Speaker 1: Today. It's great to chat with Jesse Single on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Jesse is a contributing writer at New York Magazine and
Speaker 1: the former editor of the magazine Science of Us Online Vertical,
Speaker 1: as well as the co host of the podcast Blocked
Speaker 1: and Reported. His work has appeared in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, The Boston Globe,
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast, and other publications. He was a Bosh
Speaker 1: Fellow in Berlin and holds a master's degree from Princeton
Speaker 1: University's School of Public and International Affairs. His book The
Speaker 1: Quick Fix, Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills
Speaker 1: has just been published. Jesse, Wow, man, I just have
Speaker 1: so much I want to discuss with you today. I
Speaker 1: read the book and feel like you condemned my whole field.
Speaker 1: So I can't wait to Jack. I say, like, I
Speaker 1: feel you're a very good guy and a very fair guy,
Speaker 1: but I definitely criticize some of your people. So I'm
Speaker 1: happy to get into it like some of my like
Speaker 1: dearest friends, not just some of my people like you know, like.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's all good, all in the spirit of
Speaker 1: openness and making the field of psychology better. Which I'm
Speaker 1: all about. So I want to kind of go back
Speaker 1: to the kind of origined story of this. You were
Speaker 1: at Science of Us. It's around twenty fifteen, like around
Speaker 1: September twenty fifteen or even before that. You're getting lots
Speaker 1: of press releases and you're kind of just taking them
Speaker 1: all face value. Like so you're getting inboxes, emails in
Speaker 1: your in box, You're like, Wow, here's the latest new
Speaker 1: press release. Here's the latest new study. That's it's you know,
Speaker 1: we found, it's this is better than sliced bread. You
Speaker 1: know what we found. It's so exciting. It's so exciting.
Speaker 1: And then you know, so give me like the pre
Speaker 1: Jesse and the post Jesse. So the Prejess you would
Speaker 1: look at those kind of emails and be like, wow,
Speaker 1: I got to write about it because obviously they know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. Yeah, that right. Well I think
Speaker 1: it was a little bit. I do think I like
Speaker 1: noticed something was afoot, and we did a pretty good
Speaker 1: job at like resisting that sort of thing. Like there
Speaker 1: was this famous study about hurricanes versus himmickanes, where the
Speaker 1: theory was due to some social primary effect hurricanes with
Speaker 1: female names people didn't take as seriously and wouldn't flee
Speaker 1: from so more of them died and this ended up
Speaker 1: being widely mocked and we actually read My colleague Melissa
Speaker 1: Dahl wrote a good article explaining why this likely wasn't true.
Speaker 1: But I was not skeptical enough, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I was not actively debunking it. And you know, around then,
Speaker 1: a lot of science outlets were very excited about social psychology,
Speaker 1: and I think didn't maybe apply enough critical thought to
Speaker 1: the claims that would pass along. And as you said,
Speaker 1: that problem of like writing directly off of a press
Speaker 1: release is pretty bad because like a lot of science
Speaker 1: journalists don't read the actual studies, and the press releases
Speaker 1: often misrepresent them for sure. But when did you kind
Speaker 1: of catch on to that. It was around September two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifth, I believe, and I feel like the
Speaker 1: IT came on your radar and then you're like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, there might be something to what this person
Speaker 1: is telling me about to look deeper into the it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I received an email from a guy with some training
Speaker 1: in psych who basically said, like, there's a story here,
Speaker 1: the itIt isn't as good as people say it is.
Speaker 1: That was when something really flipped in my head because
Speaker 1: the IAT I think I had more or less taken
Speaker 1: at face value. And I wrote a headline for I
Speaker 1: think a slightly viral study write up about how white
Speaker 1: people think black people are magical, and that was based
Speaker 1: on some it result where they I forget what it was,
Speaker 1: but they associated black people with magical words quicker, and
Speaker 1: I bet if I could go back now and look
Speaker 1: deeply into the methodology, I would not have written that
Speaker 1: study up in that way. But yeah, you know I
Speaker 1: went from I went, but who could resist that headline
Speaker 1: white people think black people are magical? Oh? Absolutely? But
Speaker 1: it's almost interesting to just think, like, what if you
Speaker 1: wrote the headline today like that much has changed in
Speaker 1: four in five years that I've fe like it would
Speaker 1: just have a whole different reception to it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Once I think with the I t the fact that
Speaker 1: it was hosted by Harvard and Mazarine Benaji is a
Speaker 1: really well respected Harvard social psychologist, I started thinking like
Speaker 1: if if a test with such big names behind it
Speaker 1: and such institutions behind it is whatever else you think
Speaker 1: about it, and there's real debate over how useful it is.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's useless, but the very least, I
Speaker 1: think their most impressive early claims have not been born out.
Speaker 1: And if everyone can believe in a test like that,
Speaker 1: what else am I missing? What other ideas am I
Speaker 1: passing on to readers without fully vetting them? Am I
Speaker 1: part of the problem? And I think that you know,
Speaker 1: that led me down a path toward a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a debunkie role. Well, it's really responsible for you.
Speaker 1: I remember, and I remember those articles that you wrote.
Speaker 1: I remember that Jesse like vividly, just like I remember
Speaker 1: the Jesse from the front, Yeah, from that column the
Speaker 1: Science of Us called Jesse the Science of Us, Like
Speaker 1: I remember that that incarnation of you, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Jesse from the block and yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: when you first came on my radar. And I was impressed.
Speaker 1: I mean I was, you know, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's not doing what every other journalist science
Speaker 1: journalist is doing. Thank you? Yeah? Yeah, so that was cool.
Speaker 1: So you use this phrase fad psychology in your book,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering, like, what, like, can you define that?
Speaker 1: What is fad psychology? I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm not doing fad psychology in my research. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we use it more in the title than the book.
Speaker 1: But it's basically I've noticed this pattern where a new
Speaker 1: idea will burst onto the scene via a Ted talk
Speaker 1: or a book or some combination of them. It will
Speaker 1: suddenly attract a lot of media attention, often a lot
Speaker 1: of research funding, a lot of interest within psychology, and
Speaker 1: then a few years later, when we have more data,
Speaker 1: it turns out that maybe there wasn't that much there
Speaker 1: in the first place, there wasn't that much to be
Speaker 1: excited about. Power posting, I think is one of the
Speaker 1: cleaner examples of this, because I think there's like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a there there, a little bit something
Speaker 1: where maybe it can improve people's you know, felt sense
Speaker 1: of power, but nowhere near the claims that were accompany
Speaker 1: the original Ted talk. So to me, that's a fat
Speaker 1: It's like everyone chasing the shiny new idea without really
Speaker 1: looking deeply into the strength of the evidence, at least
Speaker 1: at first. Yeah, you know, reading your whole book and
Speaker 1: I which I which I read in all in one
Speaker 1: past because it kind of reads like a novel, Like
Speaker 1: I recommend people if they have if they have like
Speaker 1: the two three hours. I think you next you can
Speaker 1: actually read your whole book, you know, perhaps you know
Speaker 1: it's it, and just reading it, I was left with, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like wow, there's a real deep truth here
Speaker 1: that they're a thread that runs through all this, which
Speaker 1: is that if you're that certain people throughout history and
Speaker 1: and also in our generation who say certain make certain claims,
Speaker 1: they're going to be more popular than other clams it
Speaker 1: regardless whether you're a psychologist, regardless of whether you're Tony
Speaker 1: Robbins kind of figure. If you make some claims that
Speaker 1: that suggest that, wow, we're capable of so much more,
Speaker 1: you know that that uh that there are characteristics that yes,
Speaker 1: maybe your environment sucks, but there are things that you
Speaker 1: can change and and and not just change a little bit,
Speaker 1: but change dramatically. There are things you can change. You know,
Speaker 1: people are craving to hear that, especially those who lack hope.
