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Battle Royale: Optimists vs Pessimists · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody in Canada, we have a pretty big announcement.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: We are finally going to do our first big, big
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: tour of Canada. We're going to announce the dates in.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: The theaters in cities here first, and then we're going
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: to give you all the ticket info. Okay, how does
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: that sound?
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: It sounds great, Chuck. Where are we going to go?
• 0:15
  Speaker 4: First?
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: On June twenty fifth, we're going to be in Montreal
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: at the Olympia Des Montreal. The next night, on the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: twenty six we're going to be going to Ottawa the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Hard Rock Live Ottawa and then on the twenty seventh,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: finish up in Toronto at Massey Hall.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: And then we're going to walk to the next shows.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: So it's going to take us a few weeks.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: On July twenty third, we're going to be in Vancouver
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: at Queen Elizabeth Theater. Friday, the twenty fourth of July,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: we're going to be in Calgary at Jacksinger Concert Hall
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: at Art Commons, and we're going to wind it up
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: in Winnipeg on the twenty fifth at Burton Cummings Theater.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: That's awesome, So tickets go on sale two day. Everybody
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: December sixteenth, starting at ten am Eastern time and going
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: all the way to Friday, December nineteenth at ten am
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Local time. We're going to have an artist pre sale.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: You can buy your tickets early. Just go to stuff
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: youshould Know dot com and click on the tour button
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: and then click on your city and when you go
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: to check out, use the promo code s YSK live.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: And if you miss all that, don't worry. Tickets go
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: on general sale on Friday, December nineteenth at ten am
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Eastern time. And again you can get all of the
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: tickets and info you need at stuff youshould Know dot
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: com and we will see you this summer Canada.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: there's Charles w Chuck Brian. We're just gonna do a
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: great job here today and Stuff you Should Know.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: Hi.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Everybody feeling good, Chuck dealing great, lewis.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Looking great?
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: Lewis Uh?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: You want to hear something funny?
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: I do? Oh you hear?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: That?
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Is that your new windows?
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: No?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: That is new windows? What does that mean?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: That is we were not able to stay in our
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: home this week because, as you know, because I've told
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you this, because we're getting our electric panel redone. So
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I was not able to print out my stuff as usual.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And where we were staying, you know, at a friends.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: They allowed me to print, but all they had was
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: card stock. So that is the sound of heavy duty research.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Man, that's like half a tree right there.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I know, I feel pretty bad, but god, it feels
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: so good in my hand.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Oh well, is this.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Your new thing't? I could not justify that, but boy,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: it feels good. Maybe for the live shows, because you know,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: over the course of a tour, which is happening next year, everybody.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one. Yeah, we're going out on
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: tour everyone soon, starting January, then April and then the
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: summer for Canada.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: But yeah that you know how those that document gets
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a little tattered over time, so I might card stock it.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: I like that. I call that tour kisses.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I thought that was something else, like after the end
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: of the tour when we make out a little bit.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: We don't talk about that, all right, we don't have
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: a name for that, No, Chuck, We're talking today, not
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: about tour kisses of any variety, but about optimism and pessimism,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: and this one, yeah, I do too. This is Olivia
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: helped us with this, And this is one of those
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: ones where when you know it was I knew very
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: little about what it actually is compared to what I
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: thought I knew, and I love like that.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, same.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Optimism and pessimism as pretty much everyone knows. Is this
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: the idea that you have like a sunny disposition or
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: maybe you're gloomy and eoorish.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: I was going back and reading some or quotes. Man,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: that was great. If you want to entertain yourself, just
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: read AA Milne E or quotes and you'll be delighted.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: But the upshot of this is that that's not really
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: the best description of optimism and pessimism.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: That may be your earliest upshot by the way.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Oh is it? I need to break that.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Record next time?
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Then yeah, I'll say hey, and welcome to the Upshot.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: If you ever go solo, that'd be great to Josh
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Clark only podcast The Upshot with Josh Clark, And.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: If I need to break that, I can say upshot
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: and upshot to the Upshot at any rate. The long
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: and short of what I'm talking about is that our
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: views of optimism and pessimism aren't exactly right, at least
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: as far as psychology is concerned. And in that sense,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: it kind of confounds things because I found some of
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: this stuff a little hard to wrap my brain around,
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: because my brain's been so ProMED by pop psychology to
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: think of these things as this when actually we're talking
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: about them like that.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Is that what it was?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Because I had the same thing where like, I spent
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: more time on this than things that were seemingly more
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: difficult to understand.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: That's the only the explanation I can think of was
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: preconceived notions.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Shall we go back and just talk about the word
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: because I thought that was sort of interesting in itself.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Was that the original word comes from French.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Optimism optimismy that was coined in the early seventeen hundreds
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: by a philosopher named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz or I Guess Leibnitz.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: And that's interesting enough, that's fine.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: The idea was that God optimized the universe for good
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and minimized evil. But what I thought was super interesting
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: was the word pessimism was literally made up just to
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: counter that, like as a straw man term for people
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: to write and say, well, now I don't really think so,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: So they made up the word pessimism.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought that was interesting too, Although if you
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: look at it from you know, this whole thing finds
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: its roots in philosophy. It's not surprising because philosophers love
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: to make up stuff to tear one another's arguments apart.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, good point.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: I read that Voltaire wrote Candide to mock Leibnitz and
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: his idea of the opti universe because you thought it
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: was so preposterous. Interesting, but you hit on something here, like,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: are the entire concept of optimism and pessimism is rooted
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: in philosophy not psychology. Yeah, and there's pessimism kind of
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: went on to have its own career Aside from optimism,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Schopenhauer came up with philosophical pessimism, which is the basis
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: of all life is suffering. Everybody's heard that one and
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: or experienced it. And then there are a couple other
