How to Master Growth Mindset to Improve Performance | Dr. David Yeager

1. 0:00 – 1:49

   Dr. David Yeager

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. David Yeager. Dr. David Yeager is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the world's leading researchers into mindsets, in particular growth mindset, which is a mindset that enables people of all ages to improve their abilities at essentially anything. He is also a world expert into the "stress is performance-enhancing" mindset, which is a mindset that allows people to cognitively reframe stress, and that when combined with growth mindset can lead to dramatic improvements in performance in cognitive and physical endeavors. Dr. Yeager is also the author of an important and extremely useful new book entitled Ten to Twenty-Five: The Science of Motivating Young People. The book is scheduled for release this summer, that is the summer of 2024. And we provided a link to the book in the show note captions. During today's discussion, Dr. Yeager explains to us exactly what growth mindset is through the lens of the research into growth mindset, and he explains also how to apply growth mindset in our lives. He also shares the research from his and other laboratories on the "stress can be performance-enhancing" mindset and how that can be combined with growth mindset to achieve the maximum results. So while I assume that most people have heard of growth mindset, today's discussion will allow you to really apply it in your life, not just from the perspective of you, the person trying to learn, but also for teachers and coaches. In fact, Dr. Yeager shares not just the optimal learning environments for us as individuals, but also between individuals and in the classroom, in families, in sports teams, and in groups of all sizes and kinds.

2. 1:49 – 4:20

   Sponsors: AeroPress & ROKA

   1. AHAndrew Huberman1:49

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is AeroPress. AeroPress is like a French press, but a French press that always brews the perfect cup of coffee, meaning no bitterness and excellent taste. AeroPress achieves this because it uses a very short contact time between the hot water and the coffee, and that short contact time also means that you can brew an excellent cup of coffee very quickly. The whole thing takes only about three minutes. I started using an AeroPress over 10 years ago, and I learned about it from a guy named Alan Adler, who's a former Stanford engineer who's also an inventor. He developed things like the Aerobie Frisbee. In any event, I'm a big fan of Adler inventions, and when I heard he developed a coffee maker, the AeroPress, I tried it, and I found that indeed it makes the best possible tasting cup of coffee. It's also extremely small and portable. So I started using it in the laboratory, when I travel on the road, and also at home. And I'm not alone in my love of the AeroPress coffee maker. With over 55,000 five-star reviews, AeroPress is the best-reviewed coffee press in the world. If you'd like to try AeroPress, you can go to aeropress.com/huberman to get 20% off. AeroPress currently ships in the USA, Canada, and to over 60 other countries around the world. Again, that's aeropress.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. Now, I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly. ROKA understands this and has developed their eyeglasses and sunglasses so that regardless of the conditions you're in, you always see with the utmost clarity. ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for use in sport, in particular things like running and cycling. Now as a consequence, ROKA frames are extremely lightweight, so much so that most of the time you don't even remember that they're on your face. They're also designed so that they don't slip off if you get sweaty. Now even though they were initially designed for performance in sport, they now have many different frames and styles, all of which can be used in sport but also when out to dinner, at work, essentially any time and in any setting. If you'd like to try ROKA glasses, you can go to ROKA, that's roka.com, and enter the code Huberman to get 20% off. Again, that's roka.com and enter the code Huberman to get 20% off. And now for my discussion with Dr. David Yeager.

3. 4:20 – 10:31

   Growth Mindset; Performance, Self-Esteem

   1. AHAndrew Huberman4:20

      Dr. David Yeager, welcome.

   2. DYDr. David Yeager4:22

      Thanks for having me.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman4:24

      Can you tell us your definition of growth mindset? I think most people have heard of it.

   4. DYDr. David Yeager4:29

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman4:29

      They have some sense of what it is, but you've worked, uh, very intensely on growth mindset for a number of years, so I'd love to know how you define it.

   6. DYDr. David Yeager4:39

      Yeah, so it's, it's simply the belief that your abilities or your potential in some domain can change. Um, a huge confusion is people think it means if you try hard, then you can do anything, but that's not really the idea. It's, it's simply that under the right conditions with the right support, change is possible, and you know, that ends up being a pretty powerful idea because the opposite is so stressful, right? The idea that you are static, nothing about you can change is, is really kind of a stressful idea.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman5:15

      Of all the, uh, studies on growth mindset, um, including yours or ones that you've participated in, um, what one or two kind of high-level results, um, stand out to you as the most striking, surprising, exciting, or meaningful? And here I will encourage you to discard with attribution. We know that, um, or everyone should know that Carol Dweck is the originator of the growth mindset idea, um, as a field, and she deserves, um, tremendous credit for that, so-

   8. DYDr. David Yeager5:48

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman5:48

      Um, so when you stand back from the field, given that it's, it's mushroomed into this very large field now, and you look at the research, which results kind of stand out as like, "Wow, that's really cool, really meaningful, people should know about that"?

   10. DYDr. David Yeager6:02

       What stands out to me a lot...... first of all is just the field experiments, that the idea that you can distill a complex idea about the brain, about malleability, you can give it to a young person at a time when they're vulnerable, and that that can give them hope, and then they can do better at school or whatever. So our 2019 paper in Nature, uh, that Carol, Greg Walton, Angela Duckworth, a lot of us collaborated on, took a very short growth mindset intervention, two sessions, about 25 minutes each, for ninth graders, and we found kids were, eight, nine months later, more likely to get good grades, uh, t- by tenth grade, more likely to be in the hard math classes. And the unpublished results find effects four years later on graduating high school with college-ready courses from a short intervention that happened, you know, just one or two times, no reinforcement. So the, there's a lot of reasons why that's true. That sounds magical and, and outrageous, and there are a lot of mechanisms, but that just demonstrates the overall value of the phenomenon. And we, in that study, we did everything we possibly could to address legitimate skepticism, right? Are we collecting and processing the data in ways that could bias it? No, third party. Is it, are we handpicking schools where you could get the best effects? No, random sample of schools. Did we post hoc decide on the analyses that would make the results look the greatest? No, preregistered. So that's a good, like, okay, this phenomenon is not something that falls apart in the hands of anyone else besides a select few researchers. That's really, and we can go into that. But that doesn't explain the mechanisms, and I think that there are a lot of interesting growth mindset mechanism studies. My personal favorite is a very underappreciated kind of like indie rock study by David Nussbaum and Carol Dweck that David did, uh, when he was a graduate student at Stanford, um, and it's on defensiveness versus remediation. And the basic idea is in a fixed mindset, the idea that your intelligence cannot change, you are the way you are, it can't change, um, your goal in that fixed mindset is to defend your ego, to, like, hide your deficiencies or any flaws, because if they're fixed and then they're revealed, then it labels you for life in some way as less than, shame-worthy, et cetera, right? In a growth mindset, though, a mistake is, like, part of the process. It's- it's just a, an opportunity to grow. So David took that idea and then, uh, set up a study, and I think I have the details right, where undergraduates did a task. They all did poorly. They were getting 20, 30% correct on this task, and the question is, what do you do before you do your second try? How do you cope with that initial failure? And he found that both fixed and mindset participants wanted to recover their self-esteem. So you do poorly, you feel like crap. What am I going to do to feel better about myself? In a fixed mindset, they looked downward. So the people getting a 25 look at the people who got a 12, like, "I'm twice as good as these losers," right? In a growth mindset, they look at the people getting an 85 or 90. What are they doing? What are their strategies?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman9:30

       Mm-hmm.