Speaker 1: I I did a noun statistical analysis, and I've been
Speaker 1: planning on writing about this. Who like who who reads
Speaker 1: self help? Like? I did a statistical a nounce of
Speaker 1: the personality traits that are correlated with interesting. Isn't that cool?
Speaker 1: Isn't that I'm gonna I'm gonna have to write this up.
Speaker 1: But I found that, like it's people with like mostly
Speaker 1: like really low self esteem, you know, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the population. You find your target population.
Speaker 1: You find people low self esteem. You say, hey, personal
Speaker 1: low self esteem, you got you can do it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you so much. I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: the the panacea, you know, and they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm listening, I'm listening. Go on, right, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's I mean, I talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the history, but there's something particularly American about that,
Speaker 1: where there's always something in our cultural waters about if
Speaker 1: you can just change your mindset, it'll transform your life.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you know, with like the secret this Rhonda
Speaker 1: Bayern idea that that Oprah helped promote it, it gets
Speaker 1: very literal, like if you can literally think about a possibility,
Speaker 1: including a new car, it'll manifest itself. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the book, the book is partly a critique of that,
Speaker 1: but part of the reason I'm excited to be on
Speaker 1: this podcast is I think you do have some hope
Speaker 1: that that there is some room people have to improve themselves,
Speaker 1: as do I. The book is more about critiquing overclaimed
Speaker 1: claims in that regard. But but I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 1: Me neither. And I mean, I look, my whole research
Speaker 1: career has been wanting to give people hope in the
Speaker 1: sense showing them they do have greater potential than they
Speaker 1: we realized through a man developed all these self actization
Speaker 1: tests and everything. I mean, you went very easy on me.
Speaker 1: You didn't mention me at all in your book, because
Speaker 1: you know, you turn the you know, all the psychologists
Speaker 1: are reading your book, turning the page and be like,
Speaker 1: is he gonna is he? Is he gonna get right
Speaker 1: about me? But I'm being cheeky. But you know we're friends,
Speaker 1: so I can. I can be that way with you.
Speaker 1: But but also I don't I don't really get the
Speaker 1: sense that you commit. I don't want to call them sins.
Speaker 1: No one's getting murdered here, but I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't view you as an overclaimer. I view you
Speaker 1: as someone trying to study this stuff in a pretty
Speaker 1: responsible way. Thank you well. That that means your incredible Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you all, thank you so much. Just now that
Speaker 1: means a lot to me. I really I try really
Speaker 1: really hard to like do it right, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? I try hard and uh and uh and
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm interested in in using rigorous science
Speaker 1: to see what we are capable of changing and to
Speaker 1: see what, you know, what we could be as a
Speaker 1: species and as as a human. So when you said,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't throw out the baby of the bathroom,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, you know, because neither do I.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to address weak science. But but are
Speaker 1: we both on aligned in saying that one can apply
Speaker 1: a rigorous scientific approach to a vow to evaluating programs
Speaker 1: and things and and may and we could find that
Speaker 1: some of these programs do have large effects. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're surely not saying you know, no, no
Speaker 1: scientists allowed to find a large effect for an intervention. No,
Speaker 1: you know, I think mindset interventions are actually a good
Speaker 1: concrete example to focus on here, because uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: when I go on to sort of a normal layperson podcast,
Speaker 1: I would I would explain what those are. Do you
Speaker 1: think your listeners more or less know what mindset interventions are?
Speaker 1: I could give the quick E give the click give
Speaker 1: the click. Yeah. The idea of mindset intervention is people
Speaker 1: tend to have either fixed or growth mindsets. A fixed
Speaker 1: mindset is this is how strong I am. This is
Speaker 1: how smart I am. That limits me. I'm not I
Speaker 1: can't improve. So the idea of a mindset intervention, especially
Speaker 1: with kids, is to change their sense of their intelligence
Speaker 1: and their academic potential from fixed to growth. So you
Speaker 1: go from I failed that test, I'm an idiot, I'll
Speaker 1: never be smart too. Well, if I work harder, I
Speaker 1: can do better on the text the next time, the
Speaker 1: test the next time. And Carol Dwak is sort of
Speaker 1: the main evangelist behind these ideas, and she was criticized,
Speaker 1: I think rightly for overhyping them a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think she made really big claims about the utility of
Speaker 1: this intervention, and I think to a lot of debunkie
Speaker 1: science people it was teetering on the brink of full debunking.
Speaker 1: Then there was a very big, rigorous study in I
Speaker 1: want to say Nature that you know, it had all
Speaker 1: the components of a genuine program evaluation, and what it
Speaker 1: found was not huge effect sizes, but for the most
Speaker 1: academically vulnerable kids, this seems to work. It seems to
Speaker 1: nudge them a bit closer to staying on track for graduation,
Speaker 1: and it points to like a very specific cost effective setting,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, I don't know exactly how to
Speaker 1: implement this, but let's say halfway through the academic year,
Speaker 1: you take the bottom twenty percent of the class and
Speaker 1: you give them this intervention and it takes like an hour.
Speaker 1: So I think at the end of the day, with
Speaker 1: a lot of these ideas, we might eventually end up
Speaker 1: somewhere where there's a cost effective intervention. But the bigger
Speaker 1: claims that you know, everyone should do this or there's
Speaker 1: really big effect sizes, that's where I'm more skeptical until
Speaker 1: there's data. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I do
Speaker 1: have some responses that. First of all, David Yeager is
Speaker 1: a colleague of DUEX, and he's been I mean, he's
Speaker 1: been writing papers arguing there. I think he even wrote
Speaker 1: an article called there is no magic. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no magical intervention. So he's been, you know, to his credit,
Speaker 1: he's been trying to make clear that there are there
Speaker 1: are cost effective, cheap interventions that can move the dial
Speaker 1: in an education set a little bit but they're not magic. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had Carol Dwek on my podcast and it was
Speaker 1: one of the rare podcasts that she agreed to be
Speaker 1: on and we and I didn't I mean, I didn't
Speaker 1: hold back anything. I gave her every single possible criticism
Speaker 1: and went through all the papers. I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: and the listeners listened to as you know, as a
Speaker 1: follow up to this, listen to my discussion with Carole Dewac.
Speaker 1: I find I found her to be incredibly gracious, humble,
Speaker 1: But there there's just was one moment where I would
Speaker 1: say my only point of contention. There was one moment
Speaker 1: where you know, we literally went through all of the findings.
