Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
Saudi Arabia's economy is transforming.
0:03
What's behind it? The public investment
0:05
fund, 0PIF It's one of
0:07
the largest sovereign wealth funds in the
0:09
world, creating thirteen new sectors,
0:12
sixty six companies, and more than five
0:14
hundred thousand direct and indirect
0:16
job so far. PIF is also
0:19
the first sovereign wealth fund to issue
0:21
a green bond supporting Saudi Arabia's
0:23
twenty sixty net zero emissions
0:25
target. Find out more at PIF
0:28
dot gov dot s a.
0:36
Hello. I'm Anne Nicole Voie. And
0:38
since twenty fifteen, I've had the pleasure
0:40
of introducing nearly four hundred episodes
0:43
of The Economist asks and still
0:45
so young. This week, however, will
0:48
be my last on this show. And
0:50
thank you to all who have over the years
0:52
listen to our conversations with some of the world's
0:55
greatest thinkers, politicians, artists,
0:58
and business leaders. Looking back,
1:00
I've traveled from London to Saint Petersburg
1:02
in Berlin, from Shanghai to
1:04
New York, and to the snow
1:06
capped peaks of Davos. Alongside
1:09
my glamorous life, my team and I have
1:11
pulled together shows from far
1:13
flung studios, including a hip
1:15
hop hangout in Harlem, a
1:18
water tower dungeon in Hamburg
1:20
and from under a lot of duvets
1:22
in lockdown and you've been there
1:25
all the way. So for this
1:27
my final episode, we've dug through
1:29
the archives and picked out a favorite show from
1:31
this year. My interview with Organizational
1:33
Psychologist, Adam Grant, and
1:35
I asked him how he can learn to disagree
1:38
better, which I reckon is a fitting tribute
1:41
to the economist asks Quest to
1:43
engage in the debates We all
1:45
need to have. We hope you enjoy this episode.
1:52
Argument is key to human
1:54
communication. Since
1:57
the classical Western philosophers tussled
1:59
in the agoras and forums of ancient Greece
2:01
and Rome, it's how the foundations of
2:03
democracy, law, and science were
2:05
agreed on. Debit and dialogue
2:08
became cornerstones of civilization and
2:10
we've continued the great tradition of positing
2:12
and postulating for
2:13
centuries. But in an age of
2:16
polarization on everything from politics
2:18
to pandemics, this county of
2:19
opportunity for disagreement and
2:22
and senator Paul, you do not know what
2:24
you are talking about.
2:25
Officer Vladimir Fenol in orders. Vladimir
2:28
Fenol.
2:29
And to do so, Nadir. Alright.
2:32
There's party of welcome. Come
2:35
in.
2:39
This is the Economist ask Simon
2:41
McAlvo in this week we're asking, can
2:43
we learn to disagree better?
2:46
My guest is the organizational psychologist,
2:49
Adam Grant. He's professor at
2:51
The Wharton School of the University of
2:53
Pennsylvania, and author of several
2:55
bestselling books on success and innovation.
2:58
He's also so host of the dead broadcast work
3:00
life. Carter spent years
3:02
studying how to sharpen our argument
3:05
literacy, and he thinks that somewhere
3:07
along the way we've lost not only the
3:09
art of arguing well, but the
3:11
ability to disagree productively.
3:14
Adam Grant, welcome to The Economist
3:16
asks. Thank
3:20
you, Anne. It's great to be here as a psychologist.
3:23
I'm interested as we're going
3:25
to talk about good argument, bad and
3:27
the difference between them, I was about
3:29
to say only good argument on this show and you'll
3:31
say, We'll be the judge of that.
3:34
Why do humans? Why do
3:36
we argue in the first place? I
3:38
actually think there's a fascinating case to
3:40
be made that we argue not
3:42
to win, but to reason. It
3:44
turns out that we make better
3:46
arguments when we're disagreeing
3:48
with other people. Than we do
3:50
often when we're thinking for ourselves. And
3:53
there are at least some evolutionary psychologists
3:55
who believe that The whole purpose of arguing
3:58
is to to sharpen our ability
4:00
to bring logic and evidence
4:02
to the table as opposed to just relying
4:04
on our intuitions and uninformed
4:06
opinions in our heads.
4:07
Have you always been interested in argument?
4:10
And as a practitioner, and all of us
4:12
have arguments of some sort or another
4:14
varying volumes. Have you ever
4:16
always been someone who liked an argument
4:18
or were you more of a conflict
4:21
of void until you started to look at this
4:23
in more detail?
4:24
I hated arguments growing up.
4:27
I avoided them. I was taught that it was impolite
4:29
to disagree. That
4:31
when I had an argument to make that I
4:33
should keep it to myself in
4:35
many situations. And
4:38
I felt like my job was to keep the peace.
4:40
don't know if it's because my parents got divorced
4:43
or or whether I I
4:45
have a genetic predisposition toward
4:47
agreeableness, probably some of both.
