How to Change the World

Before we get going today, I have an exciting update for you. Hidden Brain is now on YouTube. Not the audio podcast, which will continue to be available on Apple, Spotify, and your favorite audio podcast player, but as a brand new standalone video channel. Please check us out. Our first videos include an exploration of the science of bravery, the secret behind artistic masterpieces, and a set of ideas to deal with high pressure situations.

These scenes, like many depictions of war, can be hard to watch. But they also force us to face uncomfortable questions. Doesn't Washington's war and countless others like it prove that the realists are right, that violence is the most effective means to change, that power does flow from the barrel of a gun.

This week on Hidden Brain, the surprising truth about what actually produces radical change and the profound implications for individuals and nations.

Many of us watch movies depicting war or TV shows where detectives save the day by bursting in on the bad guys, guns blazing. These sorts of stories are based on an assumption. Using force might be unpleasant. It might even be immoral. But it's highly effective, the surest way to get what you want. At Harvard University, political scientist Erica Chenowith studies whether this common assumption is true when it comes to mass movements for change. Erika Chenowith, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much, Shunker.

Erica, I want to look at your own journey into this area of research. Uh when you were a kid, your mom bought you a book called Zlat's Diary. Um you were enthralled by this book. What was it about?

Basically, this is the story uh written by Zlat Filipovich about what it was like living as a child under siege during the siege of Sarajevo. As a thirteen-year-old kid, I couldn't help but be moved by the experiences of being a kid that were not going to be available to her or her friends and and others because of the war.

I mean in many ways it's like the fascination that many people have had over the years with, you know, the diary of Anne Frank. It gives you a window into what it's like to go through uh the experience of war. Um uh later on I understand you became really interested in the history of World War One. You'd go to the public library with your family and and you loved a book about World War One Medal of Honor winners. Um what was the appeal of the book?

Well, I think I was always really fascinated with World War One. I I can't actually remember the origins of the fascination, to be honest, but From the time I can remember, I was uh looking at military history books and one that really caught my eye was uh the one about Medal of Honor winners, in part because um it described these Uh situations of heroism and courage.

As an undergrad, I understand you took a military science class. Uh so it sounds like you were developing a real interest here in in military history.

Yes, I was interested in potentially serving in the Army after graduating from college and they had an ROTC program, which I didn't eventually enroll in, but I did uh take the military science. course uh to find out whether it was a path for me.

The September 11th terrorist attacks took place during Erica's senior year in college. They prompted Erica to go to graduate school to better understand the nature of terrorism.

And there was a really influential article and and later book published by a scholar named Robert Pape, who's at the University of Chicago. And he basically argued that suicide terrorism was on the increase because it was a remarkably effective technique.

Would it be fair to say that that your broad belief at this point was that power indeed does flow from the barrel of a gun, um from your interest in military history and your knowledge of of of wars past and present?

Yeah, I think that's right. And I I think I would qualify it somewhat just by saying that um it flows from the barrel of many guns. Uh so you know, and I think there are a lot of people that would make a similar assumption. that when violence failed, it was more a question of capacity that rebel groups or terrorist groups were using violence, but didn't have really the capacity to back up their political might.

I just wanna stop for a second to note that the intuition that you had is I feel like an intuition that many people have in the culture, right, when we when we think about, you know, how what succeeds in terms of bringing about change, whether that's change on an individual level or a group level or a political level

I think that's true. I mean, I think from a very early time in life, uh at least in the United States, many children are encountering, you know, war stories. And whether that's about the founding of the country, uh whether it's about The Civil War, the Vietnam War, uh, we encounter these fairly early on. And they're sort of memorialized and mythologized in ways um

So in June two thousand six you were uh I believe working on your dissertation and and you were attending an academic workshop, but but some of what you heard at this workshop made you skeptical. Uh what was the workshop and what were people saying?

It was a workshop that was put on by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which is an educational foundation based in DC. The thing that was really surprising about it was that. The the content was all totally new to me.

Erica immediately also thought about nonviolent protest movements that had failed. Like the peaceful pro democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in China in nineteen eighty nine.