Speaker 1: She agreed, you know, she's like, yeah, you're right, like
Speaker 1: in that instance, yeah, it was a really small effect size.
Speaker 1: That's why we're working at specific populations. You know. She
Speaker 1: finds that those with a lo se s and those
Speaker 1: with few opportunities might benefit more from these interventions versus others.
Speaker 1: But there was one point I said, so do you
Speaker 1: still stand by the statement? And I read the statement
Speaker 1: saying something along the lines that like it's that that
Speaker 1: mindset is kind of like a revolutionary or like completely transformative.
Speaker 1: I said, do you still stand by that? And there
Speaker 1: was this moment in an interview she says she thinks
Speaker 1: about it, and I mean we had just gone through
Speaker 1: all the small effects. I think she's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: still stand by it, Scott. Yeah. And it was a
Speaker 1: fascinating because I consider myself friends with her. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like these these these aren't these
Speaker 1: things aren't personal, you know, like I, if she's listening,
Speaker 1: as she probably will listen to this podcast, I want
Speaker 1: to say, you know, like I admire her and I
Speaker 1: think she does great research. But that was an interesting
Speaker 1: moment because I just don't know if I would have, like,
Speaker 1: I think that, like if I had just like gone
Speaker 1: through all that same data, I think I maybe I
Speaker 1: would have been like, yeah, I think I maybe have
Speaker 1: overhyped it a little bit. I think maybe I would
Speaker 1: say that, you know, I had a very similar in
Speaker 1: my chapter on Grit. I had a similar thing with
Speaker 1: Angela Duckworth, who I'm not friends with her. I've never
Speaker 1: met her in person, but she was like gracious enough
Speaker 1: to answer my emails and she's been pretty good about
Speaker 1: not overhyping grit and slowing down the grit train. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, But when I asked her about her most
Speaker 1: famous QUES, which is about grit beating the pants off
Speaker 1: of traditional measures, like you know, intelligence, she wouldn't really
Speaker 1: back off from it. And I don't think that's justified.
Speaker 1: I just you know, there's something we're humans, and once
Speaker 1: we say something and put it out on the public record,
Speaker 1: it's probably hard to sort of in effect retract it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, I would say the researchers in
Speaker 1: my book run the gamut in terms of how responsible
Speaker 1: they've been, and not everyone who accidentally ignites a viral,
Speaker 1: half baked idea is malicious or did so malevolently. There
Speaker 1: are errors, there are incentives. But I think where I
Speaker 1: hope my book will move the needle is once your
Speaker 1: idea is out there and perhaps getting more attention and
Speaker 1: a claim that it deserves, what do you do at
Speaker 1: that point? Do you rein it back in or do
Speaker 1: you just keep doubling and tripling down? And I hope
Speaker 1: more researchers make the right decision on that front. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you made a really good point, like scientists are
Speaker 1: humans too, Yeah, and you know we're it. It's not
Speaker 1: a very you know, on the whole science is is
Speaker 1: not as it is not a very glamorous field. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to look for, not like podcasting. It's
Speaker 1: not like podcasting. That's right, That's that's what you know that.
Speaker 1: That's why I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm going to the podcast in the root because
Speaker 1: there's a lot a lot more fun and glamorous and
Speaker 1: I get to show off my hair. My hair looks
Speaker 1: good today, doesn't it, Jesse. But I think it's great
Speaker 1: you put effort into mind. I'm just at full jufho deployment,
Speaker 1: no colman, no brushing, not very professional. I hope my
Speaker 1: publishers okay with this. That's hilarious. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: being ironic and joke. I don't think my hair looks
Speaker 1: at glamor well you know what, I'm not sure everyone
Speaker 1: can see it the way I can. I think it
Speaker 1: looks great, Scott, so well, thanks Jesse. But you know human,
Speaker 1: I almost said humans are scientists too. Scientists are humans? True?
Speaker 1: Also true. I was like, actually that's what it works.
Speaker 1: It works, but uh like, let me just let me
Speaker 1: just articulate all these points I wanted to articulate today
Speaker 1: because there's it's such tricky territory, you know, like to
Speaker 1: get grants. Here here's for instance, just I'm giving you
Speaker 1: like the inner world of what it's like to be
Speaker 1: a scientist, because it's really not easy. Okay, you you're
Speaker 1: you're porous, f right you you know you the only
Speaker 1: thing you have to not be homeless, that that separates
Speaker 1: you from being on the homeless is getting a grant sometimes,
Speaker 1: and to get a grant, you they actually say in
Speaker 1: the Grand application, tell us why your research is like
Speaker 1: the greatest things in slice spread Like they are essentially
Speaker 1: telling you to do that. And you know, I remember
Speaker 1: working on Grand applications and definitely over hyping for the
Speaker 1: sake of the of getting the grant. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: not that not lying. I tried to never lie, but
Speaker 1: but just like saying, how oh my god, it's so
Speaker 1: exciting we found this correlation here and we want to like,
Speaker 1: you know, keep working on So there's that mechanism. There
Speaker 1: is something that just occurred to me on reading this
Speaker 1: is like I think it's important to hold scientists to
Speaker 1: a high standard. But here's my question for you, like
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, okay, the book is picking on
Speaker 1: some scientists, but like, why do we hold scientists to
Speaker 1: a higher standard than like Tony Robbins kind of figures
Speaker 1: like why did they get or here's another way of
Speaker 1: framing it, why did they get a free pass just
Speaker 1: because they're not scientists? Oh, I like see what I'm saying. Well,
Speaker 1: but that's sort of one of the points in my book.
Speaker 1: I don't think I make it explicitly, but one of
Speaker 1: my critiques of social psychology and positive psychology, and this
Speaker 1: is something positive psychologists themselves have worried about, is that
Speaker 1: it's preaking a little bit close to like self help,
Speaker 1: and I think in some way psychology and self help
Speaker 1: help become intertwined. And the reason I wouldn't ta spend
Speaker 1: a book teeing off on Tony Robbins is because I
Speaker 1: think it's so obviously wrong. Whereas some of these ideas
Speaker 1: they have like Ivy League institutions behind them and helping
Speaker 1: to hype them up. So it's like in my social
Speaker 1: world and my parents' social world, these ideas are very popular,
Speaker 1: so I think I can do more good debunking them.
Speaker 1: Self help. I mean, I think Americans spend ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year on self help that will always be
Speaker 1: with us, and I think psychologist should want to differentiate
Speaker 1: themselves from that. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: just I just want to dive deeper in this point
Speaker 1: because it's been bothering me for a while. Yes, as
Speaker 1: these two domans become closer and closer to each other,
Speaker 1: because they really are, especially with the field of positive psychology,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's no doubt. Why don't we
Speaker 1: Why aren't we all interested in the truth, regardless of
Speaker 1: who it comes from. Because the thing is, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how many conversations I have with with really
Speaker 1: really big time best selling self help book writers and
Speaker 1: I'll say to them like, where's the evidence for that?
