WEBVTT 00:00:00.180 --> 00:00:02.380 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:05.527 You can take a horse to water. 00:00:05.610 --> 00:00:07.170 but you can't make him drink. 00:00:07.350 --> 00:00:11.610 It's an old saying, but it captures a fundamental truth about human nature. 00:00:12.330 --> 00:00:16.437 How often have you come by people who fail to seize the opportunities in front 00:00:16.521 --> 00:00:20.550 of them, who decline to make the most of the privileges they've been given? 00:00:20.730 --> 00:00:25.889 If you're a parent or a teacher, you may have sometimes felt like saying to a kid, 00:00:25.972 --> 00:00:27.570 I can't make you want it. 00:00:28.970 --> 00:00:33.210 If you're a manager, perhaps you've told an employee, there's a ladder over here. 00:00:33.540 --> 00:00:35.640 But you have to be the one to climb it. 00:00:36.690 --> 00:00:41.088 Sometimes the thing that needs to be seized is not an opportunity, 00:00:41.171 --> 00:00:46.657 but a lifeline. Do you know people stuck in bad situations? Unhappy marriages? 00:00:46.740 --> 00:00:49.893 dead-end jobs, soul-crushing living conditions, 00:00:49.976 --> 00:00:54.520 who seem unwilling to escape even when the chance presents itself? 00:00:54.870 --> 00:00:56.610 Thank you. Does that describe 00:00:57.210 --> 00:00:58.043 You? 00:01:00.850 --> 00:01:03.942 Today on the show, and in a follow-up episode next week, 00:01:04.025 --> 00:01:07.118 why do some people act on the possibilities before them, 00:01:07.201 --> 00:01:10.830 while others believe that nothing they do can make a difference? 00:01:12.360 --> 00:01:18.757 . How to discover or rediscover your ability to change things for the better . 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:21.060 This week on Hidden Brain. 00:01:28.440 --> 00:01:32.019 Every day, life presents us with small moments of possibility. 00:01:32.102 --> 00:01:35.327 A conversation that could change the course of a career. 00:01:35.410 --> 00:01:40.052 A relationship that could be repaired. A job posting that could become the start 00:01:40.136 --> 00:01:41.140 of something new. 00:01:42.090 --> 00:01:46.100 Some people step toward those moments almost instinctively. 00:01:46.183 --> 00:01:48.750 Others turn away without even trying. 00:01:49.020 --> 00:01:54.057 Today, we explore the hidden psychological forces that determine which path we take 00:01:54.140 --> 00:01:58.520 and why the stories we tell about ourselves can become self-fulfilling. 00:01:59.190 --> 00:02:03.370 At the University of Pennsylvania, psychologist Martin Seligman has spent 00:02:03.453 --> 00:02:07.950 many years studying these questions. Marty Seligman, welcome to Hidden Brain. 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:11.240 Thank you, Shankar. I'm happy to be here. 00:02:12.810 --> 00:02:17.490 Marty, I want to take you back to what might be your earliest memory. 00:02:17.573 --> 00:02:22.140 Tell me the story about a time when you saw your mother crying. 00:02:23.250 --> 00:02:24.007 I'm... 00:02:24.090 --> 00:02:30.570 Two and a half years old. And I think this really is my first memory. And, uh, 00:02:31.050 --> 00:02:36.833 I hear these heartbroken sobs and gasps coming from the next room. 00:02:36.917 --> 00:02:43.678 And I run in to see my mother. And there she is sitting on the second step of 00:02:43.761 --> 00:02:50.250 the stairs to the upstairs with her head in her hands. And she's sobbing. 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:58.860 Many years later, I tried to figure out what was really going on. 00:02:59.490 --> 00:03:05.940 . It would have been Mid-early 1945 00:03:06.540 --> 00:03:13.540 I think the concentration camps had opened and all of my mother's Hungarian 00:03:14.689 --> 00:03:21.689 relatives, her family that she abandoned in Hungary were murdered. 00:03:22.440 --> 00:03:23.257 you 00:03:23.340 --> 00:03:29.080 But something happened to me then, Chakra, that actually fits with the hidden brain. 00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:32.917 And that is when I look at the photos of me... 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:34.440 I'm a... 00:03:34.650 --> 00:03:40.910 smiley hair down to my shoulders. 00:03:41.430 --> 00:03:45.730 ebullient kid up until about age three. 00:03:46.320 --> 00:03:53.320 And then when I look at my photos up to my teenage and beyond, I'm tight lipped. 00:03:54.211 --> 00:04:01.211 I'm unsmiling. I'm looking thoughtful. And when I look at my really early photographs 00:04:02.596 --> 00:04:08.120 of the smiley, a bullying kid, I don't recognize myself. 00:04:08.790 --> 00:04:09.623 you 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:11.393 Amen. 00:04:12.330 --> 00:04:13.163 you 00:04:16.170 --> 00:04:20.479 Marty, I want to skip forward to another experience a few years later when you were 00:04:20.563 --> 00:04:24.608 13. Your dad was driving you in the car, and he shared something with you that 00:04:24.691 --> 00:04:27.390 was very disturbing. Describe for me what happened. 00:04:28.860 --> 00:04:35.700 It's now 1955. I'm 13 years old and I 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:37.940 I go to... 00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:43.669 My second day of playing golf with my friend Bob Kaiser, 00:04:43.752 --> 00:04:49.660 and when my father drops us off at the golf course, he says, 00:04:49.744 --> 00:04:52.240 I can't feel my left arm. 00:04:53.790 --> 00:04:57.999 And that scared me and it scared Bob also. 00:04:58.083 --> 00:05:05.083 I slept overnight at my best friend Jeff Albert's house and I had this dreadful 00:05:06.157 --> 00:05:13.157 feeling that something was wrong. And I walked home probably nine in the morning 00:05:14.333 --> 00:05:18.830 the next day and there was my father being a 00:05:19.140 --> 00:05:22.020 dragged out on a stretcher. 