Speaker 2: careful about those things. And so yeah, I'm proud that
Speaker 2: he's the real deal. He's authentic, and that he cares
Speaker 2: about people, and that he's created a legacy of doing
Speaker 2: research that is blends the best of Maslow with the
Speaker 2: best of Bestinger and made something that I hope the
Speaker 2: field will return to and over and over again. That's
Speaker 2: what the Social Animal is about, is a reminder that
Speaker 2: the field used to do some really cool stuff and
Speaker 2: it wasn't online. Thank you so much, guys, Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's very fund You asked a very good question. This
Speaker 1: was a great fun