   12. DYDr. David Yeager9:30

       How can I improve? Both of them then recovered self-esteem and looked the same at post-test. And I think about that a lot, like how often in our society does something happen to us and we feel like garbage, and you have a choice? Like, am I going to look down on other people and say, "At least I'm not as bad as these losers," or am I going to say, like, "How am I going to get better?" And I- I just, I love that because think of a ninth grader who bombs their algebra test. Am I, like, a no-good, dumb at math loser who's not going anywhere in life? Well, at least I'm not that burnout, right? Or is it like, how is anyone getting an A in this class? I'm not getting an A. What's happening? What am, what can I learn from them? So the opening, openness and willingness to self-improve, I think, is the underwriting mechanism, and I, and hardly anyone cites that study, but I think about it all the time, and it's the kind of thing that I like ... If I'm being honest, that's the mindset I want my kids to have as they go through life.

4. 10:31 – 15:12

   “Wise” Intervention, Teaching Growth Mindset

   1. DYDr. David Yeager10:31

   2. AHAndrew Huberman10:31

      Very interesting. I'm going to ask you more about this looking down or looking up-

   3. DYDr. David Yeager10:35

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman10:35

      ... um, in terms of performance, but before I do that, I have questions about these brief, uh, 25 minute, I think you said, interventions.

   5. DYDr. David Yeager10:44

      Yeah, sometimes 25. Sometimes we do two sessions, each about 20, 25. Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman10:48

      Can you give us a sense of what those interventions look like? I mean, it's incredible. These two sessions have positive effects lasting up to four years and perhaps even beyond.

   7. DYDr. David Yeager10:58

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman10:58

      Um, maybe just a top contour of, uh, some of what these kids hear during those sessions.

   9. DYDr. David Yeager11:05

      Yeah, I mean, so the first thing to realize is that they're short, and they have to do two things in order to have long-lasting effects. One is I have to convince you to think differently at the end of the session. So I just have to persuade you over the course of 25 minutes-

   10. AHAndrew Huberman11:25

       Mm-hmm.

   11. DYDr. David Yeager11:25

       ... to have a different mindset.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman11:26

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DYDr. David Yeager11:26

       That's sometimes hard, but then even if I do that, you then might have months or years between when I did that and when the outcome is measured. So how could you remember it and apply it? And how many 25-minute experiences in your life do you have no recollection of, right? I have lots. So I think, I think people are skeptical of the mindset style of interventions for two different, I think, legitimate reasons. Like, I remember a very famous statistician came to my office at- at UT Austin and was like, "I just don't understand these interventions. I mean, the other day, I spent 25 minutes telling my son all the things he has to change and, like, how he's doing everything wrong, and he didn't remember it five minutes later. How could someone remember your thing four years later?" And I was like-... "Did you hear yourself talking? Like, I'm sure the way you talked to yourself (laughs) was like-"

   14. AHAndrew Huberman12:15

       Mm-hmm.

   15. DYDr. David Yeager12:16

       "... totally condescending and bad." So the, the first step is, in that 25 minutes, how are you communicating in a way where someone's ears are open, where they're not feeling talked down to or shamed, humiliated, et cetera? But then the second step is saying that to you at a time when it's possible for there to be a, what we call a recursive process or a snowball effect that's gonna happen over time.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman12:42

       Mm-hmm.

   17. DYDr. David Yeager12:43

       So that's the stage setting. Okay, so now let's take the first part. 25 minutes, what am I gonna say to you, right? Um, there are three big things that are in every intervention, and the term that Greg Walton, a Stanford professor, uh, colleague, collaborator, um, uses is wise interventions. That's the umbrella term of which growth mindset is one.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman13:04

       Mm-hmm.

   19. DYDr. David Yeager13:06

       And a good one, but it's just one of many. For wise interventions, w- we often do the following three things. First is we present some new scientific information, some idea that almost in like a Gladwell way is not, is not obvious and intuitive to the reader, but feels like new information and useful information. So the first is a scientific. The second is we present participants with stories from people like them who have used those ideas in their lives and found them useful. So in the concrete case of ninth graders getting growth mindset, it's like tenth, eleventh, twelfth graders who previously felt dumb learned a growth mindset then felt better. It's th- it's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman13:53

       Mm-hmm.

   21. DYDr. David Yeager13:54

       And last, we don't just tell them the stories, we ask, third, for participants to author a story. So they write a narrative about a time when they struggled, a time when they doubted themselves, and then remembered this idea that people can change, like my brain can grow, et cetera. So the three points are like scientific information, stories, or the, the technical term is descriptive norms, so you're giving people information about what's normal for people like you, and then the third is the writing, which we call saying is believing, uh, which is the, uh, term that... That's a popularized version of the term that came from classic social psychologists Josh Aronson, Elliot Aronson, who, who found in the work on cognitive dissonance 30, 40 years ago that one of the best ways to change someone's mind about something is to ask them to try to persuade somebody else.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman14:49

       Mm-hmm.

   23. DYDr. David Yeager14:51

       So th- we do those sort of things. So what is the science in the growth mindset? That's where we draw on the metaphor that the brain is like a muscle, that, um, just like muscles get stronger when they're challenged and can, you know, recover, so too does the brain get smarter when it's pushed and challenged in a certain way.

5. 15:12 – 19:42

   Stories & Writing Exercises

   1. AHAndrew Huberman15:12

      This idea that writing a story about oneself or about others in which one succeeds can be useful toward building growth mindset in, you know, in basic terms, I think that's what, what you're, what you're referring to. I think it's interesting. It sort of suggests that, that we have brain circuits that underlie growth mindset type behaviors and thinking, and that just storying into those can potentially, um, lead to better decision-making and behavior. I mean, obviously, it can't create new skills, um, simply because, you know, I can't write a story about me being able to dunk a basketball and then expect that I can dunk a basketball because at-

   2. DYDr. David Yeager15:51

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman15:51

      ... present I can't. But the idea of, uh, writing a story about, um, the effort going into dunking a basketball and learning how and then translating that to a more, um, realistic sense of, of ability that allows me to then go practice more, is that sort of what you're referring to?