Speaker 1: Where's the evidence? And they say, well, I'm not a scientist,
Speaker 1: and I don't claim to be a scientist. That's what
Speaker 1: they say. And then it's like free free pass. And
Speaker 1: then and not only that, but they do get a
Speaker 1: free pass by saying that. Yeah, but why shouldn't like
Speaker 1: I feel like, let's bring everyone together in the room
Speaker 1: from every stars as stripes. I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: even a broader spirit of book. I just feel like
Speaker 1: your book, Geve hasn't even hasn't even broader message I'm
Speaker 1: trying to articulate, you know. Yeah, well so if if
Speaker 1: let me think that through, if schools were bringing in
Speaker 1: self help figures to affect their curricula, I would of
Speaker 1: course critique that. What's more likely is they'll bring in
Speaker 1: social psychologists. But a counterpoint to that is is some
Speaker 1: of the more cutting edge diversity, equity and inclusion stuff
Speaker 1: that both schools and companies are are paying for is
Speaker 1: basically self help, and that there's no often no evidence
Speaker 1: for it or no solid evidence. So that's that's a
Speaker 1: case where like it's not only psychologists delivering those programs,
Speaker 1: but whoever delivers them should be held to account anyone
Speaker 1: who is trying to make money off an idea that
Speaker 1: makes certain claims. I agree with you completely. I wish
Speaker 1: we were all more scientific and evaluating all of these claims. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that no one like there's like outside of the
Speaker 1: there's no outside the realm of science, like you can't
Speaker 1: like I think this is just becoming an increasing problem
Speaker 1: in our society right now. Is that you know, with
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, with with with ideas that there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as objective truth, you know, now, like everything is subjective,
Speaker 1: I just see a larger problem, a larger trend of
Speaker 1: just like, well, look, you know, you have your belief
Speaker 1: in that science, and I have my belief which isn't science,
Speaker 1: and we can't wait, you know, let's just all have
Speaker 1: our different belief systems. And it's like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that when it comes to things like a
Speaker 1: validate evaluating whether or not certain interventions will work, or
Speaker 1: whether or not we should apply things large scale, I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's a there's anything else other than
Speaker 1: the scientific method to help us, to help us evaluate that.
Speaker 1: I guess this is what I'm trying to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's all we got. I mean, how else
Speaker 1: do we know what ideas work and what ideas don't.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that just because science has proven something,
Speaker 1: it's right. I mean, that's the whole point in my book.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just I think most most Americans, in
Speaker 1: most people, I don't want to sound elitist, but they're
Speaker 1: not great critical thinkers because critical thinking is difficult, and
Speaker 1: it's easier to accept a story that sounds good and
Speaker 1: that we want to be true. So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we're definitely on the page at the same page
Speaker 1: of that. But we can go start going in the
Speaker 1: details of all these as we deconstruct my whole field. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I want to I want to circle back to GRIT.
Speaker 1: But let's cover the I T for a second. Because
Speaker 1: you brought up most recently, you brought up the diversity trainings.
Speaker 1: What is the rigorous research when you looked into literature
Speaker 1: show about the effectiveness of these kinds of trainings and
Speaker 1: the use of the I T in those trainings. They're
Speaker 1: the biggest meta analysis suggests that there's some interventions that
Speaker 1: can maybe change your I A T score. I should
Speaker 1: say your I T score is inherently noisy because the
Speaker 1: test retest reliability is so low. No one's been able
Speaker 1: to come up with an intervention that actually changes behavior.
Speaker 1: And behavior is what we care about, because if the
Speaker 1: theory was, isn't that your ITT score points to behavior
Speaker 1: predicts behavior. I don't think anyone would really care about
Speaker 1: so the it I believe in terms of changing individual behavior,
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of any evidence of interventions that actually
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, And also that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: The correlation is very, very small between the it score
Speaker 1: and your actual instances of discrimination racial discrimination in the
Speaker 1: real world. Now when that's even been measured, that's mostly
Speaker 1: been measured in lab setting. So even even there the
Speaker 1: sort of an external validity problem. But yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because Greenwald still defend, you know, still vietmentally defends
Speaker 1: the ITT I believe. Well, not only that, but Banaji
Speaker 1: was on a Today Show segment like a month ago
Speaker 1: that didn't I that, you know, I sort of almost
Speaker 1: rage quid over that, Like there was in the year
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. No one should be doing these segments
Speaker 1: that doesn't at least acknowledge the statistical critiques, And this
Speaker 1: exposed the test of potentially millions of more people who
Speaker 1: won't be away of that. So that frustrated me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one thing that always occur to me as as
Speaker 1: kind of as cool about the test is that I
Speaker 1: think it can tap into an understanding of the societal's
Speaker 1: most prevalent associations or or things that you know, like
Speaker 1: like I do think the media has an effect on
Speaker 1: our unconscious associations, et cetera, et cetera. To me, it's
Speaker 1: much more interesting as an index of cultural you know, consciousness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be true except for the fact that there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that it's measuring other stuff, not just like
Speaker 1: actual cultural associations. So there's some evidence that if you
Speaker 1: are the more aware you are that black people are
Speaker 1: oppressed in society, that gives you a higher SAT score
Speaker 1: sat IoT score. That's different from saying that you've actually
Speaker 1: internalized cultural messages. And part of the problem here is
Speaker 1: an individual I score appears to be complicated mix of
Speaker 1: different things and has to me, to my mind, been
Speaker 1: overhyped as like this is actually measuring your implicit bias.
Speaker 1: Your broader point, though, is totally true. I'm sure implicit
Speaker 1: bias exists and affect some outcomes. I just don't think
Speaker 1: we have an accurate way of measuring it. I agree.
Speaker 1: So I agree with my point again, and I agree
Speaker 1: with your point. You know, I agree with both points,
Speaker 1: but one of them was my point. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: I Yes, this stuff can get tricky real fast. So
Speaker 1: let's say that you do the I and you find
Speaker 1: that people in the Black Lives Matter movement have more
Speaker 1: racial bias according to the I T you know, like
Speaker 1: like like what would that even mean? Like like that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to argue, and they certainly want to
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to say that, like, you know, they they
Speaker 1: they they are they are more racist unconsciously, even though
Speaker 1: they're explicitly less racist, right that I mean that, you know.
Speaker 1: So the thing is there are multiple ways to interpret this,
Speaker 1: and one one more parsimonious way is that perhaps the
Speaker 1: more that you engage that these ideas are in the
Speaker 1: forefront of your consciousness all the time, you know, like
Speaker 1: you seeing everything through the lens of race. Well, no, duh,
Speaker 1: the associations are going to be quicker to activate, you know,
Speaker 1: with some things that you keep seeing over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. You know, if you're constantly fighting in
Speaker 1: the world of social justice and you keep seeing these
Speaker 1: things linked together by you know, if you keep seeing
Speaker 1: you know it's in your consciousness. Yeah, your millisecond reaction
Speaker 1: time is going to be quicker. One of the seminal
Speaker 1: early papers critiquing the IET was was titled, would Jesse
Speaker 1: Jackson fail the implicit association time? Exactly what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about exactly? Yeah? So yeah, I look, I as I
Speaker 1: mentioned the book, like, I wrote a long article about
Speaker 1: this for New York Magazine. Some conservatives interpreted that as
Speaker 1: me saying implicit bias isn't real or isn't important. I
Speaker 1: think implicit bias is absolutely real. I think how important
Speaker 1: it is in the overall pie of America's discriminatory outcomes
Speaker 1: is very much up for debate, and that no one's
Speaker 1: to my mind, really been all the show it's that
Speaker 1: important versus other stuff, But it could be we could
Speaker 1: learn that. Yeah, and there's some really important interactions here
Speaker 1: with the with neurologically speaking with the prefontal cortex. I
Speaker 1: wrote an article about that for Psychologist Today about like
Speaker 1: I feel like ten years ago but reviewing that research
Speaker 1: showing that you know, there are there are huge moderator
Speaker 1: effects that explain whether or not some of these associations
Speaker 1: do become correlated in the real world, Like there are
Speaker 1: moderators that can move that correlation higher and lower, you know,
Speaker 1: because we ignored everything else and we said all is equal.