As the world watches and listens in horror, the peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in China comes to a violent and bloody end, crushed by waves of Chinese military forces. Hundreds of unarmed civilians, hungry for freedom, mowed down in Beijing by gunfiring so.

And Tiananmen Square was not the only example of a failed, nonviolent uprising that occurred to Erickson.

Well, you know, there's certainly plenty of examples more recently. The one that springs to mind uh immediately is the Syrian Revolution. Um, but you know, that that's another example of where, you know, you have uh a sustained mobilization that um that is up against a regime that effectively decided that it could roll the dice and use extreme brutality and suppress the movement effectively.

And of course, you know, ev even a cursory glance at history suggests numerous examples where violent insurrection succeeded. I mean, and starting with, you know, the American Revolution or the French Revolution.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, start with the Haitian Revolution and the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. So we have we have many different examples. that leap immediately to mind. You know, most people I think wouldn't necessarily imagine that there's really anything about nonviolent resistance that could make it even compete with that.

As Erica marshalled example after example of violent revolutions that were effective or nonviolent movements that had failed, another political scientist at the conference, Maria Stefan, threw down a challenge. Examples showing violent and nonviolent movements succeeding or failing Examples. They were anecdotes. They weren't data. Now, it's never possible to rerun historical events. You couldn't ask the question. Then would the French Revolution have succeeded if it had been nonviolent?

Basically, my answer to Maria was How I would do it is I would collect data uh for a very long time period. I would use every country in the world as the universe of potential cases, and then I would look for comparable cases. featuring primarily nonviolent resistance and violent resistance. And by comparable cases, I mean cases that were seeking similar goals.

Erica was proposing an incredibly high bar to test the effectiveness of nonviolent movements. Maria Stefan's response. Let's do it. Let's find all the cases of insurrections and revolutions over more than a century where groups of people sought to overthrow a regime. Let's classify them as violent or nonviolent based on how the campaigns were predominantly carried out and see which ones succeeded.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantham. Erika Chenowith grew up fascinated by stories of war and military heroism. Like many people, Erica recoiled at the horrors of war, but came to believe that violence was an effective way to accomplish one's goals. Popular culture endorsed this idea. Movies, books, and TV regularly tell us that if you really want to get your way on something, force is probably the most effective strategy.

Erica and Maria began to analyze hundreds of cases of conflict and rebellion starting in the year 1900.

Well, they were talking about Slobodan Milosevic, one of his nicknames is the Butcher of the Balkans, uh, who had uh stolen an election that had taken place in the previous week. And the movement that organized in advance of the election. had expected Milosevic to lie about the results of the election and had set up these parallel vote tabulation and very well organized kind of verification processes to demonstrate the fraud.

So the Serbian uh organization was called Otpur and Otpur really became famous for using humor and theatrics in their anti-Melosevic protests. Uh one such campaign was called a dinar for change. Uh activists painted Milosevic's face on a barrel and placed it in front of the Belgrade National Theatre, people who passed by could pay a small amount of money to then hit the painting with a bat. It was like a game you play at a

We put the big petrol barrel with a you know portrait picture of Mr President on it in the middle of the mainstream, there was a hole on the top. So you could literally come, put the coin in, get a baseball bat and

Come hit.

Sounds loud. So we were sitting in a nearby cafe having coffee and there was a clue of people waiting to do this lovely thing. Well that's just the beginning of the show. The real show starts when the police appear. What they will do? Arrest the shoppers with kids? Doesn't make sense. Of course you could bet. They've done the most stupid thing. They arrested a barrel.

What was the effect of this campaign area?

There's no doubt that Oatpor had a really important impact on opening people's minds to imagining a new future. One of the long term legacies of that campaign.

One of my favorite vignettes comes from Morocco where there is an independence movement in Western Sahara and it's illegal to fly the colors. of the flag of the independence movement. And there was a group of protesters who wanted to mobilize a flag, an illegal flag flying protest. And they announced in advance that this would be taking place. Uh so that the authorities would show up.

Literally herding cats, huh?

Exactly. Literally herding cats, but not able to really figure out who the real protest organizers were.

