Adam Grant || Think Again

It's great to have Adam Grant on the podcast. Adam is an organizational psychologist Warden, where he has been the top rated professor for seven straight years. He is the number one New York Times best selling author of four books that I've sold millions of copies and been translated into thirty five languages. His work has been praised by J. J. Abrams,

Bill and Linda Gates, among many others. Grant's TED talks have been viewed more than twenty million times, and he hosts the chart topping TED podcast, Work Life with Adam Grant. He's been recognized as one of the world's ten most influential management thinkers Fortunes forty Under forty, Oprah, Super Soul, hundred and a World Economic Forum. Young Global Leader. Adam received Distinguished Scientific Achievement awards from the American Psychological Association

and the National Science Foundation. He was in Philadelphia, woo Go Philly with his wife Alison and their three children. Adam, so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast again.

I'm so glad to be back. Scott. Thank you for the overly generous introduction, and especially for building a bridge between all the great research that's done in psychology, including by you, and the rest of the world, which I feel like twenty years ago, if when I was an undergrad reading all these interesting studies that were collecting dust and internal articles, if I knew there were going to be people like you out there making sure that not

only good research got done, but also that it got shared, I would have been much more optimistic about the future of scientific psychology than I was. Well, that's really generous of you to say that. It's funny I view you that way, So I guess that's a nice meal thing there, you know, just reflecting because you were one of the first Psychology Podcast guests ever. You were you were so kind enough to kind of take a chance on the Psychology Podcast in twenty fourteen. But my have we both

grown since two thousand and four. I mean, I mean I could speak for myself. At least, I was such a I was such an awkward geek. And now I'm like fifty percent less of an awkward geek, but I'm still there's still percent there. But do you remember, like who we were in twenty fourteen? Do you remember these people? I think I might have had more hair, so I didn't grow in that direction, But I remember, I actually remember.

I think I was on maybe the first it was the second edition of the iPad, trying to figure out how to make a podcast recording even work at that time, which was completely foreign to me. And yeah, you've just taken off. It's amazing. Likewise likewise, so I really am excited to talk about your new book today. It's really a good book. It's like, I genuinely mean that, it's a really good book, and it's much needed right now. In fact, you say, and I couldn't agree more with

a sentence. I can't think of a more vital time for rethinking. Wow, what a time we're living right now is as you put it in the introduction, you know, there's so many crisses. There are so many fires going on right now. How do you think, first of all, what is rethinking? And how do you think rethinking can help if not put out the fires, not stoke them more?

Oh where do we begin? I think, Well, first of all, I had a really hard time titling this book at first, because I thought that in many ways, what I wanted to do was I wanted to get people to hit the reset button on the knowledge they took for granted the assumptions they held, but hadn't questioned the opinions that

might have even become part of their identity. And I just felt like so many of the titles that came to mind were either they were either a little bit cheesy, how many times have we been encouraged to hit the reset button? Right? Or they were just a little bit too I don't know, they were too contemplative, like you know. Second Thoughts was one that came to mind, And one morning I woke up and I said, Oh, think again. That's what we do as social scientists, right Our job

is to think again. And it means that the first thoughts that we've had, the initial ideas that we've gotten excited about, are not necessarily the best ideas, and maybe they were yesterday right, but the world might have changed in a way that makes yesterday his ideas a little

bit stale and irrelevant. And so I guess for me, rethinking is a skill set that starts with intellectual humility, right, knowing what you don't know and recognizing how many areas of ignorance you have in your life, and how likely it is that you're about many of the things that you believe to be true. And then from there, what I want to get to is people having a healthy level of doubt and being curious about what they don't know.

And the hope is that that leads them to make new discoveries, and that only reinforces their humility and reminds them that there is so much more to learn. You know, a lot of what you're describing sounds like the scientific mindset. You know, what we're trained to do in the sixth grade science class. You know, like we take chemistry and then we forget it. And then unless you go into the field of science. You know, but even when you go into the field of science, many scientists don't think

like that outside of the laboratory. Right, Actually, let's talk about that. I think quick on that. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think that's a tragedy. And as you know, in some ways, I wrotly think again to try to help people think more scientifically about their own beliefs. Right, which, to your point, we know a lot of brilliant scientists who don't apply the same humility, curiosity, mental flexibility to their daily lives that they bring to their labs, and

I think that's unfortunate. I also think that those of us who are not trained as professional scientists, we can actually learn something from thinking more like scientists. So I guess my original inspiration for this came from work by our colleague Phil Tetlock, who wrote about how we just spend way too much time thinking and talking like preachers, prosecutors and politicians, and being in preacher mindset is about saying I've already found the truth that my job, Scott

is to proselytize it to you. Prosecutor mode is in some ways the mirror image. I know you're wrong, I have to prove it and win my case. And we don't do a lot of rethinking when we're in preacher a prosecutor mode, Right, because if I already know that I'm correct and you're incorrect, then there's no reason for me to do any moving. All I have to do

is change your mind. And Phil wrote about politician mode is being a little bit different in the sense that you're trying to campaign for the approval of some audience. And that might look like you're a little more flexible because you can to what they want to hear. But sometimes you're doing that at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, not because you've really changed your mind, but because you know you're just trying to appease whatever that

stakeholder group is. And so I think about scientific thinking is as an alternative to start with the idea that many of your beliefs are actually just hunches, their theories that are waiting to be tested. They are hypotheses that might be falsified. And what you could do then is go out into the world and ask yourself, Okay, what experiment do I need to run in my life? What data observations do I need to collect in order to

figure out whether my hypotheses are true or false? And I think if people took that mindset a little bit more seriously, they'd be able to get out of confirmation bias, get out of desirability bias, and say, you know what, I should spend as much time looking for reasons why my opinions are false as I do, kind of hanging out in my echo chamber filter bubble, looking to validate what I already believe. What do you make of all that?

It's such a good point, because you know, where we're trained as science, we're trained to actively disconfirm our hypothesis. I mean, if we know that what's left after we've yeah, if we can confirm, if we can make sure that we haven't discovered all these things that are disconfirming our quote brilliant idea, you know, then we can have more confidence, you know, at a pe less than you know whatever.

But so that's the way we're taught. But that's not the way that that anyone is acting in the world, right No, And I immediately got you curious when I said, Okay, what if we could all do a little bit less preaching, prosecuting and politicking and a little more scientific thinking. Could that work for non scientists? Can we actually teach this

frame of mind? And conveniently, there's actually an experiment with entrepreneurs where over one hundred founders of Italian startups they're all pre revenue, are randomly asscient to either a control

group or a scientific thinking group. They go through a few months of entrepreneurship training, and the training is identical except for the fact that the scientific thinking group is told, you know what your vision and strategy for your startup, that's just a theory, and what you should do is try to identify the hypothesies you have about how you're going to capture your market and then go and do customer interviews to flesh out exactly what those hypotheses are.