00:05:22.950 --> 00:05:27.097 into an ambulance. and 00:05:27.180 --> 00:05:34.020 He had had a small stroke. Thank you. 00:05:35.010 --> 00:05:39.090 And then within a couple of days, Shankar, my mother said, 00:05:39.180 --> 00:05:41.940 My father had had massive strokes. 00:05:42.780 --> 00:05:48.637 And in the next couple of months, I visited my father reluctantly. 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:52.040 I was really afraid of this helplessness. 00:05:52.200 --> 00:05:53.340 that I saw 00:05:54.360 --> 00:05:59.180 and My father was paralyzed. He could speak. 00:05:59.400 --> 00:06:01.820 And he basically said... 00:06:02.490 --> 00:06:05.030 I'm helpless. I don't want to die. 00:06:06.510 --> 00:06:11.985 I love you and your sister and your mother, and I don't want to die. 00:06:12.069 --> 00:06:16.810 And I think this was the major experience of my childhood. 00:06:18.450 --> 00:06:21.877 I'm wondering, Marie, if you can spend a minute talking about the helplessness 00:06:21.960 --> 00:06:24.262 that you had seen in your mother when she was crying, 00:06:24.345 --> 00:06:27.862 the helplessness that you saw in your father when he told you that he was afraid 00:06:27.945 --> 00:06:28.778 of dying, 00:06:29.130 --> 00:06:30.480 How did that make you feel? 00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:38.020 It's hard for me to remember Shankar. I know my response was avoidance, 00:06:39.540 --> 00:06:46.540 not to visit my father, not to see more of it. But very interestingly, 00:06:47.940 --> 00:06:51.090 when I got to college, Thank you. 00:06:51.330 --> 00:06:53.950 I found myself wearing black. 00:06:54.210 --> 00:07:00.854 all the time and thinking all the time about death. I think those were the, 00:07:00.937 --> 00:07:07.850 if you will, the hidden brain consequences of whatever happened when I visited 00:07:07.933 --> 00:07:08.830 my father. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.220 Our experiences teach us lessons about the world. 00:07:17.340 --> 00:07:19.616 They also teach us lessons about ourselves, 00:07:19.700 --> 00:07:23.183 whether it's worth taking a risk, whether setbacks are temporary, 00:07:23.266 --> 00:07:26.120 and whether our actions can shape what happens next. 00:07:26.550 --> 00:07:29.130 Those lessons can be remarkably powerful. 00:07:31.070 --> 00:07:36.167 When we come back, Mardi steps into a psych lab and starts to understand 00:07:36.250 --> 00:07:40.916 the true horror of helplessness. You're listening to Hidden Brain. 00:07:40.999 --> 00:07:42.510 I'm Shankar Vedantam. 00:07:43.320 --> 00:07:44.320 . 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:58.693 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. 00:07:58.776 --> 00:08:03.600 All of us carry around a private explanation for why things happen. 00:08:03.990 --> 00:08:07.790 When something goes wrong, we ask ourselves, was this just bad luck? 00:08:08.100 --> 00:08:12.420 Is it going to last? Does it say something about who I am? 00:08:12.570 --> 00:08:16.016 We usually don't notice ourselves asking these questions, 00:08:16.099 --> 00:08:19.690 but the answers can quietly shape the course of our lives. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:25.699 Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies 00:08:25.782 --> 00:08:27.780 the science of human flourishing. 00:08:28.410 --> 00:08:34.386 *music* Marty, you told me about some personal encounters with hopelessness 00:08:34.470 --> 00:08:37.940 and helplessness that you had as a teenager. A few years later, 00:08:38.024 --> 00:08:41.099 as a 21-year-old entering graduate school in psychology, 00:08:41.183 --> 00:08:45.330 you had the opportunity to explore these same themes in a research context. 00:08:45.414 --> 00:08:49.731 Paint a picture for me of what you saw when you first entered the psychologist 00:08:49.814 --> 00:08:53.650 Richard Solomon's lab. What was he working on, and what did you see? 00:08:55.020 --> 00:09:00.851 Well, they were doing experiments that I actually felt were horrifying. 00:09:00.934 --> 00:09:07.515 I'm a dog lover, and psychologists were working with dogs at the time and giving 00:09:07.598 --> 00:09:10.680 them mild to moderate electric shock. 00:09:10.830 --> 00:09:15.882 So these were very difficult experiments for me to participate in. 00:09:15.966 --> 00:09:20.790 But there was something very puzzling going on, and that is... 00:09:21.060 --> 00:09:25.080 The primary puzzle that, 00:09:25.230 --> 00:09:31.999 animal learning psychologists were working on was Pavlovian conditioning. 00:09:32.083 --> 00:09:37.867 A dog or a rat or a person gets a tone followed by a shark. 00:09:37.950 --> 00:09:42.710 And then the tone comes to elicit fear. 00:09:43.380 --> 00:09:50.380 And they were working on that. And indeed, in phase one of their experiments, 00:09:51.111 --> 00:09:58.111 dogs were put into a hammock and given Pavlovian conditioning with shock. 00:09:58.470 --> 00:09:59.927 And but, 00:10:00.010 --> 00:10:06.034 They were running into this enormous problem is they wanted to see the next day 00:10:06.118 --> 00:10:09.436 when dogs were put in a different situation, 00:10:09.520 --> 00:10:15.497 a shuttle box in which the dogs just needed to run from one side to the other. 00:10:15.580 --> 00:10:17.120 to turn off shock. 00:10:18.010 --> 00:10:20.630 that the dogs didn't run. 00:10:20.920 --> 00:10:26.147 So in some ways, what you observed was that on day one, 00:10:26.230 --> 00:10:33.230 the dogs were essentially learning to associate the painful electric shock 00:10:33.375 --> 00:10:40.340 with the stone, but they could do nothing about it. They couldn't escape. 00:10:40.423 --> 00:10:47.423 On day two, the dogs were placed in a position where they were hearing these 00:10:47.761 --> 00:10:48.594 stones 00:10:50.920 --> 00:10:54.301 This was a puzzle for the people in your lab. 00:10:54.384 --> 00:10:59.844 You interpreted this in some ways as the dogs experiencing helplessness? 