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: versions of philosophical pessimism that I thought were pretty interesting.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: The most the one that grabbed me the most is
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: this idea that there's more evil in the world than good.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: So evil exists in greater quantities, but it's also of
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: greater quality too, So a small amount of evil can
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: spoil a very large amount of good.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, I agree with that. I think I do too.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: I thought of a good example is, let's say you
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: have an executive who works at a charity and they
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: get caught stealing money from that charity. Well, when word
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: gets out, a lot of people probably are going to
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: stop giving to that charity, and then the good that
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: charity was doing for other people is going to dry
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: up all because of the one act of that one person. Yeah.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Or let's say you throw a birthday party for your
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: kid and the whole day goes great, and at the end,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: some some little jerk kid spoils it all by doing
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: just this one thing like smashes your kid's face in
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: the cake or something.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Oh Man, talk about an upshot, right, But.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I think the long and short of this sort of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the early philosophical stuff was it was way more sort
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of broad as like, you know, the whole morality of
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the universe, And since then we've really narrowed it down
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: more to like, like you're just very personal outlook on stuff.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's kind of even more kind of refined
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: than that, the idea that we should use or seek optimism,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: we should optimize our optimistic outlook. Right, it's pretty old.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: William James, who essentially founded modern psychology as a field
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: the late nineteenth early twentieth century, he was basically talking
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: about that very issue too. It got picked up about
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: fifty years later by Abraham Maslow, who came up with
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: the hierarchy of needs. He also said, hey, yeah, we're
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: really into this abnormal psychology because it's really interesting, but
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: we should focus on optimizing people's happiness. We'll call it
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: positive psychology. And I remember that. Do you remember when
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: we started writing at How Stuff Works, and like every
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: third article we wrote was about happiness. Yeah, there's like
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: a whole happiness craze that came out of Maslow's whole
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: positive psychology thing being picked up and dusted off in
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: the late nineties.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I remember even in the eighties and nineties.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if this came from. And we're
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: going to talk a lot about this guy, Martin Seligman.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: He was in the nineties. He was the president of
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the American Psychological Association. He talked a lot about positive psychology,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: but I remember a lot about just PMA, your positive
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: mental attitude mm hm, and improving your PMA, and that
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: was just sort of the key to everything. Man, if
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: you can just if you can just get your head
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: right in that PMA, right, like, everything's going to fall
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: into place for you.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: And I mean I remember thinking Martin Seligman, I thought
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: he came up with positive psychology, didn't realize it was
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: an already existing thing, but that was so pushed and
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: pedaled what you just described around two thousand and eight,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: two thousand and nine that I thought this guy was
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: a total fruit loop. But then looking into this stuff,
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: his research on optimism and pessimism, I'm like, Oh, it's
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: actually this dude's pretty pretty with it. And I guess
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: maybe being grown up, a little less cynical, certainly less
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: cigarette smoky, right.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: In that kind of hindsight, I'm like, I think there's
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: actually nothing wrong with trying to figure out how to
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: how people can be as happy as possible. There's a
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: problem with foisting it on people and seeing you have
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: to be happy. There's something wrong with you that you're
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: not happy. That's not what these people are talking about.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: They're just trying to figure out things that people can
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: do to make themselves happier if they feel like they
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: need to make themselves happier.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And as we'll see, you know, we'll get to like
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: studies and stuff, but there's definitely plenty of benefits to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: trying to be positive, positive and have an optimistic outlook
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: as far as I mean, we'll get to all the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: different things, including like real health outcomes, right, but there
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: are also some positives to pessimism, as we'll learn, which
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: was not surprising, but once I read it, it kind of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of that makes a lot of
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: sense to me.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Bravo, babe.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: One big thing if you look at the like the
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: how psychology.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Really views it today, and this is sort of true
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: across a lot of psychology is sort of a nature
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: nurture thing, or in this case they refer to as
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: state versus trait state, meaning like are you feeling that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: way right now?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Mm hm?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Or is it generally your trait.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: As a person of like, oh, nothing good ever happens
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to me, and it's not just like I'm having a
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: bad day or something.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: Right, You can kind of think of states as moods
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: and traits as your personality. Yeah, exact one's way more
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: stable than the other. And psychology tends to focus more
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: on the trait side because they want to figure out
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: what it is that makes people actually adopt or or
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: grow up or be bestowed genetically. Who knows with an
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: outlook on life that's way more positive than somebody else
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: who may even have been like in the womb with them,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: but raised in a different, different house, you know. Like,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: twin studies have shown there's actually huge variations in pessimism
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: and optimism among twins who were separated at Perth.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those studies are always really telling to me because
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: that's probably not the hugest cohort, but I think it
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: just speaks a lot to a lot of different things.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a lot of really unethical studies that
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: were carried out with twins too.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Like I imagine splitting them up, right.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I think there was a researcher
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: at some point in the seventies maybe who specifically was
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: splitting up twins to study them.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: All Right, I'm gonna put on my optimist cap and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: just think that everything worked out great for them because
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: they were eventually reunited.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: That's wonderful.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: So when you talk about the psychology side of things,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways that they like to look
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: at it, which is which are dispositional and attributional. Dispositional
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: is how we predict future events, and attributional obviously is
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: like basically saying like this happened because of this, assigning
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: either credit or blame for the reason that something good
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: or bad happened to you.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: Right, And those two are trait based, Yeah, optimistic or
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: pessimistic views. It's not We're no longer talking about state
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: and trait. These are all traits from what we're talking about,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: like this is how you view life, right.