4:49
But I found that it was really holding
4:52
me back and that my hesitation to
4:54
disagree meant that I wasn't
4:56
honest with people around me It
4:58
meant that I learned less
5:00
from the people who disagreed with me.
5:02
And at some point, I I concluded
5:04
that It was actually bad manners
5:07
to avoid an argument because
5:09
that disrespected our ability to have
5:11
a thoughtful disagreement. And
5:13
it also it basically
5:15
dismissed the fact that I might be able to learn something
5:17
from
5:17
you, and I decided I was gonna overcome
5:20
it. It's interesting that people have very
5:22
strong. I don't wanna say hardwired because it's
5:24
probably the wrong use of that phrase here.
5:26
But I remember because my parents always
5:28
argued about current affairs very vociferously.
5:31
And the school friend coming over when we were watching
5:33
a show on the television is a quite
5:35
famous show in the UK that does that. Saying, I'm so
5:37
sorry. Your parents said that you drew. And I was like, no.
5:39
That's perfectly normal. It's what we do every Thursday
5:41
night. But it did make
5:43
me realize that the
5:45
pitch at which people argue and the way in
5:47
which people argue can land very, very differently
5:49
and this can lead to a lot of
5:51
stress in the workplace, disagreements in
5:53
the home, and between friends. So
5:55
fundamentally, what do you think makes for
5:57
a good argument and what makes for less good or
5:59
even a bad
5:59
one? Well, my first surprise was when
6:02
looking at at research on creative adults.
6:04
It turns out that they actually
6:06
grew up in families that had more frequent
6:08
disagreements. Well, I'm set for life
6:10
then. I can tell you. I mean, I'm
6:12
definitely in the right job. You
6:14
were clearly raised in the right environment to to
6:16
become an original thinker, Anne. But
6:19
it's clear that these were not
6:21
knock down drag out fist fights.
6:23
They were, you know, kind of friction. They
6:25
were people coming together to debate.
6:28
And to challenge, but doing it in a
6:30
way that fostered diversity of
6:32
thought as opposed to, you know,
6:34
silencing the the person who lost the
6:36
argument. The research also on child development
6:38
is pretty clear in in showing that it's
6:40
not how often parents argue that
6:42
matters. It's how constructively they
6:44
argue. So your parents can
6:46
disagree all the time and you're fine
6:48
as long as they make it clear that they still love each
6:50
other. And in fact, that people who love
6:52
each other are supposed to disagree. That's
6:55
at the heart of a good argument for me that
6:57
it involves what's often called task
6:59
conflict as opposed to relationship conflict.
7:01
So the arguments I was avoiding were about
7:03
relationship conflict. Which is the the
7:05
personal, emotional, I hate your
7:07
guts, and I wish you didn't exist at
7:10
the extreme. That that doesn't sound
7:12
particularly productive.
7:14
Not healthy. But that's kind of tease that
7:16
apart if we we could because your book's
7:18
called Think Again, and you put
7:20
forward the case that people should question
7:22
their opinions in order to open
7:25
someone else's mind as well as their their
7:27
own. But what leads you to
7:29
believe that people they need to
7:31
rethink their convictions, their assumptions
7:33
and learn to to argue better. I
7:35
mean, why is that
7:38
kind of approach? Better
7:40
than one in which disagreement is
7:42
rare or smoothed over. And people might think it's
7:44
a bit counterintuitive.
7:46
I think it is for some people. The thing to remember
7:48
is that if two people never
7:50
disagree, it means at least one of
7:52
them is not thinking critically or speaking
7:54
candidly. And that means
7:56
both of them are failing to learn from
7:58
the exchange that might happen between them.
8:00
I think a lot of us are taught to argue
8:02
to win. I think what we ought to
8:04
be doing is arguing to learn. And
8:07
the problem is that when a lot of people
8:09
come into a debate or a
8:11
disagreement, they lock into
8:13
preacher or prosecutor mode. So
8:15
in preacher mode, I am basically proselytizing
8:18
my views. In prosecutor mode,
8:20
I am attacking your views. And
8:22
in both cases, I've already concluded
8:24
that I'm right and you're wrong, which
8:28
in some cases will lead you to withdraw
8:30
together and disengage from the disagreement.
8:32
In other cases, when I go into prosecutor
8:34
mode, you bring your best defense
8:36
attorney to court. Right? And then we just butt
8:38
heads and neither of us is willing to change
8:40
our mind. I've been studying this for the past
8:42
few years and I've I've found that if you
8:44
can signal a little bit of humility and
8:46
curiosity, I'll tell you how I do this
8:48
personally. If we're gonna disagree, I would start
8:50
by saying, you know, Anne, I can be the
8:52
world's most annoying prosecuting
8:54
attorney. I've even been called a
8:56
logic bully which I only learned
8:58
later was not a compliment. And
9:00
I'm trying not to be that person anymore.