00:10:59.927 --> 00:11:06.080 I said, you know, there's something much more important in Pavlovian conditioning 00:11:06.163 --> 00:11:11.860 than learning the association of a tone with shock. The dogs are helpless. 00:11:12.670 --> 00:11:18.544 In Pavlovian conditioning, by definition, there's nothing you can do about it. 00:11:18.628 --> 00:11:23.586 The shock comes regardless of what you do. And their interest was, 00:11:23.669 --> 00:11:29.544 did you learn to be afraid of the tone? But could it be that more important to 00:11:29.627 --> 00:11:35.050 an animal or person is the fact that you're helpless in this situation? 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:40.440 and that you might be learning that nothing you do matters. 00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:48.035 And if that were so, it would make sense that the next day, 00:11:48.119 --> 00:11:53.480 when you got shocked again, you just lay there and didn't do anything. 00:11:54.070 --> 00:12:01.070 So this began a major uphill battle between me and the behaviorists. 00:12:01.257 --> 00:12:05.590 And what was behind it was the notion of, 00:12:05.710 --> 00:12:10.978 that people and animals were cognitive, that they could think, 00:12:11.061 --> 00:12:15.207 that they could integrate experience across time. 00:12:15.290 --> 00:12:21.850 And we theorize that the animals has learned that nothing they did mattered. 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:27.864 I understand that a psychologist named Donald Hiroto extended some of this work 00:12:27.947 --> 00:12:31.878 with a very interesting experiment involving human beings. 00:12:31.961 --> 00:12:34.660 Describe for me what Hiroto did, Marty. 00:12:35.170 --> 00:12:41.057 Yeah. So Don Herodo said, let's try exactly the same thing with humans. 00:12:41.140 --> 00:12:45.854 So what Don did, and it became an entire field, 00:12:45.938 --> 00:12:52.938 he put for day one headphones on people and turned on a loud, annoying noise. 00:12:53.797 --> 00:13:00.797 This is the equivalent of shock, nothing traumatic, but very annoying. 00:13:00.943 --> 00:13:02.777 And for one group. 00:13:02.860 --> 00:13:07.406 Nothing you did mattered. For a second group, you got the tone, 00:13:07.489 --> 00:13:13.542 but you could press a button. to turn off the noise. And then the next day, 00:13:13.625 --> 00:13:17.990 Don built a human shuttle box about four feet long. 00:13:18.073 --> 00:13:22.176 You put your hand on one side and noise went on. 00:13:22.260 --> 00:13:28.980 And all you had to do was move your hand to the other side of the shuttle box. 00:13:29.063 --> 00:13:33.860 And lo and behold, he found that the people who had had 00:13:34.270 --> 00:13:41.160 the helplessness experience inescapable noise just sat there with their hand 00:13:41.243 --> 00:13:47.390 in the shuttle box and didn't move and that was the beginning of uh 00:13:47.890 --> 00:13:53.625 a vibrant field of learned helplessness, which went way beyond the animal 00:13:53.709 --> 00:13:58.810 laboratory to the question of human trauma and human depression. 00:14:01.210 --> 00:14:06.655 So you use this term learned helplessness a moment ago, 00:14:06.738 --> 00:14:12.585 and it's an important term to stop and ponder for a second. 00:14:12.668 --> 00:14:19.668 How would you describe the phenomenon of learned helplessness, Marty? What is it? 00:14:21.850 --> 00:14:27.135 Here are the basics of learned helplessness. First, 00:14:27.218 --> 00:14:29.807 the event is inescapable. 00:14:29.890 --> 00:14:36.478 the first event nothing you can do matters and what we believed was that people 00:14:36.561 --> 00:14:38.957 learned that nothing they did 00:14:39.040 --> 00:14:45.704 mattered. And this had two consequences. The first consequence is you became 00:14:45.787 --> 00:14:51.380 passive later on, particularly when you faced a similar kind of 00:14:51.490 --> 00:14:57.709 annoying or traumatic event. And the second problem was that you had a lot 00:14:57.792 --> 00:14:59.410 of trouble learning 00:14:59.590 --> 00:15:05.852 that you could do something about it. So once you had learned that nothing you did 00:15:05.935 --> 00:15:12.120 mattered, it was very hard to unlearn it. But the most surprising thing we found, 00:15:12.203 --> 00:15:16.453 Shankar, was there was an emotional consequence as well, 00:15:16.536 --> 00:15:19.090 that people felt sad and anxious. 00:15:19.300 --> 00:15:24.540 So there was passivity, cognitive difficulty, 00:15:24.623 --> 00:15:30.099 and emotional sadness and anxiety. Importantly, 00:15:30.183 --> 00:15:37.183 this was not the result of trauma itself. We controlled for that. 00:15:37.872 --> 00:15:42.840 It was a result of not having any control. 00:15:42.970 --> 00:15:49.970 over trauma. And so that was the operative variable that in many ways has been the, 00:15:57.624 --> 00:16:03.450 the arc of my entire life's work. 00:16:06.220 --> 00:16:11.067 And of course, you can think about so many groups of people who experience something 00:16:11.150 --> 00:16:14.999 like this in the real world. If you're a small child, for instance, 00:16:15.083 --> 00:16:18.286 your life is governed by people who are bigger than you, 00:16:18.370 --> 00:16:21.338 more powerful than you. And if they treat you badly, 00:16:21.422 --> 00:16:24.625 you might not have options to escape your circumstances. 00:16:24.709 --> 00:16:27.090 If you're trapped in poverty, for example, 00:16:27.174 --> 00:16:30.612 you might not have the ability to escape your circumstances. 00:16:30.695 --> 00:16:32.280 And you can quickly see how 00:16:36.220 --> 00:16:38.140 bigger consequences in the real world. 00:16:38.860 --> 00:16:43.945 Exactly. And so I thought a great deal about poverty, about war, 00:16:44.029 --> 00:16:49.114 and in particular, adult circumstances in which you're helpless. 