Speaker 1: I think that what meditation does, what mindfulness does, is
Speaker 1: it helps you realize that you have mindsets, that the world,
Speaker 1: your beliefs aren't just sort of a reflection of reality
Speaker 1: as it is, that like could be this way or
Speaker 1: could be that way, and you kind of like sit
Speaker 1: back and you sort of see the kind of absurdity
Speaker 1: of it all. So that's part of it. But then
Speaker 1: what right, then you need to go live your life,
Speaker 1: like then you need to get back in the game.
Speaker 1: And so it's you know, it's stepping back in and
Speaker 1: say now I'm going to live my life and I'm
Speaker 1: going to choose to view stress as enhancing.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
Speaker 2: the depths of human potential. I'm your host, doctor Scott
Speaker 2: Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist and Columbia professor. On this episode,
Speaker 2: we have my dear friend, doctor Ali Crumb, whose research
Speaker 2: focuses on how changes in subjective mindsets, the lenses through
Speaker 2: which information is perceived, organized, and interpreted, can alter objective
Speaker 2: reality through behavioral, psychological, and physiological mechanisms. Her work is
Speaker 2: in part inspired by research on the placebo effect, a
Speaker 2: remarkable and consistent demonstration of the ability of the mindset
Speaker 2: to elicit healing properties in the body. She is interested
Speaker 2: in understanding how mindsets affect important outcomes outside the realm
Speaker 2: of medicine, in the debates of behavioral health and organizational behavior.
Speaker 2: More specifically, she aims to understand how mindsets can be
Speaker 2: consciously and deliberately changed through intervention to affect organizational and
Speaker 2: individual performance, physiological and psychological well being, and interpersonal effectiveness.
Speaker 2: This chat was very sentimental to me personally. I met
Speaker 2: doctor Crumb in graduate school at Yale, and we connected immediately.
Speaker 2: I remember fondly our deep chats, and I'm so proud
Speaker 2: to see her become such a superstar in the field.
Speaker 2: I hope you find this chat just as informative as
Speaker 2: I did. So, without further ado, I bring you doctor
Speaker 2: Ali Crumb. Oh my god, Allie, how do you look
Speaker 2: exactly the same?
Speaker 1: I mean, you look exactly the same. It's so good
Speaker 1: to see you.
Speaker 2: So good to see you too. I mean like you're
Speaker 2: exactly like you know Yale dance. What was some party, jon,
Speaker 2: I think it must be something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The memory have of you in my mind is like
Speaker 2: exactly the same. Anyway. Congratulations on keeping your health and
Speaker 2: vitality in youth, and for your amazing, amazing ascendency in
Speaker 2: the field of psychology, successes and research and everything. It's
Speaker 2: been such a delight and honor to watch you sore.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Well I feel the same about you,
Speaker 1: Scott at like seeing you brings me right back to
Speaker 1: New Haven. You know, I remember going to your dissertation.
Speaker 1: I remember meeting your mom right outside of the Hall
Speaker 1: of Graduate Studies, and you know, just to we were
Speaker 1: just you know, we were so such kids then, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, I think both of us.
Speaker 1: I was drawn to you because I got a sense
Speaker 1: that this was your passion, right, this was your calling,
Speaker 1: and you weren't doing it to get some credentials. You
Speaker 1: were doing it because you knew it mattered. So it's
Speaker 1: been fun to watch from afar and listen to all
Speaker 1: your work.
Speaker 2: And likewise, thanks, thanks. Well let's let's let's back up
Speaker 2: before we even met. Let's back up to your undergraduate
Speaker 2: at Harvard Hall. You were a TA for a very
Speaker 2: special and popular course and happiness by Tall. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yes, Tall Ben Shahar changed my life.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a little bit about that? Experience
Speaker 2: and uh, and then how it like influenced you for
Speaker 2: the research you've continued to do for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in order to understand the effect
Speaker 1: that that class had on me, it's important to share
Speaker 1: a little bit about my childhood. So I grew up
Speaker 1: in a household. My father was a teacher of transcendental meditation.
Speaker 1: He was a master of the art of aiketo. He
Speaker 1: started a foundation called Windstar Foundation with John Denver, the
Speaker 1: singer songwriter, where they would host speakers retreats where people
Speaker 1: would come basically to study in the mind body arts.
Speaker 1: And so I grew up going to all these retreats.
Speaker 1: You know, my summers were filled going to meditation and
Speaker 1: aiketo seminars and retreats. And so when I got to Harvard,
Speaker 1: I realized, you know, fairly quickly, that that was not
Speaker 1: a normal upbringing, that that wasn't the status quo for
Speaker 1: the other students there. And you know, for a while
Speaker 1: I was a little bit lost. I was feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: sense of imposter syndrome, a sense of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot, but I haven't learned all they know.
Speaker 1: And terms of you know, the academics but it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I met Tall, Benjahar, Ellen Langer, and Harrington that
Speaker 1: I realized that, you know, even though my childhood was unique,
Speaker 1: it was it was actually being researched at the time
Speaker 1: from a neuroscientific standpoint. You know, the rise of positive
Speaker 1: psychology was happening. The nerve excuse me, the neuroscience of
Speaker 1: meditation was just beginning, and people were starting to take
Speaker 1: this work really seriously from a scientific standpoint. So that class,
Speaker 1: you know, it didn't necessarily like open my mind to
Speaker 1: things that I hadn't learned or heard of before, but
Speaker 1: it made me feel at home. It made me feel
Speaker 1: like I belong.
Speaker 2: So you did some you contributed to some seminal research
Speaker 2: even as an undergrad in Harvard with I think UH
Speaker 2: paved the way for a career on mindsets and stress.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about some of that seminal research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the original research that I did. You know, I
Speaker 1: mentioned I had sort of been I had experienced the
Speaker 1: power of the mind to affect the body, both through
Speaker 1: watching my dad teach meditation, teach aikito, and the martial arts.