   4. DYDr. David Yeager16:11

      Yeah, so the... In, in a 2016 paper in PNAS, Greg Walton and I explained these types of interventions as a, uh, we call them a lay theory intervention, and the idea there is that w- lay people, like th- not scientific theories, but just our intuitive theories for explaining the world help us anticipate what something means. So the, the idea from basic developmental psychology is that human beings are walking around with kind of prior belief about objects, about motion, about, you know, number, and then later, about complex social structures like whether people are looking down on me, how, where I stand relative to others, and also lay l- little lay theories about adversity. What does it mean when I have to put in effort? What does it mean when I fail? So the idea is that if you, if you understand the theory someone has, then you'll understand the meaning they'll make about a future experience. Um, and therefore... Well, and, and the reason meaning matters is because th- the way you interpret something then affects how you respond to it, right? So if I see someone and they're doing something innocuous, but I interpret it as a threat, do I call the police, you know, do I run away? That's my interpretation that that's causing it, right? Um, and so the... There's a long way of saying it turns out one of the best ways to preset someone's meaning and give them a different theory is to give them a different story. Uh, stories are kind of like theories in motion.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman17:46

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DYDr. David Yeager17:47

      This is why, you know, like what's the point of war and peace, right? War and peace is, is really a, a theory of, of great leaders in the war, um... And if there's any English PhDs, I'm sure they'll tell me that's an oversimplified version of what Tolstoy was doing, but i- you learn the theory in a narrative way, right? So this is the classic idea throughout human history. I- great writers and authors give us theories through narrative, right?And so we're just taking that simple human fact and doing it in a 10-minute activity. And the lay theory in a person's mind that when things are difficult, it can change, can be taught with a very simple narrative, which is this person, or even I, experienced difficult, difficulty in something that mattered to me. That difficulty didn't determine my entire future because actually there were steps that I could take in order to, like, make a difference. Here are the steps that I took, and then it improved. So it's a very s- still like the simplest Freytag's Pyramid. And even though that simple story is available to all of us, you could look in culture and see it. I- you also see the opposite lay theory all the time. And so without ... Absent our intervention, it's not like people couldn't end up with a growth mindset, but they wouldn't kind of know what to sort for or what to look for. So we give them some touch points for very simple of, like, frustration, things can change, then they got better. And we think that once people do that in our writing exercises, they're more likely to s- see that pattern out in the world. And if you see that enough and then you take the actual steps to get better, then it starts becoming true for you, and that's what I earl- call the recursive process that you ... We give people a starting hypothesis about the world, they go out, try things, struggle, fail, it improves, then they see that that's true, and then they can keep acting on that over time.

6. 19:42 – 24:44

   Effort Beliefs, Physiologic Stress Response

   1. DYDr. David Yeager19:42

   2. AHAndrew Huberman19:42

      I feel like so much of getting better at things involves reappraising the, um, stress or anxiety response, you know, the-

   3. DYDr. David Yeager19:53

      Right.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman19:53

      ... um, the friction that one feels when they can't perform something well or when things feel overwhelming or confusing, um, and I think the analogies to physical exercise apply, but I feel like they're limited in the sense that I like the, the idea that the brain is like a muscle, that it can grow and get stronger. I think the, um, the key difference to my mind is that, you know, like, working out with weights, um, you get some sense of the result you're going to get because there's, like, a lot of blood flow into the muscles, so it's like a hint of what's possible.

   5. DYDr. David Yeager20:27

      Right.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman20:27

      Um, with cardiovascular exercise, like, if we run hard up a hill, there's that moment where your lungs are burning, et cetera, and anyone who understands exercise knows that that's the signal for adaptation such that the next time you can do the same thing without the burning of the lungs.

   7. DYDr. David Yeager20:40

      Right.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman20:41

      Um, when it comes to mental work and learning, I think w- we immediately assume that if we're not performing well, if we're getting confused or overwhelmed that somehow, um, we're doing it wrong-

   9. DYDr. David Yeager20:53

      Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman20:53

       ... um, as opposed to stimulating the growth.

   11. DYDr. David Yeager20:56

       Right.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman20:56

       And so I f- uh, are there any studies that point to, um, bridging the relationship between the physiology, you know, the, the stress response and the mindset that allows one to say, "Okay, this is really hard, and I keep failing and failing and failing-"

   13. DYDr. David Yeager21:10

       Right.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman21:10

       "... at this math, at this language learning, at, uh, writing this essay," whatever it is, and that's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing? It's like the burning of the lungs, or it's like the failure to complete a, uh, another, uh, repetition, um, in the, in the gym.

   15. DYDr. David Yeager21:24

       Yeah. I mean, I think that, that, uh, you're right. Um, you know, r- the, the standard growth mindset message does have reappraisal components specifically around something Carol Dweck has called effort beliefs, which is, uh, very simply the belief that if it's hard, it means you're doing the wrong thing, and that follows naturally from the fixed mindset idea that ability can't change.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman21:47

       Mm-hmm.

   17. DYDr. David Yeager21:48

       And I think it's very important to point out the centrality of that effort belief, because people have tried to apply growth mindset but simplified it in a way of just saying, uh, basically, "Try harder," right, or, "I believe in you. If you try hard enough, you can do anything." Right? But if your natural inclination is to view the need for effort as a sign that you are doing the wrong thing, which is, that's the default interpretation, uh, then people are gonna quit, right? It, if, if I tell ... If you believe effort outs you as lacking potential, and then I say, "You need to try hard," I'm saying you don't have potential. That basic insight is f- v- very poorly misunderstood in the field, and it's led to tons of misapplications of Carol's work, and then people are like, "Well, this thing doesn't work." Well, okay, but you haven't addressed the effort belief. So I think that the first type of response to what you're, what you said is you can't just abstractly tell someone your brain is a muscle and assume that magically then in the midst of stress and frustration and confusion and, and all those negative experiences, that you're gonna immediately say, "Yes, I love doing this, and this is great." Um, but then there's also the physiological component, as you're saying. So when we're stressed, frustrated, you know, confused, your heart starts racing. Maybe your palms get sweaty, right? You start, your breathing, you know, starts getting heavier. Uh, my, my daughter, who's 13, before, like, a cello audition was like, "I have butterflies in my stomach. I don't ..." You know, what does this mean? And I think that growth mindset research didn't always deal with the visceral experience of stress and frustration, and I think i- in a world in which someone hears the growth mindset message and says, "Yes, now I'm gonna go challenge myself. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna embrace stress and frustration, do the mental equivalent of, you know, running ladders or running up a hill," then they feel that stress, but if they don't know how to interpret that, they'll, they'll ... Uh, it, it's like growth mindset isn't gonna get them to the skill development, right, or at least to the mental well-being of feeling like they have confidence and can do well. So, um, in some, in some research that we've done in the last few years, what we've tried to do is to marry together the growth mindset idea ...... with great work originally coming out of Alia Crum and Jeremy Jamison's labs, who were building on lots of great appraisal psychologists, Wendy Mendes and others, to say, "Okay, in the inevitable experience where if you, if you fully believe our growth mindset, and then now you load your plate with challenges, but now you've got a physiological stress response, how are you going to appraise that better?" And that's kind of been the new frontier of growth mindset, uh, work in the last four or five years.