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: One of the first tests of this that has proven
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: to be really viable and valid. It's called the Life
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Orientation Test, the LOT That was in nineteen eighty five,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: and I think of the mid nineties they revised it,
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: so it's the LOT DASH R. Yeah, Lot DASH revised.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Is that what it stands for? I kind of figured,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: but that didn't bother looking.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Sure, anytime you see the R with it something like that,
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: it almost certainly is revised. Yeah, yeah, Well it could
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: also be revved.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Up, I guess, yeah, or really the right test.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Right, The other letters are just kind of implied.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: The lot was conceived by two dudes named Michael Schier
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and Charles Carber. And what they were trying to do,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and I did a pretty good job of it, I think,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: was measure you know, I talked about dispositional which is
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: how we predict future events. They're trying to measure dispositional
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: optimism and pessimism with this test.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So what they found is that, like I said, that,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: the test is actually really reliable. That was the word
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: I was looking for before. Yeah, because if you take
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: this test, you know, at fifty you take it again
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: on a totally different day, in a totally different state
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: and a totally different state of mind. Yeah, at fifty
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: five you're probably going to get roughly the same score, right,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: So it is a very reliable test. Interestingly, what they
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: found is that over the course of life, optimism tends
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: to rise and pessimism tends to fall from young adulthood
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: to middle age. Yeah, and then it starts to decline,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: which I can tell you firsthand that is totally true.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Uh. Oh, I don't want to self reflect too much
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: on this one.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Well, something that I'm really hanging on too, is I've
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: been told that, like your forties are far and away
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: your worst decade.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard that.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: Almost across the board. You've got way more responsibility, Like
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: you're not as young anymore. Your body's starting to change,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Like it's just a bad decade, fifties. It starts to
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: pick up. But I remember we talked about this before.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: In your sixties, your happiness starts to go so back
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: up to levels that it was when you were younger.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: So I'm really holding out for my sixties, man, I'll
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: tell you that.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm closer than you that for once. It's a benefit.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: I know I'm jelly.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: So the lot are, which I guess it could stand
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: for reliable. Yeah, so the lot are comes along.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: The revised test. It is ten questions, six of them
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: are scored, four of them are fillers, and the scored
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: wins are things like.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I think Olivia found these exact questions and uncertain times.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I usually expect the best. If something can go wrong
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: for me, it will, And you're responding to how much
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you agree with something, and they score it in a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: pretty straightforward way, where from zero to twenty four, where
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: zero is very low optimism and high pessimism and twenty four, man,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you are maxed out optimist.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I know, yeah, you got a permagrin, right, I guess.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: So I took that test. I actually found the test
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: that like a clinician would give to like a patient.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: It had like all the explanations and all that stuff
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: on it.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to reveal your score.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: So out of twenty four, I scored eleven, and I
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: was like, that doesn't sound very good. And I looked
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: at the explanation and scoring and it says below thirteen
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: is lower than typical optimism and may warrant clinical attention.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: So I got really upset about this because that's like
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: basically the test scoring academic version of going.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I want to take that test, So.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Send that to me, Leah.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: You should, I'll send it to you.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: But I went on, I guess a bit of a tailspin.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: So I tried to make myself feel better. I went
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: and listened to some Kenny G to brighten my mood,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: and I was just sitting there. I realized I was
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: just sitting there waiting for him to screw up eventually,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: so I stopped listening to trinny G. Then I went,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: I'm going to have to alone again, naturally, and then
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: everything was all right again.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's good.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Attributional optimism or pessimism is what we mentioned earlier is
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the other side of that coin. And that's when you're
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: either saying, like this thing that was good in my
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: life is happened because of this good thing only, or
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: this bad thing that happened happened because of this bad
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: thing only. It's basically assigning blame to what happens in
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: your life. And if you're you know, some of this
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: stuff is kind of no brainer. If you're optimistic, you
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: are much more prone to attribute negative events to a
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: specific thing, like, hey, things usually work out for me,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and this didn't just because of this, Whereas if you're
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: a pessimist, it's like, no, this happened to me just
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: because this kind of stuff always.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Happens to me.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And in the same vein, if you're a pessimist
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: and something good happens to here, like that was just
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: one million chants, it makes me so sad, it is,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: But that's that's usually how it works. On this test,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: the attributional Style Questionnaire, I looked at that one too.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: That's a Martin Seligman joint, huh, And it's twelve questions
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: twelve situations actually, where it says, so, for example, one
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: of them will say a friend compliment to you on
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: your appearance, and then I ask you to write in
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: what the cause was, right, like you got some new
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: duds or something like that, and then I've gotten even better. Example,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: there's one that said you've been looking for a job
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: unsuccessfully for a long time. Then you'd write in the cause,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: say you said it was a bad economy, or you
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: even said I'm not good at interviewing. Then it says
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: okay to ask you questions about the cause, like how
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: much of that is due to the actions of yourself
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: versus other causes? And so you might say like, well,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: I'm going through a bad spell right now, so you
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: know it's probably me and my gloomy nature right now.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: And then they'll say, well, how likely is it that
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: the issue is going to be present the next time,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: say you interview. You can say, well, I expect to
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: be feeling a lot better next time, so maybe I'll
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: be doing a little better. And then how much does
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: it extend to other parts of your life. So there's
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: twelve of those, and from that, apparently you can glean
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: quite clearly whether somebody leans pessimists or optimist based on
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: their responses, because again it's do things happen because you
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: screwed up right or because you are capable of achieving
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: good things? Is it always that way? If things go
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: wrong for you? Is that just par for the course.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: And then if something goes wrong for you, does your
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: whole life just get disrupted? Like those things he figured
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: out are actually really predictive and it makes a lot
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: of sense.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's interesting. It's almost like someone who is
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: like a self actualized person as opposed to someone who
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: feels like they're just sort of a victim in life.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you know, for sure.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: So Martin Seligman, once again he put forth this idea
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: that though there was an antidote to this idea of
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: learned helplessness, which is this, I imagine it's awful, this really
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: draining thought that I just can't control anything that happens,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: and all these negative things that happened to me, like
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I can't do anything about that. He put forth the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: idea of learned optimism. But that has to go on
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the assumption that optimism and pessimism aren't just these fixed
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: things in your life, and it's more of a strategy
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: that you employ.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which is really significant because I think it's easy
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: for people who say are like have a generally gloomy
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: outlook to forget that there's plenty of times where they
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: are excited about the future, where they do expect something
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: good to comfort down the road for them. It's just
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: easy to get caught up in that sort of look
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: at them as like, No, this isn't like just your
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: genes like making you move and walk like Master Blaster
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: from Mad Max. Right, this is just you not even
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: being aware that you're adopting these things as strategies to
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: kind of negotiate life, because this is the strategy you
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: learn based on all these other different events in your
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: life that led up to this, which means chuck, and
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: this is the most hopeful thing of all. You can
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: learn and unlearn strategies that you're not aware you're using
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: by recognizing them as strategies.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I just I cannot say that
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: movie character named from the Mad Max without saying it
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: like Tina Turner, I could only say Masta blasta.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: It sounds like it sounds like Tim Curry doing Tina Turner.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Wow, all right, yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: that too.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: How's Tim Curry doing these days?