00:16:49.197 --> 00:16:55.900 And there was a literature that I got very interested in about sudden death itself. 00:17:08.860 --> 00:17:13.316 friend Robert. They were down to about 95 pounds by then, 00:17:13.399 --> 00:17:19.527 but they kept Robert going by telling them that he was first on the list to be 00:17:19.610 --> 00:17:24.145 released and that in December he was going to be released, 00:17:24.229 --> 00:17:30.360 particularly if he cooperated and told them about what he did during the war. 00:17:38.860 --> 00:17:45.860 and within a few days was dead. So I was not only interested in early experiences 00:17:47.932 --> 00:17:53.577 of abuse, helplessness, systematic experiences like poverty, 00:17:53.660 --> 00:18:00.660 but adult experiences in which even though you've had a lifetime of doing well. 00:18:01.390 --> 00:18:03.850 And you're deprived... 00:18:04.090 --> 00:18:08.770 of control, what the consequences were. 00:18:09.730 --> 00:18:10.427 you 00:18:10.510 --> 00:18:17.510 *music* 00:18:20.950 --> 00:18:25.992 I understand that at one point, Marty, you spotted a connection between what you were 00:18:26.075 --> 00:18:30.574 seeing with learned helplessness and the pervasive phenomenon of depression. 00:18:30.658 --> 00:18:33.130 Talk about that connection that you made. 00:18:34.210 --> 00:18:41.210 When I was a graduate student, one of my young professors was someone named Jim 00:18:41.890 --> 00:18:42.723 Gear. 00:18:42.820 --> 00:18:48.167 And Jim came up to look at the helpless dogs and he looked at him and said, 00:18:48.250 --> 00:18:50.060 Marty, that's depression. 00:18:51.460 --> 00:18:58.460 I said, well, what's depression, Jim? And now, if we go back to 1970, 00:18:58.876 --> 00:19:02.100 depression was not a category. 00:19:02.590 --> 00:19:06.698 So if you looked at the diagnostic categories, 00:19:06.781 --> 00:19:10.790 there was something called manic depression. 00:19:11.140 --> 00:19:17.441 But by 1975, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American 00:19:17.524 --> 00:19:24.524 Psychiatric Association for the first time isolated a new disorder called unipolar 00:19:25.456 --> 00:19:26.507 depression. 00:19:26.590 --> 00:19:33.590 Unipolar depression had nine different symptoms, and if five of them 00:19:34.300 --> 00:19:40.288 were present for two weeks or more, you got the diagnosis. 00:19:40.372 --> 00:19:45.920 So the symptoms were passivity, cognitive difficulty, 00:19:46.030 --> 00:19:53.030 sadness, anxiety, trouble sleeping, food not tasting good, numbness, 00:19:53.542 --> 00:19:57.630 lack of mirth, and thoughts of death. 00:19:59.020 --> 00:20:05.457 So... I looked at those nine symptoms and then I looked at the... 00:20:05.540 --> 00:20:09.560 very large literature I learned helplessness, 00:20:09.643 --> 00:20:15.867 which had accumulated by 1975. Eight of the nine symptoms We're prisoned. 00:20:15.950 --> 00:20:21.612 The only one that wasn't present in the laboratory was thought to death. 00:20:21.695 --> 00:20:26.639 And that's probably because we're using things like loud noise. 00:20:26.722 --> 00:20:31.430 And so I proposed that learned helplessness was a model of, 00:20:31.820 --> 00:20:38.228 of depression. And indeed, that went on to become the leading model of depression. 00:20:38.311 --> 00:20:44.719 And it led to a vibrant neuroscience in which people tried out drugs that broke up 00:20:44.802 --> 00:20:48.835 helplessness in the laboratory in rats, for example, 00:20:48.919 --> 00:20:54.460 and then tried them in people. And it turned out the drugs that worked 00:21:02.990 --> 00:21:07.806 Now, the research that you were conducting at this time was focused on the people who 00:21:07.889 --> 00:21:12.071 experienced adverse conditions. They became helpless and then perhaps even 00:21:12.154 --> 00:21:16.682 depressed. But there was also another group of subjects that at first you didn't 00:21:16.765 --> 00:21:20.716 pay so much attention to. Tell me about this group of subjects, Marty. 00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:22.990 Who were they and what did you notice? 00:21:24.530 --> 00:21:29.782 In the entire helplessness literature, both in animals and people, 00:21:29.865 --> 00:21:36.088 the helplessness effect was statistical. So when I described a person becoming 00:21:36.171 --> 00:21:41.504 passive and just sitting in the shuttle box and not doing anything, 00:21:41.587 --> 00:21:44.400 that was five out of eight. people. 00:21:44.900 --> 00:21:50.720 on average, or a helpless rat, that five out of eight of them, 00:21:51.020 --> 00:21:54.777 were helpless, but about a third were not. 00:21:54.860 --> 00:21:59.755 And so starting in the 1970s, I began to ask, well, 00:21:59.839 --> 00:22:03.060 what is it about some people that 00:22:03.200 --> 00:22:10.200 some animals that made them resilient or resistant to helplessness. 00:22:11.847 --> 00:22:15.417 What is it about some people 00:22:15.500 --> 00:22:21.747 that make you in spite of the fact that your girlfriend has rejected you, 00:22:21.830 --> 00:22:28.160 your stocks have gone down. What is it that gives some people the courage 00:22:28.370 --> 00:22:34.010 to transcend helplessness. And this was the turning point in my career. 00:22:35.930 --> 00:22:42.930 *music* 00:22:50.840 --> 00:22:55.608 So you started thinking about what might distinguish the people who become helpless 00:22:55.691 --> 00:22:59.847 and passive in the face of adversity from those who remain motivated and 00:22:59.930 --> 00:23:04.027 and energetic. Were there differences between the groups in the stories they 00:23:04.110 --> 00:23:06.090 told about their experiences, Marty? 00:23:07.970 --> 00:23:12.130 Yes, and it led to nailing down 00:23:12.470 --> 00:23:17.780 what it was about the one third of people who didn't become helpless. 00:23:17.870 --> 00:23:20.550 Optimism versus pessimism. 