Speaker 1: The correlation is weak, right, but there are some factors
Speaker 1: that make it more like with than others. If you
Speaker 1: have a very if you're a very impulsive person or
Speaker 1: your you know, your personality is you have a very
Speaker 1: poor executive functioning, you you kind of go like immediately
Speaker 1: from uh, from thought to action. Yeah, you know that
Speaker 1: makes sense that that you'd be more susceptible to implicit forces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Boom boom, that's right. Okay, so thanks for
Speaker 1: for bringing that up and telling you about the nuances
Speaker 1: of that. Let's move a little bit. Let's move, let's
Speaker 1: let's dive into grit now. Look, Angela is a dear
Speaker 1: friend of mine and I my office was right next
Speaker 1: to hers at the Positive Psychology Center at pen which
Speaker 1: you also take down and uh for five years. And uh,
Speaker 1: I love that you said. Sorry. I mean, there's obviously no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't need it. It's an interesting real world example
Speaker 1: of how you're not just criticizing ideas, you're criticizing a person.
Speaker 1: And perhaps this book was easier to write because I
Speaker 1: wasn't writing about my friends, you know, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: So but that tells you something about why ideas persist
Speaker 1: sometimes they do. But I also bring this up because
Speaker 1: I just feel like I can speak to it from
Speaker 1: like a first person perspective of like like you know,
Speaker 1: like like my experience of the of the situation, because
Speaker 1: I would have so many you know, angel would come
Speaker 1: after a long day of work shed. My office was
Speaker 1: right next door to hers. I had Imagination Institute right
Speaker 1: next to the Great Lab, so that was fun. So
Speaker 1: she would come right next door and she'd be like, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to walk home, you know today, And
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many amazing conversations we had,
Speaker 1: you know, walking home to her house. And then I
Speaker 1: would have dinner sometimes at her place. She would cook
Speaker 1: dinner and would have dinner with her and the family.
Speaker 1: And she's like ravenously curious, and she's so bright, she's
Speaker 1: so bright, she's so quick, she's so quick. And I
Speaker 1: remember all of our conversation. I remember our conversations were
Speaker 1: so stimulating and and she I mean, we would we
Speaker 1: would really get into it. You know, we wouldn't always agree.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes maybe I did think IQ played a
Speaker 1: larger role, even though at the end of the day
Speaker 1: and we both have criticisms against IQ. But she would
Speaker 1: just you know, I would tell her about a certain paper.
Speaker 1: She'd be like, oh, tell me, we're about the paper.
Speaker 1: She's ravenously curious. I think I really do think she
Speaker 1: wants to I think she's a good scientist a b.
Speaker 1: I think that she really does want to know the
Speaker 1: you know, all these various correlations, but she really does,
Speaker 1: she really does believe in grit and and maybe that's
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's a problem. Maybe maybe it is,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe to the extent to which one should
Speaker 1: one believe in their pet construct to such a degree
Speaker 1: that and I would even make this case argument again
Speaker 1: with intelligence. This happens again human scientists are human and
Speaker 1: and I don't know if any any scientists exempt from that.
Speaker 1: I look at intelligence researchers all the time. By the way,
Speaker 1: I kind of wish he took them to task a
Speaker 1: little bit, just because they believe in their construct, like
Speaker 1: I mean talk about and you know, believe in a construct,
Speaker 1: and maybe you know, in a lot of ways. You know,
Speaker 1: it was important for Angela to kind of try to
Speaker 1: shake up the field a little bit and say, look,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not all about intelligence, you know, and
Speaker 1: hard work does play a role in it. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: so it's interesting because personality psychology had been studying conscientiousness
Speaker 1: for decades and often what Angela found with grit was
Speaker 1: similar to what they'd found with conscientiousness in terms of
Speaker 1: these correlations. So I think by the time I was
Speaker 1: done writing that chapter, I sort of I'm not sure
Speaker 1: American society that this was a new Like obviously it
Speaker 1: was new enough for everyone to latch onto it and
Speaker 1: be excited by it. But because we're so self healthy
Speaker 1: and we so value as Americans the value of grit
Speaker 1: and hard work, I think what you're saying, if you
Speaker 1: say it's true among sort of achievement researchers, I'm positive
Speaker 1: it's true. I'm just not sure that it was ever
Speaker 1: the case that like Americans undervalued the importance of grit.
Speaker 1: I think we've always been into that. Yeah, maybe that
Speaker 1: the split between what scientists focused on versus what the
Speaker 1: general public focused on, and the second that the two
Speaker 1: aligned more that yeah, what and that's that it was
Speaker 1: like wildfire. I will say, like, it's noteworthy to me
Speaker 1: that in both her book and her ted talk, she's
Speaker 1: forwardly is like, we don't know how to improve grit,
Speaker 1: which which already gives her points in terms of scientific
Speaker 1: integrity a lot of other researchers lack. And that's always
Speaker 1: stuck out to me about her. Even if I disagree
Speaker 1: with her on some stuff, agreed, I have found her
Speaker 1: to be quite intellectual, honest, and and and this is
Speaker 1: more of the added of the spirit, of the spirit
Speaker 1: I get from her after knowing her personally. I mean,
Speaker 1: she'll be like, let's try something else to see if
Speaker 1: it if we can work Like we She'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know yet, but let's let's try lots of things.
Speaker 1: And she'll have lab meetings where people will discuss ideas,
Speaker 1: and she had this idea. She's like, how can we
Speaker 1: objectively study GRIT, Like, let's come up with ideas, And
Speaker 1: she had this idea. She tried this. Her and her
Speaker 1: graduate student tried a bunch of studies where they look
Speaker 1: to see if you could predict someone's GRIT score from
Speaker 1: just objectively looking at not a college applicant's prior history
Speaker 1: of quitting clubs, you know, like like you can actually
Speaker 1: look at their past history and see and count up
Speaker 1: and tally how many times they switched from one to another,
Speaker 1: and it's quite quite quite a reasonable. Well, the problem
Speaker 1: with that study is is this is I this is
Speaker 1: a critique that I had to relegate to a footnote.