9:03
If you catch me doing that, please call
9:05
me out. And people do
9:07
give the feedback, which is helpful. But
9:09
also, it invites the other person to be more humble
9:11
too and say, I could actually be the most in
9:13
person on Earth, and I don't wanna be like that either.
9:15
So let me know if if you see that happening
9:17
and and we've both entered the argument
9:19
with a commitment to
9:20
openness, which is good for both of our
9:23
growth. So how should we be
9:25
approaching an argument with someone who holds
9:27
the opposite view? And did you talk about the
9:29
prosecutor, their prosecutorial
9:31
approach? And I think journalists who
9:33
do this kind of interview shows are
9:35
well aware of that. You you almost
9:37
feel you you could see the sort of bone inside. You
9:39
would hang on like a dog with the bone. But you
9:41
also then say that there is a mode which you
9:43
call the preacher. So just
9:46
distinguish if you could between
9:48
the preacher, the prosecutor. And then I
9:50
think your third category is the
9:52
politician. So the poor old politicians will
9:54
come to them in a
9:55
moment. Tell tell me about this taxonomy a
9:57
bit more. This is fascinating to me as an
9:59
organizational psychologist because I have never worked
10:01
in any of these jobs. Yet, I
10:03
have caught myself slipping into each of
10:05
these mindsets. So we've talked about the
10:07
prosecutor mode. In preacher mode, you're
10:09
basically serving your own intellectual
10:11
kool Aid. Right? And assuming that if everyone
10:14
thought just like you, the world would be a
10:16
better place. But great
10:18
minds do not think alike.
10:20
They challenge each other to think again.
10:23
And I think getting out of preacher
10:25
mode and recognizing sometimes
10:27
the harder I work to sell my own
10:29
ideas The more I
10:31
convinced myself, but the more I
10:33
alienate you is probably
10:36
something we should take into account. In
10:38
politician mode, you don't even bother to
10:40
listen to people unless you already
10:42
agree with their views or they've
10:44
already, you know, expressed approval
10:46
for yours. You're catering to your
10:48
constituents. You're trying to to
10:50
basically appeal to your existing
10:52
tribe. And that's even worse than somebody
10:54
has been preaching and prosecuting. Because
10:56
instead of saying I'm right and you're
10:57
wrong, you've concluded we're right
10:59
and they're wrong. That's the point in which
11:01
I would have a bit of a a challenge is political
11:04
journalist? Because I can understand Here we
11:06
go. I can understand why you
11:08
say that given the way that politics,
11:10
particularly in the US, but in in some
11:12
other places as well as as developed negatively in the
11:14
last few years of politicians playing
11:16
to a particular base to get over a certain
11:18
line, to get where they want to
11:20
be. But generally speaking, they
11:22
still need to appeal
11:24
to some voters who don't agree with
11:26
them. That's why we talk about swings,
11:29
isn't it? And swing voters? And if they
11:31
didn't do that, then they would
11:33
struggle. So the big political breakthroughs,
11:35
whether they've been left or right, and whether we
11:37
have a high opinion of Murillo, one would
11:39
be, for instance, people becoming
11:41
Reagan Democrats or people
11:43
voting for Bill Clinton in nineteen
11:45
ninety two. But putting the
11:47
economy, typically, at least at
11:49
that point, a subject where Republicans
11:51
often held sway at the heart
11:53
of his debate. Or
11:55
indeed, you might say Joe Biden now trying to
11:57
figure out how to bring back those working
11:59
class voters or those who felt alienated
12:01
and voted for
12:02
Trump. So I I'm not sure the politicians
12:04
are only preaching to the choir. I
12:06
think that's a good point, and I'm open
12:08
to rethinking my definition of
12:10
how people think like politicians. So
12:13
it's probably issue specific. Right? So
12:15
in the data I've gathered, there are
12:17
cases where when you're in politician
12:19
mode, you basically lock yourself in an echo
12:21
chamber. And you don't want to hear or
12:23
address alternate perspectives at
12:25
all. But I think you're describing another
12:27
flavor of thinking like a politician, which
12:30
is basically being approval
12:32
seeking to the point that you run the risk
12:34
of flip flopping. I worry a lot
12:36
about the disingenuousness of that
12:38
behavior because you
12:40
haven't actually changed your mind. You're
12:42
just, in many cases, claiming
12:44
to hold a different stance in order
12:46
to appease a new audience. And I think
12:48
there's a big difference between flip
12:50
flopping and learning. Flip
12:52
flopping is I'm gonna change what
12:54
I say but not what I think deep
12:56
down. Learning is recognizing
12:59
I have evolved my views.