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: You know, I actually saw something recently where he was
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: interviewed and he has recovered from his stroke such that
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: he can can speak, and you know, I mean, I
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: think he's doing as well as he can be for
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you know, such a I think it's a pretty massive stroke.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: But the interview I saw was like he had a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: sense of humor and was engaged and people really really
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: loved hearing from him.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Again, that's wonderful, I'm glad, I asked.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: Then.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just saw that kind of recently too. That's funny.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: You must be in my algorithm.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: I'm all up in there.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break or should we go through
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: this last bit?
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: We should go through last bit?
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, So here's something that's probably not surprising. Is it
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: dispositional and attributional optimism or really correlated to one another?
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And really no surprise there. Also, I was about to say comorbid,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: but that always sounds bad, but correlated to high self esteem,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: positive affect, feeling like you're in control of your life
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and your outcomes, and obviously negatively correlated with feeling depressed
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: or stressed or alienated or having anxiety or hopelessness.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And as far as Big five personality traits goes,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: it's most closely related to emotional stability optimism is Yeah.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: So essentially, if you put all that together, that's the
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: kid from your high school that you hated because everybody
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: loved him and he was in a great mood all
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: the time and he loved you.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah that was kind of me. Oh no, oh really yeah, sort.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Of Mine was Scott Galvin or Tony.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Appy Man, Tony Appy, that guy.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: So I say we take a break.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, well take a break. We're going to think about
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: her and where this podcast is headed. And I'm feeling
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: pretty good about it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Not theimistic. We'll be right back.
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: Stop you know, stop stop stop here. Shouldn't know no,
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: stop you know, stop stop stop here, shouldn't know stop
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: you should know?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: So the thing that was on my mind, and I'm
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: glad she included this bit Olivia did, is like, you know,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: is this stuff nature or nurture? Like are we kind
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of born this way? Or are we made this way,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: and no surprise, it's a bit of both. I think
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: generally speaking, they've come to a consensus at about twenty
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: five And anytime you hear percentages like this, this sort
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of take take it with a grain of salt, but
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: about twenty five percent genetic and the rest is a
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: mix of like your childhood and the environment that you
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: were raised in obviously, and then stuff that happened to
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you since then.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of it's pretty intuitional, right yeah, intuitive, sure, Yes,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: that's why I was like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Like if you are a developmental psychologist, you would say, well,
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: your early life experiences and being raised in a family
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: that neglected you or abused you or criticized you constantly,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: you're going to develop negative patterns of thinking and they're
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: going to frame the way that you look at the world.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah, so I mean it makes sense of jobs.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: It's not one of these things. It's like this one
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: subgroup in psychology is working on optimism and pessimism and
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: having to try to do all these mental gymnastics to
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: reverse shoehorn it into other stuff. Yeah, it just fits
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: with other concepts. So it's very clear that there are
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: there's something too. Optimism and pessimism. They do exist as
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: a thing psychologically speaking, and stuff like that just backs
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: it up.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: There was a study this year, actually pretty robust, where
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: they had two hundred thousand adults. And this one's good
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: because it was spread out over twenty two different countries.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about a little bit of the bias
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of just studying sort of western countries with optimism and stuff.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: But they compare their levels of.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Optimism with how they remember their childhood and across all
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the geographies, and again, no surprise, people who had positive
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: relationships in their family with their parents and siblings, they
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: had better financial status, better health outcomes, and obviously were
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: more optimistic. Interestingly, if you had frequent religious attendance when
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: you were a kid, they associate that with optimism, but
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: most strongly in more secular countries, which I thought was
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: pretty fascinating.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: I was trying to figure that out, and the best
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: I could come up with is that they just they
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: stood out more because they were fewer and farther between.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, I don't know, or maybe in more
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: religious countries you're just sort of more expected to be
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: dragged to church and it wasn't like a conscious choice
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you made to go.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know that's a better interpretation, okay.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: And also, like I was saying, divorce, abuse, feeling like
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: an outsider in your family all associated with lower optimism. Yeah,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: and they did say, like, Okay, there is possibly something
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: we should mention here. It's possible that these people who
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: are recalling their childhood are the optimists are recalling their
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: childhood in more favorable terms, and the pessimist are recalling
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: them in less favorable terms. And there has to be
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: like a word for when the thing you're studying acts
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: as a confounding factor in the study of itself. Yeah,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: could not find it to save the life of me.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: So if you're a researcher other and you know what
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: that is, tell me because I've been dying. But that's
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: essentially what they were saying. They still said, now this
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: study still stands, but they at least did acknowledge that
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: it's possible it was the thing being studied optimism was
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: influencing the study itself.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, there's got to be a
