Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, I'm gonna see you. Okay, I'm hanging out
Speaker 1: with my mom over Zoom today to take a trip
Speaker 1: down television memory lane. Okay, I'm ready. Mom and I
Speaker 1: are still huge fans of the TV shows I grew
Speaker 1: up with when I was a kid. You watch a
Speaker 1: lot of cartoons, you know, ThunderCats. We're also really into
Speaker 1: live action superhero TV Buck Rogers, the Greatest American Hero,
Speaker 1: and Linda Carter's Wonder Woman. But today we're watching the
Speaker 1: one superhero show that caught my imagination the most Doctor
Speaker 1: David ben scientist. That show was The Incredible Hulk, starring
Speaker 1: Bill Bixby and eighties bodybuilder Loofer Igno. In the show,
Speaker 1: scientist David Banner is accidentally exposed to a bunch of
Speaker 1: gamma rays, which mess with his body's chemistry. Now, whenever
Speaker 1: Banner gets angry or emotional, he experiences a terrible reaction
Speaker 1: that transforms him from a normal, mild mannered researcher into
Speaker 1: an enormous, muscular rage monster the Incredible Hulk. Oh and
Speaker 1: somehow the whole intense emotions thing also makes him green.
Speaker 1: Banner worries a lot about the emotional demon that lurks
Speaker 1: inside him. He also spends a lot of time warning
Speaker 1: people about the consequences of pissing him off. Don't make
Speaker 1: me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. My
Speaker 1: mom was fond of using the very same quote whenever
Speaker 1: my little brother and I were on the verge of
Speaker 1: annoying her. Don't make me angry, you would not like
Speaker 1: me when I'm angry. I'm just surprised you remembered that.
Speaker 1: I feel like you said a lot you guys calmed
Speaker 1: down where I said it. Mary, You really did, You
Speaker 1: really slowed down. I never actually had to get angry.
Speaker 1: For a budding psychologist, the concept of an incredible hulk
Speaker 1: was absolutely fascinating. It wasn't us that our powerful emotions
Speaker 1: could unleash some inner lurking beast. It was that strong
Speaker 1: feelings like anger could effectively turn anyone, even my own mom,
Speaker 1: into an entirely different person. But is the idea of
Speaker 1: an incredible help just a comic book metaphor, or is
Speaker 1: there a real psychological sense in which we do become
Speaker 1: different people when we're in the grip of anger or
Speaker 1: other intense feelings like pain, hunger, anxiety, and embarrassment, and
Speaker 1: if we do become strangers to ourselves when we're in
Speaker 1: the grip of tough emotions, Are there strategies we can
Speaker 1: use to develop more empathy for those anguished strangers? Are
Speaker 1: there ways we can harness the rational side of our
Speaker 1: inner David Banners to take better care of ourselves when
Speaker 1: we emotionally help out. Our minds are constantly telling us
Speaker 1: what to do to be happy. But what if our
Speaker 1: minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
Speaker 1: leading us away from what will really make us happy.
Speaker 1: The good news is that understanding the science of the
Speaker 1: mind can point us all back in the right direction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: When I was pregnant with my first child, I really
Speaker 1: wanted to have the natural birth experience. This is author
Speaker 1: Jemma Hartley. There was this tremendous pressure I had put
Speaker 1: on myself to be a certain kind of mom, even
Speaker 1: in the birthing room. Like many pregnant women, Gemma had
Speaker 1: lots of ideas about what the painful process of childbirth
Speaker 1: would be like. A lot of it had to do
Speaker 1: with that romanticized view of what natural birth is, and
Speaker 1: I like that idea of myself as someone who was
Speaker 1: like this tough natural birthing mother. Gemma wanted to be
Speaker 1: as prepared as possible for the birth experience she dreamed of.
Speaker 1: She read books about unmedicated childbirth and followed lots of
Speaker 1: bloggers who'd been through process naturally. This was like the
Speaker 1: height of the mom blog. Then I followed a lot
Speaker 1: of women who had these beautiful birth stories and pictures
Speaker 1: of their home births and tubs, and I felt like
Speaker 1: that was the type of womanhood I was aspiring too
Speaker 1: in that first pregnancy, and things didn't go according to
Speaker 1: plan with my first child at all. Jemma wound up
Speaker 1: being induced soon after she arrived at the hospital without
Speaker 1: getting much of a choice from her doctors, which led
Speaker 1: to a whole host of additional medical interventions, including an
Speaker 1: epidural and an episiotomy. I had a lot of anger
Speaker 1: at myself. I had a lot of anger in general
Speaker 1: around the experience, But I think the first person I
Speaker 1: blamed was myself. Jemma was angry that she chose to
Speaker 1: listen to her doctor in the heat of the moment.