Speaker 1: She and her colleague or colleagues took a pre existing
Speaker 1: college board sir instrument that is not GRIT and they
Speaker 1: just sort of said that that's grit. So they correlated
Speaker 1: that that resume task, they correlated with this other instrument
Speaker 1: that if you look at it is clearly measuring something
Speaker 1: other than grit. And they just said, let's consider this grit.
Speaker 1: So that's an example of like the slight slipperiness I
Speaker 1: don't I don't always like And if we were having
Speaker 1: this conversation offline at a bar, I would I would
Speaker 1: give you a chance, like look into it and make
Speaker 1: sure you agree with my critique. But that's just an
Speaker 1: example of like, in some cases, I think some of
Speaker 1: the research is a little bit overhyped. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: you're probably quite right that is overhyped, certainly overhyped by
Speaker 1: educators right now. I mean, who are all treating it
Speaker 1: like it's the panacea again, like everyone's looking for a penalcy,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and and and and then within the
Speaker 1: science field, I think it probably is in terms of measurement,
Speaker 1: and and and Angela agrees with us because I've I've
Speaker 1: been trying to come up with a grit two point
Speaker 1: oh scale with her. We we actually co we have
Speaker 1: a draft of a grit two point oh scale we
Speaker 1: were working on at some point yeah, and I have
Speaker 1: I have like three data sets of analysis on it.
Speaker 1: Basically she had. She fully admits that those items could
Speaker 1: be improved to more tap into what she really was
Speaker 1: trying to get it, because the problem is that there's
Speaker 1: a difference between concept and measurement. The way I think
Speaker 1: that the spirit of what she was bringing to the
Speaker 1: table was was really uh new saying, Oh, I think
Speaker 1: there's something that conscientious misses out, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: the long term perseverance and commitment aspect. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that she fully captured that in her grit scale,
Speaker 1: and and and and I think that's been such a
Speaker 1: source of this all of all these problem, you know,
Speaker 1: because all scientists have to do to try to validate
Speaker 1: her her theory and everything is using her grid scale.
Speaker 1: So then they find it's pretty much conscientiousness, particularly the
Speaker 1: industriousness aspect of if you want to really nerd out,
Speaker 1: you can zoom in and say it's pretty much, you know,
Speaker 1: perseverance aspect is pretty much the industrious aspect of the
Speaker 1: Big five conscientiousness, Ye facet but well, and I know
Speaker 1: her critics, even her fiercest critics, said, there is this
Speaker 1: one little nugget of potentially useful stuff. So like, no
Speaker 1: one's discounted the scale exactly. Yeah, that I'll be interested
Speaker 1: to see what grid two point zero looks like. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, And and and maybe let's leave it
Speaker 1: at that because in the spirit of not tearing down people,
Speaker 1: but in the spirit of perfecting the science or getting
Speaker 1: the science better, because I think that that should be
Speaker 1: what it's about. Really, I don't like some of this infighting.
Speaker 1: I don't like it. Quite frankly, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: like the scientists who get personal about it and then
Speaker 1: you know, they want to like the like they've become
Speaker 1: in their mission to take down you know, a fellow scientist.
Speaker 1: Let's just all improve the science, because I think that
Speaker 1: in that in the spirit of doing the science better,
Speaker 1: I think Angel would agree, and I I certainly have
Speaker 1: have discussed with her, and I think that you know,
Speaker 1: there's these couple there's a couple of items that that
Speaker 1: that even Marcus Creed who wrote that meta analysis, said well,
Speaker 1: there's something here with these kinds of items that are
Speaker 1: more long term based perseverance that is doing most of
Speaker 1: the prediction and my goal with my thinking and and
Speaker 1: my spirit about this is like let's let's perfect a scale,
Speaker 1: or let's get a better reliable scale that like zooms
Speaker 1: in on that, you know, double click, double double clicks
Speaker 1: on that, and uh and shows what's really unique about
Speaker 1: the great concept because I do think there's something there.
Speaker 1: It's just I think I see it as a measurement issue.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, Well, I mean it could be the same
Speaker 1: general trajectory as as mindset interventions, where you start with
Speaker 1: a lot of hype and then there's some debunking and
Speaker 1: you end up with like something that is useful to
Speaker 1: some researchers in some contexts awesome. Well isn't this great
Speaker 1: that we're getting so deep into this? Yeah? Man, So
Speaker 1: can you explain what it means to be living in
Speaker 1: quote the Age of Fracture? Yeah, Age of Fracture? I
Speaker 1: took from a with credit. I didn't steal it from him.
Speaker 1: From a Princeton historian named Daniel p. Rogers. His idea
Speaker 1: is that in mid century America, Americans and sort of
Speaker 1: public intellectuals understood that we're all parts of these big structures.
Speaker 1: We're all you know, a lot of people are members
Speaker 1: of civic institutions or churches, religion, ideology, these all, you know,
Speaker 1: there's structure to life, and that doesn't mean that anyone
Speaker 1: would want to go back to the nineteen fifties, especially
Speaker 1: if you're like the wrong gender, skin color. But his
Speaker 1: overall argument is we've gotten more and more fractured, and
Speaker 1: American life is seen as more and more atomistic. And
Speaker 1: the way I connected to this to my book is,
Speaker 1: if we're all just individuals floating around in highly competitive markets,
Speaker 1: of course we're going to both want to optimize ourselves
Speaker 1: with the latest and greatest tweak and of course we're
Speaker 1: going to be susceptible to explanations of the world that
Speaker 1: rely on things like priming and biases at the expense
Speaker 1: of like how wealthy are you? What's your local social network? Like? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Age of Fracture is a really important book,
Speaker 1: and I hope a lot of people read it after
Speaker 1: they read it. Of course, of course, of course, well
Speaker 1: thanks for introducing me to that concept, because I was
Speaker 1: not aware of that. So I actually do want to
Speaker 1: read go in and read that literature. I would like
Speaker 1: to double click or not to quick I would like
Speaker 1: to return to something I was I was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: I said, is there's nothing else other than science really
Speaker 1: if we want to rigorously test large scale interventions. But
Speaker 1: I suppose, you know, there's other voice in my head
Speaker 1: that says, at the end of the day, like, if
Speaker 1: a self help thing, even if it's not scient to evalidate,
Speaker 1: if it helps you, like, isn't that all that matters?
Speaker 1: So there's this other voice in my head, you know,
Speaker 1: because I've that that's a refrain. I get a lot
Speaker 1: from not from my scientists who write self help books.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll say to them, but you know, like
Speaker 1: there's no science in this, and they're like, but you
Speaker 1: know it. My grandmom says it helps her, and that's all.
Speaker 1: You know, Like, at the end of the day, if
Speaker 1: it helps people, I get people will say to me like,
Speaker 1: you know, but I get hundreds and hundreds of letters
Speaker 1: a day saying how much my book changes their life?
Speaker 1: Right now? What would you say in response? I know
Speaker 1: what I think, I know I was, I would say,
Speaker 1: but I want to hear what you would say in
Speaker 1: response to that. Let's take power posing as a concrete example.