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: certain it's like a blank bias, you.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Know, blank bias.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Good enough if you're wondering about the brain itself, like
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: just your physical brain, you're noodle. As they say, they
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: have found differences obviously in optimists and pessimist brain and
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: how they're built, like your gray matter volume, but also
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: how they activate. There was a study again from this
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: year in twenty twenty five where and I thought, this
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: is pretty interesting where optimists share patterns like there the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: wonder machine lights up in kind of the same way
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: when optimists imagine future events, whereas when pessimists imagine future events,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: they may all be imagining something negative, but it's all
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: individual to that person.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And how the MRI machine lights up.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: I think this is maybe the most interesting thing that
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: has been turned up about this so far.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: It's just like groupthink versus like, no, I have a
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: personal negative outlook that's only mine.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I saw somebody point out like, maybe
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: this is why some people click with other people, like
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: they share a literal brain pattern in the way that
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: they think about the future outlook on life. Whereas you know,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: people who are like have lower optimism or higher pessimism
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: tend to think be thought of as like moby alienated
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: off by themselves. So they can't even connect with one
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: another because they have varying brain patterns. It's not like
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: optimists all have one brain pattern and pessimists all have
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: one brain pattern. Optimists are the only ones that share
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: the brain pattern. I find that super fascinating.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: No, totally, And it also sort of lends itself to like,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: if you're pessimistic, you may have a harder time finding
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a community because it's your own and not one that
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: you share. Yeah, as you know, we're talking about health outcomes.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: If you read, you know, especially like when you were saying,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like the earlier two thousands, when it was all this
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: happiness stuff, like it makes it seem like optimism is
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: basically just the key to life across every single factor
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: from health to your finances, everything your focus and your
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: decision making and your motivations.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And a lot of that. It's true to a certain degree.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: It's not a magic pill, but there's no doubt that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: optimism is linked to better like literal health outcomes, better
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: heart health, lower inflammation, better immune responses, sleeping, better overall
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: mortality rates. One suggestion is like, yeah, because you know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: you're not as stressed out and stress as the cause
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: of a lot of that stuff, So that just sort
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of makes sense.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have less inflammation, which is a big one.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, that could explain it right there as far
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: as health out outcomes. But also they're like, well hold on,
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, like optimists. One of the things that defines
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: optimists is that they are undeterred in seeking their goals
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: because they generally believe they're going to be successful. Right,
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: whether all odds are against it or not, doesn't matter.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: They're just going to go and do their thing because
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: they think it's going to be fine. So that would
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: include things like quitting smoking, exercising, eating right. Having goals
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: and then just working toward them is almost always aligned
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: with better health and like having better health habits too,
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: so that would definitely explain one reason why they are
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: probably healthier.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some big caveats that Lvia was keen
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: to point out, and a lot of these studies that
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: sort of, you know, tie between being optimistic and having
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: good health. It gets ticked down quite a bit when
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: they look into the details of like someone's I don't
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: know bank account and they're like, oh, well, yeah, this
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: person that's got loads of money. Yeah, Yeah, they're more
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: optimistic and so yeah, they're healthier because a lot of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: that just financial stress and all that stuff goes out
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the door. And you know, when you're stressed out about
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: money like that may lead to like drinking more or
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: starting smoking, and so you really have to sort of
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: caveat that to death, you know.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And similarly, these studies are usually just taking a
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: snapshot of what that person's like, right then, Right, so
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: you score very high on an optimistic the life orientation test. Right,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: and you also say, like, I don't smoke, I eat
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: five servings of vegetables every day. Yeah, it's not clear
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: from that study they're correlated. But is it that people
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: who eat better and don't smoke tend to have a
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: more positive outlook? Do you not smoke and eat better
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: because you have a positive outlook? There's a whole chicken
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: in the egg thing. I just coined that phrase, but
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: I think it's gonna stick around.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Then there's something called optimism bias, which I thought was
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. As a human race, we have an optimism bias.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: They've studied it to death and they found that just
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: for the general population, the default is about eighty percent
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: of people are generally optimistic. Ten percent are generally pessimistic
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and about ten percent can go either way, or maybe
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you're neutral. And there was a psychologist named Neil Weinstein.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I think this is in the very early nineteen eighties. Yeah,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty was his initial study where he was the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: first guy to say, yeah, I mean, we're pretty much
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: biased toward being optimist. And you know, one reason may
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: be because it's so shoved down your throat that that's
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the key to everything good in life.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, maybe what Weinstein. I'm going with Weinstein,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: but I get Weinstein too. Yeah, I think one thing
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: that his study, it was a landmark study from what
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: I could tell. In nineteen eighty, he tested two hundred
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: students and said, Okay, of these positive things and of
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: these negative things, was the likelihood it all happened to you?
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: And was the likelihood it all happened to your classmates?