7. 24:44 – 29:28

   Stress-Is-Enhancing vs Stress-Is-Debilitating Mindsets

   1. DYDr. David Yeager24:44

   2. AHAndrew Huberman24:44

      Yeah, could you tell us more about this, uh, stresses-enhancing mindset? I think it's a really interesting one, especially when it's woven in with the growth mindset.

   3. DYDr. David Yeager24:52

      Yeah. So let me tell you kind of that on its own, and then, and then the, the story of how we had this insight is actually kind of interesting too. Uh, but just the basic idea, uh, as, um, you know, people who've, who've heard about Alia Crum would know, and Jeremy Jamison, is that, you know, a, an experience of your heart racing, your palms sweating, anxiety in your stomach, th- that is itself a s- new stressor that then needs to be interpreted and appraised by the person experiencing it.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman25:25

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DYDr. David Yeager25:26

      Um, that idea on its own is kind of revolutionary for people. People tend to think that your physiological arousal is this objective experience that is universally bad. Alia Crum calls that a stresses-debilitating belief. Um, and I think that's a good, that's a good label for it. It's this idea that that f- heart racing, palms sweaty, butterflies in your stomach is a sign of your impending failure and doom, and it will always interfere with your performance. And th- and, and the implication therefore is, if you were about to do well on whatever you're doing, gonna do, then you wouldn't feel that way, right? Um, Alia Crum calls this being stressed about being stressed. And that, I, I think it's a really common experience right now, where people are like, "Wow, you know, if I was a confident, good person who was about to do well, I wouldn't be sitting here feeling so stressed about how stressed I am." And it becomes this meta-cognitive layered loop of just being stuck in your own mind and, and, and interpreting your arousal in the most negative possible light. So, um, that stresses-debilitating belief doesn't, uh, people aren't, like, wrong for having come to that belief, because it's everywhere in our culture. O- one thing I do in my class a lot is I just have people Google image search, um, stress management memes. And first of all, a surprising number about cats. I don't know why people think cat pictures are, like, the way to convey complex scientific ideas. Like, it'll be, like, a cat with, like, a cookie jar, and it'll be like, "Growth mindset." I don't understand what that, what the point of that is. Um, but, you know, page two or three after all the cats, then you get to a lot of things that are, you'll see a person with a battery that's empty, and it's like, "They didn't de-stress," or, "10 tips for de-stressing," and it'll be like, "Go on a walk, drink chamomile tea," like ... And the, the, the underlying implication is that if you're stressed, then you need to distract yourself. You need to get rid of that stress. But an alternative explanation in the growth mindset world is, well, maybe you have something that's very important to you, and you've pushed yourself to embrace some challenge in a really admirable way, and that has filled your plate in some way. The g- like, if I was about to give a presentation to a senior vice president at work and I'm stressed about it, I should not, like, go take a bubble bath and, like, go for a walk.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman27:57

      Right, right.

   7. DYDr. David Yeager27:57

      Like, I should get ready to kick ass at the presentation, you know?

   8. AHAndrew Huberman28:00

      Right.

   9. DYDr. David Yeager28:01

      And so I think what, what Alia Crum and others have identified is that y- you can think differently about that stress. You can say, "This is actually a sign that I'm preparing to optimize my performance, and maybe the heart racing isn't my body being afraid of damage. Maybe it's my body getting more oxygenated blood to my brain and my muscles to, like, help me do really well." And that's called a stress-can-be-enhancing belief. And what's so interesting, I think, about this work, and I want to give credit to lots of other people, um, is that if you're in this stresses-debilitating mindset, you, you don't realize that there's an alternative. You just think that that's the way it is. So it never occurs to you to say, "Oh, wait, this stress is helping me," right? But once you tell people this, what happens is, w- in our studies, we actually see a change in stress physiology. It, uh, changing your mindset about stress in turn changes how your body reacts, which then becomes a different stressor that you can interpret. Um, and so the big insight was pairing the, these ideas about reframing stress as an i- inevitable force that's gonna destroy your goal pursuit into a resource to be cultivated, and pairing that together with the first step, which was the growth mindset that causes you to, like, be open to the challenge in the first place.

8. 29:28 – 30:58

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. DYDr. David Yeager29:28

   2. AHAndrew Huberman29:28

      I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, most of you have heard me tell my story about how I've been taking AG1 once or twice a day every day since 2012. And indeed, that's true. I started taking AG1, and I still take AG1 once or twice a day, because it gives me vitamins and minerals that I might not be getting enough of from whole foods that I eat, as well as adaptogens and micronutrients. Those adaptogens and micronutrients are really critical, because even though I strive to eat most of my foods from unprocessed or minimally processed whole foods, it's often hard to do so, especially when I'm traveling and especially when I'm busy. So by drinking a packet of AG1 in the morning and oftentimes also, again, in the afternoon or evening, I'm ensuring that I'm getting everything I need. I'm covering all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1 regularly, just report feeling better. And that shouldn't be surprising, because it supports gut health, and of course gut health supports immune system health and brain health, and it's supporting a ton of different cellular and organ processes that all interact with one another. So while certain supplements are really directed towards one specific outcome, like sleeping better or being more alert, AG1 really is foundational nutritional support. It's really designed to support all of the systems of your brain and body that relate to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs with your order plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman.

9. 30:58 – 37:54

   Language & Importance, Stressor vs. Stress Response

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:59

      I feel like so much of what human beings struggle with, um, such as...... learning and performance, our relationship to stress, et cetera, could be resolved if we could overcome the deficit in language. Um, here's what I'm thinking. Um, we're talking about reframing stress to make it performance-enhancing as opposed to performance-diminishing. I wonder if we replace the word stress with just, like, levels of arousal, but then people hear arousal and they think certain kinds of arousal.

   2. DYDr. David Yeager31:30

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman31:30

      So what we want to do is, I, you know, the way I think about it is like a continuum of- of readiness. But then that doesn't work because readiness could be readiness for sleep, which is a low level of arousal. You don't want to be h- highly alert, you know, then you're not ready for sleep, right?