Speaker 1: Also as an athlete, I was an elite gymnast for
Speaker 1: a number of years and then I was a Division
Speaker 1: one athlete at Harvard. I was an ice hockey player,
Speaker 1: and I was taking a class actually with Ellen Langer
Speaker 1: at the time, and she said, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I came back all sweaty from a practice
Speaker 1: to lab or class or something, and she was like, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, exercise, that's just a placebo And I was
Speaker 1: sort of like, wait, what, you know, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? And you know, but I caught my attention,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think at the time, I was
Speaker 1: really struggling with this sense, this question of like what
Speaker 1: is enough exercise? Like I was training two to three
Speaker 1: hours a day, and then I would like go work
Speaker 1: out after practice even further. And it kind of got
Speaker 1: my attention. I was like, what if it's all in
Speaker 1: my head the benefits of what I'm doing? So I
Speaker 1: started researching placebo effects. Actually, sequentially, Anne Harrington was teaching
Speaker 1: a class on the history of medicine and she made
Speaker 1: a comment one day in class that said, she said,
Speaker 1: you know something like, you know, in many ways, studying
Speaker 1: the history of medicine is like studying the history of
Speaker 1: the placebo effect. And so these two things kind of
Speaker 1: got in my head. Wow, you know, what is the
Speaker 1: placebo effect? How strong is it? And I did a
Speaker 1: lot of research looking into that. And then the study
Speaker 1: that Ellen and I did was looking at hotel housekeepers.
Speaker 1: We found that they were getting a lot of exercise
Speaker 1: but weren't aware of it. And what we found was
Speaker 1: if we could make them aware of that helped them
Speaker 1: to see not only are they getting above and beyond
Speaker 1: the Surgeon General's requirements, they are you know, they're probably
Speaker 1: getting more exercise than most people in the United States.
Speaker 1: That that shift in mindset didn't just change how they felt,
Speaker 1: but also had measurable changes on their blood pressure, their
Speaker 1: body fat, their weight, and so forth. So that really
Speaker 1: kicked it off for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty revolutionary research, pretty revolutionary foundation.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. I think what it did was it
Speaker 1: it brought two fields together that hadn't been integrated before.
Speaker 1: There was all this work on behavioral health being you know,
Speaker 1: the modern medicine, right, we need to eat well, we
Speaker 1: need to exercise, we need to stop stressing, we need
Speaker 1: to stop smoking, and it brought the research on placebo
Speaker 1: response into that and said well, yeah, we do need
Speaker 1: to do all those things, but also we need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to our beliefs, to our mindsets, to how
Speaker 1: we're thinking about these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And then when you got to Yale,
Speaker 2: you worked on you continued this research. You published this
Speaker 2: paper in twenty eleven called mind over Milkshakes, a classic
Speaker 2: classic in the field. Mind over milkshakes not just nutrients
Speaker 2: determine grellin? Is that? He said? Response, So can you
Speaker 2: just tell you what is grelin? You know, and I
Speaker 2: know it's related to hunger, but give me a little
Speaker 2: more technical description, and you know, how does our mindset
Speaker 2: affect that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, first of all, do you remember I think
Speaker 1: I asked you to read a draft of this paper
Speaker 1: back in New Haven. Maybe it hadn't made it such
Speaker 1: an impact yet, but.
Speaker 2: I remember two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Something like that. We were sitting at a restaurant somewhere
Speaker 1: in New Haven and I've given it to you to
Speaker 1: read because I was struggling with how to frame it.
Speaker 1: But you were really helpful.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, isn't that funny?
Speaker 1: It is funny. It's awful circle. But yeah, so this study,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, this is my favorite study I've ever done.
Speaker 1: It mostly because of how profoundly it changed my life
Speaker 1: as a result. So Grellin is a hunger hunger hormone.
Speaker 1: Her medical experts call it the hunger hormone. It helps
Speaker 1: regulate hunger and metabolism. So, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what time it is. I think you're in New York,
Speaker 1: so maybe you've already eaten lunch, but I haven't yet.
Speaker 1: So my grellin levels are slowly rising, and the purpose
Speaker 1: of that is to send signals to my brain and
Speaker 1: body that I need to seek out food. So rising
Speaker 1: levels of grellin signal hunger. It also rising grellin slows metabolism,
Speaker 1: just in case we don't get the food that we need.
Speaker 1: And then, theoretically, or at least you know, prior to
Speaker 1: the study, it had been assumed that in proportion to
Speaker 1: the amount of salaries you consume, Grellen levels will drop.
Speaker 1: So say I go out after we chat and I
Speaker 1: have a giant hamburger and a milkshake, then my grell
Speaker 1: and levels will plummet. Step telling my brain, okay, you
Speaker 1: can stop feeling hungry, stop searching out food, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to rev up the metabolism to consume the food
Speaker 1: that you just ingested. So you know, actually, these these
Speaker 1: gut peptides, these hunger hormones hadn't really been fully discovered
Speaker 1: until the late nineteen nineties, and we're still just now
Speaker 1: figuring out what they do and how they work in concert.
Speaker 1: But what we were interested in in this study was
Speaker 1: does our body's physiological response, and in particular, our bodies
Speaker 1: grell in response. Does that differ? Might that differ if
Speaker 1: we have different beliefs about the food that we're eating.
Speaker 1: So in that study, we worked with the Yale New
Speaker 1: Haven Hospital and we gave people well the exact same milkshake,
Speaker 1: so it was about a three hundred and fifty calorie milkshake,
Speaker 1: and we either told them that it was six hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty calories high fat, high sugar, or one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty calories one hundred and forty calories low fat,
Speaker 1: sort of sensible diet shake, and we had them hooked
Speaker 1: up to an IV we were measuring grillen levels through
Speaker 1: their bloodstream. And what we found was that even though
Speaker 1: the shakes were exactly the same, when people thought they
Speaker 1: were consuming an indulgent shake, their body responded as if
Speaker 1: they had had more food. So the drop in grellin
Speaker 1: was about three times as great compared to when they
Speaker 1: thought they were consuming a sensible kind of low fat
Speaker 1: diet shake.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a big effect statistically, can you like
Speaker 2: subjectively describe what that difference is if that makes sense totally?
Speaker 1: So well, First of all, the findings were signific get
Speaker 1: important in the sense that no one had ever documented
Speaker 1: just any physiological change based on the belief, So that
Speaker 1: was one thing that was important. But the second reason
Speaker 1: why this study was important was realizing actually the direction
Speaker 1: in which the belief had an effect. So I went
Speaker 1: into this, remember like thinking, okay, placebo effects are basically,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think you're going to be healthy,
Speaker 1: you'll have a healthy response. So I assumed that the
Speaker 1: sensible shake, if you know, if it made any difference
Speaker 1: at all, that would be the better mindset to be in.
Speaker 1: And what we found was exactly the exact opposite, right,
Speaker 1: assuming you want to maintain or lose weight. When if
Speaker 1: you're consuming something in the mindset that you're eating sensibly healthy,
Speaker 1: it conveys to the brain a sense of uh scarcity
Speaker 1: or restraint, this sense of like I didn't eat enough.
