Dr. David Yeager: How to Master Growth Mindset to Improve Performance

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast

where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday

[Music]

life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a

professor of neurobiology and

Opthalmology at Stanford School of

Medicine my guest today is Dr David

joerger Dr David joerger is a professor

of psychology at the University of Texas

at Austin and one of the world's leading

researchers into mindsets in particular

growth mindset which is a mindset that

enables people of all AG es to improve

their abilities at essentially anything

he is also a world expert into the

stress is performance enhancing mindset

which is a mindset that allows people to

cognitively reframe stress and that when

combined with growth mindset can lead to

dramatic improvements and performance in

cognitive and physical Endeavors Dr

joerger is also the author of an

important and extremely useful new book

entitled 10 to 25 the science of

motivating young people the book is

scheduled for release this Summer that

is the summer of 2024 and we provided a

link to the book in the show note

captions during today's discussion Dr

Jer explains to us exactly what growth

mindset is through the lens of the

research into growth mindset and he

explains also how to apply growth

mindset in our lives he also shares the

research from his and other laboratories

on the stress can be performance

enhancing mindset and how that can be

combined with growth mindset to achieve

the maximum results so while I assume

that most people have heard of growth

mindset today's discussion will allow

you to really apply it in your life not

just from the perspective of you the

person trying to learn but also for

teachers and coaches in fact Dr Jer

shares not just the optimal learning

environments for us as individuals but

also between individuals and in the

classroom in families in sports teams

and in groups of all sizes and kinds

before we begin I'd like to emphasize

that this podcast is separate from my

teaching and research roles at Stanford

it is however part of my desire and

effort to bring zero cost to Consumer

information about science and science

related tools to the general public in

keeping with that theme I'd like to

thank the sponsors of today's podcast

our first sponsor is arero press arero

press is like a French press but a

French press that always Brews the

perfect cup of coffee meaning no

bitterness and excellent taste Aero

press achieves this because it uses a

very short contact time between the hot

water and the coffee and that short

contact time also means that you can

brew an excellent cup of coffee very

quickly the whole thing takes only about

3 minutes I started using an aerop press

over 10 years ago and I learned about it

from a guy named Alan Adler who's a

former Stanford engineer who's also an

inventor he developed things like the

aobi Frisbee in any event I'm a big fan

of Adler inventions and when I heard he

developed a coffee maker the Aro press I

tried it and I found that indeed it

makes the best possible tasting cup of

coffee it's also extremely small and

portable so I started using it in the

laboratory when I travel on the road and

also at home and I'm not alone in my

love of the Aeropress coffee maker with

over 55,000 fstar reviews Aeropress is

the best reviewed coffee press in the

world if you'd like to to try Aeropress

you can go to Aero press.com huberman to

get 20% off Aeropress currently ships in

the USA Canada and to over 60 other

countries around the world again that's

Aero

press.com huberman today's episode is

also brought To Us by Roa Roa makes

eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of

the absolute highest quality now I've

spent a lifetime working on the biology

of the visual system and I can tell you

that your visual system has to contend

with an enormous number of different

challenges in order for you to be able

to see clearly Roa understands this and

has developed their eyeglasses and

sunglasses so that regardless of the

conditions you're in you always see with

the utmost Clarity Roa eyeglasses and

sunglasses were initially designed for

use in sport in particular things like

running and cycling now as a consequence

Roa frames are extremely lightweight so

much so that most of the time you don't

even remember that they're on your face

they're also designed so that they don't

slip off if you get sweaty now even

though they were initially designed for

performance in sport they now have many

different frames and styles all of which

can be used in sport but also when out

to dinner at work essentially anytime

and in any setting if you'd like to try

Roa glasses you can go to Roa that's

r.com and enter the code huberman to get

20% off again that's r.com and enter the

code huberman to get 20% off and now for

my discussion with Dr David joerger Dr

David joerger welcome thanks for having

me can you tell us your definition of

growth mindset I think most people have

heard of it they have some some sense of

what it is but you've worked uh very

intensely on growth mindset for a number

of years so I'd love to know how you

define it yeah so it's it's simply the

belief that your abilities or your

potential in some domain can change um a

huge confusion is people think it means

if you try hard then you can do anything

but that's not really the idea it's it's

simply that under the right conditions

with the right support change is

possible

and you know that ends up being a pretty

powerful idea because the opposite is so

stressful right the idea that

you are static nothing about you can

change is is really kind of a stressful

idea of all the uh studies on growth

mindset um including yours ones that

you've participated in um what one or

two kind of highlevel results um stand

out to you as the most striking

surprising exciting or meaningful and

here I will encourage you to discard

with attribution we know that um or

everyone should know that Carol dwac is

the originator of the growth mindset

idea um as a field and she deserves um

tremendous credit for that so yeah um so

when you stand back from the field given

that it's it's mushroomed into this very

large field now and you look at that

research which results kind of stand out

as like wow that's really cool really

meaningful people should know about that

what stands out to me a lot first of all

is just the field experiments that the

idea that you can distill a complex idea

about the brain about malleability you

can give it to a young person at a time

when they're

vulnerable and that that can give them

hope and then they can do better at

school or whatever so our 2019 paper in

nature uh that Carol Greg Walton Angela

Duckworth a lot of us collaborated on

took a very short growth mindset

intervention two sessions about 25

minutes each for ninth graders and we

found kids were eight nine months later

more likely to get good grades uh by

10th grade more likely to be in the hard

math classes and the unpublished results

find effects four years later on

graduating high school with colle ready

courses from a short intervention

happened you know just one or two times

no reinforcement so so that there's a

lot of reasons why that's true that

sounds magical and and outrageous and

there are a lot of mechanisms but that

just demonstrates the overall value of

the phenomenon and we in that study we

did everything we possibly could to

address legitimate skepticism right are

we collecting and processing the data in

ways that could bias it no third party

is it are we handpicking schools where

you could get the best effects no random

sample of schools did we post talk

decide on the analyses that would make

the results look the greatest no

pre-registered so that's a good like

okay this phenomenon is

not something that falls apart in the

hands of anyone else besides a select

few researchers that's really and we can

go into that but that doesn't explain

the mechanisms and I think that there

are a lot of interesting growth mindset

mechanism studies my personal favorite

is a very

underappreciated kind of like indie rock

study by David newbound and Carol DW

that David did uh when he was a graduate

student at Stanford um and it's on

defensiveness versus remediation and the

basic idea is in a fixed mindset the

idea that your intelligence cannot

change you are the way you are it can't

change

um your goal in that fixed mindset is to

defend your ego to like hide your

deficiencies or any flaws because if

they're fixed and then they're revealed

then it labels you for life in some way

as less than shame worthy Etc right in a

growth mindset though mistake is like

part of the process it's it's just an

opportunity to grow so David took that

idea and then set up a

study and I think I have the details

right where undergraduates did a task

they all did poorly they were getting 20

30% correct on this task and the

question is what do you do before you do

your second dry how do you cope with

that initial failure and he found that

both fixed and mindset participants

wanted to recover their self-esteem so

you do poorly you feel like crap what am

I going to do to feel better about

myself in a fixed mindset they looked

downward so the people getting a 25 look

at the people who got a 12 like I'm

twice as good as these losers right in a

growth mindset they look at the people

getting an 85 or 90 what what are they

doing what are their strategies how can

I

improve both of them then recovered

self-esteem and look the same at post

test and I think about that a lot like

how often in our

society does something happen to us and

we feel like garbage and you have a

choice like am I going to look down on

other people and say at least I'm not as

bad as these losers or am I going to say

like how am I going to get better and I

I just I love that because think of a

ninth grader who bombs their Algebra

test am I like a no good dumb at math

loser who's not going anywhere in life

well at least I'm not that burnout right

or is it

like how is anyone getting an A in this

class I'm not getting an a what's

happening what what can I learn from

them so the open openness and

willingness to

self-improve I think is the underwriting

mechanism and I and hardly anyone cites

that study but I think about it all the

time and it's the kind of thing that I

like from being honest that's the

mindset I want like kids they have as

they go through life very interesting

I'm going to ask you more about this

looking down or looking up yeah um in

terms of performance but before I do

that I have questions about these brief

uh 25 minute I think you said

interventions yeah sometimes 25

sometimes we do two sessions each about

20 25 yeah can you give us a sense of

what those interventions look like I

mean it's incredible these two sessions

have positive effects lasting up to four

years and perhaps even Beyond yeah um

maybe just a top Contour of uh some of

what these kids hear during those

sessions yeah I mean so the first thing

to realize is

that they're short and they have to do

two things in order to have long-lasting

effects one is I have to convince you to

think differently at the end of the

session so I just have to persuade you

over the course of 25 minutes to have a

different mindset that's sometimes hard

but then even if I that you then might

have months or years between when I did

that and when the outcome is measured so

how could you remember it and apply it

and how many 25 minute experiences in

your life you no recollection of right I

have lots so I think I think people are

skeptical of the mindset style of

interventions for two different I think

legitimate reasons like I remember a

very famous statistician came to my

office at at UT Austin and was like I

just don't understand these

interventions I mean the other day I

spent 25 minutes telling my son all the

things he has to change and like how

he's doing everything wrong and he

didn't remember at 5 minutes later how

could someone remember your thing four

years later and I was like did you hear

yourself talking like I'm sure the way

you talked to your son was like totally

condescending and bad so the the first

step is in that 25 minutes how are you

communicating in a way where someone's

ears are open where they're not feeling

talked down to ashamed humiliated