13:01
Based on better reasons
13:03
or stronger data. Let's
13:05
take the greatest American president by
13:07
consensus Lincoln. If Lincoln were alive
13:09
today, Anne, he would be accused of flip
13:11
flopping. Constantly, he would be
13:13
called a hypocrite because he came into the
13:15
White House. Insisting that
13:17
he was not going to abolish
13:19
slavery because he was afraid that
13:21
it would tear the union apart. And
13:23
he thought preserving the American paramount and
13:25
maintaining this democracy was
13:27
even more important than trying
13:29
to to eliminate this important practice
13:31
of slavery And how lucky
13:33
are we that he changed his
13:34
mind? Why would you say that
13:37
now particularly is
13:39
the time for a rethink
13:41
about the way that we make arguments. Some
13:43
of these things sound like a total truth. We
13:45
sometimes put them into different ways of
13:47
describing them or have different preoccupations
13:49
and a versions. But you seem to
13:51
feel some urgency about this
13:53
moment, and I wondered what led you to
13:54
that. Part of the issue is
13:57
polarization has expanded from
13:59
all the evidence I've seen.
14:01
People are more extreme and more entrenched
14:03
now about their political views than
14:05
they were any time in the last few
14:07
decades from the data that I've seen in
14:09
the US and the UK, there's a
14:11
perception gap where Liberals
14:13
and Conservatives are clinging to
14:15
caricature of the other side
14:17
that are not rooted in reality, but
14:19
are clearly consistent with what
14:21
in psychology is called binary bias. Where
14:23
I take a complex spectrum of people
14:25
and attitudes, and I oversimplify them and
14:28
I dumb them down into two categories.
14:30
And so the people who agree with me
14:32
are smart and
14:32
right, and the people who disagree are stupid and
14:35
wrong. And I think that's really interfering with
14:37
progress. And you wrote recently about
14:39
one of the most widely debated and
14:41
busily argued topics in America at the
14:43
moment. That's Roe v. Wade. And you
14:45
describe how Liberals and Conservatives lose
14:47
their grasp for critical thinking when an
14:49
issue strikes such an emotional or a personal
14:51
court. What is it about a
14:53
mode of arguments that makes
14:55
people lose critical thinking
14:57
or it to blur into perhaps
14:59
a tendency to believe their own biases
15:02
and not sort them out from just
15:04
something that they prefer or where the other side
15:06
might have a
15:06
point. Well, there are a few things
15:08
that can go wrong. Our reasoning is
15:11
lazy, but it's selectively lazy.
15:13
So empirically, there's good evidence that
15:15
we're much more skeptical of other
15:17
people's arguments than we are of our
15:19
own, to the point where if you make
15:21
an argument and then later, I
15:23
present it back to you. But you've
15:25
forgotten that you were the one who made it.
15:27
Over half of people will reject their
15:29
own argument when they think someone else has
15:31
made it. Because they're holding the
15:33
argument now to higher standards of rigor.
15:35
When we're emotionally charged,
15:37
we choose the easiest
15:39
arguments to make. And we accept them at face
15:41
value even when we might not
15:43
if somebody else were pitching them.
15:46
There's also good evidence to suggest
15:48
that when an issue is core
15:50
to our identity. So let's say, for
15:52
example, you're somebody who believes
15:54
strongly in abortion rights.
15:56
When Rovi WAV gets overturned, that's
15:58
a threat to your core beliefs and
16:00
values. Neuroscientists have
16:02
found that when your core ideas
16:05
identities, ideologies are attacked.
16:07
You actually respond to that in
16:09
similar ways to physical pain. So it
16:11
feels like you're being punched in the mind.
16:13
And you immediately put your guard up,
16:15
which then leads you to choose the
16:17
the most available defenses instead
16:20
of perhaps ultimately the most
16:22
compelling ones.
16:23
I think Roe is a very interesting case
16:26
because it did make me wonder if
16:28
something is so critical to a person's
16:30
well-being or indeed just their
16:32
sense of What is right? What's right for
16:34
the country? Why would it not
16:36
be okay to be
16:39
actually quite difficult, even a bit
16:41
ornery in terms of
16:43
your own beliefs. Why would you
16:45
particularly want to take on the
16:47
other side's advantages? Because
16:49
it's a fight and it's a fight that matters.
16:51
So I I wanted in a way where we're beginning to
16:53
step around the fact that some people just
16:55
believe something is really right and I should
16:57
fight for it or something is really wrong and I should
16:59
fight against
17:00
it. Well, I think for two reasons,
17:02
at least, one is that there's
17:04
a risk of winning the battle and losing
17:07
the war. That you might succeed on this issue
17:09
and then alienate people
17:11
or undermine your ability to
17:13
keep having good disagreements on other
17:16
issues. Because they just conclude that you're unreasonable.
17:18
I think the second risk though
17:20
is that very few people's
17:23
beliefs are as simple
17:25
as they might let on when
17:27
they frame this as a win lose
17:29
fight. So abortion is a
17:31
good example. If you really push people on
17:33
this, you will find that the
17:35
vast majority of people believe
17:37
that their times and abortion is
17:39
the only moral option. And there are
17:41
times when they consider it a completely immoral option.
17:43
And that's true across the the political
17:45
spectrum. So let's take some
17:48
preposterous extreme examples. No
17:50
one in their right mind would say that a woman should have
17:52
the right to abort a
17:55
healthy baby at thirty eight weeks.