Speaker 1: And what that does is it perpetuates grell In perpetuates
Speaker 1: the hunger signals, slows metabolism and so forth. So the
Speaker 1: mindset of sensibility or restraint or scarcity actually counteracts the
Speaker 1: hard work that you might be doing, actually reducing your
Speaker 1: colort intake. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: It does? But the effect you found of three times
Speaker 2: less is that the equivalent of literally going from signaling
Speaker 2: that it's time to eat versus like I don't feel
Speaker 2: any hunger at all, or is it like just not
Speaker 2: as strong or I guess I'm trying to like quant
Speaker 2: qualify qualify it, not quantify it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. It was threefold greater compared to
Speaker 1: the sense.
Speaker 2: Definitely an important effect. It's definitely port effect.
Speaker 1: But how much did that affect their subjective sense? And honestly,
Speaker 1: I the subjective sense is less important than the physiological
Speaker 1: sense important in this case. And I think everybody's different.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I've since that time wanted
Speaker 1: to do my sort of dream study is you know,
Speaker 1: because I was just they were sitting in there for
Speaker 1: two hours, right, we're measuring their response to the shake.
Speaker 1: So it's like, okay, how much does this really matter?
Speaker 1: But you know what if we could take somebody over
Speaker 1: the course of a month, right, and not only change
Speaker 1: their diet, but change their beliefs about what they're eating.
Speaker 1: So maybe they're starting a low carb diet or low
Speaker 1: fat diet or whatever it is. But if they believe
Speaker 1: that it's enough, will that actually change weight, change their
Speaker 1: body composition and so forth. But we haven't been able
Speaker 1: to do that because, as you can imagine, it's hard
Speaker 1: to deceive people for a long period of time, and
Speaker 1: we wouldn't want to deceive them for a long period
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 2: Hill, I want to take a moment to make a
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Speaker 2: to the show. No, that's cool. That's really cool. Well,
Speaker 2: you've done some really great extensions of this work. In
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, you teamed up with Peter Salve, who was
Speaker 2: he head of the Yale Graduate School at that time.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, he was I think Deane when we
Speaker 1: started to work working together, and then provost when I left.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Great, And this guy called Sean Aker was a
Speaker 2: call author in this paper as well. But you're the
Speaker 2: lead author. I want to state for the record, you're amazing,
Speaker 2: Ali Crum, And this paper is rethinking stress the role
Speaker 2: of mindsets in deterring the stress response. And so what
Speaker 2: I want to talk about on this paper is you
Speaker 2: developed a measure called the stressed mind the stress mindset measure.
Speaker 2: Can you give me I'd hate to put you on
Speaker 2: the spot, but can you give me? Give me one
Speaker 2: or two items like, how do I know if I
Speaker 2: score high on this measure?
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course you love you love self report.
Speaker 2: I love psychometrics.
Speaker 1: I do too, so we have that in common. So this, uh,
Speaker 1: the Stress Mindset Measure. The s MM asks questions like
Speaker 1: experiencing stress enhances my performance and productivity. So do you
Speaker 1: strongly you know? Do you disagree with that? Agree with that?
Speaker 1: Strongly agree with that experiencing stress depletes my health and vitality.
Speaker 1: That one is reverse scored experiencing stress. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: we had a health and performance vitality. Oh, it enhances
Speaker 1: my learning and growth. So we wanted to cover these
Speaker 1: sort of three dimensions health and vitality, learning and growth,
Speaker 1: performance and productivity.
Speaker 2: And for the record, these items are you know if
Speaker 2: you score high in this it's not the majority of
Speaker 2: participants who tend to think this way, correct. I mean,
Speaker 2: most of us don't think when I say stress to
Speaker 2: every person on the street, they don't think, oh, that's
Speaker 2: going to be improve my performance. So what percent what
Speaker 2: were percentages and things?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think our you know, we've studied this now
Speaker 1: in many different populations, It's been translated in many different languages,
Speaker 1: and the average score is always almost always below the midpoint.
Speaker 1: So you know, categorically you would put that into the
Speaker 1: belief that stress is debilitating. The only group at least
Speaker 1: that I've sampled in my life so far that is
Speaker 1: on average in the enhancing side of the scale over
Speaker 1: the midpoint are Navy seals. So and it makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: you know, these these are people who are literally choosing
Speaker 1: to go into some of the most stressful experiences you
Speaker 1: could dream up, in part because they know they can
Speaker 1: handle it and they know they'll they'll thrive under That
Speaker 1: makes sense.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure that like the whole West Point Cadet,
Speaker 2: you know, vibe is that you know when they come in.
Speaker 2: And so you found this is so cool. You found
Speaker 2: that those who show higher on the scale showed moderate
Speaker 2: cortisol reactivity and high desire for feedback under stress. Now
Speaker 2: that's not this is not normal, This is not the norm.
Speaker 2: So explain, explain the really important implications of this kind
Speaker 2: of these changes to cortisol and your desire for feedback
Speaker 2: under stress.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, well, first of all, it's important to kind
Speaker 1: of take step back and understand what this measure is. Right. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the truth about stress is that it is
Speaker 1: a paradox. Right, There's lots of research showing that stress
Speaker 1: can have damaging effects on our health, on our learning,
Speaker 1: on our growth, on our well being, and so forth.
Speaker 1: But if you actually dive deeper into the literature, you
Speaker 1: realize that you know, it's not all bad. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the body's stress response was not designed to kill us, like,
Speaker 1: it was not designed to hold us back. It was
Speaker 1: designed to help us rise to the occasion, to meet
Speaker 1: the demands we're faced with. In fact, Hanselier, who sort
Speaker 1: of you know, humorously called the father of stress, when
Speaker 1: he first wrote about stress, he wrote about the stress
Speaker 1: responses non specific, right, it's just the body's reaction to
Speaker 1: the challenges that it faces. And he also talked about
Speaker 1: you know, not just stress as only bad, but stress
Speaker 1: as being both distress when it causes negative effects and
Speaker 1: use stress when it actually helps the brain, body system, grow, learn, perform.
Speaker 1: So we want to distinguish between kind of what is
Speaker 1: the true nature of stress, which is, like most things
Speaker 1: in life, a paradox, many types of outcomes are possible,
Speaker 1: and what we're interested in, which is our belief or mindset,
Speaker 1: the core assumption that we have about the nature of stress. Now,
Speaker 1: if you probe somebody further, they might say, well, I
Speaker 1: get that it could be good here, and da da dah.