Etc but then the second step is saying

that to you at a time when it's possible

for there to be a what we call a

recursive process or a Snowball Effect

that's going to happen over time so

that's the stage setting okay so now

let's take the first part 25 minutes

what am I going to say to you right um

there are three big things that are in

every intervention and the term that

Greg Walton the Stanford Professor uh

colleague collaborator um uses is wise

interventions that's the umbrella term

of which growth mindset is

one and a good one but it's just one of

many for wise interventions we often do

the following three things first is we

present some new scientific information

some idea that almost in like a Gladwell

way is not is not obvious and intuitive

to the reader but feels like new

information and useful information so

the first is a scientific the second is

we present participants with stories

from people like them who've used those

ideas in their lives and found them

useful so in the concrete case of ninth

graders getting growth mindset it's like

10th 11th 12th graders who previously

felt dumb learned a growth mindset then

felt better that's it's more complicated

than that that's the basic idea and last

we don't just tell them the stories we

ask third for participants to to author

a story so they write a narrative about

a time when they struggled a time when

they doubted themselves and then

remembered this idea that people can

change like my brain can grow Etc so the

three points are like scientific

information stories or the the technical

term is descriptive Norms so you're

giving

people information about what's normal

for people like you and then the third

is the writing which we call saying is

believing uh which is a a term that

that's a popularized version of a term

that came from classic social

psychologist Josh Aronson Elliot Aronson

who who found in the work on cognitive

dissonance 30 40 years ago that one of

the best ways to change someone's mind

about something is to ask them to try to

persuade somebody

else so that we do those sort of things

so what is the science and the growth

mindset that's where we draw on the

metaphor that the brain is like a muscle

that um just like muscles get stronger

when they're challenged and can you know

recover so too does the brain get

smarter when it's pushed and challenged

in a certain way this idea that writing

a story about one self or about others

in which one succeeds can be useful

toward building growth mindset in you

know in basic terms I think that's what

what you're what you're referring to I

think is interesting it sort of suggests

that that we have brain circuit that

underly growth mindset type behaviors

and thinking and that just storing into

those can potentially um lead to better

decision-making and behavior I mean

obviously it can't create new

skills um simply because you know I

can't write a story about me being able

to dunk a basketball and then expect

that I can dunk a basketball because at

present I can't but the idea of uh

writing a story about um the effort

going into duny basketball and learning

how and then Translating that to a more

um realistic sense of of ability that

allows me to then go practice more is

that sort of what you're referring to

yeah so the in in a 2016 paper in pnas

Greg Walton and I explained these types

of interventions as a we call them a lay

Theory intervention and the idea there

is that lay people like not not

scientific theories but just our

intuitive theories for explaining the

world help us anticipate what something

means so the the idea from basic

developmental psychology is that human

beings are walking around with kind of

Prior belief about objects about motion

about you know number and then later

about complex social structures like

whether people are looking down on me

how where I stand relative to others and

also lay little lay Theory about

adversity what does it mean when I have

to put in effort what does it mean when

I

fail so the idea is that if you if you

understand the theory someone has then

you'll understand the meaning they'll

make about a future

experience um and therefore well and the

reason meaning matters is because the

the way you interpret something then

affects how you respond to it right so

if I see someone and they're doing

something innocuous but I interpret it

as a threat do I call the police you

know do I run away

that's my interpretation that's causing

it right um and so the there's a long

way of saying it turns out one of the

best ways to preset someone's meaning

and give them a different theory is to

give them a different

story uh stories are kind of like

theories in

motion this is why you know like what's

the point of war in peace right war in

peace is is really a theory of of great

leaders in the war um and there's any

English phds I'm sure they'll tell me

that that's oversimplified version of

what to sto was doing but you learn the

theory in a narrative way right so this

is the classic idea throughout human

history great writers and authors give

us theories through narrative right and

so we're just taking that simple human

fact and doing it in a 10-minute

activity and the lay theory in a

person's mind that when things are

difficult it can

change can be taught with a very simple

narrative which is the this person or

even I experienced difficult difficulty

on something that mattered to me that

difficulty didn't determine my entire

future because actually there were steps

that I could take in order to like make

a difference here are the steps that I

took and then it improved so it's a very

like the simplest freay tags pyramid and

even though that simple story is

available to all of us you could look in

culture and see it you also see the

opposite lay Theory all the time and so

without absent intervention it's not

like people couldn't end up with a

growth mindset but they wouldn't kind of

know what to sort for or what to look

for so we give them some touch points

for very simple of like frustration

things can change then they got better

and we think that once people do that in

our writing exercises they're more

likely to see that pattern out in the

world and if you see that enough and

then you take the actual steps to get

better then it starts becoming true for

you and that's what I called the

recursive process that you we give

people a starting hypothesis about the

world they go out try things struggle

fail it

improves then they see that that's true

and then they can keep acting on that

over time I feel like so much of getting

better at things

involves reappraising the um stress or

anxiety response you know the um the

friction that one feels when they can't

perform something well or when things

feel overwhelming or confusing um and I

think the analogies to physical exercise

apply but I feel like they're Limited in

the sense that I like the the idea that

the brain is like a muscle that it can

grow and get stronger I think the um the

key difference to my mind is that you

know like working out with weights um

you get some sense of the result you're

going to get because there's like a lot

of blood flow into the muscle so it's

like a hint of what's possible um with

cardiovas ular exercise like if we run

hard up a hill there's that moment where

your lungs are burning Etc and anyone

who understands exercise knows that

that's the signal for adaptation such

the next time you can do the same thing

without the burning of the lungs right

um when it comes to mental work and

learning I

think we immediately assume that if

we're not performing well if we're

getting confused or overwhelmed that

somehow um we're doing it wrong yeah um

as opposed to stimulating the growth

right and so I are there any studies

that point going to um Bridging the

relationship between the physiology you

know that the stress response and the

mindset that allows one to say okay this

is really hard and I keep failing and

failing and failing at this math at this

language learning at writing this essay

whatever it is and that's exactly what

I'm supposed to be doing it's like the

burning of the lungs or it's like the

failure to complete another repetition

um in the in the gym yeah I mean I think

that that you're right um you know the

standard growth mindset message does

have reappraisal components specifically

around something Carol D has called

effort beliefs which is very simply the

belief that if it's hard it means you're

doing the wrong thing and that follows

naturally from the fixed mindset idea

that ability can't change and I think

it's very important to point

out the centrality of that effort belief

because people have tried to apply

growth mindset but simplified it in a

way of just saying uh basically try

harder right or I believe in you if you

try hard enough you can do anything

right but if your natural inclination is

to view the need for effort as a sign

that you are doing the wrong thing which

is that's the default

interpretation uh then people are going

to quit right if if I tell if you

believe effort out to you as lacking

potential and then I say you need to try

hard I'm saying you don't have

potential that basic Insight is very

poorly misunderstood in the field and

it's led to tons of misapplications of

Carol's work and then people like well

this thing doesn't work well okay but

you haven't addressed the effort belief

so I think that the first type of

response to what you what You' said

is you can't just abstractly tell

someone your brain as a muscle and

assume that magically then in the midst

of stress and frustration and confusion

and and all those negative experiences

that you're going to immediately say yes

I love doing this and this is great um

but then there's also the physiological

component as you're saying so when we're

stressed frustrated you know confused

your heart starts racing maybe your

palms get sweaty right you start your

breathing you know starts getting

heavier uh my my daughter is 13 before

like a cello audition it's like I have

butterflies on my stomach I don't you

know what does this mean and and I think

that growth mindset research didn't

always deal with the visceral experience

of stress and

frustration and I think in a world in

which someone hears the growth mindset

message and says yes now I'm going to go

challenge myself I'm going to be I'm

going to embrace stress and frustration

do the mental equivalent of you know

running ladders or running up a hill

then they feel that stress but if they

don't know how to interpret

that they'll they'll it's like the

growth mindset isn't going to get them

to the skill development right or at

least to the mental well-being of

feeling like they have confidence and

can do well so um in some in some

research that we've done in the last few

years what we've tried to do is to marry

together the growth mindset idea with

great work originally coming out of Ali

crumb and Jeremy Jameson's Labs who were

building on lots of great appraisal

psychologists Wendy Mendes and others to

say okay in the inevitable experience

where

if you if you fully believe our growth

mindset and then now you load your plate

with challenges but now you've got a

physiological stress

response how are you going to appraise

that better and that's kind of been the

New Frontier of growth mindset uh work

in the last four or five years yeah

could you tell us more about this uh

stresses enhancing mindset I think it's

a really interesting one especially when

it's woven in with the growth mindset

yeah so let me tell you kind

of that on its own and then and then the

the story of how how we had this Insight

is actually kind of interesting too uh

but just the basic idea as um you know

people who've heard about ali crumb

would know and Jeremy Jameson is that

you know a an experience of your heart

racing your palm sweating anxiety in

your

stomach that is itself a new stressor

that then needs to be interpreted and

appraised by the person experiencing

it um that idea on its own is is kind of

revolutionary for people people tend to

think that your physiological arousal is

this objective experience that is

universally bad Ali Crum calls that a

stress is debilitating

belief um and I think that's a good

that's a good label for it it's this

idea

that that heart racing Palm sweaty

butterflies in your stomach is a sign of

your impending failure in Doom and and