Speaker 1: I should have told that doctor, like absolutely not I
Speaker 1: should have stayed the course. It didn't matter that most
Speaker 1: people probably would have done the same thing Jemma did
Speaker 1: and listened to the medical professionals if they were in
Speaker 1: a scary, painful and uncertain situation. But that wasn't how
Speaker 1: Jema viewed it. After the fact, I was really unkind
Speaker 1: to myself in that way. I just blamed myself for
Speaker 1: not being stronger in the moment while I was in
Speaker 1: a lot of pain. So when Jemma found out she
Speaker 1: was pregnant with her second child, she immediately began fantasizing
Speaker 1: about how she could rectify that disappointing first birth experience.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a chance that I'm going to get the
Speaker 1: kind of birth eye envisioned the first time around, And
Speaker 1: then that also didn't happen. Jemma's experience with childbirth number
Speaker 1: two was much better than the first time around, but
Speaker 1: during the delivery, her medical team worried that she wasn't
Speaker 1: progressing as fast as she should be. The doctors again
Speaker 1: suggested inducing labor and an epidural, even though Jemma had
Speaker 1: really hoped for an unmedicated birth before she went into labor.
Speaker 1: She again decided to take the intervention, and so that
Speaker 1: was still a difficult thing for me to process after
Speaker 1: everything was done. When Jemma got pregnant with baby number three,
Speaker 1: she held out hope that the third time would be
Speaker 1: the charm. She found a midwife she trusted who'd be
Speaker 1: there to advocate for her at the hospital, and even
Speaker 1: joined a group of other pregnant women who'd made the
Speaker 1: commitment to a natural labor. We were talking with a
Speaker 1: group of three midwives every week about what our plans
Speaker 1: were and kind of coming to this like group consensus
Speaker 1: of what we wanted, and I felt really confident in
Speaker 1: my ability to go through and have the birth experience
Speaker 1: that I wanted with my third this time, when Jemma
Speaker 1: went into labor, everything went as well as could possibly
Speaker 1: be planned. She made it to the hospital with no complications.
Speaker 1: My midwife was there, you know, within twenty minutes, and
Speaker 1: she like lit candles and drew a bath for me
Speaker 1: and was like, we're going to get through this. Jemma
Speaker 1: progressed as expected. Her doctors didn't see a need for
Speaker 1: an epidural or any medical interventions. Her dream of a
Speaker 1: natural childbirth was mere moments away. You're at the finish line.
Speaker 1: And I decided the pain was too much and I
Speaker 1: requested an epidural, and my midwife was really like, are
Speaker 1: you sure you just have to get through this last part.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this for your whole pregnancy. But I
Speaker 1: felt really clear in my decision. What mattered to Jemma
Speaker 1: when she was in the worst pain of her life
Speaker 1: wasn't the fantasy she'd had during her pregnancy. The only
Speaker 1: thing she cared about then was reducing the pain so
Speaker 1: that she could feel present for her final baby's birth.
Speaker 1: That ended up being more important to me than having
Speaker 1: the natural birth. Research shows that the switch and preferences
Speaker 1: that Jemma experienced in the delivery room is strikingly common.
Speaker 1: One study surveyed a group of pregnant women before, during,
Speaker 1: and after they gave birth. Before and after labor, many
Speaker 1: of the women shared Jemma's strong preference for an unmedicated birth.