17:57
Everybody considers that objectionable. same
18:01
time, there are very few people in the right
18:03
mind who would agree with the reverse
18:05
extreme and who would say it's
18:07
okay. To deny a mother an
18:09
abortion for a baby that's not viable
18:11
when the mother's life is in jeopardy.
18:14
And so if we start there, we realized that there
18:16
is no such thing as purely
18:18
pro choice or purely pro life
18:20
and that most people believe
18:22
in both the sanctity of human
18:24
life the right to bodily
18:25
autonomy, and the challenge is where do you draw
18:28
the line on trying to
18:30
reconcile those two values? I get I
18:32
think you still end up with a dividing line. So
18:34
I suppose are you saying that you don't
18:36
resolve the
18:36
problem, but that you hope to
18:39
address the way of talking about the
18:41
problem? Yes. Maybe I'll throw out a couple of ways of doing that
18:43
that are backed by good data.
18:46
So one is some experiments that Tim
18:48
Conroe and I have run recently with
18:50
people on opposite extremes of the abortion debate.
18:52
We asked them to evaluate an
18:54
essay written by the other side.
18:57
In the control group, when people just come in and and
18:59
evaluate that essay, they're pretty
19:02
nasty. You know, they call each other women
19:04
oppressors and baby
19:05
killers. So then we say,
19:08
well, what if what if we have them take each
19:10
other's
19:10
perspectives? And guess what? It
19:13
doesn't work. Because the
19:15
perspective is so unimaginable, either
19:18
offensive or foreign or both, that
19:20
people just end up creating a
19:22
ridiculous view of the other side.
19:24
What we found is much more effective is
19:26
to say instead of imagining the other
19:28
person's perspective, I want you
19:30
to consider how you might feel
19:32
differently about this issue if your life
19:34
circumstances had unfolded differently. And
19:36
we find that when people engage in that
19:38
counterfactual thinking, when they
19:40
realize, wow, if I had grown up in a different era or
19:42
a different family, I might have different beliefs,
19:45
they're less likely to demonize the
19:47
other side. They're more likely to recognize
19:49
that the other side has some legitimate
19:51
points, and they're in a better position
19:53
than to identify some common
19:54
ground. If not, fully agree.
19:56
There's a breed of politicians who are powerful
19:59
communicators in different ways,
20:01
perhaps not exactly following
20:04
the advice that you've provided. I'm thinking of
20:06
Donald Trump, Victor, Orban, in in
20:08
Hungary to an extent also of Vladimir Putin, and the
20:10
way that he controls and
20:13
distorts messages. None of them are
20:15
particularly brilliant debaters or
20:17
orators or at least not in the traditional sense,
20:19
but their words do resonate with people even
20:21
if they division as they go.
20:23
Where do you think the claims of
20:25
reasoned argument then stand when you
20:27
have political debates, which the other side if
20:29
you like is bringing sourced
20:32
to the party and you were bringing something that's,
20:34
you know, didn't want to say a baguette. But
20:36
you might think, oh my goodness, this is all
20:38
very reasonable, but how is it good to stand
20:40
up? To these forces of un
20:43
reason where they appear to be so
20:45
attractive? That's a
20:47
hard question. Let me say a couple of things on
20:49
that. Tell me what you think. My
20:51
first thought is, I
20:53
don't believe that the pen is always
20:55
miteer than the sword. But
20:57
I do think the ink lasts longer.
21:00
The autocrats of the
21:02
world are effective in the short to medium
21:04
term in many situations and
21:06
I guess the appeal of populism is they are
21:08
preaching to their choir, but
21:10
we've seen that this preaching also brings
21:12
out a lot of prosecutors. There's
21:14
a reason Donald Trump failed to win reelection. And
21:17
I think if he were better at at reasoned
21:20
argument, it's very possible he wouldn't have
21:22
alienated some of his supporters from his
21:24
first election. And I
21:26
think in the long run, we should
21:28
give people credit for their
21:30
ability to to learn and change. We saw
21:32
that actually in the election of Donald
21:34
Trump. Look at the number of Obama
21:36
voters who then cast a vote for Trump.