it will always interfere with your

performance and and and the implication

therefore is if you were about to do

well on whatever you're doing going to

do then you wouldn't feel that way right

um Ali crumb calls us being stressed

about being

stressed and that I think it's a really

common experience right now where people

are like wow you know if I was a

confident good person who was about to

do well I wouldn't be sitting here

feeling so stressed about how stressed I

am and it becomes this metacognitive

layered Loop of of just being stuck in

your own mind and and and interpreting

your arousal in the most negative

possible light so um that stress is

debilitating belief

doesn't people aren't like wrong for

having come to that belief because it's

everywhere in our culture one thing I do

in my class A lot is I just have people

Google image search um Stress Management

memes and first of all a surprising

number about cats I don't know why

people think cat pictures are like the

way to convey complex scientific ideas

like it'll be like a cat with like a

cookie jar and it'll be like growth

mindset I don't understand what that

what the point of that is um but you

know page two or three after all the

cats then you get to a lot of things

that are you'll see a person with a

battery that's empty and it's like they

didn't d-stress or 10 tips for

de-stressing and it'll be like go on a

walk drink chamomile tea like and the

the the underlying implication is that

if you're stressed then you need to

distract yourself you need to get rid of

that stress but an alternative

explanation in the growth mindset world

is well maybe you have something that's

very important to you and you've pushed

yourself to embrace some Challenge in a

really admirable way and that has filled

your plate in some way the like if I was

about to give a presentation to a senior

vice president at work and I'm stressed

about it I should not like go take a

bubble bath and like go for a walk like

I should get ready to kick ass the

presentation you

know and so I think what what alium and

others have identified is that you can

think differently about that stress you

can say this is actually a sign that I'm

preparing to optimize my performance and

maybe the heart racing

isn't my body being afraid of damage

maybe it's my body getting more

oxygenated blood to my brain and my

muscles to like help me do really well

and that's called a stress be enhancing

belief and what's so interesting I think

about this work and I want to give

credit to lots of other people um is

that if you're in the stress's

debilitating mindset you don't realize

that there's an alternative you just

think that that's the way it is so it

never occurs to you to say oh this

stress is helping me right but once you

tell people this what happens is in our

studies we actually see a change in

stress physiology it it changing your

mindset about stress in turn changes how

your body reacts which then becomes a

different stressor that you can

interpret um and so the big Insight was

pairing the these ideas about reframing

stress as an an inevitable Force that's

going to destroy your goal Pursuit into

a resource to be cultivated and pairing

that together with the first step which

is the growth mindset that causes you to

like be open to the challenge in the

first place I'd like to take a brief

break and acknowledge our sponsor ag1 by

now most of you have heard me tell my

story about how I've been taking ag1

once or twice a day every day since 2012

and indeed that's true I started taking

ag1 and I still take ag1 once or twice a

day because it gives me vitamins and

minerals that I might not be getting

enough of from Whole Foods that I eat as

well as adaptogens and micronutrients

those adaptogens and micronutrients are

really critical because even though I

strive to eat most of my foods from

unprocessed or minimally processed whole

Foods it's often hard to do so

especially when I'm traveling and

especially when I'm busy so by drinking

a packet of ag1 in the morning and often

times also again in the afternoon or

evening I'm ensuring that I'm getting

everything I need I'm covering all of my

foundational nutritional needs and I

like so many other people that take ag1

regularly just report feeling better and

that shouldn't be surprising because it

supports gut health and of course gut

health supports immune system health and

brain health and it's supporting a ton

of different cellular and organ

processes that all interact with one

another so while certain supplements are

really directed towards one specific

outcome like sleeping better or being

more alert ag1 really is foundational

nutritional support it's really designed

to support all of the systems of your

brain and body that relate to mental

health and physical health if you'd like

to try ag1 you can go to drink a1.com

huberman to claim a special offer

they'll give you five free travel packs

with your order plus a year supply of

vitamin D3 K2 again that's drink a1.com

huberman I feel like so much of what

human beings struggle with um such as

learning and performance our

relationship to stress

Etc could be resolved if we could

overcome the deficit in language um

here's what I'm thinking um we're

talking about reframing stress to make

it performance enhancing as opposed to

Performance

diminishing I wonder if we replace the

word stress with just like levels of

arousal but then people hear arousal and

they think certain kinds of arousal so

what we want to do is you know the way I

think about is like a Continuum of of

Readiness but then that doesn't work

because Readiness could be Readiness for

Sleep which is a low level of arousal

you don't want to be highly alert and

then you're not ready for sleep right

yeah so there's a real deficit of

language where I think if there was some

other word I don't I can't come up with

it on the Fly where you know one's

internal level of

Readiness as opposed to stress and maybe

it looks a lot like autonomic arousal

where heart rate is increased and blood

pressure is increased and people would

say oh yeah that's my body being ready

for something as opposed to stress about

doing it yeah and it it it's kind of a

trivial um you know recasting of stress

on the one hand but in terms of you know

kids learning about life and stress and

arousal and these internal signals and

adults learning about those and

incorporating those into their life

goals I think it would be pretty

meaningful and I I again I don't a

solution to this but I feel like

everyone hear stress is bad you hear

stress is enhancing okay great but I

think it's really about developing a

language that lets us interpret what's

going on in our bodies and compare that

to what we are facing in the moment and

just decide is this well matched or

poorly matched to what we need to do is

it great for going to sleep is it great

for learning is it great for um catching

that train that's you know soon to leave

the station and I just wonder um why the

deficit in language yeah I think it's a

profound question

because small changes in

language perpetuate problematic lay

theories because they have the baggage

on them and I think that let's think

this through so um what the

psychophysiologists like to point out is

that there's a distinction between the

stressor which is the let's call it the

internally or externally imposed demand

could be something thwarting your goals

or the exam the difficult conversation

the um the going to for some people

going to the doctor or the dentist the

hard conversation with you know with

somebody you care about it could be um

or a physical stressor right like a

football game or you know running a

marathon right so anything that imposes

demands on your body and mind and

therefore will require

resources whether like you know

metabolic resources to do well that's a

stressor okay then there's your

appraisal of it that's what you name it

how you interpret it how you frame it in

your mind and then there's your

response people in general conflate the

stressor with a stress response when

they say stress they're like I'm really

stressed right now well what really what

you mean is that there were stressors

you appraised them as more than you can

handle and then you had a threat type

stress response which means that your

body is preparing for damage and defeat

and that is like an inheritance of how

the you know sympathetic nervous system

evolved which was to Keep Us Alive from

threats mainly physical threats and so

if you have a stressor some de demand

praise is something you cannot handle

and then your threat type response your

body's basically assuming you're going

to lose whatever physical fight you're

in like the bear is going to you know

tear you apart and then your main goal

at that point is to stay alive and like

bleed out more slowly right so you end

up with more blood kept centrally in the

body cavity Less in the extremities

right the body releases cortisol because

it's an anti-inflammatory it's going to

like help with tissue repair 45 minutes

down the road so there a whole like

Cascade of physiological responses that

come in part from the mental appraisal

that this stressor is more than you can

handle now we're we're very

rarely confronted with those kinds of

physical stressors these days it's often

social stressors but a lot of social

stressers are a threat of social death

right like a ninth grader coming into

high school getting bullied by all their

friends and are excluded because the eth

their friends in eighth grade now treat

you like you don't exist right the

threat of social death is pretty bad

right or you're a new legal associate

and you've filed your first brief and

all the partners are like this is

garbage we're not going to send it to

the client right like all of a sudden

you're on trial socially in front of

these people who could cut you loose at

any time that's a very vibrant social

stressor that evokes the same kind of

physiological response as we suppose a

physical one would right and so we're

very careful to distinguish in our

studies a stressor from the stress

response because often the stressor

isn't really a bad thing like you know

getting critical feedback on your first

legal brief as a junior associate well

that could be awesome it could be like

oh great I have these awesome Partners

at my great Law Firm are now giving me

personalized feedback that's useful or

I'm a ninth grader and I have to make

new friends but I don't know that's

maybe you need new friends like that

could be a good thing right and and same

with a test same with you know

presentation to senior vice president

whatever it is

stressor often in in our daily lives are

not good or bad now of course there's

traumatic stressors that you know are

really bad for people

um but then the appraisal is really

where there's a lot of

Leverage and if you think that the

stressor is inevitably bad and that your

response to it is always harmful then

it's really hard for you to think that

you have the resources to meet the

demand that you're facing and you end up

in this threat

cycle so in a lot of our research what

we try to do is give people a different

story to tell themselves about a

stressor and about their response so

that way they end up in a better place

now I don't know what that better

language is but I will say

I once gave a talk at a middle school in

a high school and I used slides that

Jeremy Jameson who was my collaborator

had sent me that had the word arousal on

it on every single slide and that was a

big mistake in a room of like middle

school kids right I did not I I strongly

recommend different

terminology uh so and I should I was a

middle school teacher I should have

known that you can't say that word in a

in a high school so right yeah I think

that that there needs to be a better

language I think if people um of all

ages understood the autonomic nervous

system this aspect of our nervous system

that um is on a Continuum that leads us

to either be I guess at the extremes you

would say um coma would be the deepest

state of right parasympathetic yeah non-

arousal then ascending from you know

very you know deeply asleep lightly

asleep groggy awake uh awake and alert

um awake and alert to the point of being

you know highly alert um and then you

get into kind of uh low-level panic and