   4. DYDr. David Yeager31:43

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman31:43

      So there's a real deficit of language where I think if there was some other word, I don't, I can't come up with it on the fly, where, you know, one's internal level of readiness as opposed to stress, and maybe it looks a lot like autonomic arousal where heart rate is increased and blood pressure is increased and people would say, "Oh yeah, that's my body being ready for something as opposed to stressed about doing it."

   6. DYDr. David Yeager32:07

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman32:07

      And it- it- it's kind of a trivial, um, you know, recasting of stress on the one hand, but in terms of, you know, kids learning about life and stress and arousal and these internal signals and adults learning about those and incorporating those into their life goals, I think it would be pretty meaningful. And I- I, again, I don't have a solution to this, but I feel like everyone hears stress is bad. You hear stress is en- enhancing, okay, great, but I think it's really about developing a language that lets us interpret what's going on in our bodies and compare that to what we are facing in the moment and just decide, is this well-matched or poorly matched to what we need to do? Is it great for going to sleep? Is it great for learning? Is it great for, um, catching that train that's, you- you know, soon to leave the station? And I just wonder, um, why the deficit in language?

   8. DYDr. David Yeager32:57

      Yeah, I- I think it's a profound question because s- small changes in language perpetuate problematic lay theories because they have the baggage on them, and I think that... Let's think this through. So, um, what the psychophysiologists like to point out is that there's a distinction between the stressor, which is the, let's call it the internally or externally imposed demand, could be something th- thwarting your goals or-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman33:25

      The exam, the difficult conversation, the-

   10. DYDr. David Yeager33:28

       Right.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman33:28

       ... the, um, the going to, for some people, going to the doctor or the dentist.

   12. DYDr. David Yeager33:33

       The hard conversation with, you know-

   13. AHAndrew Huberman33:35

       Yeah.

   14. DYDr. David Yeager33:35

       ... with somebody you care about. It could be, um, or a physical stressor, right? Like a football game or, you know, running a marathon, right? So anything that imposes demands on your body and mind and therefore will require resources, whether, like, you know, metabolic resources to do well. That's a stressor, okay? Then there's your appraisal of it. That's what you name it, how you interpret it, how you frame it in your mind, and then there's your response. People in general conflate the stressor with the stress response when they say stress. They're like, "I'm really stressed right now." Well, what, really what you mean is that there were stressors, you appraise them as more than you can handle, and then you had a threat-type stress response which means that your body is preparing for damage and defeat. And that is like an inheritance of how the, you know, sympathetic nervous system evolved which was to keep us alive from threats, mainly physical threats. And so if you have a stressor, some d- and demand, appraise as something you cannot handle and then your threat-type response, your body's basically assuming you're going to lose whatever physical fight you're in, like the bear is gonna, you know, tear you apart, and then your main goal at that point is to stay alive and, like, bleed out more slowly, right?

   15. AHAndrew Huberman34:55

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DYDr. David Yeager34:55

       So you end up with more blood kept centrally in the body cavity, less in the extremities, right? The body releases cortisol because it's an anti-inflammatory, it's gonna, like, help with tissue repair 45 minutes down the road. So there's a whole, like, cascade of physiological responses that r- come in part from the mental appraisal that this stressor is more than you can handle. Now, we're- we're very rarely confronted with those kinds of physical stressors these days. It's often social stressors. But s- a lot of these social stressors are the threat of social death, right? Like a ninth grader coming into high school, getting bullied by all their friends and are excluded because the eighth, their friends in eighth grade now treat you like you don't exist, right? The threat of social death is pretty bad, right? Or you're a new legal associate and you've f- filed your first brief and all the partners are like, "This is garbage. We're not gonna send it to the client," right? Like, all of a sudden you're on trial socially in front of these people who could cut you loose at any time. That's a very vibrant social stressor that evokes the same kind of physiological response as we suppose a physical one would, right? And so we're very careful distinguishing our studies a stressor from the stress response because often the stressor isn't really a bad thing. Like, you know, getting critical feedback on your first legal brief as a junior associate, well, that could be awesome. It could be like, "Oh great, I have these awesome partners at my great law firm are now giving me personalized feedback." That's useful. Or I'm a ninth grader and I have to make new friends, but I don't know, that, maybe you need new friends, like that could be a good thing, right? And same with a test, same with, you know, presentations to senior vice presidents, whatever it is. Stressors often in- in our daily lives are not good or bad. Now of course there's traumatic stressors that, you know, are really bad for people. Um, but then the appraisal is really where there's a lot of leverage, and if you think that the stressor is inevitably bad and that your response to it is always harmful, then it's really hard for you to think that you have the resources to meet the demand that you're facing and you end up in this threat cycle.So in a lot of our research, what we try to do is give people a different story to tell themselves about a stressor and about their response so that way, they end up in a better place. And I don't know what that better language is, but I will say, I once gave a talk at a middle school and a high school, and I used slides that Jeremy Jamison, who's my collaborator, had sent me, that had the word arousal on it on every single slide, and that was a big mistake in a room of, like, middle school kids. (laughs)

   17. AHAndrew Huberman37:42

       Right.

   18. DYDr. David Yeager37:43

       I did not ha- ... I'd, I'd strongly recommend different terminology. Uh, so, and I should, I was a middle school teacher, I should've known that you can't say that word in a, (laughs) in a high school. So.

10. 37:54 – 44:35

    Physiologic Cues, Threat vs Challenge Response

    1. DYDr. David Yeager37:54

    2. AHAndrew Huberman37:54

       R- right, yeah, I think that, that there needs to be a better language.

    3. DYDr. David Yeager37:57

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman37:57

       I think if people, um, of all ages understood the autonomic nervous system, this aspect of our nervous system that, um, is on a continuum, that leads us to either be, I guess at the extremes you would say, um, coma would be the deepest state of-

    5. DYDr. David Yeager38:13

       Right. Total non-arousal, yeah.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman38:13

       ... uh, parasympathetic, yeah, non-arousal. Then ascending from, you know, very s- you know, deeply asleep, lightly asleep, groggy, uh, uh, awake, uh, awake and alert, um, awake and alert to the point of being, you know, highly alert, um, and then you get into kind of, uh, low-level panic, and then all-out panic attack, right? I mean, that's kind of the continuum, the autonomic continuum. I, I feel like if people understood that and they under- and they could simply ask, "Okay, where, where is my body and mind along that continuum?" and then compare it to whatever it is they face, then, uh, we'd have a better sense of whether or not we were in the correct, maybe even optimal state for, for dealing with challenge or, uh, or not. And along those lines, what is the optimal internal state for dealing with challenge that is, um, just outside our ability? Um, you know, maybe in an exam where I can naturally get 85% of the answers correct, but maybe 15%, I think this is what the machine learning and AI tells us, is probably the, the appropriate level of difficulty for something in order to best learn? I know that's probably too broad for you to-

    7. DYDr. David Yeager39:18

       Yeah, it depends on if you're motivated and if, if, you know, uh, a lot of things like ... but yeah, I mean, I think if you think of the autonomic arousal on just one axis-

    8. AHAndrew Huberman39:27

       Mm-hmm.