21:38
Right? That's a that's a pretty radical
21:40
change. In both the kind of so called leader that you prefer
21:42
and also the sorts of policies that
21:44
you support. And I think that over
21:47
time, Many people do revisit
21:49
their views. They don't often do it when
21:51
we want. They don't often do it in the
21:53
direction we
21:53
hope. But People do have the capacity
21:56
and the motivation to change their mind. I'm really
21:58
seeing as you asked, you know, what I made of that and
22:00
I spent a lot of my early working
22:02
life working in dictatorships
22:04
or near as damaged dictatorships particularly
22:07
under communism but also the beginnings of
22:09
some nationalisms in
22:11
Eastern Europe. And think you're right
22:13
that usually I would have said probably let you
22:15
hang on in there if it's I
22:17
like your idea that the the ink lasts
22:19
longer. But there is a complicating factor in
22:21
there and it certainly come on in my
22:23
working life, which is that online discourse
22:25
and social media disputes
22:27
are so much more heated
22:30
and burrow people further
22:32
and further into the corners of
22:34
their own argument. We
22:36
we all know even in our own
22:38
conversations that something like Twitter can pretend
22:40
shouty very fast, and that's before you get
22:42
to the darker recesses of
22:44
social media. So I just wondered if
22:46
that was bit of a challenge to your
22:48
view that eventually if you
22:50
like the truth or the better argument would
22:51
out. I think it's a fair
22:54
challenge and I'm sort of of two
22:56
minds about it. One is to say I think
22:58
you're right and I think that the task
23:00
has gotten harder over time.
23:02
The other is to say
23:05
Let's not overgeneralize from
23:07
a few bad social media
23:09
actors and debates. So there
23:11
was a series of studies published
23:14
last year This is eight studies eight thousand
23:16
people showing that it's not
23:18
necessarily the case that the Internet turns
23:20
people into trolls. It
23:23
actually makes their trolling more
23:26
apparent. So there's a subset of
23:28
people who are
23:30
assholes online. And it turns out they are
23:32
also assholes offline.
23:34
The difference is that when
23:36
you're an asshole in the public square, When
23:38
you're a troll in face to face interaction,
23:41
usually only a few people see it.
23:43
Whereas on the Internet, it gets
23:45
amplified. And so you have this group of trolls
23:47
who's figured out that they can use aggression
23:49
to get attention. And if
23:51
we feed them and we
23:53
respond with outrage, it only reinforces
23:56
their strategy. And I think in many
23:58
cases, it's better to ignore the trolls than
24:00
to feed them. And if you do that, one of
24:02
the things you start to notice is that
24:04
the vast majority of people on the
24:06
internet are not having nasty arguments,
24:08
are not spewing hate and visceral.
24:10
That behavior is is perpetrated by
24:12
a loud minority. The two
24:15
extremes are often feeding each other.
24:17
Empirically, less than ten
24:19
percent of people even want to have a
24:21
political debate on Twitter. The dominant
24:23
preference online is actually to have a thoughtful
24:25
discussion, not to have a nasty
24:27
one, and we shouldn't let the
24:29
visible people who choose the nasty
24:30
ones. Dominate the information space. I want to move
24:33
her so on to the return to work and the
24:35
impact of the pandemic, also on the way
24:37
that we think about work and
24:39
conflict in the workspace, but more
24:41
generally about our jobs. But before we
24:43
do, my producer who has a wicked sense of
24:45
humor, I have to tell you, says,
24:47
I could ask you. And we're both across in this
24:50
conversation. Preacher,
24:51
prosecutor, politician. No
24:54
holds barred. How are we doing, Adam, in
24:57
arguing? I don't know. I
24:59
I don't feel like you have
25:01
fit into any of those categories.
25:03
I think you're engaging like
25:05
a good journalist or dare I say
25:07
even a scientist. You're challenging some of
25:09
my arguments thoughtfully and respectfully. You're
25:12
pushing me to think
25:14
again I think doing that. And in other cases,
25:16
I'm trying to encourage you to think
25:17
again. What do you think? Well, I would
25:20
say if I've gotten awareness, I
25:22
would say like a lot of journalists who ask questions and
25:25
make arguments. For
25:25
Living, I think I can be a bit prosic
25:28
tutorial. So I just wondered how
25:30
that was coming across I don't perceive
25:32
it as prosecutorial because you're challenging
25:34
to enrich the discussion. Right? Not
25:36
to to prove your case. Or
25:38
try to win. That creates a very different reaction
25:40
in me. I don't feel like I have to defend
25:42
my
25:42
ideas. I feel like the point of this conversation is
25:45
to explore ideas. Adam,
25:47
you're welcome on the show anytime. We might just put you on every
25:49
week because We'll try not to make
25:50
you regret that. You wrote a
25:52
column for The Economist. A couple
25:54
of years ago saying the legacy of the pandemic could be
25:57
more work satisfaction, more
25:59
ethical leadership in the workplace,
26:01
and a deeper sense of
26:03
trust Do think any of that has really come
26:05
to pass a couple of years
26:06
on? I should say, III was asked to
26:08
write this article in the spring of twenty
26:11
twenty. And I did it with some trepidation knowing that
26:13
predicting the future is so hard that there's an
26:15
old joke that historians don't even predict
26:17
the past with much
26:19
accuracy. quite an eventful two years. One
26:21
should say that as well. There are sometimes two
26:23
year periods where very little appears to to
26:25
change. But this has not been one of them.