then allout panic attack right I that's

kind of the Continuum the autonomic

Continuum I I feel like if people

understood that and they and they could

simply ask okay where where is my body

and mind along that Continuum and then

compare it to whatever it is they face

then uh we'd have a better sense of

whether or not we were in the correct

maybe even optimal state for for dealing

with challenge or uh or not and along

those lines what is the optimal internal

state for dealing with challenge that is

um just outside our ability um you know

maybe in an exam where I can naturally

get 85% of the answers correct but maybe

15% I think this is what the machine

learning and AI tells us is probably the

appropriate level of difficulty for

something in order to best learn I know

that's probably depends on if you're

motivated and if you know a lot of

things like but yeah I mean I think if

you think of the autonomic arousal on

just one axis

mhm what where where you start running

into problems we find is is that I think

you're right that there's like you know

coma to like some arousal or meaningful

arousal but the it's the middle to the

end part where there's two different

tracks and One Track is very high

arousal but you're terrified of the

damage and defeat and the humiliation

and the failure and so that's that's um

demanding all your attention that's what

we call threat type stress there's

another version that is again very high

arousal but that's like you're stoked

and you feel confident you're going to

do well and that's also very high

arousal and if you just look at arous of

measures like pre-ejection period right

um could you explain pre-ejection period

um it's it's just a it's a simple

measure uh of just the sympathetic

nervous system that we use in all of our

studies so sympathetic just remind folks

is one aspect of the autonomic nervous

system um has nothing to do with

sympathy just the more alert means more

more contribution of the sympathetic arm

of the autonomic nervous system sorry

it's a mouthful and then um less alert

would be um more contribution of the

parasympathetic arm of the autonomic

nervous system and P is just a measure

that we use in our laboratory studies um

and and another could have been like

skin conductance how it's which is a

about the wet coming out of your skin

and then we use an electrode to figure

out how much is there um that uh those

kinds of measures can't distinguish what

we call a challenge type State that's

almost like people have heard of flow

where you're

optimally balanced between important

challenge you care about and resources

and ability to you know overcome or at

least deal with that challenge on the

positive side in the other higher rousel

state which is threat and that's again

you're highly everything's highly

engaged your whole stress system but you

don't think you can deal with it so the

that becomes really important because um

here's a very practical example if you

look at devices people are wearing to

detect their stress that might say high

or low arousal but it can't distinguish

between super good positive challenge

type stress and really negative threat

type stress one of the examples that

psychophysiologists like to say a lot I

got this from Jeremy Jameson is imagine

you're at the top of a double black

diamond about to ski down if you are a

good skier your heart rate isn't

probably low you're probably amped up

you're stoked you're like this is

awesome I can't wait to do this you're

fully confident you're going to make all

the turns and have a

blast if you're a terrible skier you're

just imagining the yard sale that's

about to happen you're about to crash

you're going to fall down the mountain

you might die also High arousal if

you're wearing like the regular watch

that will just detect sympathetic n

nervous system activation it wouldn't be

able to tell the difference between

really stoked to do something positive

and terrified of like crashing and dying

and so we I like that example because

often in social situations or

performance situations you you want to

be high arousal to perform your best but

you you want your perception of that

demand the demand that's requiring your

body to respond to be matched with an

equal belief or what we call appraisal

of your resource to meet that

demand um so I think my answer to the

question is is well I think it's not so

much about what's the optimal amount of

Demand right so that the

85% likelihood of success rate problems

are that's tight trading demand I think

it's how do you

pair a a necessary level of demand for

whatever goal you have with the

perceptions of the resources and

sometimes those resources are your

internal

like just confidence you know or

sometimes it's your ability to

reappraise and other times it's material

resources like do you have a it could be

in in real life do you have a friend

that you could turn to or it might be

have you been trained in a way where

you're able to overcome this you have

enough time so resources can be a big

bucket and that's kind of the magic is

because resources are appraised by the

mind in our interventions we can give

you a different way of viewing your

resources so that way people feel like

they can meet the demand and that pushes

them them from a threat type response

into a more challenge type response it

makes sense if I think that um the

stress for lack of a better term and the

effort is going to get me where I need

to go eventually I'm going to be far

more willing to invest the effort yeah

especially if I'm motivated I want the I

want the thing that lies at the Finish

Line you basically take the demand which

was your intense stress and worry and

turn it into a resource in your own mind

and it it turns out that that actually

helps people cope at a physiological

level got it got it

um we've been talking a lot about kind

of the um the nuts and bolts of of

growth mindset and stress is

performance-enhancing uh mindset maybe

we could um shift a little bit to the

discussion about what you call the

mentor mindset and and as we do that

maybe we'll weave back in some of these

some of these Concepts yeah yeah your

book 10 to 25 um focuses heavily on uh

social appraisal self appraisal

basically the idea that we want to be

liked and we don't want to be disliked

and it um and it hurts when people say

mean things about us or when we hear

negative feedback especially if it's

provided publicly But ultimately what we

do with that information is what

determines you know whether or not we

grow and move forward yeah um everyone

loves a great report card nobody likes a

poor report card so so um tell us about

Mentor mindset and both for folks in the

10 to 25 age range but also for

everybody you know um because it's clear

that this impacts us throughout our

lifespan yeah so the the the work I

write about comes out of a dissertation

led by Jeff Cohen at Stanford in the 90s

with Claude steel and they coined a term

that they called the mentors dilemma and

the mentors dilemma is the idea that if

you're a leader a manager a coach

teacher whatever it is parent it's very

hard to simultaneously criticize

somebody's work and motivate them to

overcome and embrace that

criticism and the reason it's a dilemma

is

because the leader on the one

hand wants to maintain high standards by

being critical maybe in order to help

the person grow but that could crush the

person's motivation the alternative is

with withhold your criticism don't say

the truth hide all the critical feedback

and be nice and super

supportive but and that meets your goal

of being friendly and caring but it

doesn't help the person grow so it feels

like we have to walk through the world

stuck between two bad choices either

you're a demanding autocratic you know

dictator who care doesn't care about

human feelings or you are a like low

standards wimp pushover that that's you

know giving in to the like wimpy demands

of the weak Next Generation and neither

of those have uniformly positive

connotations and the classic example in

Jeff's work was a student at Stanford

who writes a first draft of an essay and

then gets really harsh critical feedback

from a professor are they willing to

revise their work or do they say this

teacher hates me they're biased I

dislike them and leave the leave the

comments

unaddressed so the solution to that in

in that research on the mentors dilemma

has been to say two things one is appeal

to the very high standard you have for

someone's work but also always accompany

that appeal to the high standard with an

assurance that if they implement the

feedback and use the support that

they're capable of meeting the high

standard I like to think of it as like

if you go to the roller coaster and they

say you have to be this tall to ride

right so just saying you have to be this

tall and you're not see you later isn't

reassuring to somebody right but if you

can say here's the standard and I

believe you can meet it but it's going

to be hard that means a lot it means I'm

taking you

seriously um it means I like believe in

your growth and it's a kind of

leadership practice that makes growth

mindset be something that comes to life

and feel true it's not just an idea in

your head that you're growing it's like

I live in a social world where people

are going to push me to grow and not

leave me alone are you familiar with the

um book of the late I think the

pronunciation is Randy P for the last

lecture no he was a computer scientist

he developed a lot of um early online um

portals for kids in particular um uh

young women to learn programming I think

it was called Alice um uh and he is

known for what called the last lecture

he was diagnosed with cancer he

eventually passed away but he talked

about um in his book um lessons that

were important for life and one of the

things that he said was um the the thing

to worry about is not when your mentors

and coaches um are pushing you it's when

they stop pushing you that you should

really worry because that means they've

basically given up on you right so that

always that always rung in my in my mind

yeah that what what I call the the

person who just is is no longer

maintaining high standards for you I

call that a protector mindset that it's

it's almost like it's going to be too

much trouble to see you dealing with

stress from being pushed that I am going

to protect you from that stress I I

maybe I care about you but I'm not going

to not going to hold you to a high

standard and I see that a lot um in

coaches I see it in teachers I see it in

parents um for me the the opposite

problematic version is what I call an

enforcer mindset this is like here's the

standard

and I'm going to hold you to it and it's

up to you to meet it or not right that's

kind of like the college professor that

says look to your left look to your

right half of you you know are going to

be gone by the end of this um for me the

solution is to think about taking the

best parts of both of those two what's

the high standards High support So

enforcer great you've got the standards

let's add your support protector you

care a lot great let's add the standards

and what Jeff Cohen and Claud steel

found in their initial study is that

students were far more likely to view

negative criticism as a sign that the

teacher cared for them if it was

accompanied by a transparent and clear

communication of these two elements of

high standards and high support if it

was just the critical feedback the

professor could have meant the same

positive thing I'm caring about you but

they didn't make it clear to the person

then then participants were less likely

to think that the that that the

professor was on their side in an artwor

in some small studies we um we showed

that even seventh graders when they get

critical feedback on their essays are

about twice as likely to implement the

teachers's critical feedback with even a

very short invocation of the high

standards and the high

support So to get to your question about

Mentor mindset at some

point I got worried that our experiment

on high standards High support messages

which we called wise feedback in those

studies would be viewed as um I don't

know like a magic phrase like I my joke

my laugh Line This is a lame laugh line

but I'm a professor so that's the best I

can do my laugh line was always I just

live in fear that Pearson and other

textbook companies are going to sell