Speaker 1: They too, predicted that they'd stick to that choice even
Speaker 1: in a moment of extreme pain, But during labor, nearly
Speaker 1: all of their preferences switched. Like Gemma, many women wound
Speaker 1: up requesting the very pain relief they'd sworn off minutes earlier,
Speaker 1: and so I ended up getting the epidural at the
Speaker 1: very last moment that they would let me. I was
Speaker 1: not ready to go through that pain. Gema chronicled her
Speaker 1: repeated changes of heart in an essay for the website
Speaker 1: Romper entitled I wanted a natural childbirth, Then I changed
Speaker 1: my mind. Writing the article was Jema's attempt to process
Speaker 1: the sense of anger and blame she'd felt about her
Speaker 1: decision with the first two pregnancies. I wanted that identity,
Speaker 1: and I had already sort of claimed it for myself,
Speaker 1: even though I hadn't done it yet, and so I
Speaker 1: had to sort of shift my perspective on who I
Speaker 1: was as a birthing person. What I find so fascinating
Speaker 1: about Jema's story is that it shows just how bad
Speaker 1: we are at understanding what we'll need when we're in
Speaker 1: the grip of an intense emotion. We assume that we'll
Speaker 1: be courageous when we're hit with extreme pain or column
Speaker 1: in the midst of a terrifying situation, or stoic in
Speaker 1: the face of a rage inducing event, and we often
Speaker 1: beat ourselves up badly when we tap out, feel terrified,
Speaker 1: or go full hulk in anger. It's so much easier
Speaker 1: to find our inner critic than our inner cheerleader. You
Speaker 1: truly feel like you're a different self moment to the next,
Speaker 1: as driven by these really intense emotional or visceral states.
Speaker 1: It's very challenging. This is psychologist Rachel written a second later.
Speaker 1: It almost feels like you're dealing with a stranger, but
Speaker 1: the stranger is yourself. It's just your emotional state. Two
Speaker 1: minutes ago. Rachel knows just how hard it can be
Speaker 1: to have empathy for yourself after you've been in the
Speaker 1: grip of a tough emotional situation. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was just so into figure skating. It became such
Speaker 1: a part of my life. It's basically all I did.
Speaker 1: That was the career that I wanted, and as a
Speaker 1: part of that, I had just had massive performance anxiety.
Speaker 1: At skating practice, Rachel was the picture of poise and confidence,
Speaker 1: but as soon as it was time for a big
Speaker 1: meet or competition, everything changed. I would faint before competitions,
Speaker 1: I would fully go down. As soon as the music
Speaker 1: stopped and the performance was over, Rachel's anxiety completely disappeared.
Speaker 1: We're talking like five to ten seconds after this is over.
Speaker 1: Then I just had the sense of regret of why
Speaker 1: did that go so poorly? And it just went so
Speaker 1: quickly to just self critique, sort of like really intense
Speaker 1: self loathing. Post competition, Rachel experienced the same frustration about
Speaker 1: her behavior as author Deema Hartley experienced after taking those
Speaker 1: epidurals to Rachel, that skater who was having a panic
Speaker 1: attack seconds earlier was as much of a stranger as
Speaker 1: the raging, incredible hulk was to mild Manner David Banner,
Speaker 1: and then once the competition was coming again, I would
Speaker 1: get it. Eventually, the constant choking under pressure forced the
Speaker 1: budding skater to drop her dreams of turning pro but
Speaker 1: the curiosity Rachel felt about her own affect of transformation
Speaker 1: stuck with her and I think certainly has shaped my
Speaker 1: interests to this day, this power of affect. Rachel is
Speaker 1: now an assistant professor at the Rotman School of Management
Speaker 1: at the University of Toronto. Since leaving competitive figure skating,
Speaker 1: she's become an expert on the psychological bias known as
Speaker 1: the hot cold empathy gap. So the empathy gap is
Speaker 1: this broad tendency for people who are in emotional states
Speaker 1: what are known as hot states, to fail to appreciate
Speaker 1: what it will be like in an unemotional or cold state.
Speaker 1: Study after study has shown that we have trouble comprehending
Speaker 1: other people's hot states, their anxiety or anger, or sadness
Speaker 1: or exhaustion, when we ourselves are in a not so
Speaker 1: emotional cold state. For example, fit and healthy nurses routinely
Speaker 1: undermedicate cancer patients experiencing the hot state of chronic pain.
Speaker 1: Parents who aren't stressed about an upcoming test often underestimate
Speaker 1: the academic anxieties their children feeld, And as one Irish
Speaker 1: proverb eloquently put it, a full person has a hard
Speaker 1: time understanding the needs of the hungry. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to jump into the mind of someone else who's
Speaker 1: experiencing something very different from what you are. Rachel wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out why people have this hot cold empathy gap.
Speaker 1: Her work started from the hypothesis that we find it
Speaker 1: easiest to empathize with another person if we've had some
Speaker 1: experience of the thing they're going through, and there are
Speaker 1: findings to support that. If you put undergraduate students in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair for a day, they're more likely to indicate
Speaker 1: that they feel empathy toward someone else who is disabled. So,
Speaker 1: of course shared experiences can help with empathy. And so
Speaker 1: I think our intuition does come from a good place.