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: And just across the board, students said that positive things
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: were much more likely to happen to them than to
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: their classmates. Negative things were much more likely to happen
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: to their classmates than to them. And we're talking things
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: like liking your post graduation job, or your house doubling
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: in value in five years, or this one, I love
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: this one, your achievements being written up in the newspaper,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: like all those things were much likelier to happen to
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: the test taker than they were to their fellow students.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: And that kind of gets to the basis of this
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: optimism bias that everyone thinks that they're above average in
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: a lot of different ways, which is of course impossible
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: because there have to be people who that isn't true for,
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: or else there wouldn't be an average. We'd all be
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: above average. It's not possible. And so here's where we
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: get to stop talking about optimists as if they're the
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: greatest thing that ever happened, because one of the big
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: problems with optimism is this bias and making terrible predictions
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: about the outcomes of events.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Well, there was another study that kind of tied into
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: that is from Tali Sharrat, who's a cognitive neuroscientist at
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the University College of London and kind of took that
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: experiment and ran with it and said, all right, I'm
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: going to ask you about the likelihood of something good
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: or bad happening in your life. Get that answer, and
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: then they say, well, here's actually the average likelihood of
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing happening, and now let me ask
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you again. And they found that people change their answers
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: more in response in the positive way than in the
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: negative way, which I thought was sort of counterintuitive.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: It is, because you'd think if you've said, like, what's
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: your chances of winning the lottery tomorrow and somebody said
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: eighty percent, and then the people said, actually it's ninety percent,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: they go, great, what's say one hundred percent for me? Right,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: So that's what people would do. But if the researchers said,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: actually it's more like twenty percent, they'd be like, no,
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: eighty percent for me. And that's what I was talking about.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: People tend to think that good things are likely to
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: happen for them.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even in.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Knowing that statistically speaking, right overall, it's very unlikely to
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: happen just anybody. But they're not just anybody. This is
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: the optimism bias that's been turned up and reinforced the
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: year after year every year. Yeah, it's an annual thing.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Well, and uh, speaking of reinforce, it seems that optimism
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: reinforces optimism if you. When they have they've studied this
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: that positive life events just tend to make you even
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: more optimistic, which makes a lot of sense. But if
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: you have something negative that happens, it doesn't generally all
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of a sudden make you more pessimistic.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: It's just like, well, that happened.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Some other examples are when you expect things to
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: be easy for you. A lot of people do that.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: I understand that one too, it could be bad, and
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: that you'll be more successful then then you would, I
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: mean again, just statistically speaking, And then also that we
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: spend a lot more time thinking about good things that
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: are coming down the pike than bad ones, so I
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: also can associate with I mean it. It just seems
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: unusual for the average person to sit around and be like, well,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: I'm probably going to get a flat tire in the
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: next like year and a half. Statistically speaking, I should
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: probably think about that for a little while.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: But there is some sort of like I guess, prophylactic
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: influence of that, which is you might go make sure
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: that your spare tire is doing okay, And that kind
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: of belies this. I'm not sure if I'm using that
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: word correctly, but that goes to show that the optimist
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: bias can actually be harmful in some ways because it
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: will prevent you from doing something like going to check
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: your spare tire, because of course you're not going to
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: get a spare tire because that wouldn't happen to you.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Emily and I talk a lot about it,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: like the Pollyanna thing. That doesn't seem to serve people
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: well because then you're all of a sudden ignoring, or
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: maybe not ignoring, but at least not putting as much
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: weight into the things you do and the decisions you
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: make day to day that might have a bad outcome,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're caught unaware when that
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: bad outcome happens. Which is it's bad enough when you're
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: just an individual, but if you're a corporation or a
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: friggin government and you're caught unaware because you thought something
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: was going to go too well, or you didn't put
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the budget or the time into something that you should
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: have because you just thought it was a no brainer,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: or something like that, that can be really destructive to
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: a business or to a nation.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like just believing that artificial intelligence will
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: be great with no downsides, you're worth considering. Is it
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: good excellent example of what you're just talking about.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: So you might say, okay, well, then if eighty percent
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: of people are optimistic, that kind of suggests that this
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: is like maybe humanity's default setting, and that tessimism is
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: like maybe malfunction. Even the the thing about that is
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: that it doesn't really make sense that it would be
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: evolutionarily favorable for us to be optimistic because of this
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: optimism bias that can get us into trouble. But you
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: can look at it a certain way and say, like, actually,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: it does make a lot of sense, because if we
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: didn't have an optimistic bias, we might not go try
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: new things, we might not make it out of the
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: cave and learn to make fire ourselves, or kind of
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: put differently, if you have a problem that's life or death,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: and you throw a bunch of people at it, and
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: all of them are kind of pre tuned to expect
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: their attempt at being successful to work. The ones who
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: die trying don't get to reproduce. The ones that succeed
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: do get to live to reproduce. And not only do
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: they get to live to reproduce and pass on that
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: optimism bias, it's reinforced because they were successful, and they
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: think all the more, now I can successfully predict my future,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: and I'll be successful in that future.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: And you know I mentioned the caveat about the Western
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: societies being the most studied. A lot of these are
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: definitely you know, slanted toward you know, the American way
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: of life or the Western way of life, and thought
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: they're really.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Not super sure about sort of worldwide.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: There is some evidence that like in Japan, that like
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: they might not anticipate positive outcomes as much for their
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: own selves like we do here in the United States, Right,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: But they also make the point like, well we're also
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: you know, all of these things are people self reporting.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: So in places like the United States or Australia, they
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: may just be more likely to say out loud that
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: they're optimistic, whereas in another country they may feel that
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: way but just you know, no WAMIs kind of style,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: or maybe they just are not as outwardly optimistic, but
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: they really feel it, they just don't want to say it.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not cool to be optimistic in those countries. Yeah,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: you want to take a break and then come back
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: and talk about some variations on this theme.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: Okay, stop, you know, stop stop stop. He shouldn't know no, stop,
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: you know, stop stop stop. He shouldn't know stop you
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: should know.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Okay, Chuck. We said we're going to talk about some variations,
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: and I think one thing we should point out is
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: that optimism itself is almost a variation on a theme.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: When people say like like somebody's just happy all the time,