00:23:21.350 --> 00:23:28.350 These were vague terms to me at the time. But what we wondered was when you have a, 00:23:29.330 --> 00:23:34.470 bad experience, a traumatic experience, you could believe 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:36.540 There's nothing I can do. 00:23:37.160 --> 00:23:44.160 and I'm helpless. But we postulated from the stories we heard that, uh, 00:23:45.740 --> 00:23:52.493 What protected people from helplessness, what made them resilient, 00:23:52.577 --> 00:23:56.720 was different dimensions of interpreting 00:23:56.810 --> 00:24:00.230 What happens to you when bad events occur? 00:24:00.650 --> 00:24:06.830 So first, you might believe that the bad event is, 00:24:07.010 --> 00:24:09.430 was going to last forever. 00:24:09.560 --> 00:24:14.863 or you might believe it was temporary. And so, for example, 00:24:14.946 --> 00:24:20.420 if you fail an examination, you might say, I had a hangover. 00:24:21.530 --> 00:24:26.219 That's temporary. That means the next time you confront an examination, 00:24:26.302 --> 00:24:31.210 you'll be fine. On the other hand, you might say to yourself, I'm stupid. 00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:36.660 That's permanent. So the first thing we thought about was, 00:24:36.920 --> 00:24:40.680 When bad events occur to you, Shankar, do you... 00:24:40.820 --> 00:24:47.820 reflexively believe they're gonna last forever or do you believe no just this one 00:24:48.377 --> 00:24:55.377 time the second dimension we worried about was pervasive versus local and that 00:24:55.655 --> 00:25:01.940 is you're rejected by your girlfriend and You could believe... 00:25:02.720 --> 00:25:03.800 I'm unlovable. 00:25:04.490 --> 00:25:10.654 Well, unlovable is pervasive, and it means no matter who you come across, 00:25:10.737 --> 00:25:17.157 you're not going to find love. On the other hand, you might say, that's her. 00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:24.240 And we postulated that people who believed that helplessness was pervasive would go 00:25:24.343 --> 00:25:30.447 on to generalize across situations. People who believed it was pervasive. 00:25:30.530 --> 00:25:37.172 temporary would recover quickly. So we began to look at the way people 00:25:37.255 --> 00:25:41.207 interpreted the bad events in their lives. 00:25:41.290 --> 00:25:47.163 And this opened up an enormous literature on learned optimism. 00:25:47.246 --> 00:25:54.246 And it basically showed that the people who became helpless in the laboratory 00:25:54.644 --> 00:25:58.460 believed the helplessness was permanent 00:25:58.550 --> 00:26:05.227 pervasive and typically their fault. The third of people who didn't become helpless 00:26:05.310 --> 00:26:11.009 believed it was temporary. It was just this one situation and it wasn't 00:26:11.093 --> 00:26:12.070 their fault. 00:26:12.710 --> 00:26:17.690 you you 00:26:17.810 --> 00:26:21.788 So having established the importance of explanatory styles, Mardi, 00:26:21.872 --> 00:26:26.465 you began to generate evidence that an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory 00:26:26.548 --> 00:26:30.527 style can significantly affect how people go about pursuing goals. 00:26:30.610 --> 00:26:34.650 One place you explored this was at the West Point Military Academy. 00:26:34.733 --> 00:26:37.010 Paint a picture for me of that study. 00:26:38.300 --> 00:26:42.113 So we not only asked the question about depression, 00:26:42.197 --> 00:26:46.850 so what we did was to take large groups of people at time one, 00:26:46.934 --> 00:26:52.963 measure their explanatory style, and then go on to predict who's going to become 00:26:53.046 --> 00:26:58.700 depressed. And it turned out the pessimists, the people who believed that. 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:04.221 it's me, it's going to last forever, are between two and eight times as likely 00:27:04.304 --> 00:27:07.825 to become depressed. And so we then ask the question, 00:27:07.908 --> 00:27:10.220 let's test this in the real world. 00:27:10.430 --> 00:27:16.468 And so one thing we did is we went to West Point and West Point at the time and still 00:27:16.551 --> 00:27:20.933 does to some extent had something called Beast Barracks. Well, 00:27:21.016 --> 00:27:25.902 West Point is one of the most selective schools in the United States. 00:27:25.985 --> 00:27:29.730 These are very highly qualified young men and women. 00:27:40.430 --> 00:27:46.347 of helplessness experience in which the attempt is explicitly to break them. 00:27:46.430 --> 00:27:52.001 They're woken up at four in the morning, sent on a 10-mile run. 00:27:52.084 --> 00:27:58.193 They're systematically abused. And my memory is that about a third of 00:27:58.276 --> 00:28:00.430 the candidates drop out. 00:28:00.710 --> 00:28:06.598 So we asked the question, could you predict from day one in Beast Barracks who 00:28:06.682 --> 00:28:12.730 was going to drop out? And it turned out it was the pessimists who dropped out. 00:28:13.400 --> 00:28:19.413 We then looked at something very similar about the grades you get in college. 00:28:19.496 --> 00:28:23.054 We looked at the optimists and the pessimists, 00:28:23.138 --> 00:28:27.725 and we asked who does much better than their talent augers. 00:28:27.809 --> 00:28:33.822 And it was the optimists. And who does much worse? And it was the pessimists. 00:28:33.905 --> 00:28:38.180 And then in selling insurance, exactly the same thing. 00:28:43.400 --> 00:28:47.561 helplessness and optimism in Olympic swimming. 00:28:47.644 --> 00:28:54.019 And just come back from a day of looking at our Olympic swimming data. 00:28:54.102 --> 00:29:01.102 And the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone and it was an insurance salesman. 