Speaker 1: There's just real limits to it, and Rachel found that
Speaker 1: the extent of these limits is rather surprising. In one study,
Speaker 1: she tested whether being forced to endure a boring task
Speaker 1: in the past would make subjects more empathic towards strangers
Speaker 1: who are currently doing that task. She brought college students
Speaker 1: into the lab and told them about a fictional subject,
Speaker 1: let's call him Pat, who was asked to do an
Speaker 1: onerous memory test that involved remembering long strings of numbers,
Speaker 1: exactly the type of lab studies that undergrads don't want
Speaker 1: to come in and do. Pat was really motivated to
Speaker 1: finish this test, but he got too tired and flaked out.
Speaker 1: The subjects were then asked to evaluate Pat. Did they
Speaker 1: think he was competent and capable and so on. The
Speaker 1: first group of participants had no personal experience doing the
Speaker 1: tests that Pat had fluncked, but the second group of
Speaker 1: subjects got to evaluate Pat immediately after doing twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of the same boring test themselves. So these were people
Speaker 1: who were really in the heat of it that they
Speaker 1: understood the fatigue. A third group of subjects was also
Speaker 1: asked to evaluate pat but they did so a full
Speaker 1: week after they'd completed the boring task, when they'd had
Speaker 1: plenty of time to recover from the hot state of exhaustion.
Speaker 1: The most compassionate people were the ones who were fatigued themselves,
Speaker 1: followed by those who had no experience. But the least
Speaker 1: compassionate people of all were the ones who had done
Speaker 1: the task themselves. But they had done it a week ago,
Speaker 1: So it was something specifically about only not being in
Speaker 1: the fatigue state anymore, but also having the knowledge that, well,
Speaker 1: I did that task just a week ago, and I
Speaker 1: managed to get through it myself. That seemed to be
Speaker 1: particularly problematic for compassion. Our emotional empathy gaps, it seems,
Speaker 1: are even more cavernous than researchers had expected. Rachel worries
Speaker 1: that our inability to show compassion for the people who
Speaker 1: need it most, even in cases where we've been there
Speaker 1: and done that, could be hindering our happiness. Tons of
Speaker 1: studies show that we get a well being boost from
Speaker 1: helping others in need and taking care of the people
Speaker 1: we love, but Rachel's were hints that we may be
Speaker 1: significantly less motivated to provide that help when we're in
Speaker 1: a cold state. But there's a second, and possible even
Speaker 1: bigger worry for our happiness. If we're bad at understanding
Speaker 1: other people's hot states and showing them compassion, are we
Speaker 1: any better at being kind to ourselves when we cross
Speaker 1: that hot coal boundary? I think an essential insight of
Speaker 1: a lot of this research is that when you're not
Speaker 1: in an emotional state, you just can't really grasp what
Speaker 1: it's life. The Happiness lab will be right back. We
Speaker 1: were on this bike trip and there was one day
Speaker 1: that was just particularly gruling, and we kind of knew
Speaker 1: it at the beginning of the day. Social psychologist Leaf
Speaker 1: van Boven and George Lowenstein recently went on a hard
Speaker 1: cycling trip together. Leif says that they're used to intense rides,
Speaker 1: but even they knew that this particular day of biking,
Speaker 1: which included an eleven hour trek entirely up hill, would
Speaker 1: test their limits. About halfway through the day, we suddenly
Speaker 1: just got desperate to get out of the situation, and
Speaker 1: we were trying to get to the top of this
Speaker 1: hill where we could make a call to someone to
Speaker 1: come and pick us up. Even though Leaf and George
Speaker 1: had fully committed to that tough route earlier that morning,
Speaker 1: the pain and exhaustion they experienced in the moment were
Speaker 1: just too much. Unfortunately, their desperate attempt to escape was
Speaker 1: defeated by poor cell phone service. We were unable to
Speaker 1: reach the person to come rescue us, and so we
Speaker 1: had to do another twenty five miles and four thousand
Speaker 1: foot assent, which almost seemed like it was going to
Speaker 1: be impossible to do. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: when we got into camp, we were all so relieved
Speaker 1: that we hadn't been able to reach the person, because
Speaker 1: we forgot the misery of those twenty five miles. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting counterfact. Well, actually, if we had been successful
Speaker 1: in getting a ride at that point, would we have
Speaker 1: looked back and just felt just a little bit embarrassed
Speaker 1: that we weren't able to actually pull it off and
Speaker 1: ride the full distance? You know that we would have.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we had no phone service at
Speaker 1: that point. Even now, I am, like psychologist Rachel Rattan,
Speaker 1: George and Leaf are interested in the mechanism underlying our
Speaker 1: hot cold empathy gaps why we can't fully understand strong
Speaker 1: emotional states like fear, or anger or exhaustion when we're
Speaker 1: not experiencing that state ourselves. Their first hypothesis about the
Speaker 1: processes underlying these gaps when something like this, when we
Speaker 1: are trying to predict how other people are going to
Speaker 1: respond to a particular situation, we first try to imagine
Speaker 1: how would we respond in that situation, and then we
Speaker 1: tried to make adjustments for the fact that the other
Speaker 1: person is different from us. You might assume, as many
Speaker 1: psychologists initially did, the empathy gaps occur because we don't
Speaker 1: fully understand how other people are different from us, and
Speaker 1: so we screw up that second part of the process.