Speaker 1: They can get all nuanced in their thinking. But you know,
Speaker 1: we when we operate, when we act in the world,
Speaker 1: we are acting based on these default assumptions. Our first
Speaker 1: inclination is going to be based on where on that
Speaker 1: scale did we stake our claim on average, And so
Speaker 1: there's variability in that. Even though on average most people
Speaker 1: are on the stress of debilitating side, there's variability in
Speaker 1: people's beliefs. And what we find is that that variability matters.
Speaker 1: So people who believe hold the mindset that stress can
Speaker 1: be enhancing, they show more adaptive cortisal response and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a second, and they also show
Speaker 1: more willingness for feedback. And it makes sense, right if
Speaker 1: you think that stress is bad for you, and then
Speaker 1: you're faced with something stressful in your life, how do
Speaker 1: you feel right now? Not only are you stressed because
Speaker 1: something just happened, but now you're stressed about the stress,
Speaker 1: and you're upset that you're stressed, and you're a little
Speaker 1: depressed that you have to deal with the stress, and
Speaker 1: you're worried about, you know, the cardiovascular ramifications of this stress.
Speaker 1: So the mindset itself just made the stress worse. So
Speaker 1: emotionally it changes. Motivationally, we also are influenced by our mindset.
Speaker 1: So if you believe that stress is debilitating, that it's
Speaker 1: bad for you, that it's going to kill you, what
Speaker 1: are you motivated to do? You're motivated to either yeah,
Speaker 1: to like get the hell out of there, like either
Speaker 1: pretend that this problem isn't there, you know that your
Speaker 1: boyfriend or girlfriend didn't just give you negative feedback, or
Speaker 1: to overcompensate, to overreact to like make sure this problem
Speaker 1: goes away. So those two responses, either hyperactivity around the
Speaker 1: stress or you know, avoid and hypoactivity show up physiologically,
Speaker 1: so either people freak out or they check out. And
Speaker 1: what we found is people who believe that stress can
Speaker 1: be enhancing. There's somewhere in the middle. They're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be dealing with this stress, but
Speaker 1: it's here, and the stress response is designed to serve me.
Speaker 1: So what do I have to learn from this? How
Speaker 1: can I engage with this in an appropriate, thoughtful, useful way.
Speaker 1: What feedback do I actually need to hear? And that
Speaker 1: shows up physiologically in you know, moderate levels of cortisol,
Speaker 1: which is important because most people get this wrong. They
Speaker 1: think cortisol is all bad, but actually, you know, cortisol
Speaker 1: is linked with attention, focus, engagement, right, So you want
Speaker 1: to be somewhere in the middle with respect to cortisol.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a there's an old saying that goes,
Speaker 2: when you worry, you suffer twice, and you have to
Speaker 2: be thinking that it's you know, you have the stress,
Speaker 2: but the whole avoidance and we should use the word fear,
Speaker 2: is that enhances. Yes, these reactions and these and these
Speaker 2: these physiological responses that cause damage to your body quite frankly,
Speaker 2: and your mind. So in some ways it's like a
Speaker 2: double whammy. You know, it's you have the stress itself
Speaker 2: and then you also have the avoidance response. So it
Speaker 2: just seems like the more you can have this stress,
Speaker 2: it's enhancing mindset, the more you're kind of like avoiding
Speaker 2: a double whammy. Does that make any sense totally?
Speaker 1: You know? And some of the work that I did
Speaker 1: with Peter Salave and he coined the term emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: back before Dan Goldman, yes, yeah, and David Caruso. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I remember Peter talking about, and
Speaker 1: later Mark Brackett and others is this idea of dirty discomfort.
Speaker 1: So you have clean discomfort, which is like the stress
Speaker 1: or the fear or the sadness, and then you have
Speaker 1: dirty discomfort, which are your judge ment and concerns about
Speaker 1: the discomfort, like I can't believe I'm feeling this way.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be feeling this way. This is going to
Speaker 1: be harmful for me and so forth, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's nuanced, right. The goal is not to you know,
Speaker 1: get rid of all negative feelings, right, It's to feel them,
Speaker 1: but not make them doubly damaging, as you say, not
Speaker 1: make them worse. Right, There's enough to learn from them,
Speaker 1: and that's important, I think, you know, to say with
Speaker 1: respect to this stress is enhancing mindset, is you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people misunderstand that. They think, oh, that means that,
Speaker 1: you know, you should seek out more stress in your life,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, no, like, if you care about
Speaker 1: anything in life, you're going to experience stress surrounding it.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, the definition of stress, at least
Speaker 1: that I use is stress is the experience or anticipation
Speaker 1: of encountering challenges in your goal related efforts. That's super jargony,
Speaker 1: But like you know, for all intensive purposes, what matters
Speaker 1: is that you only experience stress in domains that you
Speaker 1: care about. Right, if I told you that Johnny was
Speaker 1: failing school, you wouldn't really be stressed about that unless
Speaker 1: you were Johnny or your son was Johnny, or you
Speaker 1: cared about the Johnnys of the world school. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna have stress in our life. You don't need to
Speaker 1: seek it out. A stress is enhancing mindset. Also doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the stressor is a good thing. And I
Speaker 1: think you know you know this with all your work
Speaker 1: on trauma and your great book that you just wrote recently,
Speaker 1: Like you know, when you say you can rise above
Speaker 1: right trauma, it doesn't mean that like the trauma was
Speaker 1: a good thing, like stress, the stressor is not a
Speaker 1: good thing, but going through it can lead to enhancing outcomes,
Speaker 1: and that mindset makes those outcomes more likely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like a bedfellow of a cow Dlex
Speaker 2: growth mindset, but applied to a different demean exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, Carol's work has been very inspirational. I think
Speaker 1: her use of the term mindset to kind of define
Speaker 1: a core belief that we have about the nature of
Speaker 1: intelligence as fixed or malleable is just so profound and important.
Speaker 1: And what we're doing here is we're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: expand that. But it's different right now. The topic is
Speaker 1: stress and the modifiers are you know, is stress enhancing
Speaker 1: or debilitating, not necessarily growth or fixed? Right, So it's
Speaker 1: we have mindsets about all sorts of things, and they
Speaker 1: turns out they matter, They.
Speaker 2: Do matter, and we can, you know, get even nerdier.
Speaker 2: You proposed a metacognitive approach to mindset change. Just when
Speaker 2: you thought it didn't get nerd enough, you create your
Speaker 2: stress mindset scale. What is the metacognitive approach that you
Speaker 2: published in twenty twenty three where you evaluate your rethink
Speaker 2: stress of mindset intervention from twenty thirteen. Yeah, anyway, I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we get to nerd out together, Scott.