And then when you do your little product launch or you create a minimum viable product, or you test out your service, that's an experiment to find out whether your hypotheses were true or false, and you can immediately start to see the benefit of that. The data, I think that we're really striking, and that the control group averaged

less than three hundred dollars of revenue that year. The experimental group, just getting that scientist lens, averaged over twelve thousand dollars in revenue in that year, which is a I mean, that's a whopping effect. And the main mechanism was just pivoting that if you were taught to think like a scientist as an entrepreneur, you were more than twice as likely to abandon your old strategy and say, you know what, that wasn't working. Let me find something

that does. And I think that kind of flexibility is exactly at the heart of thinking like a scientist. Yeah, I'm I'm listening to you talking now, and it just strikes me that a lot of your work is talking about characteristics that that that like maybe in the past before you came along, like they sound nice, you know they're but but they're not why are they relevant you

know in the workplace? You know, like be kind Yeah, yeah, okay, my mother told me that when I was ten years old, you know, or like you know, have humility, have intellectual humilis okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, but that person's an asshole.

You know. But but I feel like you're actually coming along and you're saying, well, look these characteristics, like you know, like basically you're saying, think again about the kindness, think again about thinking again, you know, like you know, is this you know, right, this seems to be a kind of a common theme or a thread that we've across. Have you thought about that way? You know? I didn't. I didn't see it at all until I'm trying to remember.

I think it was twenty sixteen. A reporter had interviewed me about some of my research, and afterwards she said, you know, you're just a giant trojan horse. I'm sorry, tell me more. I've never been exactly I would. I would really like to know what you think I'm smuggling into, you know, into some forbidden gads. And she said, well, what you're what you're constantly doing in your work is you're you're motivating the things that you study by their

ability to drive success and excellence. But the payoff is actually a better you. And so the you know, the the initial hook is, well, here's how you can become you know are, Here's how you can become more effective at whatever you do. But the path I guess that I keep studying there is a virtuous path, right that at some level I want you to be more generous, more curious, more humble, and I want to say, study how how those virtues can actually go hand in hand

with success. So I think you're onto something, Scott, and it's interesting because this is also a theme in your work. You've you've written just several now fascinating articles and brought some data together about bright side personality traits as opposed to the dark triad that we like to talk about in psychology, and you've you've also been highlighting how some of these lighter side traits can be associated with with success. Was this more intentional on your part than it was

on mind? Well, I certainly can't say if it was more intentional in comparison to you, but I can say it was intentional on my part for sure. We felt and I don't want to redirect the conversation to myself all of a sudden, but I'll just say at Penn there were some amazing colleagues like David Yaden, Elizabeth Hyde, Eli Tsakonama, who's not at University of Hawaii. He worked

with Angel Duckworth on the original GRIP paper. We're just all we'ch all felt like just asshole's got too much attention in the personality psychology literature, you know what I mean, Like when you look at the personality psychology, it's like, for instance, the paid the journal Paid Personality and Individual Differences. Every single article is dark triad in this dark tried, in this meeting, dark tried meeting dark tried in the

workplace dark. And I went exasperated to my you know, friend, David Yiden's office, and I said, is there anything that's interesting about someone who's not an asshole? And so that was the question, that was the question motivating that personality

psychology research. But but I feel like there was probably a greater intentionality than you're giving yourself credit for in your own work about it, right, because you once you discovered like that, for instance, give and take, when you were doing that research, and you discovered that, my gosh, like this is such a predictive variable that maybe I didn't even you know, I didn't even realize how predictive

it was. You wanted to then your motivation was to share that information in the world, right and show them that's I definitely was interested in that specifically, right. So I came in thinking, Okay, do you really have to be selfish to be successful? Is it possible that there are ways to achieve your goals while being unselfish or even generous? I don't think I saw though, the larger pattern, right that that that idea of linking character and success

was going to keep threading throughout my work. So I knew I was doing that with studying givers, takers and matchers, and that that part of it was deliberate. I didn't know that I was. I was playing the same tune though, when I went on to study other topics, and it either I was chasing it implicitly or it's been following

me ever since. So fascinating. Okay, So I kind of want to I want to stay on this topic for a second, because like, creativity is another one right that you did, and so the triumphant I like these three. I like this street compassion. I'm reframing giving as compassion. All. I hope you'll you'll allow me that license for a moment. It's not exactly we could get into the nuances. Why that's probably not now. They're they're near cousins, and they

both they both belong to the pro social families. Sociality. It's total process creativity and uh and and you know, rethinking a new construct. I want I want to give you credit here for you know, I'm not just gonna say something else like oh, an intellecual humility, because that's not quite the same thing. I mean, you've really come up with a new construct here, and and that's what I want to talk to you a lot about today

and how that cut do you think? So? I do actually think you came up with a new construct, and I wanted to talk to you about it's correlations and linkages to like the Big Five and stuff, and I thought we could nerd about that today. But I really do think that it's not reducible to if I just had like like epistemic humility, you know, it's like, no, that's not quite it, you know, or the intellect facet of openest experience. No, not really. You look at those items,

it's like I like philosophical discussions. You can like philosophical discussions and never rethink anything in your entire life, right, I mean I feel like that's most of academia, people having rich, abstract conversations that confirm what they already believed. That's right, that's right. So these three things, rethinking, creativity and pro sociogy, those are that gets us a nice start with the whole virtue was youd ammonia path of life?

Doesn't it creative actualization? Yeah? Yeah, I think it does. So what what's missing? I think integrity is probably missing. And that's that you're just like, oh, there's a lot of like cans, like we're opening up and it's like, wait,

which can do I want to focus on? Because that's all the authenticity questions fascinating one and and and I think that I think that both me and you are kind of moving more in the direction of like it's really integrity, Like authenticity is really more about integrity, you know,

And that's how Eric crom thought of it. So yeah, but anyway, I do think that, uh, that's a good one, that that's probably missing in Okay, okay, at least four Okay, let's say if we just had we build like an artificial intelligence robot with these four and think about what could be missing. Well, obviously we give them vision, but that's not that's like that obvious. But then we give a robot, we give an a I you go to car and email, and we program a robot that has uh,

these four characteristics. Maybe you know, maybe the one thing that I'm that I'm trying to see how it fits into this picture is emotional intelligence, you know. And it's like, because that's not quite the same thing as pro sociality either, right, No, it's not. Yeah, do we want to add that one? Do we want to make these five the Big five?

Our new Big five? You know, it's a I don't know what to do with emotional intelligence here because I think about it much more in the ability and skill category, and I'm thinking about the other attributes you listed. Is more motivational as as more will do as opposed to can do. So maybe maybe we need a couple of different families. Right, So what we've been building are our

strengths of character. There's also probably a set of of strengths of skill that I like that, And then you know, we would want to put a grit maybe is that a skill is grit? But then that's tricky, right, It's like a compound trait. I feel like grit is a compound trait between skill and motivation because it is a skill. It's a skill in a way, you know, it's a muscle.