Speaker 1: We don't correctly adjust for how different other people really are.
Speaker 1: But what we find is their big reason that you
Speaker 1: get it wrong is because you get yourself from You
Speaker 1: don't know how you would act if you got into
Speaker 1: that situation. It turns out that we also show an
Speaker 1: empathy gap for ourselves. Take for example, my favorite of
Speaker 1: Leaf and Georgie's studies. Leaf and George would have loved
Speaker 1: to have forced their subjects into super extreme hot states.
Speaker 1: It's like reage or pain or starvation. But powerful states
Speaker 1: like those are pretty hard to induce, at least ethically
Speaker 1: in laboratory settings, so they focused instead on a feeling
Speaker 1: that's both relatively common and reasonably achievable in a classroom.
Speaker 1: Social embarrassment. If you just kind of imagine standing in
Speaker 1: front of an audience and having to deliver an impromptu speech,
Speaker 1: everyone understands that that's embarrassing that they might want to
Speaker 1: get out of that situation. But Leaf and George didn't
Speaker 1: just ask their subjects to give an impromptu speech. They
Speaker 1: put students in a big group and told them that
Speaker 1: they might soon be chosen to step up to the
Speaker 1: front of the class and perform the best dance moves
Speaker 1: they could to Rick James's nineteen eighty one song super Freak.
Speaker 1: We chose super Freak because everybody knows super Freak Like.
Speaker 1: It's probably an easily danceable song if someone were to
Speaker 1: actually enjoy dancing in front of an audience, like, it's
Speaker 1: very easy to put people in this state where they
Speaker 1: can imagine exactly what's happening. We've removed all the mystery
Speaker 1: of just a pure fact of the situation they're confronted with.
Speaker 1: The remaining mystery is, how are you actually going to
Speaker 1: respond if that's reality. Half of the students were told
Speaker 1: to imagine, just hypothetically, what would it be like to
Speaker 1: dance in front of the group. What's the smallest amount
Speaker 1: of money we'd need to pay you to do that.
Speaker 1: Most of people in the hypothetical condition, they were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, eight bucks or so. But the other
Speaker 1: students were told that the dance off was not hypothetical,
Speaker 1: it was actually happening very soon. Unlike subjects in the
Speaker 1: hypothetical condition, these students were terrified that they might actually
Speaker 1: be wiggling their butts on stage within the next thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: They were feeling the heat of embarrassment, and their hot
Speaker 1: state seals wanted to chicken out as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: Leaf than George found that students in this hot state
Speaker 1: demanded over fifty bucks to get on stage, and some
Speaker 1: students wanted way more. The surprisingly large number of people
Speaker 1: said like a million dollars, Like they just wanted to
Speaker 1: really drive that point home that there's no possible way
Speaker 1: I'll ever do this when we're in a cold state.
Speaker 1: We have the illusion that our hot state sells act
Speaker 1: in ways that are confident and courageous that we'd be
Speaker 1: totally willing to embarrass ourselves to earn eight bucks. But
Speaker 1: when we're actually in that hot state, we suddenly want
Speaker 1: to avoid discomfort as much as possible. The problem is
Speaker 1: that our lion cold state minds don't realize that, so
Speaker 1: they constantly put us in emotional situations that kind of suck.