    9. DYDr. David Yeager39:28

       ... uh, the, what, where, where you start running into problems we find is, is that I think you're right that there's, like, you know, coma to, like, some arousal or meaningful arousal, but the, it's the middle to the end part where there's two different tracks. And one track is very high arousal, but you're terrified of the damage and defeat and the humiliation and the failure, and so that's, that's, um, demanding all your attention. That's what we call threat-type stress. There's another version that is, again, very high arousal, but that's like you're stoked and you feel confident you're going to do well, and that's also very high arousal. And if you just look at arousal measures like pre-ejection period, right? Um-

    10. AHAndrew Huberman40:17

        Could you explain pre-ejection period?

    11. DYDr. David Yeager40:19

        Um-

    12. AHAndrew Huberman40:19

        Yeah.

    13. DYDr. David Yeager40:19

        ... it's, it's just a, it's a simple measure o- of just the sympathetic nervous system-

    14. AHAndrew Huberman40:24

        Mm-hmm.

    15. DYDr. David Yeager40:25

        ... that we use in all of our studies.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman40:26

        So sympathetic, uh, just to remind folks, is one aspect of the autonomic nervous system. Um, has nothing to do with sympathy. Uh, it's just the more alert means more a- more contribution of the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system. Sorry it's a mouthful. And then, um, less alert would be, uh, more contribution of the parasympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system.

    17. DYDr. David Yeager40:46

        Yeah. And PEP is just a measure that we use in our laboratory studies, um, and th- an- another could've been, like, skin conductance, how it's, which is, uh, about the sweat coming out of your skin, and then we use an electrode to f- figure out how much is there. Um, that, uh, those kinds of measures can't distinguish what we call a challenge-type state. That's almost like people have heard of flow, where you're optimally balanced between important challenge you care about and resources and ability to, you know, overcome or at least deal with that challenge on the positive side. And the other high arousal state, which is threat, and that's, again, you're highly, you're ... everything's highly engaged, your whole stress system, but you don't think you can deal with it. So the, th- that becomes really important because, um ... like here's a very practical example. If you look at devices people are wearing to detect their stress, that might say high or low arousal, but it can't distinguish between super good, positive challenge-type stress and really negative threat-type stress. One of the examples that psychophysiologists like to say a lot, I got this from Jeremy Jamison, is imagine you're at the top of a double black diamond about to ski down.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman42:01

        Mm-hmm.

    19. DYDr. David Yeager42:02

        If you are a good skier, y- your heart rate isn't probably low. You're probably amped up. You're stoked, you're like, "This is awesome. I can't wait to do this." You're fully confident you're going to make all the turns and have a blast. If you're a terrible skier, you're just imagining the yard sale that's about to happen. You're about to crash, you're going to fall down the mountain, you might die. Also high arousal. If you're wearing, like, the regular watch that will just detect sympathetic nervous s- system activation, it wouldn't be able to tell the difference between really stoked to do something positive and terrified of, like, crashing and dying. And so we ... I like that example because often in social situations or performance situations, y- you want to be high arousal to perform your best, but you, you want your perception of that demand, the demand that's requiring your body to respond, to be matched with an equal belief, or what we call appraisal, of your resources to meet that demand. Um, so I think my answer to the question is, is well, I think, uh, it, it's not so much about what's the optimal amount of demand, right? So the, the 85% likelihood of success rate problems are, that's titrating demand.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman43:13

        Mm-hmm.

    21. DYDr. David Yeager43:14

        I think it's-How do you pair a l- a necessary level of demand for whatever goal you have with the perceptions of the resources? And sometimes those resources are your internal, like, just confidence, you know, or sometimes it's your ability to reappraise, and other times it's material resources like do you have a v- a v- it could be, i- in, in real life do you have a friend that you could turn to? Or it might be, uh, have you been trained in a way where you're able to overcome this? Do you have enough time? So resources can be a big bucket. And that's kind of the magic is because resources are, um, appraised by the mind, in our interventions, we can give you a different way of viewing your resources so that way people feel like they can meet the demand and that pushes th- them from a threat-type response into a more challenge-type response.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman44:06

        I mean, it makes sense. If I think that, um, the stress, for lack of a better term, and the effort is going to get me where I need to go eventually, I'm going to be far more willing to invest the effort.

    23. DYDr. David Yeager44:17

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman44:17

        Especially if I'm motivated, I want th- I want the thing that lies at the finish line. Huh.

    25. DYDr. David Yeager44:22

        You basically take the demand, which was your intense stress and worry, and turn it into a resource in your own mind.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman44:28

        Mm-hmm.

    27. DYDr. David Yeager44:28

        And it, it turns out that that actually helps people cope at a physiological level.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman44:32

        Got it. Got it. Um,

11. 44:35 – 53:58

    Mentor Mindset & Leadership; Protector vs Enforcer Mindset

    1. AHAndrew Huberman44:36

       we've been talking a lot about kind of the, um, the nuts and bolts of, of growth mindset and stress is performance-enhancing, uh, mindset. Maybe we could, um, shift a little bit to the discussion about what you call the mentor mindset and, and as we do that, maybe we'll weave back in some of these, some of these concepts.

    2. DYDr. David Yeager44:57

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman44:57

       Your book, 10 to 25, um, focuses heavily on, uh, social appraisal, self-appraisal, basically the idea that we want to be liked and we don't want to be disliked and it, um, and it hurts when people say mean things about us or when we hear negative feedback, especially if it's provided publicly. But ultimately, what we do with that information is what determines, you know, whether or not we grow and move forward.

    4. DYDr. David Yeager45:20

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman45:20

       Um, everyone loves a great report card. Nobody likes a poor report card. So, um, tell us about mentor mindset and both for folks in the 10 to 25 age range, but also for everybody.

    6. DYDr. David Yeager45:37

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman45:37

       You know? Um, because it's clear that this impacts us throughout our lifespan.

    8. DYDr. David Yeager45:41

       Yeah, so the, the, the work I write about comes out of a dissertation led by Geoff Cohen at Stanford in the '90s with Claude Steele.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman45:49

       Mm-hmm.