Speaker 2: It's been too long.
Speaker 1: We need a better term for this, but it's so crucial, right, So,
Speaker 1: the truth of stress is a paradox our mindsets matter.
Speaker 1: If we know the goal is to get people to
Speaker 1: adopt more of a stress is enhancing mindset because we
Speaker 1: know that's useful for them, how do we do that?
Speaker 1: So one approach could be to just try to convince
Speaker 1: them that that's the true mindset, right, Like, that's the
Speaker 1: right way to think about stress. And in fact, we
Speaker 1: did that in that early study with Peter Salave and
Speaker 1: Sean Aker. We worked with ubs bankers who were going
Speaker 1: through layoffs after the two thousand and eight financial recession,
Speaker 1: And what we did was we gave them three minute
Speaker 1: video clips that shared the science science of stress, anecdotes, etc.
Speaker 1: But they were oriented towards one or the other of
Speaker 1: these truths. So, you know, one group in the study
Speaker 1: saw all the information that kind of reaffirmed how bad
Speaker 1: stress is for you, and the other group saw all
Speaker 1: the information that showed that stress, you know, actually wasn't
Speaker 1: designed to be that way. It was designed to support
Speaker 1: your immune system. And narrow your your attention and ways
Speaker 1: that can support you. We found is over the course
Speaker 1: of the week, just watching those videos did change their
Speaker 1: mindset and it did have effects on their health and performance.
Speaker 1: But I left that study feeling like, you know, that
Speaker 1: wasn't really ideal because it's not fully true, right, Like
Speaker 1: we're not lying to people. Everything that we put in
Speaker 1: those films were you know, was based on evidence or
Speaker 1: it was a true anecdote, but it wasn't the full picture, right.
Speaker 1: So then I was left with this question of how
Speaker 1: do we get people into the mindset that stress can
Speaker 1: be enhancing, not by kind of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to teach them or getting them to see that
Speaker 1: that's the true nature of stress, but by getting them
Speaker 1: to see that that mindset is useful. And so what
Speaker 1: we decided to do was to create an intervention where
Speaker 1: people learned the true nature of stress. They learned all
Speaker 1: the whole messy story of stress. It can be the
Speaker 1: worst thing for you, right, and some people really thrive
Speaker 1: and grow from stress. All of these things are true,
Speaker 1: and your mindset about it matters. It can shape your attention,
Speaker 1: it can shape your feelings, it can shape your motivation,
Speaker 1: it can even change your body. So you choose, right, like,
Speaker 1: how do you want to choose to view stress? Right,
Speaker 1: do you want to view it as debilitating or do
Speaker 1: you want to view it as enhancing? So by meta mindset,
Speaker 1: what we mean by that is we inspire people to
Speaker 1: adopt the mindset a particular mindset, such as the mindset
Speaker 1: that stress can be enhancing, not because they're manipulated into it,
Speaker 1: but because they choose consciously that that mindset is a
Speaker 1: more useful one to have.
Speaker 2: Well, so it's just like a flexible stress mindset, Yeah,
Speaker 2: strategically flexible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of like you know, I think that
Speaker 1: what meditation does, what mindfulness does, is it helps you
Speaker 1: realize that you have mindsets, that the world, your beliefs
Speaker 1: aren't just sort of a reflection of reality as it is,
Speaker 1: that like could be this way or could be that way,
Speaker 1: and you kind of like sit back and you sort
Speaker 1: of see the kind of absurdity of it all. So
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But then what, right, then you
Speaker 1: need to go live your life, Like then you need
Speaker 1: to get back in the game. And so it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's stepping back in and say now I'm going to
Speaker 1: live my life, and I'm going to choose to view
Speaker 1: stress as enhancing.
Speaker 3: It's mine. Okay, your piano, I don't know, but I
Speaker 3: can beatbox.
Speaker 2: No. So I mean this is this, there's a whole
Speaker 2: there's some extensions, so many offshoots of this. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's some fascinating stuff found that you can change cancer mindsets.
Speaker 2: You know, a brief mindset focused digital intervention was effective
Speaker 2: at improving physical, social, emotional, and functional h r QO
Speaker 2: L Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: You gotta love jargon. Yeah, so you know, we did
Speaker 1: the stress mindset stuff that stuffs still ongoing so important
Speaker 1: as you know. Sadly, well, we can come back to this.
Speaker 1: But I thought, you know, we would do this research
Speaker 1: and then everybody would learn about it, and then everybody
Speaker 1: would have a stresses enhancing mindset.
Speaker 2: I think, sadly, you need to write that book.
Speaker 1: I'm working on it. Yeah, But sadly, I feel like
Speaker 1: our culture has even taken a step back in you know,
Speaker 1: having this belief that stress is bad, all stress should
Speaker 1: be avoided, we should protect everyone from stress and so forth.
Speaker 1: But we can talk about that. The cancer work is
Speaker 1: really near and dear to my heart, this is work
Speaker 1: that I've done with Shan Zion, former grad student in
Speaker 1: the lab, Lydia Shapira, and others. Jonathan Barrack and we
Speaker 1: wanted to understand what are mindsets that people have about cancer.
Speaker 1: And you know, what we learned is that, you know,
Speaker 1: like stress, there's you know, cancer is complicated. It doesn't
Speaker 1: just have one effect on people's lives, but people have
Speaker 1: mindsets about it. Three of the mindsets that we know
Speaker 1: people hold are you know, either you view it as
Speaker 1: kind of an unmitigated catastrophe. My life as I knew
Speaker 1: it was over, Nothing will ever be the same. Why me,
Speaker 1: poor me? You know, Yeah, the cancer is a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: But people can also view it more as something that's manageable. Right.
Speaker 1: They have a mindset that, yeah, I'm diagnosed with cancer.
Speaker 1: This is not what I would have hoped for. It's
Speaker 1: not what I wanted, but I can manage this. I
Speaker 1: can handle this. And there's a third mindset that we
Speaker 1: see actually quite frequently in people with cancer, and that
Speaker 1: is that cancer can be an opportunity. So again, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you wanted it doesn't mean it's a good
Speaker 1: thing in and of itself.
Speaker 2: Growth potential for postmatic.