00:29:01.667 --> 00:29:06.012 And I hung up on him. And I said to myself, gee, 00:29:06.095 --> 00:29:09.140 this must be an awfully difficult 00:29:13.400 --> 00:29:19.859 And it so happened that the month before, I had become friendly from a professional 00:29:19.942 --> 00:29:23.170 meeting with the CEO of Metropolitan Life. 00:29:23.253 --> 00:29:28.687 And I had told him about optimism and pessimism. He said, well, Marty, 00:29:28.771 --> 00:29:33.890 if you ever have an application to life insurance, give me a call. 00:29:33.973 --> 00:29:40.200 So I called him up and I said, well, how do you hire a life insurance salesman? 00:29:43.400 --> 00:29:50.400 Do you want to make a lot of money? And we hire 5,000 new salesmen a year because 00:29:52.101 --> 00:29:58.410 of this. But... After one year, 50% of them drop out. 00:29:58.760 --> 00:29:59.917 And after four years, 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.777 For years, 90% of them have quit. They just can't take money. 00:30:04.860 --> 00:30:06.100 The rejection. 00:30:07.140 --> 00:30:13.145 said, well, I think I've got a test that might predict who can stick with 00:30:13.228 --> 00:30:19.650 a difficult job like life insurance. We just found out it predicts grade point 00:30:19.734 --> 00:30:23.737 average and it predicts Olympic swimming success. 00:30:23.820 --> 00:30:27.240 Maybe it'll predict professional success. 00:30:28.940 --> 00:30:34.100 So indeed, Metropolitan Life started to give the test. 00:30:37.140 --> 00:30:43.044 life insurance salesman is more optimistic than you or me. 00:30:43.127 --> 00:30:49.031 You have to be frankincidentally optimistic to even start. 00:30:49.115 --> 00:30:56.115 And then they hired a special force of 140 salespeople who knocked the top off 00:30:57.167 --> 00:31:03.980 of optimism scale. This special force outsold everyone at MetLife. 00:31:07.140 --> 00:31:11.620 as opposed to 10% were still working. 00:31:12.240 --> 00:31:19.240 So we basically found across success in beast barracks, grade point average, 00:31:19.805 --> 00:31:26.589 and difficult jobs that the optimists did better than the pessimists. 00:31:26.673 --> 00:31:33.640 And they were the people who didn't become helpless in the laboratory. 00:31:34.530 --> 00:31:40.330 *music* 00:31:41.070 --> 00:31:43.130 you 00:31:47.220 --> 00:31:49.943 Most of us think our lives are shaped by events, 00:31:50.027 --> 00:31:53.627 but just as important is the meaning we assign to those events. 00:31:53.711 --> 00:31:58.305 The way we interpret a setback today can quietly influence the decisions we make 00:31:58.389 --> 00:32:01.020 tomorrow and the future we ultimately create. 00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:06.296 When we come back, we'll explore one of the most powerful forces in human 00:32:06.380 --> 00:32:10.990 psychology. The belief that our choices can shape what happens next. 00:32:11.073 --> 00:32:14.560 You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. 00:32:14.970 --> 00:32:20.130 *music* 00:32:21.390 --> 00:32:24.660 you you you 00:32:30.360 --> 00:32:32.720 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. 00:33:00.360 --> 00:33:05.274 www.fema.org. Use the subject line, How to Make a Difference. Again, 00:33:05.358 --> 00:33:07.780 that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org. 00:33:10.440 --> 00:33:14.398 Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. 00:33:14.482 --> 00:33:18.262 He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Agency, 00:33:18.345 --> 00:33:20.960 the Psychological History of Human Progress. 00:33:22.650 --> 00:33:27.162 Marty, so much of this conversation has really been about whether people feel like 00:33:27.246 --> 00:33:31.477 they can make a difference in their own lives. It's about the idea of agency. 00:33:31.561 --> 00:33:33.130 How do you define that term? 00:33:34.980 --> 00:33:40.260 Agency is the opposite of learned helplessness. 00:33:40.620 --> 00:33:44.820 If you break it down, it's got three beliefs. 00:33:45.120 --> 00:33:50.703 The first is efficacy, and that's the belief that in the here and now, 00:33:50.787 --> 00:33:53.620 you can accomplish a specific goal. 00:33:54.060 --> 00:33:54.877 Thank you. 00:33:54.960 --> 00:34:01.960 The second was optimism. And that's the belief that you can accomplish this goal 00:34:02.730 --> 00:34:07.710 Not just now, but into the future and into the far future. 00:34:08.340 --> 00:34:14.380 And the third is imagination, which was the... 00:34:14.640 --> 00:34:19.112 range of possible goals that you might achieve. 00:34:19.195 --> 00:34:24.151 And the broader the range of goals, the more agency. 00:34:24.235 --> 00:34:31.235 So full-blown agency is efficacy. I can do it in the here and now. Optimism, 00:34:31.601 --> 00:34:35.685 I can do it in the future. And imagination, 00:34:35.768 --> 00:34:40.420 I can innovate across many different situations. 00:34:44.640 --> 00:34:45.530 you you 00:34:50.580 --> 00:34:54.009 So this idea of agency is something that fascinates you, 00:34:54.092 --> 00:34:58.420 and you think that it tells us the story of humankind. How so, Marty? 00:34:58.770 --> 00:35:04.350 My hypothesis was that because 00:35:04.530 --> 00:35:11.530 Agency is such a potent force that maybe this was the psychological state that 00:35:13.227 --> 00:35:17.130 was key to progress and innovation. 00:35:18.780 --> 00:35:24.563 Let me take you through some of the main highlights which convinced me of this. 00:35:24.647 --> 00:35:27.840 One of the great mysteries of human history 00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:31.320 It's called The Mystery of the Axial Age. 00:35:32.130 --> 00:35:35.620 So, Come back with me to 1000 BCE. 00:35:36.540 --> 00:35:41.939 What you've got is primitive societies, small villages. 