So the Serbian police began to crack down on Otpur. They were arresting the protesters, uh many of whom were teenagers, and they were also calling the protesters terrorists. Uh but increasingly it wasn't just young people who were involved. Uh older people were getting increasingly drawn into the struggle. Why was that?

Well, um I think that the movement likely did a very good job of appealing to a wider and wider base of supporters. There was a a period in which they were uh experiencing a a pretty high degree of police repression. And I was told by one activist there that they began organizing something called grandparents' protests, which is

What was the final outcome of the protest? Did it did it work?

It did. Milosevich announced that he was retiring to spend more time with his grandson. Uh he fled. Uh he fled the the square. And uh the movement effectively walked through the line of policemen who obviously were not going to fire on them anymore and occupied the parliament building. And inside, apparently they found lots of ballots that were premarked for Milosevic. Uh so further demonstrating the fraud.

Let's fast forward twenty years and turn from Eastern Europe to Africa, The country of Sudan was ruled for nearly thirty years by President Omar al Bashir, who was a brutal dictator. He presided over the genocide in the Darfur region of southern Sudan in the early two thousands. Now, there were periodic uprisings over the years, but the security forces quickly suppressed them. But then in December 2018, protests erupted across the country after the government raised Fuel and food prices.

Thank you.

The demonstrations were organized by a group called the Sudanese Professionals Association. What were the techniques they used?

One of the most important techniques that the SPA was able to organize en masse was a general strike and various other limited strikes and stayways. And stay aways can be really important for movements that are facing brutal regimes because unlike mass demonstrations, they don't necessarily place people. In positions of directly confronting the agents of repression. But in this case, there were also mass demonstrations.

So soon after these these protests uh you know really became widespread, um, Al Bashir was actually removed in a coup and the Sudanese military established a military council. But but the SPA kept protesting. They wanted the coup leaders to hand over power to the people and establish a democracy. And this led to something that's now known as the Khartoum Massacre. Uh what happened there?

Yeah, so what was happening there is that there was a massive sit in um outside of the military headquarters demanding that the civilians be represented in the new government and that a transition to democracy take place as soon as possible and various security forces committed a a mass atrocity. They killed and sexually assaulted and tortured over a hundred people, um, some of whose bodies they dumped in the Nile River. And in the aftermath of that event, the SPA

One of the other lessons that I'm I'm getting from this is that even, you know, highly repressive regimes at some level depend on the cooperation of the people being repressed. in order to hold on to power. And when that cooperation is is is uh withheld or withdrawn, it becomes actually quite difficult for even very authoritarian regimes to hold on to power.

That's right. I think that's the the basic theory. The ruler does depend on so many people to stay in power. Like they're not doing it themselves. And when very large numbers of people refuse to continue supporting them, Things collapse rather quickly. Movements have to do what Maria Stefan has argued, which is extend the nonviolent battlefield uh into constituencies upon whose cooperation the regime does depend.

So we've talked about a couple of movements that successfully utilized nonviolent techniques to enact change. Um I I wanna look at an example of a largely nonviolent movement that sometimes dabbled in violence and it's in it's instructive to see what happened. Uh in May 2011 there was a wave of

Basically there was an episode in which uh some of the protesters um were provoked uh into using violence uh in one way or the other. And um there were a couple of social scientists who had been conducting surveys on opinions toward the movement before that event took place, and then they were able to uh do surveys after that event took place as well. And what they found is that the average support for the movement dropped by about 12% in the aftermath of that event.

But among people who were kind of adjacent to the movement politically, uh, who were sympathetic to the movement before or who were kind of not affiliated with the movement in any way. There was a much bigger decline in support. So in other words, the episode of violence. Tended to uh have very little effect on base solidarity, but it had a pretty big effect on alienating potential third-party supporters of the movement that would have allowed it to expand its base.