Speaker 1: Growth exactly the experience of going through cancer. Can yeah,
Speaker 1: help you reorganize your priorities, help you, you know, deepen
Speaker 1: your values, help your self actualize, help deepen your relationships,
Speaker 1: and you know, unlike stress actually in the normal population,
Speaker 1: when you look at people with cancer, this is actually
Speaker 1: pretty strong, right, And I think when you're really faced
Speaker 1: with tough things, you kind of are forced to see
Speaker 1: the light, to see the silver linings. But here again
Speaker 1: there's lots of variability. And what we find is that interestingly,
Speaker 1: these mindsets aren't correlated with the severity of cancer. So
Speaker 1: you have people who have stage four metastasized cancer who
Speaker 1: believe it's an opportunity, feel like it's manageable, and you
Speaker 1: have people with stage one, you know, no big deal
Speaker 1: kind of cancers that feel like their whole life's over.
Speaker 1: And here again these mindsets matter in shaping how people feel,
Speaker 1: how they're motivated to engage with treatment, how their bodies
Speaker 1: are responding physiologically, and what they pay attention to in
Speaker 1: the treatment. And the intervention that we designed is also
Speaker 1: a metacognitive strategy to changing people's mindsets. So you can imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't want to go in and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you who just was diagnosed with cancer, you should think
Speaker 1: this way or this is the right We don't do that.
Speaker 1: What we do is we showcase stories from former, you know,
Speaker 1: people who have been formally diagnosed their cancer survivors talk
Speaker 1: about the role of their mindsets in the cancer journey.
Speaker 1: And they're not just the people who had great mindsets
Speaker 1: for the start. They're people who initially felt like this
Speaker 1: was a catastrophe and then realize the impact of their mindsets,
Speaker 1: chose more useful mindsets and reaped the benefit of doing that.
Speaker 1: So the intervention is watching others talk about their mindset,
Speaker 1: and what we show in that study is that, you know,
Speaker 1: that intervention, which is a total of about an hour
Speaker 1: long of documentary style films, changes mindset and that confers
Speaker 1: the benefit on health related quality of life. So health
Speaker 1: related quality of life is, you know, basically, how well
Speaker 1: are you functioning? Are you getting up and doing the
Speaker 1: things that you want to do? Are you you know,
Speaker 1: you feel good about your relationships. Are you physiologically in
Speaker 1: terms of symptom sort of managing Okay, that's cool.
Speaker 2: There's another category of people that you might want to
Speaker 2: consider in your further studies on the topic. There was
Speaker 2: a woman who got a lot of press for the
Speaker 2: way she handled this her cancer diagnosis. She was told
Speaker 2: that she had stage four cancer and maybe had two
Speaker 2: years left to live, and she decided she was going
Speaker 2: to completely surrender to it. Actually not. She said, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to fight. I'm not going to fight a
Speaker 2: battle with cancer. I'm going to enjoy my life for
Speaker 2: two years and accept it. Except that I only have
Speaker 2: two years left. And I just don't like you. You don't
Speaker 2: hear that about that option often enough, you you find
Speaker 2: like you're almost like feeling pressure to fight it to
Speaker 2: you know, oh yeah, what are you doing to fight it?
Speaker 2: What are you doing to you know, fight the battle
Speaker 2: with cancer? Cancer? She's like, I don't want to fight
Speaker 2: the battle with cancer. I want to enjoy my life.
Speaker 2: And uh, and so that's just it might be an
Speaker 2: interesting if there's you can get word enough sample of
Speaker 2: people like that.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I'm so glad you brought that up,
Speaker 1: because I think it's going from a place another place
Speaker 1: where people mis interpret the work. You know, and you know,
Speaker 1: having the mindset that cancer is an opportunity, your cancer
Speaker 1: is manageable, doesn't mean you're kind of happy about cancer.
Speaker 1: It also doesn't mean you're sort of denying it. It
Speaker 1: also doesn't mean you're a hundred percent going to beat it, right,
Speaker 1: It's just to get there. The first step is really
Speaker 1: to acknowledge and accept the reality of your diagnosis. Yes,
Speaker 1: And it's only when you do that that then you
Speaker 1: can choose how you're going to handle that, how you're
Speaker 1: going to approach it. And that might mean going all
Speaker 1: in and getting the treat every single you know, treatment
Speaker 1: that you can, or it might mean you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. I want to live out
Speaker 1: the rest of my days, you know, doing something else.
Speaker 1: But you can only get there through acknowledging it and
Speaker 1: through having a mindset that is useful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to shift a little bit to what
Speaker 2: happens when you get information about yourself and how that
Speaker 2: changes those actual things without you trying to change them.
Speaker 2: So that's a long witted way of talking about a
Speaker 2: study that you were a co author on with Turnwald
Speaker 2: at colleagues in twenty nineteen. Learning one's genetic risk changes
Speaker 2: physiologic physiology independent of actual genetic risk. I mean that's mindful.
Speaker 2: I mean it's just so mind blowing to me. Okay,
Speaker 2: because so many of us are able with twenty three
Speaker 2: and meters, right, we're able to find out all this
Speaker 2: information about our genetic risk estimates for this and that, Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity,
Speaker 2: all sorts of diseases. What did this study find about
Speaker 2: just merely learning about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was such an interesting and fun study to run.
Speaker 1: We got people into the study. Under the study guys
Speaker 1: that we were looking at how you know, personalized medicine,
Speaker 1: how we could create sort of personalized fitness plans, and
Speaker 1: this was very believable. In the Stanford area, lots of
Speaker 1: stuff on genome mapping and personalized medicine were happening at
Speaker 1: the time, and we in particular were interested in one
Speaker 1: gene called the CREB one gene, and that gene had
Speaker 1: been linked with obesity and weight through exercise capacity pathways.
Speaker 1: So people with the risk aalele of the CREB one
Speaker 1: gene were essentially associated with less cardiovascular efficiency when they exercise,
Speaker 1: So you would run, you feel like not very good it,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of painful to run. And the
Speaker 1: theory was that was linked with part of the reason
Speaker 1: why these people had higher rates of obesity. What we
Speaker 1: were interested in in the study was what do do
Speaker 1: your beliefs about your genetic risk influence the physiological effects
Speaker 1: of that gene? Right, So not just you know, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, you know, twenty three meters was big,
Speaker 1: lots of this genetic you know, genotyping was getting more
Speaker 1: and more you know common. And the theory was, I
Speaker 1: think that if you got information about your risk for
Speaker 1: certain things, that that would motivate you to you know,
Speaker 1: compensate and engage in behaviors that would make you healthy.
Speaker 1: And a meta analysis had been done to show basically
Speaker 1: that that just wasn't true at all, Like people would
Speaker 1: being told they at risk for all these things and
Speaker 1: it just didn't motivate them to be any healthier. So
Speaker 1: that was interesting. But what we were interested in was
Speaker 1: even more kind of fundamental, which was, if you believe
Speaker 1: that your genes make you bad at exercise, will that
Speaker 1: actually will that just the belief.