wise feedback posted notes say they can

magically erase the achievement Gap

right and I always said that as a joke

and then two things happen one is a

popular author a guy named Dan Coyle

literally called it magic Fe back in his

book didn't site us but like you didn't

sight us no

Dan but also like magic Fe I'll say it

so you don't have to not cool

attribution is important it's just not

it's not magic at all the the the magic

of high standards and high support is

not the 18 words it's I'm taking you

seriously when a moment When You're

vulnerable and I have power over

you that is just so deeply human and so

powerful but there's nothing about the

magic words it's

the it's the experience of dignity and

respect when you are questioning whether

you are either worthy of it or going to

be given it by authorities it's

interesting we had um Dr Becky Kennedy

on here to talk about parenting yeah and

she said um many important things but

among them was the fact that um children

perhaps all people want to feel real

yeah and they want to feel safe yeah um

an important concept that I think many

people heard and and are really

internalizing I I know I am um for sure

and this idea of feeling real has to do

with um not just feeling seen but that U

people believe us even if they disagree

with us yeah like they they believe us

she has another thing that's super

profound is uh the the kind of two

things argument that I can both have

high expectations for my kids and love

my kids and I think that's a very good

version of wise feedback Mentor mindset

that as parents it either feels like I

can expect a lot of my kids but then I'm

a monster and they're going to yell at

me or I'm going to be a pushover and

then they're going to be unruly and I

think part of her wisdom is to help

explain to parents how you can do both

of those things and indeed one can right

I think but it requires having a kind of

dynamic stance or dynamic mindset as the

the teacher the leader the the coach the

parent I'd like to take a brief break

and acknowledge one of our sponsors

waking up waking up is a meditation app

that offers hundreds of guided

meditations mindfulness trainings yoga

needer sessions and more I started

meditating over three decades ago and

what I found in the insing years is that

sometimes it was very easy for me to do

my daily meditation practice I was just

really diligent but then as things would

get more stressful which of course is

exactly when I should have been

meditating more my meditation practice

would fall off with waking up they make

it very easy to find and consistently

use a given meditation practice it has

very convenient reminders and they come

in different durations so even if you

just have one minute or five minutes to

meditate you can still get your

meditation in which research shows is

still highly beneficial in addition to

the many different meditations on the

waking up app they also have yoga Nedra

sessions which are a form of non-sleep

deep rest that I personally find is

extremely valuable for restoring mental

and physical Vigor I tend to do a Yoga

Nidra lasting anywhere from 10 to 20

minutes at least once a day and if I

ever wake up in the middle of the night

and I need to fall back asleep I also

find Yoga Nidra to be extremely useful

if you'd like to try the waking up app

you can go to waking up.com huberman to

try a free 30-day trial again that's

waking up.com huberman I want to get

back to some of the the mechanics of had

to go about that but why do you think

this stuff is so hard like like if we

think about um I don't know kind of a

curbside

evolutionary uh Theory um meaning I

don't have any formal training in

evolutionary psychology you could step

back and say like I don't know maybe we

just used to be so busy from morning to

sleep that we didn't really have time to

do anything except the stuff we needed

to complete in order to feed our

families and take care of our our

communities Etc and and now a number of

things are outsourced and um and so here

we have this notion of strivings but

then again you know we went from Hunter

gather uh culture to writing war in

peace and everything else um

Technologies of all kinds so you know

there must be something in the human

brain that um causes us to strive and

what we're really talking about here is

striving in our relationship with

striving um so if we were to step back

and just say

okay what do you think determines

whether or not someone uh feels they can

do better is it early success you know I

they tried at something I mean everyone

most everyone I assume who tries to

learn to walk walks um learns to speak

speaks you know they're rare exceptions

but um you know what do you think this

whole thing about strivings is about and

when we talk about growth mindset

stresses enhancing mindset the mentor

mindset um I mean are we trying to get

back to activating systems that are

hardwired within us and that have been

kind of um masked by daily life um or

are we trying to kind of better

ourselves and our species through you

know like really trying to do something

that's never been done in human history

before right it's a big it's a big

question it's a big question but I mean

I think that that all I can do is

conjecture you know as a scientist but

the um I'm often reminded of something I

heard from Ron doll who's a

neuroscientist at Berkeley and not

Ronald doll the the children's not rald

doll Ron Ron doll although Ron is just

just so such an awesome guy it's like

just polymath who can do everything and

just so curious and generous uh he uh

what he always says to me is like look

is like David what do you think the

human brain wants to do like I I don't

know feel good he's like no wants to

feel better and I think what he was

trying to get me to see is that it's the

kind of pursuit of some kind of Delta um

and a change yeah a change from the

state and and I think the argument is

that even if you are if what you thought

was your biggest need if that was

satisfied then there's always like

another thing I think as part of the

argument and

so but it's also this idea that if you

think of the human brain as trying to

learn at all times like what is it

trying to learn and the at least in the

animal studies as you know often it's

like how do I either feel better or

avoid you know feeling worse in a lot of

ways and I think that as I think about

adolescence that's a period where your

theory of how to feel better is

dramatically changing because you're no

longer fully cared for by adults right

all of a sudden your criteria for

feeling good about yourself is your

social standing not just in your parents

eyes but in the eyes of the community

and the mill you you're a part of and

and that comes a lot from your

contribution value if you think in our

evolutionary history like the being

ostracized and alone is certain death in

ancient human culture

right I mean you can't the tribes

wandering around in the savannah you're

alone at a minimum you have no one to

watch out for you when you fall asleep

and so and you humans can't sleep in

trees because our muscles aren't don't

contract when we're uh asleep unlike

animals and so you're just Exposed on

the ground if you're alone eventually

you're going to die right so the the

fear of moving from a parents taking

care of your safety all night to now you

have to trust peers to take care of you

and watch over you

that comes to the Forefront of young

people's minds like kind of the minute

puberty strikes and so what it means to

feel better often is that I'm socially

valued by the group there's something

they're going to keep me around for some

reason now they don't often keep score

in an explicit way I mean now things are

on social media maybe they're kind of

keeping score but like the rules of how

you're doing socially are so implicit

you have to read between the lines

they're inferred social hierarchy is

very complex for adolescence

and so they overdo it thinking

through like how how am I standing like

where am I relative to others now that

process is started by puberty and we

know from lots of species work that it

then leads to changes in the brain so

the dop energic system of course is like

driven in part by changes in Gad

maturation Ron likes to talk about these

great studies of song birds of how do

they learn the meeting calls

and if song birds don't have

testosterone when they are learning the

mating calls they don't do the like

over-the-top obsessive practice so they

don't Master them and then they don't M

and they die alone interesting yeah I'm

familiar with that um with that

literature there's a great uh

unfortunately now passed away uh

biologist who was first in the UK and

then uh was up at UC Davis uh Peter

maror and who studied the U the bird

song learning yeah and it's it's um it's

amazing yeah it's amazing work and it

mimics a lot of the uh the development

of human speech although not exactly

like there's this babbling phase yeah

where babies and birds experiment with

different to tones and they're they're

learning to use the fings and larynx or

you know in Birds it's a slightly

different system yeah and some birds are

seasonal singers but I I wasn't familiar

with this result that the testosterone

drives a kind of obsessive uh practice

Yeah it's obessive practice in order to

demonstrate well status but really your

value I mean there it's mate value right

right but I think the same thing is true

for lots of things that teenagers trial

could be playing guitar you know uh

could be gymnastics I mean think about

how many of their Olympic athletes are

like 14 right and they're waking up at 4

in the morning they're practicing

obsessively how many like pro-social

hackers who take down evil foreign

governments right are teenagers right

there things that that take so much

practice and so much learning happen at

the exact same age as adults are saying

these kids are lazy and don't want to

work right so I tend to focus on get to

your question about why do people strive

to get better I think in adolescence you

look around in your social millu and see

what counts for status not in a

superficial way it sometimes happen but

often in a deeply meaningful way what am

I going to bring to the table one would

hope and then well I remember Junior

High School being far more superficial

but I'm 48 so I remembered it in the

kind of the John Hughes film era where

people were very divided in terms of

jocks and skateboarders and rockers and

nerds now it seems a little bit more

Mish mashed um but I think also people

will uh in adolescence I feel like um

kids find their Niche and then try and

Excel within that Niche yeah you know as

opposed to high school or Junior High

School being um one huge hierarchy yeah

you know there's kind of these sub

hierarchies yeah Dan McFarland is a

sociologist at Stanford did this really

interesting study with the ad Health

Data and you turns out you could

characteriz the social hierarchies in

different high schools by kind of single

pyramid high schools versus multi-

pyramid high schools and there's way

better adjustment in the multi- pyramid

high schools because there's many roots

to status The evolutionary psychologist

Bruce Ellis talks about having many

roles and I I like that because in the

old model you know if if there's one

pyramid and you're kind of near the top

but not at the top you've got a lot of

incentive to destroy reputations be you

know Mean Girls type of behavior

um Bob Ferris sociologist at Davis finds

that the most bullying in high school is

the people that are like the 6th to 85th

percentile on popularity it's like

you're near the top but not all the way

at the top yeah this Maps very well to

Robert spolsky's work on primate troops

yeah yeah the alphas are stressed but

the the sub Alphas are they have options

yeah um and this is true for female and

male animals um just as it's true we

were talking about testosterone a few

minutes ago an obsessive practice

I'll remind people that um in women uh

they actually have more adult women have

more testosterone than they do estrogen

if you look at a pure nanogram per

deciliter comparison it's just that

overall it tends to be on average less

than in men so the the statement about

testosterone and obsessive um uh

learning uh or efforts to learn it I

have to imagine is not restricted to

males or females and I think I