Yeah, so this was work by the political scientists Jordi Munoz and Eva Anduisa. Uh they happened to be in the area at the time studying fifteen M so they were able to survey the public both before and after, you know, the the turn to violence. But I wanna stay with this idea for a moment because you know, I I suppose if your base is large enough, if the number of people whom you have on your side is a significant majority, then

Yes, that's exactly how I would read kind of the state of the of the literature on this one, which is that it's a much more risky political uh move to do when a movement is very small and trying to expand its base. than it is if the movement is already very large, enjoys a lot of popular support, and critically, the opponent is hated by lots and lots of people. So if it's just a regime that's made so many

It's interesting that I think in these conflicts, um, you actually have in some ways a test of discipline on both sides because the the protesters, nonviolent protesters, are often also trying in some ways to to incite the government authorities into overreacting, into cracking down, into repression, because I think they also recognize that

Yes, I think that's that's a fair comparison. I I also think that they're they're playing a similar game in the sense that they're both trying to divide and rule the other. Um so the logic of nonviolent resistance has to grow the base in order to create these defections from the opponent's support base. So basically

So we've looked at um a few examples uh of cases where people used violence or nonviolence or a combination of these tactics to try and enact change and obviously the specifics of each conflict are unique and cataloguing conflicts as violent or nonviolent probably involves some judgment. Things may not be entirely, you know, black and white, but

Well, um the the basic descriptive statistic that really jumped out is that the nonviolent campaigns. were twice as likely to have succeeded as their violent counterparts, and that the rates of success for nonviolent campaigns had actually increased over the latter half. And into the beginning of the 21st. So, in other words, nonviolent resistance was working much more.

uh it definitely motivated us to continue trying to figure out why.

but end up being more effective in the long term. You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantham.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. At Harvard University, political scientist Erica Chanowitz studies the effectiveness of political protest. Along with Maria Stefan, Erica has studied more than a hundred years of struggles for radical change around the world. These included both violent and nonviolent revolutions and insurrections. They found that nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns.

The first factor is mass participation. So movements that win tend to be much larger and more diverse than movements that don't. And nonviolent campaigns tend to be able to elicit much larger and more diverse participation than armed campaigns. The second factor is the ability of the campaigns to divide and rule the opponent.

So th I just wanna go back to one of the points you you made. The the idea that in some ways the central goal of these movements is to expand their base of support, to bring more people in, to to sort of feel like the movement is a mass movement. Uh talk a little bit about the work that you've done that examines how large a movement needs to be in order to be effective. Because when I saw this, I was actually struck by in some ways how small that number actually needs to be.

Right, Maria, Stefan and I analyzed about 323 cases of maximalist campaigns or revolutionary campaigns. And I found that none of the campaigns seem to have failed after mobilizing three and a half percent of the population. And three and a half percent is a a small number in relative terms, but very large in absolute terms. So in the United States, that's like 11.5 million people. In China, it's many tens of millions of people. And so then we start to get a sense of the scale.

It's worth pausing for a moment and sitting with that finding. Erica found that movements that mobilized about 3.5% of the population succeeded pretty much everywhere. But before you think it's easy to organize and execute a mass movement for change, Erica has a few caveats about that data point.

That it only counts participation, it doesn't necessarily look at supporters of the movement or sympathizers with the movement and so. it can be easy to sort of conclude, uh, I think wrongly, that all you need is three and a half percent of the population on your side. I don't think that's what the data say. It says that, you know, countries in which there have been Three and a half percent of the population actively mobilized at a in a in a sort of peak period.

I wanna look at one other idea which is in some ways violence sort of produces its own opposition. So the the harsher you behave, um, yes, on the one hand you do get compliance and people do fall in line, people are afraid of you. But it's also the case that violence generates enemies Uh you have more enemies tomorrow than you did yesterday. Uh and and over time, uh you can see how it's effective in the short term, but it can end up having great costs for your campaign in the long term.

Yeah, I mean I I think one helpful way to think about this is to think about tactical effects versus strategic outcomes. So if you think about that event that took place in Spain with the 15M movement, you know, the the short-term effects of those types of events are often really obvious. It's things like greater media coverage. Like maybe they wound up on the front page rather than on the twentieth page or something of the newspaper. Maybe, you know, there there was a

So what's fascinating to me, Erica, is that, you know, our our model, our mental model I think, is still stuck in sort of what we see in on television or in the movies. Uh, you know, where where we see that violent you know, people who have been unjustly, you know, treated uh resort to violence in order to get justice, or we see that groups that basically want their way sort of use violence to win.