There's probably a skill component of all these. Now. Yeah, there's a really interesting Dudley and Cortina paper on organizational citizenship, behavior and the knowledge and skill component saying, look, we don't care how motivated you are to help other people if you don't have relevant expertise to share, you're not

going to be that helpful. And if you don't know how to offer help without making people feel stupid or undermining their self reliance and making them feel dependent, then you're probably also not going to end up being that successful in your efforts to support others. And we could probably do that analysis for each of these there's a

will component and a scale component. But I maybe okay, so maybe Angela Duckworth, who we've we've both spent a lot of time with, would say, okay, there's there's strengths of heart, mind, and will, and we could say the the pro sociality clearly fits in the heart category. The the will would be That's where I would put grit, I guess and rethinking and creativity both feel like strengths

of mind. Where does integrity belong? You know, it almost seems like that's like a superordinate category, you know, for any of these things. Couldn't you not have integrity in any of those demeans? Right? You could you assume saying it almost seems like that youka like the meta virtue in a way, in a way one maybe could make a case. So talk to me a little more about

your authenticity view of integrity. I'm asking part because in the organizational worlds, Roger Mayer and his colleagues have defined integrity is as having and enacting worthy principles. So they want to know, you know, at least when they ask are you trustworthy? The integrity to mention of that is okay, do we believe that you have that you have decent values, and then also that you're going to enact the values

that you espouse. You're going to live by the the principles that you've I guess you're going to practice what you preach effectively, and I think your your integrity stance is a little bit different. Through an authenticity lens, it is,

and this is this is a good discussion. When I was constructing the self factorization scale, trying to like test to see which of Maslow's characteristics of self actualizers actually could hold up psychometrically, My items and authenticity were adapted from the way he thought about authenticity in the way that Eric from the humanistic psychologist at that time thought of authority, which was simply this, I stay true to my values, specifically under conditions in which they're threatened the

reason why I like thinking about that way, and I want to get your thoughts. I really don't want to turn the spotlight back on in this chat. You're the interviewee, but I'd love to get your thoughts on this and how you think about us. But I just I feel like things like courage, right, Like why would you just measure courage by saying on a scale one to five,

I have courage, No, you have courage. It's easy to have courage when when the courage is not really needed, you know, But it's a lot harder to have courage when it's when it's truly requires courage. And I almost

see authenticity in a similar sort of way. It's easy to just stay, you know, whatever is on your mind when you're when you have enablers who when you have like supporters who would burn down the White House for you, so you know, for example, I don't know where I got that example, but it's easy to kind of say

whatever you want when you have devoted sycophones. But it seems to me like authenticity and and tagery the related construct, there is something that comes about when you can really have that strength of muscle to say no, this is my value, and I'm gonna stick this value even though everyone wants me to not stick to it. I don't know what are your thoughts on this. I think this is a great way to think about values and virtues more generally, because they're all easy to live when they're

not being tested. It's incredibly easy to be kind when you're in a good mood and when things are going your way right. It's very easy to be creative when you have access to lots of ideas and a lot of support around you. I think it's it would be interesting to actually think about studying and measuring values through this lens and say, Okay, the real test of whether you live by value, as opposed to just claiming it is whether you stick by it when the deck is

decked against you. Yeah. I really really like that. I wish the field moved more in that direction because the field I'm talking about positive psychology, because I feel like a lot of these constructs are just a contextual right. They're like, you take question like the VIA survey, these are your top character strands, but it's like they're they're a contextual right. It's like there's something that's not sat

deeply satisfying about that. Yeah, I want I want to measure whether you're a giver or a taker by how you treat someone on your worst day as opposed to your best. I love that, or how do you treat a subordinate like like for instance, you know, narcissists are huge givers when it comes to people that they know they can get something out of right. So if you just look at that context, right, they're Oh, they're such

a giver. But then how do a lot of these people treat you know, Like we found White Tried Dark Triad. One of the biggest things differentiating White Tried versus Dark Tried was how you treat Do you treat all individuals with dignity and respect or you do you only and the dark triad individuals who scored well, those are scored high on the dark trine. I should, I should say, because we're we all have a little bit of it within us right where they were very much like you know,

I I treat people dignity, respect who are powerful. I treat people with powerful peaceeople, they need respect. It's like, does that really make you a great human being overall as a whole person? Not? Last time I checked It reminds me of the Rusvank paper on the slime effect, where people were essentially kissing up and kicking down. They were extremely likable and flattering towards superiors, but then not

so kind and respectful towards subordinates. And it almost sounds like it reminds me a little bit of the classic Adorno work on the f scale of authoritarianism, where if you acted submissive with superiors and dominant with subordinates, that was a marker of being an authoritarian. And I wonder if that's part of what you're capturing that differentiates dart and excuse me, dark and light triad tendencies. It could be. It could be, And I know I definitely think about

that more. But I want to return to rethinking your really cool new construct because it's really worthy of airing here. Getting some are so. First, I took your test and you have a think again quiz, and my score was fifty percent scientist, thirty percent politician, ten percent prosecutor, and ten percent preacher. And I got zero percent in the other category. Is it possible to get something in the other category? Yeah. First of all, I haven't done systematic

validation work on these items. I adapted them from some items in a few relevant literatures and then wrote a bunch of new ones myself. But it's really just designed as a fun way for people to reflect on their own styles and when they you know, when they might be more likely to slip into preaching or prosecuting or

politicking versus science. But yeah, there's some red herring items in there, like if you said that you wanted avocado toasts, I didn't have a category for that, So I was on the fence about that one, but decided I chose the other option to be curious about what I don't know.

But yeah, start, but talk about your scores for a saying no, no, go ahead, sorry, oh oh no, I was just going to mention some other of the I was on the fence about some of your funny ones because I was like, oh, but I do like that. But that was like enough. I was like, come on, Scott, focus, focus, you want to you want to really know what your scores? But no, no, yeah, let's talk. What are you going

to say? No? So I I one, I'm surprised that your scientist score wasn't higher, because too you are, You're so passionate about about thinking scientifically and in almost every part of your life. To my knowledge, that could be

an indictment of my items being flawed. I wonder also, though, it's interesting that politician is your next highest because you've talked about how agreeable you are and how historically it's been extremely important to you to be liked, and I wonder if if that's if we're picking that up a little bit in your politician score, that there are situations where you might you might adjust what you claim your opinion to be in order to fit in with the

group around you. That's really interesting. I saw the politician thirty percent score as my interest in like public science outreach and and persuading people of the importance oh this kind of stuff. But you did hit on something that I'm working through with my therapist. It sounds like I need the same therapist. So tell me, So you did hit on something they're out of But no, no, no, I think there there could be some truth to that.

But you know, I've really, I've really tried to work on the authentic, the integrity thing as much as possible, you know, in my life, and so so that it does raise an interesting question, what's the relationship between integrity and can you have a thirty percent politicians score and still have integrity? Isn't that interesting question? Like can you be a good politician? I think it's a relevant question to the moment we're seeing right like can you be like,

like I get the stint? And I was I was talking to some senator. I was in this like inaugural ball virtual ball last night with like senators, you know, and like and actors and so the strangest thing, but anyway, and and they were talking and they were saying, how you know, like they're like, well, we we've known Joe Biden for years and years and regardless of the politics, we disagree. There were some Republicans. I think there might

have been some Republicans regards the politics. He's a man of integrity, you know, he's a man he's a really kind, caring like authentically, Yet at the same time, in order to do the work he has to do right now, to unite America, he has to at least be thirty percent in your test right on. So do you see him saying, like, how can you balance those two things? Yeah? Yeah, it is a very timely question. I'm not sure if

I have a simple answer to it. But I think one of one of the things I've been thinking about lately on I guess on this dimension is it's it's almost impossible to be true to all the parts of your character at the same time, right, because we're so complex and multi dimensional. And I wonder if part of what it means means to be a politician who acts with integrity is being true to your core values while being false to your personality from time to time. So

I look at Joe Biden's an interesting example. I don't know, I don't know his big five personality traits. I do know that he overcame a stutter, and that he's described whether it was because of the stutter or just a compounding factor for the stutter, being very shy at first, right, And he's had to overcome that, I assume in service of his values of both advancing his own political career and also trying to, you know, trying to promote the common good the way that he sees it as a politician.