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: there's going through life, they have like the best attitude,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: that's actually not optimism. Optimism is either, like we said,
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: you are expecting good things to happen down the pike,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: or or you assume that you can overcome obstacles. You
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: don't blame other people for your issues. Like that's optimism
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: with the other thing that I just mentioned is positive affect,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: which is more enjoying the present, and optimism is thinking
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: about the future essentially.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good thing to point out for sure.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Some of these variations that you mentioned we were going
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: to talk about. I thought all these were pretty interesting.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: One is called depressive realism, and I think they all
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: have their place. Depressive realism is this idea that if
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: you're you know, maybe a little depressed or moderately depressed,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: then you're actually a realist and you have a way
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: more accurate view of the real world around you. In
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: other words, you're not that Pollyanna, You're a realist. And
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: this came from a study in the nineteen seventies by
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: psychologist Lauren Eloy and lynn Yvonne Abramson where it's kind
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: of a funky study, but they had participants push a
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: button and then judged how a fel that might be
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: for causing a light to go on, Like I'm going
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: to press this button, but I don't think it's going
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to do anything, right.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Or man, this room's going to light up when I
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: press this button.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Right exactly, And they said that people with depression tended
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: to more accurately predict whether that button was going to
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: turn the light on or not, right, yeah, And so
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: they extrapolated that to say, like, well, you know, that
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: means that people with depression or depressive symptoms are they
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: have just a greater handle on the reality of reality. Basically,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: they're less likely to make wild predictions about their success
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: and so they understand reality better. And this was a
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: landmark study that people just immediately put into the pop
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: psychology grind because it's just so contrary and it's delicious. Yeah,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: and it's also one of those landmark studies that people
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: have loved to kind of try to take shots at.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: And apparently it's not very well replicated. So yeah, I
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: don't know its status right now, but it seems like
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: it's it hasn't been debunked, and it's not unfounded as
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: far as the feel psychology is concerned, but it doesn't
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: seem like it's as golden as it once.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Was to like a dented landmark. Yeah, I think.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: That's a great one, like that ball of foil. That's right.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: There's another variation called defensive pessimism. I like this one.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't really me, but I think there's
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of validity here and that if you have
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: lower expectations and you're sort of planning for the worst,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that's almost the same as being optimistic in a way
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: as far as it helping you in life, because it
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: can really help manage your anxiety. It can make you
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: feel like you have some sense of control and you're not.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: You know, like during COVID, they found that if you
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: were a defensive pessimist, then that correlated with taking more
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: precautions and being safer and I E.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: I guess being healthier.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you ever put two words to go to
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: describe me, it's defensive pessimist.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure I could see that, and I think.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: There's no greater description than this. But defensive pessimists don't
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: focus as much on pursuing happiness. They focus more on
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: avoiding regret, which is I mean, they can still have
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: the same outcome, but it's it's what you're chasing is different.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: You're avoiding a negative outcome rather than pursuing a positive outcome,
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: but the outcomes still the same.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: You succeeded because you're pursuing something.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're Actually it's based on the idea that you
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: can change your fate, right Like, you can take actions
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: to affect this outcome and make it as close to
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: the outcome you want as possible. That's the same thing
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: as optimism, it's just coming at it a different way. Yeah.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I really like that idea because I mean, it's not me,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: but I love it for you because it's not like, well,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: this is just going to happen to me no matter
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: what it's like. Boy, I have a bad feeling that
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: this is going to happen to me unless I take
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: these steps, right.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: The only downside of it is like you won't let
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: yourself think about the future being good because you'll chank
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: it essentially.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Jinxing's a whole of their uh for sure,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: part of this thing.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: So what you just described, though, is what I think
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: is the worst one, fatalistic pessimism, which is right, everything's
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: wrong and I can't do anything to change it. That
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: is a sad, sad disposition that I like to think
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: that is not set in stone. It's just because of
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: like circumstances, or it's a particular low point in your life.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: I don't know, but I don't like to think that
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: anyone out there is at their base of fatalistic pessimists.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: That's just sad.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: On the flip side of that coin, you have toxic positivity.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, we almost don't even need to say anything
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: else because I think everyone knows what that is. It
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: can lead to bad things because like that's sort of
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the Pollyanna thing I was talking about.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: You're ignoring anything.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Negative to like basically you're delusional about that, and so
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna attempt to improve things because you're just like, no,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: it's it all gonna work out.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: It's gonna be great.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: One of the ways that this pops up, I think
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: for people, and they don't really recognize that that's what
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: they're doing, is when somebody shares their feelings or confides
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: in you that they're afraid of something or anxious about something,
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: and you just say, oh, it's all gonna work out.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: You're being toxically positive right there. You're actually dismissing their fears.
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: You're probably doing it because you're uncomfortable, right then. You
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: don't know what else to say, so you're just going on, well,
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: I can't go wrong by being positive. You actually can,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: and that's toxic positivity.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's I mean true in all relationships, supporting
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a spouse or a friend, but also a lot with parenting,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Like that's not a great road to go down with
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a kid because you're teaching them the wrong things. I
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: feel like you should be saying like, well, hey, let's
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: think about this and maybe if you take these steps
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: you can help affect the outcome, rather than like it's
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: gonna be fine, you're gonna be great, yeah, because you're
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: not always gonna be great.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: No, that is a good thing to teach a kid
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: for sure. Yeah, there's also tragic optimism. Yeah. It was
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: coined by a guy named Victor Frankel who is a
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: psychologist or sorry, psychiatrist who actually did He was interned
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: in a Nazi concentration camp and lost essentially everyone he knew,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: and he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: from that and it's like a seminal book and search
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: for the meaning of life. But he coined tragic optimism
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: to basically say, this is the mindset where you are
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: aware that in life you're going to suffer pain, guilt, loss,
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: and that you can accept that that's true and still
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: seek the most positive outcomes you can get. I like
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: that one too, Try to be happy even knowing that.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I like that.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: And then what's the last one.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck, Cultural pessimism. I'm not going to editorialize here. That's
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: basically just like the belief that the society was better
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: at a different time. You know, decades ago everything was
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: great in this country and everything is just going straight
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: down the toilet today.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: It's called getting old.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: It's interesting in that you have a tendency, in this
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: case toward optimism bias about your own life while also