Yeah, I think part of it is just basic misconceptions and myths about what nonviolent resistance is. Uh, for example, when people use the term nonviolence. I think that they often just associate that with a moral position. And they think of it as something that's potentially noble but extremely naive. Uh, you know, they don't think about it in terms of a strategy that's literally helped to shape the world we live in right now and that's available to anybody anywhere to a certain degree.

There's a an interesting book called Recovering Nonviolent History that's edited by Mace Barkowski. And um there's an opening chapter in there about the myth of violence and how sort of appealing it is and how we memorialize it and mythologize it and make it part of our national histories. But that book is full of examples of nonviolent campaigns that were formative.

Before we recorded this conversation, I had never heard the argument that the most important part of the American Revolution occurred in the ten years before armed hostilities broke out. When we think of revolutions, we tend to remember the drama of soldiers heading off to war, the outcomes of battles fought on land and sea, guns and guillotines. Bloodshed has a way of imprinting itself on our minds.

We often think of courage as a personality trait. You either have it or you don't. But researchers are finding that courage can be cultivated in moments of reflection where we think through who we are and what matters most to us. The laying of our inner groundwork is what allows us to act bravely when a crisis is upon us. After the break, stories of times where our courage is tested and what they teach us about the true nature of bravery. You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. We all have to deal with scary situations. There may be moments of high drama, like a car crash or a natural disaster. Or perhaps we will have moments of personal crisis, like navigating a serious illness or sharing a painful truth with a loved one.

Then we will face these moments bravely. But will we actually rise to the occasion?

At Harvard Business School, Ranjay Gulati studies courage and how we can strengthen our own capacity to be brave. Ranjay joined us recently for two episodes on this topic. The first was titled U2.0, Cultivating Courage. And the second, on Hidden Brain Plus, was called U2.0, How to Help Others Be Brave. You can find both those episodes in this podcast.

Today, Ranjay returns to the show to answer listener questions about this topic. Ranjay Gulati, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Thank you, Shankar. It's a pleasure to be back.

One story that you cite, Ranja, is of the Russian dissident politician Alexei Navalny. Tell me his story.

You know, Nivandi is a kind of a very interesting story and it follows a very interesting arc as well, you know. He starts as an anti corruption lawyer, critical of power, but still within the system. And he then decides that he's really gonna pivot from there into exposing corruption at the highest levels, you know, and he then becomes part of the opposition story here. And then things really ramp up for him. Arrest.

What happens when he goes back?

Well, he's arrested right at the airport, uh that then transported to Siberia, uh put into one of the worst prisons over there, is in solitary for long periods of time, and ultimately he passes away over Uh he's periodically allowed to meet people and so there are recordings of him while he's there, even shortly before his death, he writes, he talks, and he's still making his point. He still wants to get the point out there that listen, giving up is not an option.

Wow.

You know, when I hear the word hero's journey, I think I was mistakenly focused on the word journey. these epic journeys involve, you know, a warrior travelling from one place to the other. But really the journey that is being described is an internal journey. It's the internal journey from someone who might have been hesitant or diffident to the discovery of one's own courage. That is the journey that is the hero's journey.

In many instances, uh, it's something about your own commitment to a set of values or principles that go beyond self-interest and a willingness to incur cost, and no matter what that might be, for that set of principles. People have also called this felt responsibility. You know, you somehow believe that this is such an important piece for you. Um and that violating violation of those values and principles feels more threatening than personal.

I want to play you a question from a listener that perhaps complicates one dimension of our account of a hero's journey. This message comes from listener Suzanne.

Courage in my life has often been not felt like a decision at all. It has felt like a kind of inner knowing that simply moved my body forward before my mind could argue. One moment stands out vividly, My son was only six months old. My husband and I were walking into a restaurant and I was holding my baby. I saw a very large man assaulting a very petite woman outside.

So, Ranjay, Suzanne tells us over and over that she didn't think through her actions. She just acted. Do you think it's possible that when we label someone's story as a hero's journey, we are doing that after the fact that in the moment bravery may in fact be impulsive?