Speaker 1: There's probably some people for whom, standing up straight before
Speaker 1: a meeting, hands on their hips like Wonder Woman for
Speaker 1: thirty seconds helps There's nothing wrong with that, But if
Speaker 1: the creative power posing gives overstated or false explanations why
Speaker 1: it might help people, that's a problem. If it doesn't
Speaker 1: help people on average, we shouldn't say it does. There's
Speaker 1: also just the issue of like averages or averages like
Speaker 1: power posting could have a negative average on people. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it does, but even if it did, there
Speaker 1: could still be a subset of people for whom it benefits.
Speaker 1: That effect could be washed out by everyone it hurt.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you read a self help book
Speaker 1: and you find it inspiring, I would just be really
Speaker 1: one of the first things we learned in ap psychologies
Speaker 1: that people are not good at evaluating themselves and understanding
Speaker 1: what helps and hurts them. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we have clinical psychology. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the power posing helps you because you're taking deep
Speaker 1: breasts during it, or because you're just giving yourself thirty
Speaker 1: seconds to collect yourself before the meeting or the negotiations.
Speaker 1: There oftentimes might be other explanations for why these interventions
Speaker 1: feel like they're working than what lay people think. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a role for critical scientific types to
Speaker 1: try to explain that. And also the placebo effect is
Speaker 1: really can be really big. My colleague at Stanford, Ali Crumb,
Speaker 1: doing really good work on that, And I was actually
Speaker 1: surprised you didn't bring in Ali Crumb's research because I
Speaker 1: think that'd be a cool way to incorporate some of
Speaker 1: your ideas as well. Because she's found that, you know,
Speaker 1: the mindsets you have over like that when you enter
Speaker 1: a certain one of these conditions can group dramatic and
Speaker 1: prove the extent to which you actually get benefit from them,
Speaker 1: especially in a pasebo situation, like if you really expect
Speaker 1: expect this passibo thing to change your life, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll be much more likely for your life to be changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's done some interesting stuff I think with like
Speaker 1: food and calories and mindsets milkshakes milk. I think she
Speaker 1: has a title of one of her paper's mind over milkshakes. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's great. I was, she was my I went to
Speaker 1: grad school with her. So it's it's so like it's
Speaker 1: cool to see like your your your grad school buddies
Speaker 1: like become famous and awesome. You know. Yeah, So should
Speaker 1: we tackle self esteem. Now since we're taking it all,
Speaker 1: we're burning we're burning it all down, destroying everybody. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I could start with like the kernel of
Speaker 1: truth to self esteem that I mentioned the chapter. If
Speaker 1: you think completely worthless, if you have very low self
Speaker 1: esteem and you interpret every event negatively and you have
Speaker 1: a bad date and you assume that that's the signal
Speaker 1: you'll be unloved forever, then you know, some cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy would likely help you. And there's some solid evidence
Speaker 1: for that. And that's a facet of self esteem, right,
Speaker 1: it's your mindset about yourself. My chapter is about this
Speaker 1: this craze that took over the nineteen eighties and the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, mostly thanks to one California legislator named John
Speaker 1: Vasconcello's pretty soon like the whole country and a number
Speaker 1: of other countries thought that self esteem could sort of
Speaker 1: fix everything. That self esteem lay at the root of
Speaker 1: problems ranging from academic underachievement to literal murder, and it,
Speaker 1: you know, it became a fad and a craze, and
Speaker 1: we now know Baumeister actually around the turn of the
Speaker 1: century did like a big study where he looked at
Speaker 1: all the past literature with some colleagues, and they found like,
Speaker 1: there's very little there suggesting a strong causal role for
Speaker 1: self esteem. But as always baby in bathwater, we need
Speaker 1: to keep two thoughts in our head. At this time,
Speaker 1: the craze was over the top. People don't kill one
Speaker 1: another because of low self esteem. Usually in fact, criminals
Speaker 1: have high self esteem. Is an interesting finding. But also
Speaker 1: if you have incredibly low self esteem, CBT can help. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the researchers found there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as low self esteem. It's really uncertain self esteem.
Speaker 1: You actually find when you do look at self distributions
Speaker 1: of self esteem scores, very few people say they have
Speaker 1: no self worth. It's usually around the midpoint or at
Speaker 1: the high point. Well, that was one interesting bout mister
Speaker 1: pointed out, is that all this talk of an epidemic
Speaker 1: of low American self esteem. He's like, where is it.
Speaker 1: Americans are very very high on themselves. We're very like
Speaker 1: Lake Wobeganish. Yeah, it isn't. Also, it's a important distinguish
Speaker 1: between self esteem and narcissism. I think some people sometimes
Speaker 1: people when they say when they make fun of of people,
Speaker 1: they and they use self esteem they're really they're really
Speaker 1: referring to a different phenomenon of narcissism. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of important nuances here, you know, Like I think
Speaker 1: that it's good to have a basic sense of self
Speaker 1: worth and a sense of self competency. But as I
Speaker 1: argue in Transcend, because I have a whole chapter on
Speaker 1: self esteem and Transcend, as I think it's a healthy
Speaker 1: self esteem is a basic human need, but it's one
Speaker 1: it's one that shouldn't be pursued for the sake of
Speaker 1: being pursued. It's one that should emerge or organically from
Speaker 1: real earned accomplishments and being a valued social partner. Well.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big I Ran fan, but John Vaskinsello's
Speaker 1: took his enthusiasm for self esteem from a disciple and
Speaker 1: lover of eye brand named I think Nathaniel Brandon, and
Speaker 1: his whole point, which I think bascin Cello's sort of missed,
Speaker 1: is like there's the fake self esteem of looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror and trying to convince yourself you're great, versus
Speaker 1: the organic self esteem of like, oh I've accomplished some stuff,
Speaker 1: I have a beautiful family, things are going well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Good. Good.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you I'm glad that you did this.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you wrote this book justin early I too,
Speaker 1: I am yeah, I'm glad you wrote it. I think
Speaker 1: it needed to be written, and we need to be
Speaker 1: having these conversations even if people don't, you know, agree
Speaker 1: one thousand percent with every single sentence you say. You know,
Speaker 1: even some scientists might have some quibbles, especially the ones
Speaker 1: that you'll look forward to reading them. And I know you,
Speaker 1: I know you, I know you are looking for I
Speaker 1: I know that you're You're you want to you You're open,
Speaker 1: you know you want to have that discussion. I do
Speaker 1: want to give a lot of credit to my editor,
Speaker 1: because he was the one often pushing back and saying like, well,
Speaker 1: this idea isn't Alex Starr is my editor, this idea
Speaker 1: isn't bunked. We shouldn't assume everything here is bunked. Obviously
Speaker 1: there's some element of your posture that matters, or your
Speaker 1: self esteem that matters. So he was that the he's
Speaker 1: himself a skeptical guy. He has to be as a
Speaker 1: book editor. But he was whispering in my ear like,
Speaker 1: let's not go too far in the other direction. I
Speaker 1: think the book benefited a great deal as a result,
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to take credit for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that, like I saw that. I saw those
Speaker 1: sentences where you'd go through a whole long two pages
Speaker 1: and there would be the paragraph but maybe we shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's that was his his, his and fluids inserting.