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: at the same time being pessimistic about society as a whole,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: which I think is super fascinating.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: It is, for sure, especially when you talk about, like,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: my economic outlook is sunny, but not for the country.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: I've also seen it called declinism too. Oh, so let's
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: say you're like, all right, nuts to all this pessimistic
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: outlook that I've got. I want to be an optimist.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: I'm even willing to try to navigate optimistic bias. That's
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: how bad I want to be optimistic. There's actually some
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: stuff that they figured out that you can do to
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: essentially shift your outlook some I don't think anyone saying
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: like this is going to rewire your genetic code or
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: anything like that, but there are some proven interventions you
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: can take to help that along. I think probably it's
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: based on your willingness to want to change too.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I think intervention is a good word because it's like, hey,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: this is happening, let me use this specific technique to
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: stop it in its tracks. In the first case is
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the ABC technique. Our ol buddy Martin Seligman came up
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: with this one to use a lot in CBT, cognitive
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: behavioral therapy and the A is the antecedent or adversity,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: so you encounter something difficult. Olivia used a great example
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of like you, you know, like you flunk a test.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe then you have your belief and behavior, which in
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: this case might be like I just I can't pass
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: this test, I can't understand this stuff.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: I'm too dumb.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: And then the consequence is the C, which is because
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: you have that fatalistic attitude I'm just too dumb to
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: pass this test, you don't study and you fall further behind.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: And the key here, you know, according to Seligman, is
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: you got to get in there between the difficult situation,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: the thing that happens, and the B thing between the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: A and B and change the attribute. So in other words,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: don't go to like, oh, I'm too dumb to do this,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: go to like, now that happened because I've been really
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: stressed out. I didn't put the time in that I
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: needed to to study. I was really had my priorities
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: it priorities out of whack. I didn't sleep well that week.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And that's an immediate intervention where you're putting the attribution
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: on something that was temporary that happened.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: And this is how I.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Am right, and that you can also change too exactly.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: And then conversely too, you can also say, like I
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: got a good grade, it wasn't just because you know
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: I was lucky. You tell yourself, I got a good
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: grade because I worked really hard, I got good sleep
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: this week, and I paid attention. I found this interesting.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: You can do the same thing too, the opposite too,
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: to achieve the same goal. I think you probably have
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: to do both to tell you the truth.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And then this is also a good thing to
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: remember when you're parenting, because when your kids are in
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: school and they maybe get a bad grade, the first
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: question I think you should say is, well, why do
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: you think you got a bad grade? And see what
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: they say, and then just kind of go from there, right.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: And then if they get a really good grade, you say, well,
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: why didn't you get.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: A hundred exactly.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: So there's another one that's even better than the ABC technique.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: That's called the best Possible self for BPS intervention, And
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: apparently everybody loves this one. There's a way of dealing
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: with trauma that they used to have. It's called trauma writing,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: where you would write out essentially like the worst stuff
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: that happened to you and it would make you feel
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: better having gotten it out on paper. It would also
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: be pretty traumatic to do, right, Yes, the whole basis
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: of that trauma well, Laura King back in two thousand
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: and one said, let's try something different. Let's write out
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: this sketch of yourself down the road in the future
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: where you've achieved everything you wanted to achieve it was
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: through hard work. Write that version out and it's less traumatizing,
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: but it also has the same effect, like it improved
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: your sense of well being and apparently increases your optimistic
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: outlook on things.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's the idea, that sort of hippie
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: dippy thing where you know, close your eyes and envision
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: your future where you're strong and you're not doing the
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: things that you're doing now that are holding you back.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: And it sounds kind of corny, but I think when
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: you write it down, there's something to that, just the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: same as trauma writing. It's different than just sort of
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: mentally visualizing good things happening.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: Way different. There's something about writing that's definitely yeah, a
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: step plus, you know. Yeah, And then so just real quick,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: there are some benefits to pessimism too. It's not just
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: you know, being optimistic, Like, if you are pessimistic, there's
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: some upsides to it. But also even if you're optimistic,
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: there's maybe a little pessimism you should adopt too, Like,
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: if you want to enact social change, that usually doesn't
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: happen through optimistic leaders. It happens through people who are
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: skeptical and are not following for the false advertising or
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: false promises essentially, right, Like, you can't really be optimistic
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: and good social change, I think yeah. And then also,
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: if you are a group that wants to spur social change,
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: it's probably because you're unhappy with your current situation. And
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: then lastly, this one's always stood out to me. If
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: everyone's looking on the positive side of things, then the
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: people who are doing negative stuff are much likelier to
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: get away with it. Oh interesting, So I feel like
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: if you have the ability to shift between pessimism and
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: optimism as the situation calls for it, that's probably ideal.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Or you know, if you're a defensive pessimist, it's not
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: about aiming low, it's about not expecting too high. And
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: then if you have and it sounds bad to have,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: like you should have low expectations it's more like realistic
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: expectations and then you outperform those like That's got to
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: feel great to a Pessimi, for sure.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: It's like planning for the worst but hoping for the best.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that old T shirt. Isn't there a cat hanging
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: from a tree or something?
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: I think that's hanging in baby. Okay, you got anything else?
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: I got nothing else that. That was a good one.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: I enjoyed it.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: Agreed, well, Chuck enjoyed this one, which means he automatically
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: unlocked listener mail.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: You know what, I don't have a great listener mail
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: preps for today, So let's just mention once again that
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: we are going on tour again next year. We are
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: super excited. We got shows lined up in January out
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: West Ish, in the Midwest in April, and then we're
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: finally going all across Canada. You guys, we're reaching out
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: with an Olive branch such weird times between our countries
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: and saying, hey, don't boycott us, we want to come
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: visit you. We're going to Montreal, We're going to places
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: we've never been before, and.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: Tickets are on sale now and we'd love to see everybody.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, starting out we're going to be in Denver and
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: then Seattle and then San Francisco on January twenty seventh,
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: twenty eighth, and twenty ninth. Yeah, and for those tickets
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: and all tickets as they come on sale, you can
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: just go to Stuff you Should Know dot click on
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: the tour button and it will take you where you
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: need to go.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: That's right. Can't wait to see everybody.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, Hey, And if you want to get in
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: touch with this in the meantime and send us an email,
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: we would love that. You can send it off to
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 55:22
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• 55:26
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