And I think there's some clear integrity in doing that. You could say he's being very authentic to some values that are important to him. There are probably moments where he feels extremely inauthentic. I can't imagine that every single time he gets on stage he thinks, yes, this this is me, This is who I was born to be, the same way that a George W. Bush or Bill Clinton did probably did. I love this Just discrepancy between integrity sometimes and like choosing the integrity option over the

biological personality disposition option. I really like what you're saying, and it's it's cool because it's you don't hear about people talking about that discrepancy. I think we had like lunch one time and you made some comment like I'm temperamentally an introvert, but I do you remember that? I think am I allowed to say this on air? That? Yeah? And uh and you and that struck me. You know, it is real. It strikes me right now as relevant

to the conversation. You know how sometimes you probably feel like even though biologically you don't, you don't feel like you really want to go out there on that stage or or go to the networking media, you know, like, but like you're reacting, like physically you're breaking out and sweat like at least that I know that's how I feel when they say Scott, you want to go to a break uh uh, you know, like a networking event. I almost a breakdancing. I don't know, I might, I

might actually like that better. And that's not an endorsement of me ever, breakdancing. I'm like networking event. I'm sorry, I have a great network. It's Ethernet, it's wired in my house. I'm good, thank you, no thanks. Yeah, but you still do it, you still act anyway. And that's the point here. Yeah, I mean it's it's yeah, that that is that that gets the heart for me. Of I didn't choose my personality. I didn't choose to have the dopamine response pattern of an introvert, right. I did

choose my values. I did choose my passion for sharing ideas and teaching and and learning from other people. And it's the same thing that I've watched Brian Little do his whole career when he talks about acting out of character and says, look, I'm gonna I'm gonna go into pseudo extra version mode because I have a personal project that matters deeply to me. And I think, if if we agree that personality is you know, largely a set of biological tendencies that you didn't choose, and values are

principles that you decided are important to you. I know which one I'm gonna let win when there's a conflict between the two. I think that's authenticity, you know, in a way that may most people don't think of as authenticity, But I think it's almost true authenticity in a way. I guess that's the question is in authenticity, who are you being authentic too? What part of yourself? Yes? I think What's what's interesting about that? And I didn't see this until you just brought it up? Is it passes

your difficulty test? Because the easy road would be to say, you know what, I'm an I'm an introvert. I'm not going to put myself in situations that require me to act extroverted. And yet I'm choosing those situations anyway because I have a goal and a set of values that I care about, and that makes me think that that that, yeah, that that feels more like in tent than just saying nah, I don't feel like networking not can a network? Right? Right? So you you say like a little knowledge can be

a dangerous thing. Now, how can a little knowledge be a dangerous thing. Well, I think this goes to one of the wrinkles in the Dunning Kruger effect, which I think anybody who has a passing interest in psychology is just endlessly interested in right'. It's the you know the finding Well, it's the classic pattern is the people who have the least knowledge are skill in a domain are the most likely to overestimate their expertise in that domain.

So the people with the poorest grammar and the lowest emotional intelligence are the most likely to be over confident about exactly how brilliant their writing is and how emotionally skilled they are. And I think when I first learned about Dunning Krueger, gosh, this is just over two decades ago now, so half my life ago. When I learned about Dunning Krueger, I thought it meant that complete beginners were the most over confident. But that's not the pattern

in the data. If you know literally nothing about an area, then it's pretty easy to see that. What David Dunning has shown in some of his studies is that when you start to gain a little bit of knowledge, your confidence climbs faster than your confidence, and it's almost like you confuse the rate of learning that you have with the level of expertise that you have. And they've done

some Dounning and Sanchez. I love this paper. They did this experiment where people are in a simulated zombie apocalypse and they have to be doctors basically to rescue or treat and cure humans who have been I guess bitten by zombies. And at first there's you know, nobody knows what they're doing, and nobody's confident, and then they start to get a little bit better, and all of a

sudden they think they're extremely good. And you see this widening gap between their skill, which is going up a little, and their confidence, which is going up a lot. And I think that that's why a little done. I guess that's why a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Is once you know something you can you can start to believe because you know more than you used to and because you know more than than some other people do, you can start to convince yourself that you're actually pretty

darn informed on this topic. What about you know this idea of overconfidence? Can you know, like, can you know too much? Because like so much of your research looks at uh inverted you shaped curves. This is like this is this is like your thing? So this does this apply to the same thing with with knowledge? Yeah. Eric Dane wrote a great paper about this, on what he called cognitive entrenchment, and he showed that when it comes to at least when it comes to a bunch of

different domains, I don't know. He argued that this is a general phenomenon. I'm excited to see more research on this, but the basic argument was that if you are extremely knowledgeable or experienced in a domain, that you fall into this trap of cognitive entrenchment where you start to take for granted assumptions that need to be questioned and you become a fish that doesn't even know it's in water.

And the data on this are kind of cool. So some of the studies that he cites speak to Okay, So one would be expert bridge players, if you change the rules a little bit, they actually play worse than novices because they have such a hard time unlearning the

strategies that have always worked for them. And highly skilled accountants, if you change tax laws, are actually slower to adapt than really inexperienced accountants who are learning these tax laws for the first time, and so it does make me think that there's a risk of rigidity when you develop a lot of expertise and you're you're deeply immersed in

a set of assumptions or approaches to a field. And I wonder if this is one of the reasons that, whether you're an entrepreneur trying to disrupt or whether you're a scientist trying to bring in a revolutionary new theory, that we sometimes see big, bold ideas come from a slightly outside perspective as opposed to inside the field. I think that's that's so quite right, and that links to creativity as well. You see a lot of outsiders as

outsiders are really really creative and innovative. No immigrants, you and well, sorry, gone, I just said immigrants in particular. I always found that research really interesting that they're very innovative. But what were you going to say? Fascinating? No, no, no, I was going to say you. You and our brilliant colleague rereb Rebelly have some research on this right about how having broad interests is actually associated with creativity. That's

that's correct. Reb and I have collected so much data on this that we're overwhelmed with a with a paper with like four studies and it's like we got to wait, no, now, we got to write this up. But but yeah, diversity of interest is uh, that's right, diversity of interests is a topic we've been really interested in for for quite some time. So okay, so let's think about your Uh, I don't want to lose sight of your construct and

the uniqueness of your construct. Thinking again, So I was thinking again, it's that's still not quite the same thing as diversity of interest. But you could see how they'd be allied as well. You know, they'd be in you know, their cousins, you know. Uh, but thinking again, you know, I almost am thinking like if I was the cognitive

scientist again, like, that's my training was in cognitive science. Like, I bet there's a relationship between like the updating component of working memory and have you thought about it at that level of granularity and and thinking again and the ability to think again? Yeah? No, that that's that's an interesting way to think about it. There, You're right. You

could like the enakak Yeah you could. You could. Actually you can measure people's either will or skill to think again by looking at how quickly they're able to discard old memories and accommodate NW ones. That's what I'm thinking. It should be a really objective way of capturing that. You're right, the cognitive underpinnings of this orientation, But that's

like the cognitive science we trained NERD in me. That's like, oh, I bet we could like if I was still doing a dissertation, that's a dissertation topic, Like someone could do that dissertation. Do you think that's different from actively open minded thinking? Because that that felt like the closest what I wanted to do with Think Again was to capture a mindset that had, you know, a series of elements attached to it, right, and say, okay, you know, there's

the humility, there's the curiosity, there's the doubt. Uh, there's the the updating, right, and and this is a cycle that we go through that that helps protect us against overconfidence. It seemed like actively open minded thinking was was the construct that got closest to at least what's at the center of that cycle. Do you see a difference between

the two. I see it again. I can see as as uh as Allied, I see all of these Keystanovich kind of rationality skills as Allied as well, and I'm trying to go through my head like my side bias.