Speaker 2: Will change the genes?
Speaker 1: Change, yeah, change the express the genes. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: what we did was we this was also within subjects
Speaker 1: study like the milkshake studies, so it was the same
Speaker 1: people did the same VO two max test. It was
Speaker 1: a cardiovascular efficiency test. This was done at the Human
Speaker 1: Performance Lab run under Scott Delt and so we hooked
Speaker 1: them up. We were literally measuring the amount of oxygen
Speaker 1: they were intaking and how efficiently they were able to
Speaker 1: convert it to carbon dioxide through their lungs. And we
Speaker 1: did one exercise test, very stringent. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a stress test, if you know, if you've ever done one,
Speaker 1: or a VO two max test. And then we had
Speaker 1: them do the exact same test one week later, but
Speaker 1: before they did it, we gave them their genetic result.
Speaker 1: So we gave that on this very official looking pamphlet
Speaker 1: and we said, you know, we just want to give
Speaker 1: you some important information that we got from your genotype.
Speaker 1: And they looked at it and half were told they
Speaker 1: were they had the risk allele, that they were the
Speaker 1: people who were likely to have lower exercise efficiency, or
Speaker 1: they were told they had the protective allele, that they
Speaker 1: had the good gene. Right like this, they had the
Speaker 1: type of gene that made them good at exercise basically,
Speaker 1: and then we had them run again the exact same test.
Speaker 1: Now what was interesting about this is we had their
Speaker 1: actual genotype too, and so we had their actual genotype,
Speaker 1: and then we randomized them to getting the information, so
Speaker 1: the information they got was randomly determined. So therefore we
Speaker 1: can separate the effect of the actual gene on the
Speaker 1: outcome and the perceived genetic risk on the outcome. And
Speaker 1: essentially what we found was the perceived genetic risk mattered.
Speaker 1: When people thought they had the risk aaliele. They converted
Speaker 1: oxygen into CO two in a far less efficient rate.
Speaker 1: They also, you know, felt hotter, more pain less, motivation,
Speaker 1: you know, all a lot of other effects as well.
Speaker 1: But the physiological results were really interesting, and it was
Speaker 1: fully shaped by belief, not their genetic risk.
Speaker 2: Just to quarify some I'm understanding this methodology correctly, they
Speaker 2: were given accurate information about their genetic risk, right. You
Speaker 2: didn't have a condition where people were given because I'd
Speaker 2: be interesting too, a condition where people were given them
Speaker 2: opposite of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, I didn't explain that, so people, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is good. So we had their actual genetic risk,
Speaker 1: which is actually three types. You're either the risk allele,
Speaker 1: the protective allele, or the heterozygo, which is sort of
Speaker 1: right in the middle. And what we did was we
Speaker 1: took each of those two three groups and we randomized
Speaker 1: them to getting to being told they're either protected or
Speaker 1: at risk.
Speaker 2: So it was actually accurate for everyone.
Speaker 1: Some were right, So people who were actually protected. Half
Speaker 1: were being told they were protected and half are being
Speaker 1: told exact opposite.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so then we can kind of we can
Speaker 1: look at if you just compare the people who were
Speaker 1: told they were at risk versus told they were protected,
Speaker 1: regardless of what their actual genetic risk was. Just that
Speaker 1: information changed their exchange rate of carbon dioxide and oxygen
Speaker 1: and carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: Changed it in a direction consistent with what they were told.
Speaker 2: Is that the idea exactly.
Speaker 1: So the belief, the belief that you are you know,
Speaker 1: your genes make you less efficient when you exercise protect
Speaker 1: created that reality.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, that's I just can't express enough how
Speaker 2: my mind was when I read when I when I
Speaker 2: read that paper. Yeah, it's amazing, and it's time to
Speaker 2: be thinking of studies that I want to conduct, you know,
Speaker 2: because there's the g WOSS approach is now starting to
Speaker 2: show not great predictability, but that there's something there with
Speaker 2: like predicting IQ for instance, and an academic achievement potential,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, and it's you're statistically significant effects.
Speaker 2: It's explaining maybe what like two to fifteen percent of
Speaker 2: the variants of the outcome. It's I mean, that's something.
Speaker 2: And so it makes me wonder, what if you start,
Speaker 2: what if you tell people their risk for like IQ,
Speaker 2: for instance, like high er will IQ? Does that actually
Speaker 2: alter the expression of the genes that the GOS studies
Speaker 2: are starting to show are relevant. I just think that
Speaker 2: would be such an interesting study and potentially controversial, I understand,
Speaker 2: but I'm just very curious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that idea and how far does
Speaker 1: it go? Right? Again, this was another one of those
Speaker 1: studies where our effects were very temporary, right, in part
Speaker 1: because it was an experimental manipulation. We were deceiving them,
Speaker 1: some of many of them about their genetics risk and
Speaker 1: that was important to do for the science, right, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't know otherwise. But you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: do sort of a long term study of like, oh,
Speaker 1: how does learning that you're you know, you're all the
Speaker 1: aggregate of your genes lead you to have high IQ
Speaker 1: and how might that affect you over decades? Right, that
Speaker 1: would be really interesting, But we got to be careful
Speaker 1: in how how we you know, glean that information as
Speaker 1: you know, you know, these messages matter.
Speaker 2: That's why I would want to do the studies. Is
Speaker 2: the way my mind was thinking about it is that
Speaker 2: can help show I mean, in a way, this is a
Speaker 2: modern day version of the Pygmalion effect. You know, this
Speaker 2: is like a modern day fancy genetics update on that.
Speaker 2: You know, is is it a self fulfilling prophecy our
Speaker 2: genetic is our genetic expression the way we think a
Speaker 2: self fulfilling prophecy on our genetic expression. But you know
Speaker 2: it's to me, it's still on the similar wi, you
Speaker 2: know totally.
Speaker 1: I had that same thought as you were sharing your ideas,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, some of the reviewers on
Speaker 1: our paper had a similar question, which is like, you know,
Speaker 1: how important is it that this is genetic information? Like
Speaker 1: if you know, what if it was just like family
Speaker 1: history or you know, in the Pygmalion study it was
Speaker 1: the Harvard Aptitude test, like you know, at that time
Speaker 1: that was really important information that you believed. And in
Speaker 1: the day of age we're living in, or at least
Speaker 1: you know, we were. I think we're changing slowly, but
Speaker 1: genes are like every you know, there's something that's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just hardwired. Right. If your genes, you know, predispose
Speaker 1: you to something that's meaningful, that's real. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, that's just information, just like some
Speaker 1: test or you know, your family history or otherwise.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Is that great? I want to end
Speaker 2: this interview by discussing a very fruitful collaboration you've you've
Speaker 2: got going with Jared Clifton at University of Pennsylvania. You
Speaker 2: guys are quite the duo, him looking at beliefs about
Speaker 2: the world at large and you obviously having a very
Speaker 2: illustrious career looking at beliefs and how it can affect physiology.