Absolutely. You know, there is what you might call, you know, even psych in psychology, we talk about system one, the fast emotional response, and system two, that is a more slow and reflective response. And and yes, it is true that some of our responses, the fight, flight, freeze response are automatic. And fight is one of the three. Um and and somehow sometimes some things trigger us to fight because most of the time it is freeze or flee. And but I would submit to you that, you know,

It's also the case as I'm reflecting on what you're saying, Ranjay, that there are probably different kinds of situations that call for different kinds of courage. So in this situation In fact, the courage that was called for was immediate and instinctive. But that's not always the case. There are many, many situations that we have where

It's a great question. You know, so I would distinguish between acute bravery, which is the moment, in that moment short term, right? or and enduring bravery or long term bravery, which is quieter and often harder. Yeah. Because you it shows up as persistence, endurance, recommitment. You know, kind of having the holding on to unpopular positions, living with uncertainty, and still remaining aligned with your values.

When we come back, a man cheats death in rural China. Plus, how the nature vs. nurture debate plays out in the context of courage. You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Ranjay Gulati is a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. He studies the science of courage and what makes some people act bravely in a scary or dangerous situation.

Ranja, we talked in our earlier conversation about the importance of self-efficacy in shaping our capacity to be brave. What do you mean by this term?

Self-efficacy was a term that uh famous Stanford psychologist Albert Bandora really put forward. And the idea was around that you have confidence in your own ability to take action. I think self-efficacy then transcends into a larger can-do mindset. I would call this the spillover effect. And there's really good research on this. Self-perception theory, for instance, suggests that we figure out who we are by watching what we do.

We got an interesting question from a listener about how much bravery is learned and how much it's innate. Uh here's listener Talga.

Is being brave something that people acquire over time or is it natural ability or is it a mix of both? I'm asking this because I have uh three children and I try to nurture them at the same time, at the same way. However, one of my children is extremely brave. It looks like he doesn't have his part of the brain that's responsible for being cautious. And this is not some s something that I taught him. So I'm curious about what do you think?

What do you think, Ranjay? Does courage come from nature or from nurture?

So Tolgat asks a great question. And this gets to the heart of my project. I mean, if n if there was only nature, then I didn't have much to write about. Um my entire book is premised on the idea that maybe there are a set of practices that we can learn. but it's not some kind of classroom skill. You can't teach people courage by saying, come on, from tomorrow you're going to be brave. Um we teach it by helping them act and then reflect.

make them

Prove to themselves that they can function while afraid. How do you build a relationship with fear? Um and so understanding how to take on fear head on, I think is a conditioning and understanding that comes with taking action, then showing yourself, I know, I think I can do this. I was scared of snakes, I'm not scared of snakes.

In our earlier conversation, Ranjay, you shared various methods of cultivating bravery as a skill. You talk about the idea of acting your way into knowing. We received a voicemail about acting your way into bravery from a listener named Aubrey.

when I heard the phrase acting your way into knowing, I immediately thought about the experience of transitioning. Uh, and how for me I wasn't born knowing that I was a boy inside, you know, trapped in a girl's body. Instead it was really a process, uh a very, very scary process of taking one step at a time of you know, taking hormones week after week, of getting surgery, of changing my name.

So Ranjay, Aubrey's message really underscores the idea that sometimes being brave can come before feeling brave.

You know, I wanna thank Aubrey for sh trusting us and sharing the story with us. And uh and you're right, it you know, sometimes How do we think about acting before feeling? This story touches me because it highlights a quieter sustained form of courage that you had talked about earlier. It's a profound example of choosing authenticity over safety.

Hey. We heard from a listener named Brad who shared a remarkable story that made me wonder whether people can go not only from being fearful to brave, but also in the other direction. In 1988, Brad's father passed away. To work through his emotions, he decided to go on a bicycle trip through rural China.

It quickly got dark. It started to rain. It started to pour. I sat in a bowl in my tiny cave hole,

Thank you.

And I sat as still as I could. I'd never been so cold. It was terrifying. And I was done adventuring. There had to be healthier ways to work through the death of a loved one. All I wanted now was a boring life for the rest of my days. I decided if I lived to tell about this, I would return home and take over the family business.