It's not quite the same thing, but it's related. I feel like there's I feel like you've added another thing to the table of the rationality Stanovitch kind of like circle of things that are really important in order because so many people have the my side bias right now, right like they really only interpret arguments uh in through the lens of their own side. But the idea of

like constantly update, it's funny. The closest this is really how nerd I am, Adam, because the closest thing construct I could think of to what you're talking about was the enpact task. Now that's really nerdy, that's really nerdy. But the point, the point is that there's something about your construct that is really about the up an updating

component that is missing from all these other more static constructs. Right, So, even you know rationality, it's like you measure it one moment in time, you say, oh, well, that person has the MyD side bias, so that person suffers from or

that person's an active, open mind thinker. But I think what you're capturing, what I like about it, and I want to highlight this is that there's a dynamic aspect to what you're proposing that is missing in the psychological literature because these things aren't studied in that kind of micro moment, kind of overtime perspective, and what you're you're taking a more overtime perspective, I think is at least

that's my interpretation. Yeah, that's interesting. I think I like I like that line of reasoning, and it seems like it's it's a little bit what Phil Tetlock and his colleagues were doing when when they studied perpetual beta in super forecasting and said, look, you know, the the greatest forecasters when it comes to predicting world events revise their forecasts more often than forecasters who struggle, and so there

is an updating component of that. But they study that in a very specific domain, which is okay, you know, is the is Donald Trump going to be convicted by the Senate or not? Right? And then you make a prediction and then tomorrow how likely are you to either change your prediction or adjust your confidence interval around your prediction? And I want to know something much more basic, which is whatever you learn today or whatever you thought to be true yesterday. How willing are you to let go

of that and reconsider it tomorrow. Yeah, it's that letting go part. That's like a it's like a letting go of a cognitive representation, letting go of like something that that maybe is in our semantic tree, but we're like, you know what, I'm just going to ignore it as part of my symantric tree right now. So, yeah, there's something there that is You're really hitting on something important

in the world today and linking it too. I want to link it to disagreeableness for a second, as you talk about your book, because as you mentioned, I have been I would put it, I've been plagued by my agreeableness my whole life. But I one of my one of my nearest resolutions was to dial down my agreeableness like twenty five percent. I'd still be pretty a nice guy, you know, but twenty five percent or so. And you in your book you advise, well, actually, a couple things

I thought werely interesting. One is that you talk about the benefits of disagreeable disagree disagreeableness and how it contributes to growth via what you call challenge network or challenge networks. So that's my first question about disagreeble was can you tell me a little about how that connects to challenge networks. Yeah. So, in organizational psychology, Eddie Jenner colleagues have put this distinction on the map, which I found extremely useful. It's between

task and relationship conflict. So when most people think about conflict, they're thinking about relationship conflict, which is the very emotional, very personal I dislike you, I think you're a bad person, I can't stand working with you, and not surprisingly, that turns out to have all sorts of negative consequences for relationships, for teams, for performance. But task conflict is different. Task

conflict is much more intellectual. It's we're disagreeing about ideas as opposed to having some kind of personal animosity toward each other. And if you can have task conflict without it spilling over into relationship conflict, there's evidence that can build creativity and teams, it can boost decision making quality and groups. It can enhance team effectiveness because you're less

likely to fall into a pattern of groupthink. And there's some evidence that agreeable people are so afraid of of relationship conflict that they just they steer away from task conflict. And I can think of countless situations where I've done that in my life. I'd imagine you probably can too. And disagreeable people are are a little bit more fearless, right,

They're happy to embrace the uphill battle. They're energized by the tension, and so they're much more likely than to say, look, you know what, I really disagree with you, and you know, the risk is that they don't pull their punches and it does become relationship conflict. The benefit is they're surfacing

the issues that lead to task conflict. And so I guess to answer your question directly, I think that what I've noticed is I've analyzed this and at least in my life is agreeable people have consistently been my best support network. They're the people who believe in me, who encourage me, who go to bat for me, who are my cheerleaders what I'm feeling like, I'm not able to do something. But the disagreeable people, especially the generous ones,

have been really a challenge network for me. They've torn apart my work, they've criticized my ideas because they really want to help improve them, and they've held me accountable to the highest standards and so one of the things I did while I was writing Think Again was I identified the core people who had played a big role in my life as my challenge network, and I told them and I actually reb was one of those people who's always I don't think of him as a disagreeable

person per se, but his feedback has always been he's very honest, he's intellectually honest, and he's always given me the harsh feedback. Let me say that differently, he's always given me the tough love that I need. And so one of the things I wanted to make sure he knew was like, sometimes I haven't taken the feedback. Well, sometimes I've been too dismissive of it. But I desperately need it and I really value it, and I consider you a core member of my challenge network. So bring

it on. And I've noticed that since I've had those conversations, I get more constructive feedback because I think people have started to realize, oh, well, not only are they not going to hurt my feelings, but well, sorry, not only are are they not going to hurt my feelings by criticizing me, They're going to hurt my feelings if they don't criticize me right, that holding back whatever feedback they have is actually hurting me. And so I think we

all need a challenge network. I'm curious, Scott, have you had a similar experience. Do you also have a challenge network? Have you formalized it at all? Or is this too geeky? Oh,

it's definitely definitely not too geeky. I have formalized, But I've become really sensitive to another level here, which is I almost think we can have a four by four matrix of good faith versus bad faith, and disagreeable and agreeableness on the other axis, So we can have agree we can have good faith or not good or bad faith agreeable people and a bad faith agreeable personal would

be someone who's like sneaky. You know, these people who are like they're like they're nice and flattering, but they're not. They're there. Those are the agreeable takers for me. The fakers. Yeah, the fakers good good good. So you see my the four by four matrix I'm thinking of. But but so

what I become really sensitive. I've become sensitive to the bad faith on both the agreeable end and the disagreeable end, And I do try to assemble my network good faith, agreeable and disagreeable people a nice mix, because if I have too much good faith disagreeable in my soul, I feel like, I like feel it insecure, like I'm a loser. But like I'm like you, I'm like because I'm like you guys are right, like you know, I'm like, you're all you're right, like you know, and but could someone

just say something nice about me? But but but then good faith agreeable people you know, your mom, like my mom's you know, good faith agreeab well, she could be disagreeable, so that's what God bless her. But but do you know what I mean? The people who? Yeah who? Anyways, So anyway, I just want to add that additional layer there, because I do try to assemble a good like fifty to fifty mix of good faith, agreeable and good faith

disagreeable people. Well, this is one of the reasons that I've been so both I would say, intrigued and also excited by the development that what is it Deebles and Leary and colleagues on selfishness as the possible sixth factor of personality. Yes, what do you think about that? I?