understand as a man praising

testosterone that I could come across

but I I so I always need to remember

that the research is is very interesting

on

t uh Evelyn Crohn's lab um did these

great studies where they had kids

starting age 10 to like 25 and they had

them come in the lab twice and they took

testosterone levels but also had them do

a bunch of tasks in the scanner and you

can look at nucleus incumbant prefrontal

cortex Etc areas associated with reward

yeah yeah and pursuit motivation yeah

yeah and um and they also have them do

risk-taking tasks and what they find is

that in both boys and girls testosterone

goes up over time starts a little

earlier in girls because going to Ary is

one or two years before boys but the

change score from one point to the next

was equally predictive of neural

reactivity during risk-taking tasks for

both boys and girls so although boys end

up with higher tea throughout

adolescence um the the increase is

equally predictive which is another way

of saying it's just as important for

these social learning things in girls

and and T by the way is just a a really

testosterone testosterone is a really

good proxy other hormones are involved

too they're just more complicated like

DHEA you could um study as well but

that's part of the same metabolic

pathway of cortisol and testosterone so

it's just Messier and harder to

interpret so it's not we're not making

claims specifically about testosterone

it's just like a really good proxy for

where you are in gonat maturation in

both boys and girls gonat maturation

really matters for this kind of status

social seeking part of your brain yeah

so if I understand correctly the slope

of the line of one's uh testosterone

increase for both boys and girls is

predictive of striving if it's a steep

upward you know yeah line then then that

that's associated with more striving in

a given practice to the extent that like

neural activation during a social reward

task or a risk-taking task is a proxy

for striving and and that's what that's

what a lot of people have argued yeah do

you think that striving reflects the

action of a you know kind of a basic

neural circuit that then can be applied

to other things um or lots of different

things the reason I ask is that you know

the the notion of growth mindset is so

attractive it's such a sticky idea um

because or I think because one imagines

okay if I can get really good at one

thing chess then I can apply the same

kind of relationship to the internal

state of stress or arousal or what have

you when trying to navigate a new a new

environment of another kind a physical

practice or a relationship challenge or

something of that sort that that you

know what we're really talking about

here is an algorithm that can be

directed at different uh Pursuits as

opposed to growth mindset is applied in

one context and not another um so what

what of that um people who are

incredibly good at accessing growth

mindset in one domain of life does that

mean that they'll be good at accessing

gross mindset in another domain of Life

what's the the um the carryover or the

spill over it's a great question it

comes up a lot um the Michigan State

psychologist Jason moer studied this and

they measured growth mindset about your

intelligence the classic one your

personality your morality your social

relationships your emotions Etc and the

question is is there kind of like one

growth mindset that applies in all the

different ways

or are

there totally narrow mindsets that have

nothing to do with each other or is it

something in between and the finding was

that there is an overall Association if

you think one trait can change and be

developed you tend to think another

trait can be changed and developed and

just empirically it's hard to separate

that from people's General tendency to

disagree or agree with items that could

be what the common factor is but it kind

of makes sense however

there's also very domain specific

mindsets so there are people who think

yeah I can get smarter but I can't

change my shyness and other people who

think my relationships are never going

to get better but I can learn to play

the cello you know and vice versa and

when you want to predict Behavior turns

out that the closer you are to that

domain the better the prediction is

going to be so if I want to know if

you're going to quit playing the cello

or not I'm going to ask you your cello

mindset said that's going to do way

better than in general can human

qualities change but if I'm going to

intervene at what level should the

intervention happen if I only change

your cello mindset well you're right

like what if cello isn't your thing in

life now are you going to be fixed

mindset for your relationships in school

and that I not really help you so um

the kind of the empirical answer

currently is if it's a domain that

someone could be really defensive about

it's better to be a little vaguer about

it classic example is Iran how parents

work on the Israel Palestine conflict

which is obviously a big issue right now

their science paper in

2011 changed mindsets about group

conflict in

general can an ethnic group or a

national group ever change they didn't

go to people in Israel and say

Palestinians can change cuz they're like

no they can't that's not it's not

possible

but if they said you know sometimes

leaders change and When leaders change

the group's priorities change and they

become more amenable to negotiation and

when that happens things can change if

that was done at a more General level

then both Israelis and Palestinians were

more open to a peace

process so I think if it's something

you're very defensive about I I tend to

think back up and do the more abstract

mindset another example is I remember I

was in graduate school at Stanford

and one of my raas was so excited about

our work and he went to a party and

talked about it it's like that very

Stanford thing to do as talk about

research at a party and he's like oh

yeah math ability can change you don't

have to be done with math forever and

the person he talked to was so offended

she was like are you telling me I could

have done better in high school math and

I just didn't try hard enough and my

life could be different I could be an

engineer right now like I like my life

why are you telling it was it went down

this road of like how dare you tell me

it could have been different

and I who knows maybe he had bad

delivery and had 14 margaritas and

that's who knows what happened but I

think the idea is like if if someone's

got a reason

to think about that fixed mindset

as comforting in some way that they

don't have to feel bad about something

that could have been different it's

probably not smart to go after that in a

very specific way but if someone's not

defensive generally the the closer to

the domain the better because they're

going to see the application otherwise

they have to use it by analogy and an we

know analogic reasoning is is tough cuz

it's Hit or Miss we love stories of

people that have come from a place of

being really back on their heels um or

even just dissolved into a puddle of

their own tears too uh doing well again

maybe even soaring again it's sort of

the the the common thing is that this is

the the classic American uh story

although it's true of people all over

the world I imagine right it's not

always true in America either but yeah

right some people yeah some people crash

and burn but it seems like everybody

loves a comeback story right I know

something about that um the the uh the

hero's journey the the um hero of a

thousand faes is that the that's the

Joseph Campbell um yeah um and it's

written into so many movies and books

and and real life uh uh stories I can't

help but superimpose today's discussion

onto something like that right that um

you know that life is a series of um

efforts to apply growth mindset from

learning how to walk right presumably is

part of that right I don't know any

child that just stands up and walks um

early on to to the things that we we

really think uh we can perform well at

to um finding ourselves like really back

on our heels and and so are there any

data um or theories even that point to

the use of growth mindset and stress is

enhancing mindset in coming from a real

place of deficit not just from trying to

do better and learn new things but from

a real place of deficit a real place of

challenge I think it's important for our

audience to hear because I think a

number of people do feel back on their

heels um in one or more domains of life

yeah it's a good question I mean I think

that the data suggests that growth

mindset becomes most relevant to your

next Behavior the more challenge you

face and so for a long time what that

meant is if you maybe we're a low

achieving student and we're going to and

we're going to evaluate growth mindset

by looking at your grades you should see

bigger gains for low achieving students

compared to high achieving students part

of that could be an artifact if you

already have straight A's we can't give

you more A's it's impossible right but

um you know in in general psychological

treatments like a growth mindset tend to

work better for people who

counterfactually wouldn't have them and

could plausibly benefit from them where

the story becomes more interesting is

that often your kind of own individual

difficulties are associated with your

environment and the environment is

really what allows you to apply your

growth mindset over time so it might

might make you right now need a growth

mindset more but it might make it harder

for you to act on

it and so the for people who like

complex three-way interactions the idea

is that a treatment for growth mindset

should work best for individuals who

face the most challenges but are in the

most supportive environments and one is

like Baseline why do you need it and the

other is over time what's going to help

you keep using it so to be very concrete

about this in uh in one paper we

published in

2019 uh the national study of learning

mindsets it was published in nature

we evaluated growth mindset in this

large National sample and the the

question wasn't does it work on average

the question was where does it work and

for whom as we had there were lots of

replications already and and sometimes

people tried it and like well didn't

work here okay well what's that's a

puzzle how do we figure that out and the

finding was low achieving students in

high schools um that had more supportive

classroom culture where you got where

you got the long run effects and in the

in the in the four-year results it's low

achieving students in high schools that

offered more advanced courses so if

you're a low achieving student you go

with mindset it's like great give me

pre-cal

oh we don't offer that here right or

it's a toxic environment in some way the

teachers are untrained they're first

year teachers there's lots of poverty in

the school if you don't have the

structure to support the striving you

don't get the long run effects

especially if the effects you're looking

at are increases in equality of

opportunity so for me the message is

like you think about growth mindset and

psychological interventions as one tool

in a toolkit to help people achieve

their goals

but we can't forget about the entire

field of Sociology that tells us a lot

about the allocation of resources

through which people can even be

afforded the chance to pursue their

goals and so what I like about that

finding which by the way came from a

collaboration with sociologists who

thought you psychologists are absurd

they're like you think your little

mindset is going to like change

inequality like you're going to make an

argument to 15-year-olds and that's your

plan for improving the American economy

that's absurd

I was like well I don't know might it

could do something and uh psychologists

are skeptical sociologists they're like

look how how often do we have huge

changes in law and policy but people

don't don't take advantage of the

resources that are available to them

let's change the behavior so they take

advantage we kind of came together and

said what does it look like to consider

both the structure and the internal

psychology and I think this was a very

important point because people tend to

choose one or the other together either

we're going to lobby for new laws to