26:27
This is longer term prediction. What we were
26:30
starting to see in the early days of the
26:32
pandemic was that leaders were
26:34
finally waking up to realize that you don't
26:36
get quality work if your people don't have
26:38
quality of life. That burning
26:40
someone out on the job was a short
26:42
sighted strategy because you were
26:44
ultimately gonna lose your best
26:46
people. We've seen that prediction come true in
26:48
the sense that the great resignation has
26:50
been driven by people fleeing from
26:52
toxic cultures. And saying, I live in
26:54
a world where there's enough freedom and
26:56
flexibility now that I do
26:58
not want to tolerate disrespect,
27:00
abuse, exclusion, unetheical
27:02
behavior or selfish taking when I
27:04
think an organization should be built around generous
27:07
and fair behavior. The other thing
27:09
that's intriguing to me about the set
27:11
of predictions is I didn't
27:13
really account for the possibility of
27:15
backslide. So our our leader
27:17
is going to change their mindsets. are
27:19
they gonna return to business as usual? And I
27:21
think we've seen a mix on on
27:23
that front. We're still seeing leaders who are trying
27:25
to drag their employees back to
27:27
the office full time. Ignoring the
27:29
fact that in many of the
27:31
studies so far, people have been just
27:34
as productive when working fully
27:36
remote or hybrid. I worry a little
27:38
bit that either there's some unlearning
27:40
going on or that the learning never
27:42
happened in the first place, but I think
27:44
the majority of the effects on the way that
27:46
leaders have taken well-being and mental health
27:48
seriously at work have been
27:50
positive.
27:50
You talked about something that struck a chord in a piece that
27:52
you wrote for the New York Times a little
27:55
while ago went viral and it was about
27:57
languishing that sense of stagnation or
27:59
emptiness and you dubbed it the middle child
28:01
of mental health, IEA
28:03
phenomenon which gets neglected or
28:05
doesn't sort of show up if we're
28:07
looking for doing well in one category or
28:09
feeling depressed or anxious in another. But
28:12
I still was a bit confused about the
28:14
difference between languishing and
28:17
mild to moderate depression?
28:19
Is it possible to pinpoint
28:22
what a sense of languishing is? And it
28:24
particularly is you've now had a chance
28:26
to perhaps look at it more across time
28:28
or test the reactions to what you were
28:30
writing
28:30
then. There are about two decades of data
28:32
on languishing now that have been gathered by mostly
28:34
a sociologist since cologists. Some
28:37
people would say the difference between languishing and mild
28:39
depression is just a matter of
28:41
degree. That mild depression is a little
28:43
bit more severe. And you
28:45
start to feel a little bit
28:47
hopeless. Whereas, languishing is, you
28:49
know, more just emptiness stagnation
28:51
on we It's not the presence of
28:53
mental illness. It's just the absence
28:55
of of peak mental health. And so
28:57
you're a little bit shorter on joy. Maybe
28:59
you're lacking motivation or you're struggling
29:01
to concentrate, but you don't feel
29:03
down. You're just not up. There's
29:05
a case to me made though that these are different
29:07
in kind. Not just in
29:09
degree. The presence of mental
29:11
illness symptoms is very different from the
29:13
absence of maybe signs of
29:15
flourishing. Mile depression would typically be characterized
29:18
by real difficulties functioning.
29:20
Whereas in languishing, you
29:22
can get by and oftentimes you don't
29:24
even realize you're languishing. You become
29:27
indifferent to your own sense of indifference. I
29:29
think one of the reasons we need to pay attention to
29:31
that is languishing turns out to be a
29:33
risk factor for later mental
29:35
illness. It's the people who are languishing
29:37
today, not the people who are depressed today,
29:39
that are actually empirically at the
29:41
greatest risk for depression or anxiety in the next
29:43
decade or so. I guess it is a
29:45
neglected middle child because it's
29:47
neglected by the person. Who's
29:49
feeling it in many cases and that means
29:51
that if you don't know that you're
29:52
languishing, you're probably not gonna seek
29:55
help and you may not even do anything to
29:57
help yourself.
29:57
And were you sure then what the route to
30:00
help should look like? Yeah. I think languageing
30:02
is tricky because it's not necessarily
30:04
a state that you would seek
30:06
help directly for it or even one that a therapist
30:08
would always be trained or qualified to
30:11
treat. It's not a diagnosable medical
30:14
condition. I think the
30:16
research on languishing suggests
30:18
that there are a few ways of overcoming
30:20
it. And the psychology of
30:22
resilience maybe gives us a few others as
30:24
well. So People seem to
30:26
avoid languishing when they
30:28
have a sense of mastery, mindfulness,
30:30
and mattering. Mastering not
30:32
always being big triumph but just
30:34
small wins, a sense of progress, which is the the
30:37
strongest known predictor of daily joy at
30:39
work. Mindfulness concentrating
30:41
on a single thing as opposed
30:43
to constantly being interrupted and distracted,
30:46
which is necessary for those moments of
30:48
progress in mastery. And then mattering what we were
30:50
talking about before, knowing that your work
30:52
benefits other people or your
30:54
actions as a parent or as a volunteer
30:56
contributing to the lives and well-being of
30:58
others. Those are all missing ingredients for
31:00
people when they're languishing. Maybe
31:02
this is why sourdough baking was so
31:04
popular. In the early days of the pandemic,
31:06
right, is you were able to get that that
31:08
little jolt of mastery. I I baked a loaf
31:10
of bread. required mindfulness because
31:12
if you took your eyes off of the oven, you
31:14
were about to deal with with a charred
31:16
burning wreck. And it also
31:18
contributed to the sense of mattering
31:20
that I can create something to share with my family
31:22
or my neighbors or my friends.