I love it because, as you know, I've long been frustrated by the fact that altruism and helpfulness and even compassion have been lumped under agreeableness, when I think at least the heart of agreeableness, as I've understood it across cultures is really much more about harmony and cooperativeness, about getting along, and to the way that you captured, it is really nice that there are some agreeable people who are in bad faith, right, they might be deceitful or

selfish or you know, trying to flatter and charm, and there are some disagreeable people who are bringing lots of tough love. And so the idea that individual differences in selfishness might be a separate factor of personality from agreeableness and disagreeableness I think helps. It helps to flesh out and support the matrix that you're building. I really like that, and I and then that allows for interactions between the two, which is what we're talking about. So I like that,

which is where we want to go. Yeah, and it's funny. It's funny that you, you know, you don't want too many of the disagreeable people in your life, because maybe maybe this is a way that our our styles of agreeableness differ I So my my biggest vice when it comes to preacher, prosecutor politician is going into prosecutor mode.

There are I can think of an embarrassing number of times where I was convinced that somebody was wrong, and I felt like it was my opportunity to educate them and my responsibility to, you know, to let them know that actually, the thing they believe is true is definitely false, and here's all the evidence for it. And strangely that

never goes well. No. But one of the things I enjoy about, I guess about having disagreeable people in my life is they kind of naturally go into prosecutor mode quite a bit, and I feel like I have degrees of freedom to do that with them without worrying that it's going to cause relationship conflicts. And so they become an outlet for that. I hear you. It almost it's almost like they they empower you to to to be your false health, which is you know, so you feel

free to express that. Yeah, I could definitely see that. I mean, it's I just like like a balance, you know, like a balance in my life. I really do. I do like agreeable people. I find there are a lot of fun, you know, on picnics, but maybe not so much fun when you want them to read your book and give you advice. You know, it depends on the context, you know, Like so I don't want to go in a nice you know, stroll on the beach with a

disagreeable person. Right, Well, it depends on the topic of conversations. True, But to your point. I remember in grad school I was I was working on I guess it was my first major paper, and I sent it to a group of faculty and asked if they might be kind enough to read it and give me some constructive criticism. And I got amazing comments from all of them, except for one who is very into positive psychology and wrote me a page long list of all the strengths of the paper.

And I was so disappointed. I wrote back and I said, listen, I'm so glad that you see promised in this paper, but I know that's not the orientation that the blind reviewers are going to have. And I would love to get this paper published. Can you help me identify some of the holes and the flaws that they're going to find in it? And the response I got back was I think this work is important and interesting, and I see no flaws in it, Like no, no, no no, that's

not positive psychology. Now you're just failing at critical thinking. I like this. You know, this is a value that you have that I like. One of the values that you have that I like is well, you just like honesty, like it sounds to me, It sounds to me. Just it just as base. All you're really saying, and it's base if you cut to it is you just don't like bullshit. You don't like you know, it's like, tell me what you really think. I'd rather know, Yes, I'd

rather tell me what you what my book? What sucks about my book? I want to know what talks about my book. You know, it's like this what you're saying, you know, that's what you're saying. Yeah, did you want to respond to that? Yeah? I think that's I think that's true. I wonder if part of that is it's sort of it feels a little bit. I'm just thinking

about the way you articulated it. It almost seems like an outgrowth of being a high self monitor that if I don't know where I stand with other people or what their thoughts are about my ideas, and my work that it's it's very hard to adapt and address what they have to say. But maybe more importantly, it's also really hard to learn and make my work better, which is why I got into this field in the first place.

So yeah, I want people to be honest, and I also don't want them to think that I have such a fragile ego that they can't tell me the truth. That seems like a great way to stagnate. I think that that could be it for sure, and I don't know so much. The high self monitor thing is you know, even a more charitable interpretation that I'll give you more charitable interpretation of yourself than you just gave yourself. Is that you really care about mastery. I mean, it's another

way of framing the situation, even all the monitors. You know. Uh, A side is that you wanna you want to get it right, Like that's exactly right, you nailed it. That is mastery right there. Thanks. Well, we're two psychologists talking to each other, which is made for a very very interesting conversation. So we both we've been agreeing a lot today. I've been trying to find a way of finding a way of like cheekily inserting, well, i'll we'll just have

to agree to disagree to bring up this question. But I haven't found that moment yet, so I'm just gonna flot to ask, why do you advise against agreeing to disagree? A lot of people do that, right, but it's like it's like they really still want to punch each other's in the face. You know, they're like, well, well, just

agree to disagree. You talk an asshole. It's you know, it just it just happened to me last week when I was in a debate with a friend of mine and he said, all right, we're clearly not gonna see eye to eye. Let's just agree to disagree. And I have I wrote a whole book about why we shouldn't do that, so I can't just let this go. And I said, well, you know, it's to me that's a

missed opportunity for learning. And let me tell you a bunch of the things that I've changed my mind about in this conversation, which maybe I wasn't clear about because I was so busy, you know, trying to make sure that you saw what I thought were the gaps in your argument that I didn't tell you where you convinced me or where you opened my mind, and I'd love to see what you know, what you actually rethought based on this discussion as well, and that that to me rarely.

I guess that's a casualty of agreeing to disagree, is if you agree to disagree, you say, all right, well, neither of us is going to budge. Right, we have a what's what's the the old physics parable? You have a is it an I forget what's the exact You'll know this. It's the unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Yeah, And that that's when we agree to disagree, right, Like, Okay, I'm an unstoppable for us, you're an immovable object. This is not gonna do any good for our relationships, So

let's just put it aside. We'll never talk about it again. The problem is, this is not the end of that conversation, because I'm probably gonna end up disagreeing with you on something else in the future, and I want to learn how to do that more constructively. I'm also probably gonna end up talking to somebody else who has a view that's similar to yours, and I want to learn how

to be more reasonable with them. Too, And so what I like to do is when somebody says let's agree to disagree, or when I feel that impulse, I want to say, you know what, this is a cue that it's time to stop arguing to win and start arguing to learn, and say, hey, Scott, tell me, did I

say anything that was persuasive to you? And if you were making my argument, how would you rethink it so that I can figure out, you know, how to be more thoughtful or you know, how to be a little bit more more persuasive to somebody who doesn't see the world the way that I do. And I've learned a lot from having those conversations, and I think we should all have the courage to have them. Oh gosh, I love that. And I think that does relate two ways

we can diminish prejudice. You talk about destabilizing stereotypes. How can we kind of bring that attitude to the table to destabilize stereotypes? Well, I think you know the front history of research on perspective taking. I like the Nick Epley work a lot twenty five experiments showing that when people are encouraged to imagine the other person's perspective, they don't get anywhere near on average what the perspective is.