Speaker 1: As George knows all too well, there is a girl
Speaker 1: I always had a crush on in high school. She
Speaker 1: had your first name, Laurie. All of high school I
Speaker 1: was tongue tied, like I never asked her out or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Several years after graduation, George's mom, a professor,
Speaker 1: called to share some news. Her son's high school crush
Speaker 1: had enrolled in her new class, and I said, really, George,
Speaker 1: figure he must have grown emotionally since high school. In
Speaker 1: this cold state, he fully believed he wouldn't fall prey
Speaker 1: to that dorky teenage anxiety. So George hatched a plan.
Speaker 1: He'd head to his mom's classroom and wait for class
Speaker 1: to end, and when Laurie walked out the door this time,
Speaker 1: he'd finally be able to chat with her. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: how it walks Laury just five minutes before. George had
Speaker 1: predicted that he'd be completely smooth, that he'd finally talked
Speaker 1: to his crush and overcome his adolescent shyness. But it
Speaker 1: didn't pan out like that. I was instantly transported back
Speaker 1: to those days. Tongue tied again, and she just walked
Speaker 1: past and left the building. So I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us have fantasies off we only we could go
Speaker 1: back to high school, we'd be self brave, but we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be We'd be exactly the same way that we were.
Speaker 1: Experiences like these have convinced George and Leaf that comic
Speaker 1: books like The Incredible Help are onto something important about
Speaker 1: human nature. The idea that we are different people and
Speaker 1: we're in different emotional states helps to understand why we
Speaker 1: have so little perspective into our own feelings and behavior
Speaker 1: when we are in a different state. This inability to
Speaker 1: predict how we'll think or act in a hot state
Speaker 1: often leaked to a huge hit on our happiness. There
Speaker 1: are tons of situations in which we just set ourselves
Speaker 1: up for failure, whether it's the pain of a tough
Speaker 1: bike ride or the stress of a tough week at work,
Speaker 1: or the sugary temptations that come when we try to
Speaker 1: eat healthier often put ourselves into situations where, in the
Speaker 1: grip of a hot state, we do things we hadn't expected.
Speaker 1: We call a cat, or shout out our coworkers, or
Speaker 1: grab a candy bar. Try as we might, we simply
Speaker 1: can't predict the happiness needs we'll have in a hot state.
Speaker 1: From the vantage point of a cold state, we also
Speaker 1: get very very judgy, and the cold state you have
Speaker 1: very little empathy for your hot state. We tend to
Speaker 1: blame ourselves and hold ourselves much more accountable exactly because
Speaker 1: of this empathy gap, because we don't really understand the
Speaker 1: power of the emotions that we were operating under. And
Speaker 1: as you can probably guess, the pain caused by all
Speaker 1: this blame, guilt and judginess isn't great for our happiness.
Speaker 1: The problem is we can't in retrospect then understand why
Speaker 1: we fail to act, and so those moments end up
Speaker 1: kind of haunting us as we look back on them.
Speaker 1: So how can we deal with the anguish this haunting
Speaker 1: can cause? Well, the science shows there are ways we
Speaker 1: can be kinder to our helped out selves. If we're
Speaker 1: willing to put in some introspective work. We'll learn more
Speaker 1: about what those strategies are. When the Happiness Lab returns
Speaker 1: from the break, my nerves would just get so bad.
Speaker 1: I would start to just feel I would get covered
Speaker 1: in cold streat. I would just feel a loss of
Speaker 1: control of my body, and I would go down. Psychologist
Speaker 1: and former competitive skater Rachel Return knows just how badly
Speaker 1: hot emotional states like anxiety can affect us. All I
Speaker 1: wanted to do is run away. Like if I could
Speaker 1: have just shed my identity, gotten a new passport, it
Speaker 1: left the country before some big competitions, I absolutely would
Speaker 1: have done that. Rachel also knows the shame and judginess
Speaker 1: that begins as soon as our hot states start to
Speaker 1: cool off. I would just be like, why did I
Speaker 1: do that? That doesn't make any sense. This is the
Speaker 1: thing that I care about so deeply. These are three
Speaker 1: to four minute performances. Why can't I put that aside
Speaker 1: and just do this? And decades after performance anxiety ended
Speaker 1: her skating career, Rachel still struggles with the way intense
Speaker 1: states impact her performance. I've fainted during an academic talk.