So the next morning Ranjay Brad was able to escape. He lived to tell the tale. But I'm wondering what you make of his story. Can we do scary things, decide that we've had enough, and then want to go back to a life that is much more cautious and safe?

So, um, look, uh what we are experienced there's two parts to this story. I think it's a great story and I'm really th grateful that Brad decided to share this with us. Um, you know, what he has described here is what has been called conditioned fear. Fear learnt through experience rather than logic. Conditioned fear is a learned nervous system response. So it's automatic, right? So the classic example of that is being bitten by a dog and then getting terrified of dogs.

Cheers.

Maybe there are smaller steps along the way where you can actually allow yourself the possibility of going on a guided tour, going to places that are safer. And what I have come to realize is that most of us are living our fears, not our dream. And it's because we have sometimes these, you know, conditioned responses that then become kind of a guiding principle that, oh, I'm conditioned, I'm not gonna do it.

Mm-hmm.

something simple and small and and and as I do it I convince myself that I can do Uh it builds up my own confidence and honestly it helps me overcome the trauma that I may I I probably went through. It must have been a I can only imagine, but it sounds like a really traumatic experience.

Brad's story also makes me reflect, uh, Ranjay, that one thing that scary experiences do is is they help us reflect on our lives, to see the value and more mundane and boring things in our lives. So as Brad sat shivering in the cave, he was fantasizing about how wonderful it would be to be bored.

Well, no question about it. The contrast effect always helps, right? What courage does, or these risky or crucible moments, do, is they shift our sense of time. Instead of just being trapped by the present threat and what's happening here, we start to also imagine ourselves in longer arcs. Like, what do I want my life to add up to? So I think courageous moments and courageous actions powerful kind of moments of self-reflection.

When we come back, is courage always a good thing? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. Throughout human history, storytellers have extolled the virtues of courage. From the biblical tale of David and Goliath to the latest superhero movies, we love characters.

But bravery isn't always easy. It can be messy, dangerous. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King junior went to prison and eventually lost their lives to their causes. An employee who confronts an unethical boss may lose her job. A student who turns in a cheating classmate could get called a snitch.

Ranjay Guladi is the author of How to Be Bold, the surprising science of everyday courage. Ranjay, let's look at some of the challenges involved with courage. Some listeners pointed out that their ability to be brave depends not only on what the situation is, but on who is involved. Here's K.

And I've realized I've had no problem or hesitation inserting myself into any arena if if I'm seeing someone getting bullied, if I'm seeing someone throw a piece of trash or if there's a natural disaster, I don't seem to hesitate to react or respond and in what I feel like is courage and standing up for what I morally believe is right.

So Ranjay, I feel like many people can relate to this. Um our likelihood to show courage can vary based on who is the aggressor and who is the victim. What do you make of this?

ད དགས དགས དགས དགས དགས དགས དགས དགས དགས

Deeply deep.

You know, and social psychology has shown us that. Like we more likely to take action if we identify with a victim, you know, like in the story of Suzanne, we feel empathy. Or if we feel safe in our group, safety in numbers. Conversely, if the aggressor is some kind of a powerful authority figure, the perceived cost skyrocket.

You know, I'm thinking in some ways of an analogy here, Ranjay. Um many parents I think experience this. They might be, you know, meek and cautious people most of the time, but if their kids were in danger you know, lion dad and lioness mom, you know, come out. And so there are some situations that really bring out the protector in us, that bring out the defender in us, and we don't do this for everyone and sometimes we don't do this for ourselves.

Yes, absolutely. And you're absolutely right. So that's where it's a great illustration of context dependence of courage. that in certain conditions we are willing to. Now, the parent-child I think is almost genetically hardwired in us as we know, uh helping our own genetic pool survive. But people stand up for causes.

A listener named Thomas called in from China. He says that years ago early in his career, he stood up to his boss over what he felt were unethical business practices. Surprisingly, the boss recognized the error and publicly apologized. But looking back now, Thomas realizes his courage might not have all been about courage, some of it might have been the unthinking rashness of youth.