It doesn't help, and in some cases it actually hurts, especially if they're far apart, because you're much more likely to come up with a cartoonish idea of who the person is and what they're all about, because by definition, you don't understand them, So how could you possibly imagine what their viewpoint looks like? And I think the alternative is,

I guess to you. I mean the real alternative, of course, is actually perspective seeking right or perspective getting as opposed to taking right to go and ask the other person, huh, I was really puzzled by this thing that you said that I didn't understand. Can you help me get a

feel for what was behind that? And as you know, in some experiments with Tim Kundro, we tried another approach, which is a little different, to say, Okay, maybe you can understand other people better if you imagine yourself living a version of the life that they'd led. And so we asked Yankees and Red Sox fans and gun control and gun rights supporters to imagine how they might help. They might have held different beliefs if they had been

born and raised differently. So the baseball version of this was easy. Hey, you know what, Yankees fan, what if you'd grown up in Boston, what team do you think you'd root for now? And all of a sudden, it's a little bit harder to essentialize those awful Red Sox fans, to say that there's something in their na that makes them root for the wrong team, and you realize, okay, some of this is an accident of birth or circumstance.

And this didn't make it into think again. But we just finished some experiments with people on opposite sides of the gun debate, and we said, look, if you're very big on gun control, what if you had grown up in a family that did a lot of hunting, do you think you would hold a slightly different stance? And then for people who are big on gun rights, we said, what if you had grown up in Columbine or Parkland, what if there'd been a mass shooting in your town.

Do you think you'd hold different beliefs about guns if that was part of your formative childhood experience. And we found that they actually showed less animosity toward the other side after doing that reflection, And I guess where that leaves me Scott is what I've started thinking is that counterfactual thinking is a strategy for reducing prejudice. To say, if I could rewind the story of my life and imagining, sorry,

I'll say that differently. If I could rewind the story of my life and think about how if I lived in an alternate version of reality and I'd grown up with different people and different beliefs, I might actually be in a different position on this debate. Maybe I become a little more flexible, and I see more flexibility in other people too. Well, you know, I love this, but how do we teach this in schools and even like universities. It seems like, and I don't want to use the

phrase cancel culture. They're just loaded words that I've actually been trying to stay away from these days because I want to just But let's talk about a phenomenon we see on some college campuses where it seems like we almost reward students sometimes for resisting that way of thinking, you know what I mean, Like there might be some situations where students will say, you know, that's racist, So I'm not going to take in. You say, well, let's

try to think it through. Counterfactually and different points of view before you come to that conclusion, and then you know, let's have a discussion and let's talk to people who might disagree. So what do you do in those kind of situations where like we almost you know, we don't promote that, Like, how do we teach that in schools? I would love to know the answer to that. I

think it's hard, Yeah, I think I would. I would like to make a distinction between what often gets referenced in safe space discussions emotional safety, and what in organizational psychology and organizational behavior we would call psychological safety. I think that actually Van Jones has a great take on this. He says, Look, I don't want you to feel safe

intellectually every moment. I want you to be strong. I don't want you to be bruised by every single idea that somebody brings to the table that you disagree with. I want you to be able to think it through

and grapple with ideas that might make you uncomfortable. And that's what psychological safety is, right, It's the freedom to take an interpersonal risk without having to fear that you're going to get punished or penalized or canceled or retaliated against in some way, and I think that universe have a huge responsibility to build that level of psychological safety. So where I struggle with this is when I've talked to marginalized groups, they say, yeah, but then what if

what if somebody makes a comment that is racist? Do I just let that go and do I not challenge it? Am I? You know, as a as a white man, I'm not sure I'm always the most qualified person answer that question. But one of the things that I've learned from the research on this is no, what you could do is you can instead of just immediately calling them a racist, you can say, look, here's why I think the view you're articulating right now is, you know, is

oppressing a minority group. And I think that that's something we need to we need to think really carefully about, because I'm not okay with that level of prejudice or that kind of discrimination, and I think that skill has to be practiced in order for people to get comfortable using it. I don't think it's easy at all, But I worry a lot about universities that are that are starting to say, okay, safe space, you're not allowed to hurt anybody's feelings, Well, how do we ever learn, how

do we ever take risks? How do we ever ask uncomfortable questions? I mean, some people hurt my thoughts. I just thought of that. I just throw that for the first time. But it's a great phrase. And you know what, your thoughts should be hurt more often, because that's how you improve them. Yeah, yeah, that's just I don't never know what's going to enter my head in one of these podcast things. But I feel like sometimes people say

shit to me. I'm like, you just hurt my thought, Like, but no, I really respect a lot what you said. And I think that this is where the good faith

thing just comes into play. I feel like, you know, it's it is to any common sense person, it's obvious that if you have a a white supremacist, racist person foaming at the mouth outside of a context of academy, like on the streets or something like sayings no, like, there's no need to be like, well, let's exercise the skills of intellectual discourse and rethink, you know, maybe you should no, like that person's racist, like could someone arrest

that person? Point? Okay, but comment it's also dictates I think that when you're in a good faith academic environment where someone is presenting an intellectual argument you disagree with, even if it sounds racist to you, it seems like there might be value in if they're both good faith people, right, there might be value in discussing and trying to take it from the other person's perspective and doing some of the techniques and skills that you talk about. It seems

like there's value there in doing that. I think so too, and it makes me wonder if we can get more precise about what good faith means. Yeah, So when I hear you say good faith, what I think of is, first of all, I'm not trying to insult or offend somebody else. I'm trying to express or work through a view I genuinely hold. Yes, So it's not I would I'll say it's not. They're not not trying to hurt or The point is, what I mean by good faith is simply that that we're two humans here that are

trying to get ascertained the truth of the matter. That's see I think of it. In Sam Harris talks about he uses the phrase good faith a lot, and that's what he means is well, we're gonna bring two people together who their only commitment is to the truth, not to anything else, but that at the base, yes, they

respect each other as humans. And I think so, I think that it's that combination of like, yes, you feel like the person you're talking to, there's a basic sense of dignity, kind of white trya you know, respect there, but that's already given. So yeah, that's what I guess what you're saying is how to build communities that where everyone feels like they're psychologically safe, but also there's a shared commitment to the truth, because I think sometimes you

can have one without the other. I personally feel like again, conversations with people where I don't feel comfortable talking to them because I don't feel like they're committed to the truth at all. I feel like they're committed to telling me their truth. Yes, yes, their truth as opposed to the truth. Huge difference between their truth and the truth.