31:24
One of the mistakes a lot of people made during
31:26
the pandemic is they said, well, I don't know what
31:29
to do. I'd never lived through a pandemic before. And
31:31
it is true unless you're a hundred three years
31:33
old, you probably have not lived through one, and even
31:35
then you wouldn't remember it very well.
31:37
But you have languished before. You
31:40
have burned out. You've felt
31:42
loneliness. You've experienced grief. And one
31:44
of the best things you can do is learn lessons
31:46
from your own past resilience. To
31:48
think about when was the last time that you were
31:50
languishing or burned out? What was your
31:52
last bout of grief or
31:54
loneliness? And ask, what is it that got me
31:56
through it? And you find there are insights
31:58
to be gleaned there. If you're having
32:00
trouble getting those, one of the things you can do
32:02
is find someone else who's in a similar
32:04
mental zone. Find a friend who's
32:06
languishing or a family member who's burned out
32:08
or a colleague who's grieving, and
32:10
give them some advice for how to
32:12
navigate it. And you will generally find
32:14
that the advice you give to others is the
32:16
advice that you needed to take for
32:17
yourself. You mentioned some
32:20
competences in pandemic
32:22
that might have helped us get through it and
32:24
maybe set us up on some different tracks
32:26
and approaches to satisfaction.
32:29
of them being dough baking. I think mine is
32:31
best forgotten. Though it was it was quite eclipsed
32:33
by my mixologist skills, which came
32:35
on a lot at the quarantine hour.
32:38
But you have some really interesting skills
32:40
in your back pocket item. Before you
32:42
were an organizational psychologist
32:45
and professor, You had a career as a
32:47
magician and as a junior Olympic
32:49
springboard diver, which is quite
32:51
the mix. What lessons you
32:53
take from those disciplines you
32:55
think might help us to
32:56
do? I think magic taught me the
32:58
importance of the element of surprise that
33:01
if I told you exactly what trick I
33:03
was gonna do, you'd often say,
33:06
yeah. But if I used a little bit of
33:08
misdirection and and set an
33:10
expectation that that I would then break you
33:13
were much more curious and excited, and I've
33:15
I've tried to do that in communicating
33:17
ideas. I think diving, the
33:19
biggest takeaway came from my cochair
33:21
at best. I was afraid of heights was terrified of getting
33:23
lost in mid air and and then crashing all
33:25
over the pool. And so I would just sit
33:27
there shaking at the end of the board, afraid to
33:29
try a new dive. And
33:31
I remember one particular day I was I was standing on
33:33
a three meter springboard and I was supposed to do a
33:35
a front two and a half with a full twist. To
33:38
some results, a three hundred sixty degree
33:40
rotation and then a dive at the end. I stood
33:42
there for what must have been fifteen or twenty
33:44
minutes and my teammates were
33:46
getting annoyed and I was getting frustrated with
33:47
myself. And Eric said,
33:50
Adam, are you gonna do this
33:52
dive?
33:52
And I said, ever? Like,
33:55
of course, I'm gonna do dive. It's a major goal of mine.
33:57
And he said, well, what are you
33:59
waiting for? And I have heard
34:01
his voice in my head every
34:04
time I've been nervous.
34:06
I've been hesitant to take on a challenge. I've been afraid
34:08
to step out of my comfort zone.
34:10
I ask myself Are you going to do
34:12
this one day? And then the answer is
34:14
yes. And then the next question is, what
34:17
am I waiting for?
34:18
Adam Grant, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
34:22
Thank you.
34:26
And thank you for listening to this. The final episode of The Economist asks. My
34:29
producer is Alicia Burrell. The bookings
34:31
producer is Melanie Starling Condon, and
34:33
the executive producer
34:36
is Hannah marino. And for one last time,
34:38
I'm Anne McElroy and in London.
34:40
This is the Economist. Saudi
34:47
Arabia's
34:50
economy is transforming. What's
34:54
behind it? The public investment fund or PIF.
34:56
It's one of the largest sovereign wealth
34:58
funds in the world, creating
35:00
thirteen new
35:02
sectors sixty six companies and more than five hundred thousand
35:04
direct and indirect jobs so
35:06
far. PIF is also the first
35:10
sovereign wealth fund to issue a
35:12
green bond supporting Saudi Arabia's twenty sixty net zero
35:14
emissions target. Find out more at
35:16
PIF dot gov dot s
35:20
a.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More