reallocate resources or we're going to

optimize the psychology of the

individual and I think our perspective

is to find ways to bring those two

together and kind of do

both um and ultimately it's not a

deficit-based perspective of you have a

deficit and we're fixing that growth

mindset is more like well it's an asset

based perspective what I mean by that

is we're not giving someone motivation

in growth mindset

we're presuming people already kind of

want to do well they want to impress

others they want to be meaningful they

want to contribute but there's a barrier

the barrier is when you strive and then

inevitably struggle if you're pushing

yourself beyond your abilities people

make you feel dumb for that

struggle so we are we're trying to

remove that cultural and social barrier

that's preventing people from their

natural goal Pursuit and and that comes

deeply from Carol D's original work at

the intersection of Developmental and

Social Psychology the basic claim in

developmental psychology is the human

being is an active learner who's trying

to figure out the world right this is

classic Allison kopnick you know Susan

Gman infants are meaning makers trying

to interpret the world and wanting to do

well and eventually they're socialized

into beliefs that prevent them from

acting on that basic neural desire to

learn grow develop ET

and and growth mindset is really it's

not trying to be a magic pill to give an

unmotivated disaffected kid a shot in

the arm of adrenaline so they go out and

learn no it presumes agency and love of

learning and kind of like Dr Becky said

presumes the goodness in kids and tries

to remove whatever kind of garbage

beliefs they've learned from social

context and then our long-term studies

then show how

you once you do that if they're also in

a context where you can act on that love

of learning then you can see long run

effects that are far more than what a

lot of people have said you could get

even in even a disadvantaged

context it's so interesting because what

we're talking about here is

psychological theory playing out in the

real world but also um kind of like no

deep Notions of the human Spirit like we

are a species that um seems to organize

our experience in terms of of stories of

ourselves and others but that um when it

comes to things like strivings and

learning um are really always in a

constant state of either being more to

borrow the words of a friend of mine

either back on our heels flat footed or

forward Center of mass right um and what

we're talking about today is being

forward Center of mass at least in

certain areas of life I mean that the

fact that the reward systems of the

brain where you mentioned them earlier

these misol liic reward Pathways that

basically deploy dopamine um and other

things of course um are so associated

with striving and achieving striving and

achieving and presumably underly much if

not all of our human evolution assuming

we're still evolving lately sometimes I

wonder but um some people would argue

we're Devol devolving but I I would

argue we're still evolving um especially

with this new burst in AI it's all about

math nowadays folks a few years ago it

all about neuroscience and Neuroscience

is still really important and the two

share but it's all about math lately um

so I I like to just think of the human

animal as so different than the other

animals of the planet like we're the

curators of the planet the house cats

might be striving but they're clearly

not doing as well as we are in terms of

managing the way the world goes so what

do you think that this is like a basic

um algorithm within human beings

to look at ourselves look at the

environment see challenges overcome

challenges develop Technologies it's

just kind of like a a it's like the same

way my bulldog used to like to gnaw on

things you know you like to chew and

pull we just want to learn and grow do

you do you think it's inherent to who we

are as a species maybe even what sets

our species apart from all the others I

mean that's that's a profound question I

think that's that's a good one to debate

that what what I've been really taken by

recently is Carol dak's Secret Life as a

neuroscientist she has this great psych

review

paper

that contradicts a lot of received

wisdom about prefrontal planning regions

of the brain and the kind of amydala and

the hippocampus the you know the

affective regions and the memory

creation regions and the the classic

argument and going back to Plato and the

fadis right is that the rational acting

part of the brain plans out what it

wants makes all these calculations and

then has to tame the emotional part in

order to make those goals into a reality

and so the emotion you know the amydala

the

mesolimbic that's this unruly horse that

the Chariot has to harness you know and

I think that Carol argued and I think

other people have argued too I've I've

seen Adriana Galvan and rondall and

others argue this that

um the affective regions are often the

teacher and the prefontal is the student

and that makes sense if you think about

how humans are goal directed think about

how a kid learns to walk they don't do

that for theoretical reasons they don't

just like look at people walking and be

like I want to learn how to do that

right it's I have four kids it's usually

because there's a toy at the other side

of the room that they really really want

and that I don't want them to have and

the only way for them to go get it

because I won't get it for them is for

them to learn how to walk so the the

motor learning is the effect of the

desire in the goal Pursuit and what what

Carol argued is that

feder's had is totally wrong it's not

that the prefrontal charioteer is taming

the emotional it's really that the the

affect part is training the prefrontal

to be better at pursuing the goals that

matter in the social millu that you have

and a lot of people like um Adriana

Galvan and Jen feifer and Nim Tottenham

in the Adolescent space have shown this

and I don't understand all the details

fully but the the argument that I've

heard is that once the scanning studies

were able to switch from fmri focused on

simple activation to studies looking at

connectivity then they and where you

could get temporal ordering then you

could start seeing actually that

especially in adolescence it's the the

affective regions are training or

teaching or telling the prefrontal

regions what to do so I guess the the

that's a long way of answering the

question of I think that I think goal

Pursuit is fundamental to Human Nature

and I think that the brain and our

adaptation is designed to help us learn

how to be a lot better at pursuing

whatever goals will help us survive in

our environment and the brain has to be

adaptive to that environmental input

because the environment's always

changing if it had only one way of

pursuing its goals then we would never

survive so it has to be the case that

the planning rational observing part of

the brain is actually responsive to what

works in your context for goal Pursuit

so again I'm summarizing other people's

here but that's how I that's how I see

it yeah I completely agree that emotions

Drive the more um let's call tactical

circuitry of the prefrontal cortex of

course we should be fair to the the

Neuroscience the prefrontal cortex is

part of the lyic system people often

think because it's in the cortex it's

higher order and um that's simply not

true but um well if we both agree and it

sounds like we do that emotions Drive

tactical decisions that drive action and

learning

um maybe we could talk about the two

major types of emotions um that one

could imagine one is um I really want

the toy I really want the piece of food

I really need um something for survival

or for well-being and so I'm going to be

be motivated and then the prefrontal

cortex will work out the strategies and

um balance out the relationship to

stress Etc and remind ourselves that

stress can be performance- enhancing and

eventually we we we get the thing or the

skill or the whatever the other would be

um fear fear of social shame fear of

staying in a place that's not good for

us financially emotionally socially Etc

um is there any work that um identifies

whether or not the the core emotion

driving motivation is relevant and is

there role for growth mindset

there that's interesting um I guess it

put simply um take it down out of the

Ivory Tower a little bit which is what

we're doing here anyway um you can do

things out of love you can do things out

of fear you do for both reasons too yeah

um you can do things to um please

yourself you can do things to please

others you can do things to avoid others

being disappointed in you you being

disappointed in yourself presumably it's

both yeah but are is there any um I'm

dying for you to tell me that when we do

things out of love we learn faster but

maybe that's not the case well I don't

know I mean so two thoughts one is just

you know honoring Danny conoman who just

passed away

his work with Amos tersi took on a

version of this question in prospect

theory and it's the idea of does the

does the fear of a loss motivate us more

than the prospect of a gain right and

their argument is that both can be

motivating as well as the possibility of

a loss but that losses Loom larger that

people are more willing to take a risky

gamble to prevent a loss than they are

to get a numerically equal like a

mathematically equal gain um and so a

lot of people have used that information

in various ways and and I think that

that has led people to conclude that the

prospect of a gain doesn't mean anything

but that really wasn't ever the point in

prospect theory it's just that it's a

little more powerful to to avoid a to be

afraid of a loss it's honestly a problem

with with thinking like yeah losses are

a little worse you know if I already had

$1,000 and you took it away feels a

little worse than the chance to win a

thousand I didn't win mathematically

it's the same Delta um but uh but but I

think that the way that behavioral

economic work gets applied is to appeal

to people's kind of basist and most you

know fearful responses to things and if

you think about what what drives a lot

of

excellence in in moral examp

too um it it's this chance to feel like

you've made a big contribution to others

and and I don't think people are afraid

that they didn't help as many people as

they could have and maybe that drives

some people but I think just the the

affective forecasting of uh one day I'll

feel good because of the meaningful work

I did for others that was high integrity

when no one else would have seen it you

know that I think I think that's really

motivating for a lot of people and I

think we underappreciate that and

therefore we appeal to very narrow

self-interest and and my my favorite

theorist on this is Dale Miller is at

the Stanford Business school and he

calls it the norm of self-interest that

if you look around it looks like

everyone's behaving for only uh very

narrow short-term self-interested

reasons and because you think that's the

norm then you yourself kind of respond

to those incentives and then you then

inter turn create that Norm even more

that other people see but it's not a

state of affairs that anybody really

likes everybody kinds of prefers a

pro-social world where people are

helping others but if you think that's

just a really weird thing to do and not

normal then people conform to the wrong

Norm so in my work what I try to

emphasize is is not that we're not

afraid of losses and and the narrow

short-term gain that you know that we're

avoiding uh or the short-term loss we're

avoiding but like I I really do think

that people are capable of far more like

beautiful contributions to the world

when

we assume that that's what they want and

we create opportunities for them to do

that I've seen that so much um if you

look at some of the best managers right

it's it's not just if you screw up

you're going to lose your bonus like

that's not what the best managers in the

world are doing right they're like let's

do something no one's ever done before

let me support you to do it and then let

me make sure that you look awesome in

front of all the senior vice presidents

because you did that like that's what

the best managers do and coaches too

this uh for my book I interviewed the

NBA's best shooting

coach this uh basketball player uh named