Speaker 1: So this is just something that's plagued me for a
Speaker 1: long time, and it really drives this fascination with the
Speaker 1: power of these states, and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: Rachel's current research is focused on how we can reignite
Speaker 1: the compassion that our cool, rational selves should be feeling
Speaker 1: for our hot, emotional selves. The first step to minding
Speaker 1: such empathy gaps, according to Rachel, is making sure that
Speaker 1: our cold state selves remember that we have such gaps
Speaker 1: in the first place. When you're not in an emotional
Speaker 1: state at a given time, it's nearly impossible to understand
Speaker 1: its effect on your behavior. We usually plan our lives
Speaker 1: when we're in a calm, rational state, but we often
Speaker 1: forget that more intense, emotionally charged situations could be lurking
Speaker 1: right around the corner. There's just been so much research
Speaker 1: on how whatever state we're in, just it feels like
Speaker 1: the truth, Like it just feels like an accurate assessment
Speaker 1: of reality, and I'll never not feel this right. This
Speaker 1: prediction that will always feel as rational as we do
Speaker 1: in a cold state gets us into trouble. We constantly
Speaker 1: underestimate how emotionally vulnerable will be in certain situations, and
Speaker 1: this leads to what Rachel's thesis, advisor Laura Nordgren called
Speaker 1: the restraint byas when we're in a cold state, we
Speaker 1: assume we'll have more willpower and emotional control and tough
Speaker 1: situations than we actually do. This is one of the
Speaker 1: really strong nuggets of wisdom in this idea that you
Speaker 1: really truly don't have control and you just have to
Speaker 1: internalize that message because you may feel great right now,
Speaker 1: but if a craving takes hold of craving takes hold it,
Speaker 1: you truly don't have as much control over that as
Speaker 1: you think. Rachel thinks we should practice reminding ourselves that
Speaker 1: we're going to be pretty powerless when a truly intense
Speaker 1: emotion strikes. She likes to quote one AA mantra in particular,
Speaker 1: the one is away from one's last shrink, the closer
Speaker 1: one is to the next one, which is just the
Speaker 1: farther you get from something that you actually get worse
Speaker 1: at understanding it. But Rachel also has practical tips for
Speaker 1: how to at least nudge ourselves closer to that kind
Speaker 1: of understanding. One recommendation involves doing author and mother of
Speaker 1: three Gemma Hartley did after her final childbirth experience. We
Speaker 1: can write to ourselves about how we really felt when
Speaker 1: we made a hot state decision. It's a trick that
Speaker 1: Rachel has used a lot. I started to just write
Speaker 1: down what's going on when I'm in a hot state,
Speaker 1: just as a way to consult with the future cold self.
Speaker 1: If you get terrified every time your friends drag you
Speaker 1: on stage for karaoke, or enraged every time you hop
Speaker 1: in your car to run errands during rush hour, grab
Speaker 1: a pen when you're still in the grip of that
Speaker 1: hot feeling and give your future cold state self a
Speaker 1: little happiness advice. Just write down, like, don't do this again.
Speaker 1: Your past self is going to communicate to a future
Speaker 1: self from the stage, because you can't rely on the
Speaker 1: idea that you're going to remember what that was. It's
Speaker 1: just giving you a kind of a little sneak peek,
Speaker 1: some slight access to how you actually might feel on
Speaker 1: that state. Rachel also recommends what she calls anticipated re experience.
Speaker 1: When you're in a cold state, take a few minutes
Speaker 1: to carefully and vividly imagine what it would feel like
Speaker 1: to re experience a past strong emotion, and go slowly
Speaker 1: play out the emotional experience, almost like a movie in
Speaker 1: your head in which you follow the steps of going
Speaker 1: from a cold state into a hot state and then
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the intense emotion of craving or anger or
Speaker 1: anxiety you just simulated is probably lurking somewhere around the corner.