And yeah, you know, it's interesting. There's a there's a two by two that I drew toward the end of Think Again, which was crossing psychological safety with accountability, which is something Amy Edmondson has done for years, and her argument, which I find compelling is that if you have psychological safety without accountability, that you end up basically being complacent where any ideas are welcome, and you're actually in an environment that's too permissive or too tolerant. You don't have

quality standards. And if you add the accountability, or in your case it's a commitment to truth, a shared commitment to truth, then Amy would say you get into a learning zone because people are comfortable bringing up a variety of viewpoints and challenging each other's thinking, but they share a goal of trying to get more accurate. And yeah, that's I think that might be what we're looking for in schools or at least in higher education, is to say we all have high standards when it comes to

quality of evidence and argument. We also expect that there's a level of psychological safety for people to try on arguments that might be unpopular or might be considered contrarian in the spirit of them exploring ideas and also exposing other people to new perspectives. And I think adults could use that training. I think before you sign up to Twitter, you should go through a training thing like drivers train training,

Twitter trainer. I like this. I think we need this, So y'all just end today with this phrase dancing with foes. Thought that that really that phase phrase that you use in your book really nicely captures a lot about what we're talking about today. But anyway, thank you so much Adam for the chat. I really truly enjoyed this, really as did I. Thanks for having me, Scott, and I

do have to ask you before we wrap. In the spirit of think again, I'm asking everyone I talked to on this tour, what's something you think I should rethink? Oh boy, playing me on the spot on that one. Absolutely, Maybe rethink the extent to which you can divorce giving from empathy, because I know we've had a discussion we've this is a point of contention we had once in

an email. We had a long email thread ie a while ago about the light try dark trade, and I thought it had to do with I think I think like the heart mattered there, and you said, well what if And you actually raised a good point that got me thinking some you might actually want to come back to me, which I'm pretty totally fine. I'd be totally fine of that, by the way, but you know you

had made a point, well, look at effective ultruus. You know, they don't necessarily feel everything they're doing, you know, but I think that genuine giving uh really should have some sort of uh genuine for to be genuine. Now now you'n see. Okay, look Adam, now I'm rethinking me. This backfire, backfire, This is not what I intended. It's definitely not well, we should we should just we should double click on this for a second because it's I think it's interesting.

It's actually the funny thing is I guess the argument I was making to you was the product of my own rethinking, which is, for a long time I thought empathy was was essential for pro social behavior, forgiving, for generosity.

And then I came across the effective altruism movement, which had a disproportionate number of I think, people who were probably on the autism spectrum, who were trying to figure out the rational way to give as much money to charity as possible and say I should not keep like

it's irrational. Like I actually talked to somebody in the effective altruism movement who said something that really got me thinking, which was he said, well, it's irrational for me to take a dollar more than I need of callery every year because there are other people who have less, Like it's it's not rational for me to care about myself more than any other human. I was like, well, I'm actually not sure if that's true, because there's a difference

between individual and collective rationality. But it's an interesting argument. And then I read Paul Bloom's work where he differentiated, you know, care from empathic concern and said, look, you do not have to feel somebody else's feelings in order to have an interest in improving their well being. And I started rethinking, Okay, empathy is one path to pro sociality, maybe it's not the only path. So that was that was kind of the genesis of of I guess how

we landed in that email discussion? So where where do you come down based on what you know? Yeah? Now, well now I'm rethinking everything I ever thought. I knew about what I thought, but so but but you know, maybe you can distinguish maybe is here's something see that I'm I'm very wary of you asking you to rethink something because my my greeableness is coming into play here

because I don't. I almost feel like it's an insult because I'm i don't want you to rethink, but think, think more broadly about about giving, because I think that there's it's valuable. Maybe you can discription lowercase G and higher case G, but I don't think worwercase G is any less important. I guess you know we're both interested in giving, but I'm interested in like like like who are you by the way that you treat others every second of your life? You know, like as a personality trait,

not as a strategy to be successful? And I guess if I would if my advice to you about rethinking, it would be to think more broadly about giving. Even if it doesn't Even if it doesn't make you more successful and more money or or or or make make you better in business, it puts someone's smile, a smile on someone's face, and that can actually be a bigger impact than you ever realized. You know what I'm saying.

I agree with that strongly, and it's it's one of the reasons that I I felt like I was getting into such hot water when I was writing Give and Take, And then it clicked when I was finishing chapter one.

It must yeah. Chapter one, I wrote this line that I hope everyone at least makes it to this line where I said, if you do it to succeed, it probably won't work To say, look, you know, just because there are ways in which success can be a byproduct of generosity doesn't mean if if that's your goal, you're going to become successful. And in fact, that undermines the very spirit of being the kind of person who enjoys helping others with no strings attached, which is a paradox.

But I think you've just you've hit on a distinction that's important and that deserves some research, which is I think that when I was thinking about effect of altruism and you were talking about how you treat other people, you're talking about about what I might think about is interpersonal or relational giving. It's like giving up your being, yes, versus much more of the I don't know, make a difference. Right,

what's what's my impact? In question? And in the in the Schwartz values framework, I think benevolence and universalism roughly

map onto those two categories. So I'm wondering if so benevolence is supposed to be helping people that you know personally, your friends, family, close colleagues, Right, your your your trusted relationships, and universalism is the much the much broader concern for uh, for you know, the outgroup, or I should say it's much broader concern for out groups, for the planet, for the world, for the future. I wonder if empathy is a stronger predictor of benevolence than it is universalism. Well,

I could look at my data. I have a data set. All that I could. I'll look at some point and get back to you. Bring it on. I think that that that I'd love to see that because I'm going to look it up. I'll look it up and uh yeah, let me know what you find. Because I I'm now even rethinking that and thinking, well, one of the ways you see universalism play out sometimes is concern for animals,

which I think is heavily governed by empathy. And so maybe maybe it's it's not as simple as it sounds, but I think there's something interesting there in at least the basic idea that feeling empathy for another person changes the way that you treat people. But when it comes to your attempt to have impact at broader scope and scale, maybe empathy becomes less important. Well, there are a lot

of really interesting distinctions here. You know, you go even further and start to distinguish between universalism and universal love, like because I distinguish between I distinguish between tribal connection and universal love. In my book Transcend I say that we don't distinguish enough between the two and the psychological literature. Actually I also say we don't discinctwe belonging and intimacy as well, But just sticking to the one about universal

love versus like tribal love. There's a paradox there that Paul Boom points out, which you're that you're pointing out. You know, you can have a lot of trouble of in fact, having empathy for your political group actually is correlated with deepoor with with political polarization. Yes, so there's something there about how empathy actually, the stronger empathy you have for your in group, the more hate you have

for your group. Yes, And that reminds me. I remember when I was reading Transcend, which, by the way, you made Maslow more interesting than Maslow made Maslow. That it was impressive feat it was. It was one of my favorite parts of the book is you know, you took a thinker that so many people have been influenced by and said all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna elevate him.

And I guess that's that's in the spirit of transcend But one of the things I was thinking about when when you made that distinction was some writing that Todd Potinski did a while back on saying, look, if you take positive psychology seriously, prejudice reduction is a pretty low bar. What we should actually be doing is trying to cultivate what I think he borrowed from Greek was allophilia, which was the love of the other or the love of

the outsider. And I think there's there's a natural convergence between his ideas there and yours around universal love. Absolutely absolutely. There's even some really interesting research that uh Leary Mark Leary has done on what if everyone believed in oneness? So he created a scale of like people who believe in oneness versus the people who believe in that we're at its base, we're all one. They actually reported and in this you never see this more love for outsiders

than their insiders. The actually complete reversal of the whole situation. Wow, you flipped it, flipped it. It was the only situation that in the literature psychotic I've ever seen that happen. Yah. Wow, I'll send you that paper. That paper, Yeah, I would love to see it. And actually it's something we can cite in a paper we're working on and trying to reverse that exact effect through the ironic awesome. Well, this is we could probably nerd out all day. You have

probably five thousand other promotions to do for your book. OK. I want to wish you all the best with this book production, with this book tour. It is a really important book for our times, and I think you've really had on an important construct. No, thanks, thanks, thank you, Scott. I appreciate that. I hope you don't think again about that particular view anytime. It probably will. Thanks Adam, Thanks for the chat today. Thanks for listening to this episode

of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.