00:35:42.022 --> 00:35:48.817 This is true of Greece, it's true of the Hebrews, it's true of China, 00:35:48.900 --> 00:35:55.080 it's true of India, it's true of Persia, a thousand years BCE. 00:36:06.240 --> 00:36:11.757 The Buddha has lived, Confucius has lived, Socrates has lived, 00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:17.538 and progress breaks out. Technology, medicine, arts, literature, 00:36:17.621 --> 00:36:22.860 the first spatterings of political freedom. What happened? 00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:27.930 between a thousand people and 500 BCE. 00:36:28.890 --> 00:36:31.340 I think I've discovered... The answer. 00:36:32.130 --> 00:36:37.350 And that is... Humans discover... 00:36:37.500 --> 00:36:39.720 The concept of agency. 00:36:42.270 --> 00:36:47.928 So the hypothesis I had was that maybe in 1000 BCE, 00:36:48.011 --> 00:36:54.990 they didn't have the words for agency, words like I can do it. 00:36:55.260 --> 00:36:59.940 human agency and the like. And there's an entire lexicon 00:37:00.150 --> 00:37:02.550 of agency which I had created. 00:37:02.730 --> 00:37:09.730 So in Homer, for example, in the Iliad, Achilles doesn't decide to act. 00:37:10.068 --> 00:37:17.068 Athena tells Achilles to act. But a hundred years later in the Odyssey, 00:37:17.405 --> 00:37:23.626 you've got Odysseus, who's this clever, cunning, wily person. 00:37:23.710 --> 00:37:29.167 The gods have started to leave the stage. And so 00:37:29.250 --> 00:37:34.390 Convincingly, across these cultures, by 500 BCE, 00:37:34.473 --> 00:37:39.613 you've got a massive vocabulary of human agency, 00:37:39.696 --> 00:37:44.810 and you can track it almost century by century. 00:37:44.970 --> 00:37:49.230 So I took the entire Old Testament. 00:37:49.680 --> 00:37:52.420 and looked for a gentic 00:37:52.740 --> 00:37:59.740 verbs and words. And grossly, you can see that the Torah is God-commanding. 00:38:01.080 --> 00:38:06.853 and humans obeying, with a few exceptions, like choose life. 00:38:06.936 --> 00:38:11.636 But as you go into the prophets and the writings, 00:38:11.719 --> 00:38:17.882 human agentic words occur more, divine agentic words occur less. 00:38:17.966 --> 00:38:24.422 And now it turns out you can have AI read the entire Old Testament, 00:38:24.505 --> 00:38:28.800 book by book, and rate how agentic each was. 00:38:29.070 --> 00:38:34.041 book is, and you plot it across time and it's linear. 00:38:34.124 --> 00:38:39.476 So as time goes on from the Torah to essentially 300 BCE, 00:38:39.559 --> 00:38:44.244 the Babylonian exile, more and more agency occurs. 00:38:44.327 --> 00:38:49.584 And if you plot it against human innovation, population, 00:38:49.667 --> 00:38:55.747 standard of living, political freedom, technology, it's linearly 00:38:55.830 --> 00:38:59.010 related to the development of the words. 00:39:04.890 --> 00:39:08.103 I mean, in some ways, the point that you're making, Marty, 00:39:08.187 --> 00:39:12.366 is that there was a time when people essentially turned their fates over to 00:39:12.450 --> 00:39:16.459 the gods, where they assumed that the gods were telling them what to do, 00:39:16.542 --> 00:39:19.983 that their fates were written on their foreheads, if you will. 00:39:20.066 --> 00:39:24.359 And over time, people started to feel, no, in fact, it's not the gods, but I, 00:39:24.443 --> 00:39:26.830 the individual who actually can do things. 00:39:34.890 --> 00:39:39.130 has shown signs of flourishing, signs of innovation and progress. 00:39:39.810 --> 00:39:46.810 Exactly so. Two comments on it. Progress and agency have not been linearly... 00:39:48.330 --> 00:39:53.489 going up in human history. And when does progress stagnate? 00:39:53.572 --> 00:39:59.970 When does the human condition deteriorate? And the Christian Middle Ages 00:40:00.370 --> 00:40:07.370 are a very interesting example of that. And this is not what you were taught 00:40:08.313 --> 00:40:15.313 in school. But basically, early Christianity is highly agentic and highly 00:40:15.942 --> 00:40:22.607 optimistic. And then something radical happens. In actually 383, 00:40:22.690 --> 00:40:25.750 AD and it's St. Augustine. 00:40:25.930 --> 00:40:32.070 St. Augustine says grace is arbitrarily evil. 00:40:32.530 --> 00:40:34.630 bestowed by God. 00:40:34.990 --> 00:40:40.110 Predestination occurs and there is no human will. 00:40:40.330 --> 00:40:41.350 That is... 00:40:41.980 --> 00:40:48.980 independent of arbitrary grace. This becomes the theology of the Middle Ages. 00:40:49.776 --> 00:40:51.700 And if you plot the 00:40:51.880 --> 00:40:58.840 progress across time. Basically, the Middle Ages believe that Okay. 00:40:59.080 --> 00:41:05.927 God does it and humans don't do it. And it's not until the Renaissance 00:41:06.010 --> 00:41:10.670 that Augustine's views are overthrown and progress breaks out. 00:41:12.400 --> 00:41:15.677 So that's one point. 00:41:15.760 --> 00:41:20.920 When does stagnation occur? But the other has to do with China. 00:41:21.520 --> 00:41:26.800 versus the West and the importance of agency in China. 00:41:27.580 --> 00:41:32.660 Western agency Shankar is about I can do it. 00:41:33.190 --> 00:41:39.250 the individual and indeed progress in the West is intimately related to 00:41:39.460 --> 00:41:45.430 to I can do it. But we've asked exactly the same question about the history 00:41:45.514 --> 00:41:52.300 of China. But in the history of China, we quantify we agency as, 00:41:52.390 --> 00:41:54.830 as well as eye agency. 00:41:55.720 --> 00:41:59.820 And to make a long story short, the book, 00:41:59.980 --> 00:42:06.980 balance in China between we agency and I agency is what predicts population, 00:42:09.174 --> 00:42:14.980 innovation, GDP and the like. And when we agency 00:42:15.160 --> 00:42:20.487 in the form of the state is very high and crushes individual agency, 00:42:20.570 --> 00:42:24.147 that's when you get stagnation and regression. 00:42:24.230 --> 00:42:30.035 But when there's a balance between collective agency and individual agency 00:42:30.118 --> 00:42:33.460 in China, that's when progress breaks out. 00:42:33.760 --> 00:42:34.593 . 