Speaker 1: So if you tell people like, yeah, you've made it
Speaker 1: out of this state or this difficult life experience, but
Speaker 1: there's a chance that that might not always be true,
Speaker 1: that's a surefire way to get people to at least
Speaker 1: somewhat tap into that experience again. Rachel says that such
Speaker 1: knowledge is power. She worries that we're prone to just
Speaker 1: ignoring or shying away from the things we did when
Speaker 1: we hulked out. I think people are so quick to
Speaker 1: say that whatever was done in these emotional states is
Speaker 1: not them. That's paradoxically not helpful because you're not learning
Speaker 1: from it. It can be tough to take a cold,
Speaker 1: no pun intended, hard look at how we behave when
Speaker 1: we're angry or anxious or pissed or exhausted, But doing
Speaker 1: so gives us critical information about the ups and downs
Speaker 1: of our emotional life. If you're collecting data and you're
Speaker 1: seeing the ebbs and flows, it's hard to completely distort
Speaker 1: that information. Rachel's final tip is the hardest one. It
Speaker 1: involves recognizing that will never truly be able to overcome
Speaker 1: our empathy gap, and that basic feature of human nature
Speaker 1: means unfortunately, our hot state selves will pretty much always
Speaker 1: feel like a stranger. As a real challenge for us
Speaker 1: to understand ourselves in this sense. Again, like I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to the AA model, is it because I
Speaker 1: think there's a real beauty to it, which is like,
Speaker 1: at some point you have to just acknowledge the loss
Speaker 1: of control and live your life that way. This final
Speaker 1: piece of advice reminded me of something that psychologist George
Speaker 1: Lowenstein shared when we spoke earlier. It isn't possible to
Speaker 1: bridge the empathy gap itself, but George and his colleague
Speaker 1: Leaf Fan Boven share Rachel's hope that if we can
Speaker 1: just get our rational selves to remember that fact, it'll
Speaker 1: help us better take care of our emotional selves. The
Speaker 1: solution isn't just to sort of say you need to
Speaker 1: be different, you need to kind of develop willpower, self
Speaker 1: control and be a better person. It's how we think
Speaker 1: about restructuring the situations on the context that you find
Speaker 1: yourself in so that you are less often tempted, that
Speaker 1: you're less often sort of pushed into this hot situation.
Speaker 1: Like Rachel, Leaf and Georgie are optimistic that a better
Speaker 1: understanding of the empathy gap could help our cold state
Speaker 1: selves to become a little less judgy and perhaps even
Speaker 1: more forgiving when we do holk out. There's a famous saying,
Speaker 1: to explain is to forgive, and I think that to
Speaker 1: some degree that is true when it comes to empathy gapps.
Speaker 1: The more we can truly understand people's behavior, the more
Speaker 1: sympathetic we would be. The hot cold empathy gap means
Speaker 1: that we all have a misunderstood inner monster who's ready
Speaker 1: to burst out whenever we experience intense emotions. It's not
Speaker 1: just as David Banner says, that we don't like ourselves
Speaker 1: when we're angry. It's more that we simply can't know
Speaker 1: ourselves when we're in a hot state, even though our
Speaker 1: lying cold state minds tell us otherwise. The science shows
Speaker 1: that we can't fully grasp what it's like to be
Speaker 1: in a hot state unless we're actually in it. There's
Speaker 1: no way to cure or the incredible hulks lurking inside us,
Speaker 1: but there are strategies to at least acknowledge those Hulks
Speaker 1: and better plan for their arrival. And all the suggestions
Speaker 1: you've heard today in this episode kind of fit with
Speaker 1: what my mom and I learned watching my favorite TV
Speaker 1: show back in the day, because what I loved most
Speaker 1: about The Incredible Hulk is that researcher David Banner was
Speaker 1: pretty good at following all this scientific advice. When the
Speaker 1: series ended, Banner still hadn't found a cure for his
Speaker 1: tragic metamorphosis, but he successfully lived his life in full
Speaker 1: awareness of the rage monster inside him. He spent pretty
Speaker 1: much every episode trying to make sure he didn't get
Speaker 1: into situations that would cause him to hulk out. He
Speaker 1: controlled his circumstances by admitting to those around him that
Speaker 1: they needed to be careful about upsetting him. Banner didn't
Speaker 1: go to AA, but he fully acknowledged the loss of
Speaker 1: control that comes from being a human with an empathy gap,
Speaker 1: and he really did try to be the best caretaker
Speaker 1: he could for the fragile, yet rather muscular, emotional green
Speaker 1: dude within. I hope your cold State selves will commit
Speaker 1: to being nicer and more compassionate to your inner emotional hulks,
Speaker 1: and I hope you'll return next week to check out
Speaker 1: the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and produced
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley, Emily Ann Vollon and Courtney Guerino. Joseph
Speaker 1: Friedman checked our facts. Our original music was composed by
Speaker 1: Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by Evan Viola.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Milabelle heather Thing, John Schnars, Carlie Migliori,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserve,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.