Encourage that I had at that time. It's really very rare in my life in fact because as I grew older as I became more and more socially experienced I just defined that I have gradually lost that kind of courage because at that time I didn't know uh what the consequences were. I didn't know what I was doing in fact. I just play a hero if you will so I wanna ask is ignorance actually a factor that leads to courage?

Thank you.

Ranja, I'm wondering what you make of Thomas' question. Can ignorance be a source of courage?

Sir Thomas asked a great question, and and the honest answer is yes, sometimes, but with important caveat to think about. Ignorance can be a spot. That triggers someone to take care of not knowing the full danger can help you take the first step. But to sustain courage, even in that particular story or over a course of your life, requires building awareness of courage. My gentle suggestion to Thomas is to learn to build a relationship with fear. to to learn to lean into that discomfort.

We received uh an interesting message from a listener named Steven about the line between bravery and recklessness, the same line you were talking about a moment ago. A couple of years ago Stephen narrowly escaped a shark attack. He actually had to hit the shark on its snout. to make it go away. Now that scary incident didn't deter him some time later from getting back into the ocean. I let him pick up the story.

So I get in the water and I'm swimming and it's there's two sets of breakers so I'm swimming about a hundred yards out and s and I'm about a half an hour into the swim and uh as I my right arm enters the water Um I guess it must lift just like a fish going into the water, because a shark comes up from underneath me, grabs my right arm, pulls me under, shakes the heck out of me, and then lets me go. I guess he figures I'm not a fish and uh

Wondering what you think, Ranja? Um was Stephen being uh brave or was Stephen being recognized?

There's a defined line there, and what I would say the line is the dividing line between those two is acknowledgement. Bravery acknowledges the risk. And chooses to act for a higher purpose or other beliefs or other factors that propel you to consciously take. Right? Recklessness, on the other hand, ignores or minimizes the risk, often for the thrill or out of negligence.

Yeah. Now it's also the case, of course, that there are many situations where It's not clear what the risks are. Uh if you're dealing with let's say confronting an authoritarian regime, maybe you don't have signs saying, you know, your risk today is twenty-five percent, your risk today is sixty-five percent. Is it always possible to know what the risk is before venturing in, Ranjay?

That's a great question. And you know, in my book actually I make a distinction between risk and uncertainty. Um, you know, risk is where you know the probability of outcomes and you can put some numbers to it and the shock example is one of them. Signs saying shock sightings have happened, there are sharks in the area. Un uncertainties where we don't know. Right. Where maybe you go into a remote place or a uh a country where they don't track shock movement.

Ranjay Kulati is a behavioral scientist at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of How to Be Bold, The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage. We also heard today from political scientist Erika Chenowith, also at Harvard. Erika is the author of Civil Resistance, What Everyone Needs to Know, and with Maria Stefan, Why Civil Resistance Works, The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quirell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hittenbrain's executive editor.

Thank you to Loom biatlassian for sponsoring the Hidden Brain Perceptions Tour. While on tour, audience members shared the best piece of advice they've ever received. At our tour stop in Baltimore, a listener named Sanjeev told us about a piece of career advice he received from a friend. Sanjeev says he had always struggled with networking until his friend told him something that changed his whole perspective.

I'd heard how important networking was, but I didn't know how to do it. I didn't think I was a good networker. So I went to one of my friends who I consider to be the best n networker I've ever met. I'm like, how do you do it? Ed, how do you do networking? Because I can't do it, right? I'm intimidated by it.

Mm-hmm.

Sanjeev, when I meet with people, I don't think about what they can do for me, but what I can do for It was such a simple but profound message that day. It reoriented my thinking. And from that point on, I've never been afraid to just go and meet people. Thank you.

Thanks to Sanjeev for sharing that piece of advice, and thanks again to Loom for sponsoring the Perception Story. Loom is AI-first powered video communication that moves teams forward, whether you're sharing feedback, obtaining approvals, or setting context. Reduce unnecessary meetings and make the ones that matter more effective. Unstuck your teams today at loom.com. That's lom.com. It's a team changer. I'm Shankar Vedanta. See you soon.