    10. DYDr. David Yeager45:50

        And they coined a term that they called the mentor's dilemma. And the mentor's dilemma is the idea that if you're a leader, a manager, a coach, teacher, whatever it is, parent, it's very hard to simultaneously criticize somebody's work and motivate them to overcome and embrace that criticism. And the reason it's a dilemma is because the leader on the one hand wants to maintain high standards by being critical, maybe in order to help the person grow, but that could crush the person's motivation. The alternative is withhold your criticism, don't say the truth, hide all the critical feedback, and be nice and super supportive. But... and that meets your goal of being friendly and caring, but it doesn't help the person grow. So it feels like we have to walk through the world w- stuck between two bad choices. Either you're a demanding autocratic, you know, dictator who care- doesn't care about human feelings, or you are a, like, low standards wimp, pushover that's, you know, giving in to the w- like, wimpy demands of the weak next generation. And neither of those have uniformly positive connotations.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman47:06

        Mm-hmm.

    12. DYDr. David Yeager47:07

        And th- the classic example in Geoff's work was a student at Stanford who writes a first draft of an essay and then gets really harsh critical feedback from a professor. Are they willing to revise their work? Or do they say, "This teacher hates me, they're biased, I dislike them," and leave the, leave the comments unaddressed? So the solution to that in the- in that research on the mentor's dilemma has been to say two things. One is appeal to the very high standard you have for someone's work, but also always accompany that appeal to the high standard with an assurance that if they implement the feedback and use the support, that they're capable of meeting the high standard. I like to think of it as, like, if you go to the roller coaster and they say you have to be this tall to ride, right? So just saying, "You have to be this tall and you're not. See you later," isn't reassuring to somebody, right? But if you can say, "Here's the standard and I believe you can meet it, but it's going to be hard," that means a lot. It, it means I'm taking you seriously. Um, it means I be- like, believe in your growth.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman48:18

        Mm-hmm.

    14. DYDr. David Yeager48:19

        And it's a kind of leadership practice that makes growth mindset be something that comes to life and feel true. It's not just an idea in your head that you're growing. It's like I live in a social world where people are gonna push me to grow and not leave me alone.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman48:34

        Are you familiar with the, um, book of the late, I think the pronunciation is Randy Pausch for The Last Lecture?

    16. DYDr. David Yeager48:40

        No.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman48:41

        He was a computer scientist, he developed a lot of, um, early online, um, portals for kids, in particular, um, uh, young women to learn programming.

    18. DYDr. David Yeager48:51

        Mm-hmm.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman48:51

        I think it was called Alice.

    20. DYDr. David Yeager48:52

        Hm.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman48:53

        Um, uh, and he is known for what's called The Last Lecture. He was diagnosed with cancer, he eventually passed away, but he talked about, um, in his book, um, lessons that were important, uh, for life. And one of the things that he said was, um, the, the thing to worry about is not when your mentors and coaches, um, are pushing you, it's when they stop pushing you-

    22. DYDr. David Yeager49:13

        Right.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman49:13

        ... that you should really worry because that means they've basically given up on you.

    24. DYDr. David Yeager49:16

        Right.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman49:16

        So that always, that always rung in my-

    26. DYDr. David Yeager49:18

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman49:18

        ... in my mind.

    28. DYDr. David Yeager49:19

        Yeah, the, wh- what I call the, the person who-... just is, is no longer maintaining high standards for you, I call that a protector mindset. That it's, it's almost like it's gonna be too much trouble to see you dealing with stress from being pushed that I am gonna protect you from that stress. I w- I, maybe I care about you, but I'm not going to, not going to hold you to a high standard. And I see that a lot, um, in coaches, I see it in teachers, I see it in parents. Um, for me the, the opposite problematic version is what I call an enforcer mindset. This is like, "Here's the standard, and I'm gonna hold you to it, and then it's up to you to meet it or not." Right? That's kind of like the college professor that says, "Look to your left, look to your right, half of you, you know, are going to be gone by the end of this." Um, for me, the solution is to think about taking the best parts of both of those two. What's the high standards/high support? So enforcer, great, you've got the standards, let's add your support. Protector, you care a lot, great, let's add the standards. And what Jeff Cohen and Claude Steele found in their initial study is that students were far more likely to view negative criticism as a sign that the teacher cared for them if it was accompanied by a transparent and clear communication of these two elements of high standards and high support. If it was just the critical feedback, the professor could have meant the same positive thing, "I'm caring about you," but they didn't make it clear to the person, then, then participants were less likely to think that, that, that the professor was on their side. And in our work, in some small studies, we, um, we showed that even seventh graders, when they get critical feedback on their essays, are about twice as likely to implement the teacher's critical feedback with even a very short invocation of the high standards and the high support. So to get to your question about mentor mindset, at some point I got worried that our experiment on high standards/high support messages, which we called wise feedback in those studies, would be viewed as a, I don't know, like a magic phrase. Like I, my joke, my laugh line, this is a lame laugh line but I'm a professor so that's the best I can do, my laugh line was always, "I just live in fear that Pearson and other textbook companies are gonna sell wise feedback Post-it Notes, say they can magically e- erase the achievement gap." Right? And I always said that as a joke, and then two things happened. One is, a popular author, a guy named Dan Coyle, literally called it magic feedback in his book. Didn't cite us, but like ...

    29. AHAndrew Huberman51:59

        He didn't cite us?

    30. DYDr. David Yeager52:00

        No.
12. 53:58 – 55:14

    Sponsor: Waking Up

    1. AHAndrew Huberman53:58

       I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditations, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started meditating over three decades ago, and what I found in the ensuing years is that sometimes it was very easy for me to do my daily meditation practice. I was just really diligent. But then as things would get more stressful, which of course is exactly when I should have been meditating more, my meditation practice would fall off. With Waking Up, they make it very easy to find and consistently use a given meditation practice. It has very convenient reminders, and they come in different durations, so even if you just have one minute or five minutes to meditate, you can still get your meditation in, which research shows is still highly beneficial. In addition to the many different meditations on the Waking Up app, they also have yoga nidra sessions, which are a form of non-sleep deep rest that I personally find is extremely valuable for restoring mental and physical vigor. I tend to do a yoga nidra lasting anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes at least once a day, and if I ever wake up in the middle of the night and I need to fall back asleep, I also find yoga nidra to be extremely useful. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman to try a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman.

13. 55:14 – 1:06:28

    Strivings, Social Hierarchy & Adolescence, Testosterone

    1. AHAndrew Huberman55:14

       I want to get back to some of the, the mechanics of how to go about that, but why do you think this stuff is so hard? Like i- like if we think about, um, I don't know, kind of a-... curbside evolutionary, uh, theory. Um, meaning, I don't have any formal training in evolutionary psychology. You could step back and say, like, I don't know, maybe we just used to be so busy from morning to sleep that we didn't really have time to do anything except the stuff we needed to complete in order to feed our families and-

    2. DYDr. David Yeager55:43

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman55:43

       ... take care of our, our communities, et cetera. And, and now a number of things are outsourced and, um, and so here we have this notion of strivings. But then again, you know, we went from hunter-gatherer, uh, cultures to writing War and Peace and everything else.