00:42:35.500 --> 00:42:41.060 A reminder, has this conversation evoked your own experiences of feeling helpless? 00:42:41.170 --> 00:42:45.434 Or has it reminded you of a time when you stepped up and took charge of your own 00:42:45.517 --> 00:42:49.727 destiny? If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden 00:42:49.810 --> 00:42:53.531 Brain audience, or a question or comment about the science of optimism 00:42:53.614 --> 00:42:57.389 and pessimism, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on 00:42:57.472 --> 00:43:00.070 your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. 00:43:00.160 --> 00:43:05.730 Then email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org using the subject line, 00:43:05.813 --> 00:43:11.750 How to Make a Difference. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org. 00:43:13.170 --> 00:43:18.069 In our episode next week, we take a deep dive into the ingredients and drivers 00:43:18.153 --> 00:43:22.988 of agency. We examine how people can become more agentic and how you can help 00:43:23.071 --> 00:43:26.374 the people around you discover their autonomy, drive, 00:43:26.457 --> 00:43:31.548 and self-confidence. Marty told me how he himself has taken his research to heart 00:43:31.631 --> 00:43:34.517 and learned to be more optimistic and agentic. 00:43:34.600 --> 00:43:37.660 And as he puts it, less of a grouch. 00:43:40.870 --> 00:43:43.870 I think it's important to tell you about it, Shankar. 00:43:44.020 --> 00:43:46.560 I'm sitting... 00:43:46.660 --> 00:43:52.380 In the garden. I'm a gardener with my five-year-old daughter, Nicky. 00:43:53.230 --> 00:43:58.205 We're weeding together. I am grimly pulling weeds out. 00:43:58.288 --> 00:44:03.732 Nikki's having a wonderful time. She's dancing and singing, 00:44:03.815 --> 00:44:09.810 throwing weeds in the air, running around, and I shouted at her. 00:44:10.060 --> 00:44:12.080 You can eat Get to work. 00:44:13.150 --> 00:44:15.810 And Nikki walks away from me. 00:44:16.570 --> 00:44:20.410 come back and says, Daddy, can I talk to you? 00:44:21.160 --> 00:44:28.160 Yeah, what is it, Nicky? Daddy, do you remember that before my fifth birthday, 00:44:30.580 --> 00:44:34.940 I was a whiner that I whined all the time. 00:44:35.260 --> 00:44:41.445 Thank you. I said, yeah, Nikki, you were pretty horrible. And Nikki said, well, 00:44:41.529 --> 00:44:48.136 that was two weeks ago, my birthday. And have you noticed that I haven't whined 00:44:48.219 --> 00:44:52.007 once in the last two weeks? I said, oh, yeah. 00:44:52.090 --> 00:44:56.890 Yeah, you've been a real pleasure. Well, Daddy... 00:44:57.010 --> 00:45:01.637 On my fifth birthday, I decided to 00:45:01.720 --> 00:45:08.116 I wasn't going to whine anymore. And that was the hardest thing I've ever done. 00:45:08.199 --> 00:45:13.120 And if I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch. 00:45:15.850 --> 00:45:22.670 Well, this was for me, an epiphany, and it changed my career. 00:45:22.810 --> 00:45:27.617 In that moment, Shankara realized that I was a grouch. 00:45:27.700 --> 00:45:33.347 And indeed, I was proud of being a grouch. What a grouch does, 00:45:33.430 --> 00:45:40.430 he sees everything wrong with what's going on, criticizes it, and corrects it. 00:45:40.640 --> 00:45:47.640 And it occurred to me for the first time in my life that maybe any success I had 00:45:48.034 --> 00:45:53.350 had in life was was not because I was a grouch, but in spite of it. 00:45:55.190 --> 00:45:59.087 And so I resolved to personally change. And by the way, 00:45:59.170 --> 00:46:04.876 I do measure these things, Shankar, and I'm a completely different person than I 00:46:04.960 --> 00:46:06.190 was 30 years ago. 00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:13.400 I'm not a grouch anymore. 00:46:17.770 --> 00:46:18.603 you 00:46:20.540 --> 00:46:24.816 Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. 00:46:24.899 --> 00:46:29.368 He's the author of Agency, the Psychological History of Human Progress. 00:46:29.451 --> 00:46:33.342 Marty, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. 00:46:33.426 --> 00:46:37.958 I've been enjoying our time together. This is great fun for me, Shankar. 00:46:38.041 --> 00:46:39.580 I hope it's fun for you. 00:46:40.510 --> 00:46:42.570 you 00:46:46.720 --> 00:46:50.076 Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. 00:46:50.159 --> 00:46:54.978 Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, 00:46:55.062 --> 00:46:59.442 Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. 00:46:59.525 --> 00:47:04.940 Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. 00:47:06.670 --> 00:47:10.840 Before we go, I'd like to give a special shout out to a friend of mine who has 00:47:10.923 --> 00:47:15.093 a new podcast. I first met Vivek Murthy years ago when he joined me as a guest 00:47:15.177 --> 00:47:19.510 on Hidden Brain. At the time, Vivek was the Surgeon General of the United States, 00:47:19.593 --> 00:47:23.218 and he was particularly interested in calling attention to the issue 00:47:23.301 --> 00:47:25.210 of loneliness and social isolation. 00:47:26.510 --> 00:47:30.974 His episode with us was hugely popular, in large part because Vivek has a powerful 00:47:31.057 --> 00:47:32.610 way of showing vulnerability 00:47:35.830 --> 00:47:36.663 Thank you. 00:47:37.110 --> 00:47:41.236 Vivek has continued to expand on his work on social connection in the years since 00:47:41.319 --> 00:47:44.302 our interview, and I'm delighted to recommend his new show. 00:47:44.386 --> 00:47:47.212 It's called Staying Human. And if you love Hidden Brain, 00:47:47.296 --> 00:47:50.027 I'm confident that you'll love Staying Human as well. 00:47:50.110 --> 00:47:52.810 You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. 00:47:55.930 --> 00:47:58.310 I'm Shankar Vedanta. See you soon.