Shane Bader who played college in pro

basketball told me about him and I

interviewed chip England is his name and

he was at the San Antonio Spurs which

they had a 17-year run of being a

perennial Contender for the

championships and constantly drafted

players

who were talented but had a bad jump

shot so Kawhi Leonard is in example

where fell late in the first round

because people thought Couldn't Shoot

Tony Parker is another example when Tony

Parker used to shoot Greg papovich would

say that's a turnover every time chip

England is the a great shooting coach

worked with them there's lots of Bill

Barnwell had a great story about him

called him the shot doctor and I

interviewed chip and I was like chip how

do you sell the vision to these players

who are 18 to 21 are Newfound

millionaires everyone's saying you're

the best you're a first rounder and they

don't want to change their shot because

if they

do they could mess it up make it worse

it's like a golfer superstitious about

their shot and he's like you know the

the number one thing I have to do is

build trust because I can't critique a

player shot and make them change it if

they think they're going to sacrifice

more so he's like Dave the first thing

you have to do is sell your vision I was

like well what's your vision he's

like he doesn't say if you don't change

your shot you are going to lose millions

of dollars and be out of the league so

it's he doesn't motivate with the fear

of loss he

says the average time in the league is

two and a half years right if you

develop a great reliable jump shot where

even as your athletic talents decline

you're still reliable you're talking

about a 10-year career and then you're

not just helping you you're not just

helping your family you're helping your

family's

family so even in the like money

obsessed cutthoat world of professional

sports the single best coach working

with the top players appeals to the

prospect of what you could do for others

not the fear of loss and to me that's

really telling like if if it worked to

just motivate with the fear of loss

that's what he would do because they

would do whatever is effective it's a

like at some level an efficient market

but that's not what chip England does

and I think the same is true for a lot

of other great mentors and leaders so if

I understand

correctly when we find

ourselves back on our heels or

flat-footed we want to focus on the

prospect of what we can do for others

like ultimately that's going to be the

best um or the world yeah or the world

yeah I guess yeah pick your um pick your

scope of impact could be for art for

intellectual history it's it's a classic

Victor Frankle argument of man search

for meaning right as the as Victor

frankl's leaving the the concentration

camps what helps him

survive and it's the debt that he owes

to the Future work that he wants to

write to share with the world and it's

not it's not the fear of death it's the

the meaning of the work he could do for

the world if he

survives yeah I think um I'd like to

hover on this for a minute or two

because I think it's really important I

realize we're getting more philosophical

than operational but we have data on

this it's a um yeah I I'd love to hear

it that's one of the things I'm really

enjoying about this conversation the

moment I think it's going to be abstract

or or that you've got uh you got it all

there in in in that brain um yeah let's

talk about this the pro uh that when

when we feel back on our heels or we're

flat footed meaning we're not doing well

I maybe hard things have happened

focusing on the prospect of what we can

do for others not just trying to avoid

loss or further shame or or just

diminishment is going to be the best

thing so what what are the data on this

yeah so um well first just look at

correlational studies in these Global

surveys of Happiness um in almost anyone

you can think of the best predictor of

Life satisfaction and well-being is

going to be the meaning of your life in

particular the feeling like you're

connected to others you've contributed

to others

that your life mattered that your life

there was something of value in your

life to others or to the world right um

and so the just anecdotally the advice I

always give to people like going through

depression or the risk of that is to

focus on what you can do for others or

what you have done right um so that

that's just correlation now

experimentally what we did in some work

this was started with my first adviser

at Stanford Bill Damon who studies

purpose in life is we ask the question

of when you're going through something

tedious boring

frustrating what motivates you to keep

going and we there are many possible

answers to that but we compared two

different ones one is the potential

benefit you get out of that striving so

for a student in school it's like the

money you would get one day from working

hard and doing well

an alternative though is what you could

do with the knowledge that you gained by

going through the hard learning how

could you contribute to others make a

difference Etc with the Knowledge and

Skills we call that our purpose

condition a couple things make

that different from this the standard

narrative but but I think ultimately

intuitive one is the standard narrative

is if you try hard in school or at work

or whatever it is in suffer now then one

day there will be a kind of financial

compensation so you're you're suffering

now in a way that will bring material

reward in the future that the brain's

not really designed to make that kind of

calculation right it's like well how

certain is the reward in the future how

far into the future and how bad is their

punishment right now so there's all

kinds of affective tradeoffs that are

hard for anyone or especially hard for

13 year olds right so what a lot of

school comes down to is an adult saying

you need to suffer through 40 minutes

per day of factoring trinomials because

I said so that and I said it's good for

your long-term future so that one day in

your 30s you can barely afford a

mortgage right this is not a compelling

argument for most of America's youth my

opinion the purpose condition though is

not about the exchange value of a

credential some long time in the future

it's more like right now you're getting

a hard and kind of admirable skill that

not everyone's going to get and you're

gonna then be prepared when the moment

arises to do something of significance

for others now that also is uncertain

and in the future but for things that

are contributions you kind of get to

feel like a good person right now the

analogy I often use is if I'm going to

like make lunch for the homeless I don't

have to wait until they actually eat the

food to feel like a good person I feel

like a good person when I'm putting it

in the bag you know or even when I'm

driving to the homeless shelter right

and I think it our idea was you can move

up the reward by making it a social

reward right now rather than a material

reward years into the future because

then the pursuit itself becomes the

reward right right now my and actually

the more frustrating it is right now the

more I'm being a good person because it

means it was a hard skill to acquire

that'll prepare me to make a difference

later and so we we framed super tedious

math this is with Angela Duckworth and

Sydney Dello and Dave penescu and others

as Marlon Henderson

as a chance to gain a skill that helps

you contribute

versus a chance to learn how to get an A

and make money in the future versus a

control and what we found was that the

contribute to others version led to

deeper learning greater persistence um

higher grades over

time and in one of our

experiments we gave them a choice of

either doing super boring math or

goofing off on the internet and we were

secretly tracking what the websites they

were going to and we found that

teenagers did um more very boring math

and watched fewer videos and played less

Tetris when they were given this purpose

message uh before the task it's in our

2014 paper and what I I of always think

about that's the kind of paper I wanted

to go to graduate school to work on but

I I think about it

because if you think about Dale Miller's

Norm of

self-interest nobody thinks to do the

purpose argument they're like of course

teenagers are shortsighted and think

about material rewards and all they want

to do is either look cool or make money

or whatever but no like in our studies

if you appealed to the chance to make a

contribution right now then they did the

behaviors that adults want them to do

they didn't Goof Off online and instead

chose boring math and and adults think

the only way you could ever get that is

by imposing our will and and with this

kind of

authoritarian um set of rules but if you

instead just appeal to the love of

learning for the sake of others then

they're willing to kind of go through

the suffering and and in the paper we

cite Victor Frankl where you know the

person who knows the why for their

existence is able to Bear anyhow mhm and

I I think about that that a lot that we

underestimate how willing young people

are really anyone is to Bear through

things that are hard and difficult if

they have a strong

why I think this is one of the most

important Concepts frankly ever

discussed on this podcast if I'm really

honest I think that um you know we've

parsed dopamine circuits and we've

talked about motivation and reward we've

talked a little bit about growth mindset

in a Solo episode but never before have

I really understood the um the why

component the meaning component and and

I love how it marries so much of what we

hear in kind of like you know pop

culture psychology with real data like

we're finally uh thanks to you being

here meaning we're finally um in the

guts of it um because we hear this like

oh it feels so good to make a

contribution but you know people are

also self-interested people want money I

then then people say well past a certain

amount of money you don't get any

happier and I would argue that um uh

it's true money can't buy happiness but

it can definitely buffer stress yeah not

all forms of stress and money itself can

get people into more stress but um

anyone that says you know past blank

number of dollars there's no incremental

increase in happiness I I I just don't

see how that could be given inflation

and you know that treats humans like

linear functions I think that's a

simplification right if higher purpose

is best defin is making a meaningful

contribution to the world um to a

community to the or maybe at the scale

of the world maybe at the scale of a

family or or um or what have you a

classroom and the thing that you said

before that seems so important is that

the moment that you attach uh your goal

to something that's for others it makes

the effort involved its own form of

reward yeah that to me is so important

yeah so so important I kind of want to

highlight bold underline and you know

put a big exclamation mark after it

because that's so different than like oh

you know I want to be the top player on

the team yeah which means that every bit

of effort you put in you're like

thinking I'm going to I'm going to be

the best I'm going to be the best I'm

going to be the best

but um and one perhaps can then feel

that progress when one is making it and

feel like they're ascending that that

staircase

but something additional must come about

when

we're invoking this this feeling of

contribution um and I think this

isessential to our Evolution as a

species because we didn't develop an

isolation yeah I mean we had to show our

value to the group or else they would

get rid of us right I mean that's what

it meant to go from being a child to

being an adult and

the think about what it just take

basketball or whatever right to if I'm

trying super super hard and it feels

impossible to me and I'm not getting

better and it's purely for me then I I

feel like a failure it feels like my

goals are not being met and they never

will be met right the effort feels

terrible because it means something

really bad about me right now imagine

you're putting in effort for others the

harder it is the more awesome it is

because it's more noble right you've

done something that's super impressive

and sacrificed your own happiness for

others right the social status of trying

hard and failing for yourself is net