Speaker 1: But I noticed that it followed that pattern, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like you'd go a couple and then
Speaker 1: and they have but look, you know, maybe there's something here,
Speaker 1: you know, if we, if we, you know, because there's
Speaker 1: this other study that did find maybe something promising. So
Speaker 1: you did, you know, throw a bone every No, No,
Speaker 1: that was that was nice. That was pretty nice of you.
Speaker 1: I think, like just like the last topic I just
Speaker 1: want to discuss you, which is a very heavy topic,
Speaker 1: is the fact that the human brain really has an
Speaker 1: easy time latching onto mono calls all accounts. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you've written about this. You have this blocked and reported
Speaker 1: podcast where you you're not afraid of saying uh, protically
Speaker 1: incorrect things, you know, for the sake of if you
Speaker 1: think they're true. You know, do you see a problem
Speaker 1: right now with with with people latching onto kind of
Speaker 1: racism as the single cause of so so many disparities,
Speaker 1: as opposed to looking at multi causal accounts. I think
Speaker 1: yes and no. I think I'm recording this from my parents'
Speaker 1: nice suburb of Boston, And I think anyone who knows
Speaker 1: the history of Boston or most major American cities understands
Speaker 1: that the suburbs were built by racism and to support racism,
Speaker 1: and only certain people had access to them. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you read Tom Sagrew on what happened in Detroit
Speaker 1: in the fifties where there were black families with money
Speaker 1: and they wanted the same thing white families wanted. They
Speaker 1: wanted more space, more living room. They tried to sort
Speaker 1: of move into the Detroit suburbs. They were met with
Speaker 1: armed mobs of white homeowners. This stuff happened in the
Speaker 1: lifespan of people who are still alive today and often
Speaker 1: hasn't been talked about. So part of the pendulum swing
Speaker 1: has been let's talk about that. But people don't always
Speaker 1: do a great job like understanding how complicated structural racism
Speaker 1: can be. And like you're saying, some we've gotten to
Speaker 1: a point where I do think sometimes whenever anything happens,
Speaker 1: it's assumed to be racism as the root cause, just
Speaker 1: because that is the current conversation. The tragic recent example
Speaker 1: we saw was this mass shooting where, for structural reasons,
Speaker 1: the I don't know if these women were all sex
Speaker 1: workers or just messuses, but the women targeted were mostly Asian,
Speaker 1: not all Asian. I think two white women died, But
Speaker 1: a lot of the coverage suggested that he was motivated
Speaker 1: by racism, when it seems like he was more motivated
Speaker 1: by these horrible far right ideas about sexuality and his
Speaker 1: shame and the sense that these women had tempted him somehow,
Speaker 1: which is ludicrous to blame your own issues on women,
Speaker 1: first of all, and of course ludcris to then attack them.
Speaker 1: My argument for a long time has been if we
Speaker 1: reduce an event like that to one cause, whether it's
Speaker 1: racism or whatever else, we're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: stop the next attack, because we're fighting with one hand
Speaker 1: tied behind our back. And I think in liberal spaces
Speaker 1: you would probably agree this is seen is a very
Speaker 1: important conversation, but the good faith attempts to understand events
Speaker 1: can sometimes bleed into opportunistic attempts to signal that you're
Speaker 1: on the right side of an issue. So so if
Speaker 1: you go online and you say anti this anti Asian
Speaker 1: racism has to stop, it's not just an empirical claim
Speaker 1: about what happened, but you're signaling, like, I understand this
Speaker 1: is a serious issue, and of course anti Asian racism
Speaker 1: is a serious issue. But again that's different from whether
Speaker 1: we can reduce this particular attack to it. So uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my my basic stance on it. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was really nuanced, and that was that was a
Speaker 1: very jesty response. Sociate. I'll take that as a compliment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because and you should take it as a compliment. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's spought on because like I'm
Speaker 1: deeply interested in closing achievement gaps with various racial ethnic
Speaker 1: you know, and they're actually called excellent scaps. You actually
Speaker 1: see at the top two percent of standardized test scores.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's huge discrepancies when you get to the tails.
Speaker 1: But it's a multi determined issue, you know. It just
Speaker 1: it just makes no sense to say the answer is
Speaker 1: just racism. You know, there's poor schooling, there's poverty, well
Speaker 1: and also you don't need again, you don't need to
Speaker 1: like I think one of the conservative beliefs that I'm
Speaker 1: softer on now than I was ten years ago is
Speaker 1: that like, family structure actually matters a lot. If you
Speaker 1: have two parents to look after a kid, that matters
Speaker 1: a lot. That doesn't mean we should morally judge people
Speaker 1: who have kids early on. It means it's it's harder
Speaker 1: to raise a kid. Everyone knows this. Everyone who's college
Speaker 1: educated tries to have kids with a partner who's there.
Speaker 1: But something like that, like like having a kid earlier
Speaker 1: than you should, that is also connected to structural racism
Speaker 1: because of you know, access to education or contraceptor You
Speaker 1: can still make that argument if you want, but like
Speaker 1: you're saying to reduce every part of this achievement gap
Speaker 1: to like, you know, people have tried to claim the
Speaker 1: sat is particularly racist, which I think you're sort of
Speaker 1: letting a lot of institutions off the hook, because like
Speaker 1: we want schools to be better, we want people that
Speaker 1: better and safer families. I've observed the same thing. I
Speaker 1: think it's not to durrealis I got a really interesting
Speaker 1: email from a medical resident and he said that socioeconomic
Speaker 1: determinants of health. You know, is this really important new
Speaker 1: idea of medicine, Like whether you're healthy or not healthy
Speaker 1: has to do with a lot of things like your
Speaker 1: level of social support, your education level. If you're a diabetic,
Speaker 1: do you have access to testing strips? Do you know
Speaker 1: what to eat and what not to eat? He said,
Speaker 1: he arrived in medical school excited about this new area
Speaker 1: that could improve lives. But the shift recently has been
Speaker 1: the only socioeconomic determinant of health they talk about is racism.
Speaker 1: Everything is racism, and that that doesn't help. We need
Speaker 1: to talk about racism, but we need to talk about
Speaker 1: other stuff. Yeah, and that that can generalize to the
Speaker 1: other conversations we had today, Like I spent my whole
Speaker 1: career to understand what are the determinants of greatness? You know,
Speaker 1: what are the determinants of high achievement? And you just
Speaker 1: you know, you could say grit matters, but you can
Speaker 1: say talent matters. But it's it's a lot more interesting
Speaker 1: when you start looking at the malls, multi calls or interactions.
Speaker 1: You know, people who are more talented are going to
Speaker 1: be more motivated to put in the grid. There are
Speaker 1: these level of nuances that when you when you double quick,
Speaker 1: you're like, Oh, it's the interactions that are interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: they most the multicollsal interactions. Anyway, Jesse, thank you so
Speaker 1: much brother for being on my podcast today. I thought,
Speaker 1: I think you read a really good, important book, and
Speaker 1: I hope everyone reads it, and I hope that we
Speaker 1: can do better psychology as a result. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you having me here, and I hope we
Speaker 1: can get together in person sometime soon. Wouldn't that be nice?
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
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