Speaker 2: So what does that mind meld look like? I saw
Speaker 2: that you recently published a paper in the American Psychologists.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Greece this year?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's like a dream for psychologists to
Speaker 2: publish in the American Psychologists. So congratulate. It's probably not
Speaker 2: he's probably not.
Speaker 1: Your first international psychologist, but.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. That was very American centric of
Speaker 2: me to say that. Thank you for putting that out.
Speaker 2: But have you have you been in the American Psychologists before?
Speaker 2: And tell me about this paper a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, that was the first time. Yeah, and thank
Speaker 1: you for that. I do you know, I remember reading
Speaker 1: you know, you know the American Psychologists. It has like
Speaker 1: the picture of the psychologists. I remember reading articles from
Speaker 1: some of my heroes and that. But yeah, I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about the partnership that I've started with Jared Clifton.
Speaker 1: I know you know him from Penn bok Hair similar
Speaker 1: Pen Roots. Jare is doing really critical work, I think,
Speaker 1: looking at the beliefs that we hold, the mindsets we
Speaker 1: hold about the nature of the world as one big place.
Speaker 1: And you know, as just as I've extended Carol Dweck's
Speaker 1: work from looking at your core beliefs about intelligence to
Speaker 1: looking at our core beliefs about other domains like stress
Speaker 1: or cancer, or exercise or diet or our genes. Right,
Speaker 1: what Jar's doing is looking at what are our core
Speaker 1: beliefs about the world? Right, Like do you believe the
Speaker 1: world is dangerous or safe? Do you believe the world
Speaker 1: is abundant or scarce? Do you believe the world needs you?
Speaker 1: Scott Barry Kaufman or could it just live without you? Right?
Speaker 1: These are again neither true or false, Right, or wrong.
Speaker 1: There's lots of evidence to support either side of these spectrums.
Speaker 2: Spectrum, but there's a lot of evidence that.
Speaker 1: The world needs you, Scott.
Speaker 2: You say there's evidence for the world.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, the world. I believe the world needs you.
Speaker 1: I believe the world needs me, right.
Speaker 2: I believe that's actually objectively true. Though that's where I'm
Speaker 2: disagreeing with you, my men.
Speaker 1: A mindset knows that it's not objectively true, but it
Speaker 1: is a mindset that serves me and keeps me motivated
Speaker 1: to do what I can to actually have that be true.
Speaker 1: But anyways, we did we got off on tangent there.
Speaker 1: But you know, so Jare's work is was really methodologically
Speaker 1: advanced because instead of just like coming up with, you know,
Speaker 1: the beliefs that he thought mattered about the world, he'd
Speaker 1: decided to take a systematic approach to uncovering what are
Speaker 1: all the possible beliefs that people could hold about the
Speaker 1: nature of the world. He looked at you know, many
Speaker 1: thousand tweets, He looked at all the great religious text
Speaker 1: philosophical texts, you know, surveys in different countries and so forth.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think my contribution to that work
Speaker 1: has been to kind of help define the type of
Speaker 1: belief we're talking about here. So these aren't you know,
Speaker 1: nuanced kind of you know, takes on the world that
Speaker 1: could could be falsified, like the world is flat or
Speaker 1: you know, the world was made by God. Right, These
Speaker 1: are simple adjectival and evaluative beliefs about the nature of
Speaker 1: the world, and they tend to have these modifiers like
Speaker 1: it's fixed or malleable, it's enhancing or debilitating, it's abundant
Speaker 1: or scarce, these adjectives that characterize the essence of what
Speaker 1: the world is. And in that paper what was fun
Speaker 1: to write about with Jair is, you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to the world, our beliefs are omnipresent, right, Why
Speaker 1: because we never leave the world, at least you and
Speaker 1: I haven't yet left the world. And so personality psychologists
Speaker 1: and social psychologists used to get in these epic debates
Speaker 1: about like is it the person like is it their
Speaker 1: personality that's shaping their behavior or is it the situation? Right,
Speaker 1: And obviously like the situation matters. You know, your level
Speaker 1: of introversion and quietness is going to differ if you're
Speaker 1: in a movie theater or a party. But on the whole.
Speaker 1: You know, whether you're more extroverted, it's going to shape
Speaker 1: how talkative you are. But what jar and I talk
Speaker 1: about in this paper is that personality as defined as
Speaker 1: this is who you are on average across many different situations,
Speaker 1: is not. It's here too, also about a belief about
Speaker 1: a situation, right, it's in this case, it's a belief
Speaker 1: about the situation of the world, this place that you
Speaker 1: never leave. So that's a little philosophical, but we're doing
Speaker 1: lots of fun work kind of trying to codify what
Speaker 1: are these beliefs, how do they matter, Like, what are
Speaker 1: the mechanisms and what's the role that they play in
Speaker 1: shaping not just you know, our health and performance, which
Speaker 1: has been my focus, but who we are, how we
Speaker 1: show up in the world.
Speaker 2: Such deep, deep, profound and important work. Ali and I
Speaker 2: started off saying, I'm so proud of seeing your your journey.
Speaker 2: I just want to conclude by reiterating that, and I
Speaker 2: really view you as, you know, one of the brightest
Speaker 2: lights in our field, in this generation, at this time
Speaker 2: in human history. And I'm honored to be in the world,
Speaker 2: in the world with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Scott, and I really you know, when
Speaker 1: I look back at my days in grad school, which
Speaker 1: were stressful and uncertain, and you know, in many ways,
Speaker 1: research was research. I started the stress research during that time.
Speaker 1: I you know, having people like you in my life
Speaker 1: made it possible, made it doable, made it fun, and
Speaker 1: most importantly, people like you reminded me of why we're
Speaker 1: doing this right, We're not doing it for ourselves. We
Speaker 1: are doing it for the world. So thank you for
Speaker 1: the work that you do and all the sincerity and
Speaker 1: the you know, really just the kind of joy that
Speaker 1: you bring to it.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks for letting having me remind myself about
Speaker 2: all that as well is really important as well. So boy,
Speaker 2: thank you so much and yeah, talk soon to be continued.