    4. DYDr. David Yeager55:59

       Right.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman56:00

       Um, technologies of all kinds. So, you know, there must be something in the human brain that, um, causes us to strive, and what we're really talking about here is striving and our relationship with striving. Um, so if we were to step back and just say, "Okay, what do you think determines whether or not someone, uh, feels they can do better?" Is it early success? You know, I, they tried at something. I mean, everyone, m- most everyone, I assume, who tries to learn to walk, walks. Um, learns to speak, speaks. You know, there are rare exceptions, but, um, you know, what do you think this whole thing about strivings is about? And when we talk about growth mindset, stresses enhancing mindset, the mentor mindset, um, I mean, are we trying to get back to activating systems that are hardwired within us and that have been kind of sh- um, masked by daily life? Um, or are we trying to kind of better ourselves and our species through, you know, like really trying to do something that's never been done in human history before?

    6. DYDr. David Yeager57:05

       Right. Yeah, th-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman57:07

       It's a big, it's a big question, but yeah.

    8. DYDr. David Yeager57:07

       It's a big question, but I, I mean, I think that, that all I can do is conjecture, you know, as a scientist. But the, um, I, I'm often reminded of something I heard from Ron Dahl, who's a neuroscientist at Berkeley, and...

    9. AHAndrew Huberman57:18

       Not Ronald Dahl, the, the children's book author.

    10. DYDr. David Yeager57:19

        Not Roald Dahl.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman57:20

        Not Roald Dahl.

    12. DYDr. David Yeager57:20

        Ron, Ron Dahl.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman57:21

        (laughs)

    14. DYDr. David Yeager57:21

        Although Ron is just, just so, such an awesome guy. He's like this polymath who can do everything and just so curious and generous. Uh, he, uh, what he always says to me is like, "Look," w- it's like, "David, what do you think the human brain wants to do?" Like, "Uh, I don't know. Feel good." He's like, "No. It wants to feel better." And I think what he was trying to get me to see is that it's the kind of pursuit of some kind of delta, um, and...

    15. AHAndrew Huberman57:48

        A change.

    16. DYDr. David Yeager57:49

        Yeah, a change from the state, and, and I think the argument is that even if you are, i- if what you thought was your biggest need, if that was satisfied, then there's always, like, another thing, I think is part of the argument. And so i- but it's also this idea that i- if you think of the human brain as trying to learn at all times, like, what is it trying to learn? And the, at least in the animal studies, as you know, often it's like, how do I f- either feel better or avoid, you know, feeling worse, in a lot of ways. And I think that, as I think about adolescence, that's a period where your theory of how to feel better is dramatically changing because you're no longer fully cared for by adults, right? All of a sudden, your criteria for feeling good about yourself is your social standing, not just in your parents' eyes, but in the eyes of the community and the milieu you're a part of. And, and that comes a lot from your contribution value, r- if you think in our evolutionary history, like, the being ostracized and alone is certain death in ancient human cultures, right? I mean, you can't... The tribe's wandering around in the savanna. You're alone. At a minimum, you have no one to watch out for you when you fall asleep, and so, and y- humans can't sleep in trees 'cause our muscles aren't, don't contract when we're, uh, asleep, unlike animals. And so you're just exposed on the ground. If you're alone, eventually you're gonna die, right? So the, the fear of moving from, uh, parents taking care of your safety all night to now you have to trust peers to ca- take care of you and watch over you, that comes to the forefront of young people's minds, like, kind of the minute puberty strikes. And so what it means to feel better often is that I'm socially valued by the group. There's something. They're gonna keep me around for some reason. Now, they don't often keep score in an explicit way. I mean, now things are on social media. Maybe they're kind of keeping score, but, like, the rules of how you're doing socially are so implicit. You have to read between the lines. They're inferred. Social hierarchy is very complex for adolescents, and so they overdo it thinking through, like, what, how, "How am I standing? Like, where am I relative to others?" Now, that process is started by puberty, and we know from lots of species work that it then leads to changes in the brain. So the dopaminergic system, of course, is, like, driven in part by changes in gonadal maturation. Ron likes to talk about these great studies of songbirds, of how do they learn the mating calls? And if songbirds don't have testosterone when they are learning the mating calls, they don't do the, like, over-the-top obsessive practice, so they don't master them, and then they don't mate and they die alone. (laughs)

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:40

        Interesting. Yeah, I'm familiar with that-

    18. DYDr. David Yeager1:00:41

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:41

        ... um, with that literature. There's a great, uh, unfortunately now passed away, uh, biologist who was first in the UK and then, uh, was up at UC Davis, uh, Peter Marler, and who studied the, um, the l- bird song learning.

    20. DYDr. David Yeager1:00:54

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:54

        And it's, it's, um...

    22. DYDr. David Yeager1:00:55

        It's amazing work.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:56

        Yeah. It's amazing work and it mimics a lot of the, uh, the development of human speech, although not exactly. Like, there's this babbling phase-

    24. DYDr. David Yeager1:01:03

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:03

        ... where babies and birds experiment with different tone, tones and they're, they're learning to use the pharynx and larynx, or, you know, in, in birds, it's a diff- slightly different system.

    26. DYDr. David Yeager1:01:11

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:12

        And some birds are seasonal singers. But I, I wasn't familiar with this result, that the testosterone drives a kind of obsessive, uh, practice. Um...

    28. DYDr. David Yeager1:01:19

        Yeah, it's obsessive practice in order to demonstrate s- well, status, but really your value. I mean, there it's mate value, right? But I think the same thing is true for lots of things that teenagers...... tribal, it could be playing guitar, you know. Uh, could be gymnastics. I mean, think about how many of their Olympic athletes are, like, 14, right? And they're waking up at 4:00 in the morning, they're practicing obsessively. How many, like, pro-social hackers who take down evil foreign governments, right, are teenagers, right? They're things that, that take so much practice and so much learning happen at the exact same age as adults are saying, "These kids are lazy and don't want to work." Right? So I tend to focus on, to get to your question about why do people strive to get better, I think in adolescence, y- you look around in your social milieu and see what counts for status, not in a superficial way, although it sometimes happen, but often in a deeply meaningful way. What am I going to bring to the table?

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:17

        One would hope.

    30. DYDr. David Yeager1:02:18

        And then, well, I, I, I, yeah.
14. 1:06:28 – 1:11:36

    Growth Mindset & Transferability, Defensiveness

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:28

       think that striving reflects the action of a, you know, kind of a basic neural circuit that then can be applied to other things, um, or lots of different things? The reason I ask is that, you know, the, the notion of growth mindset is so attractive, it's such a sticky idea, um, because, or I think because one imagines, okay, if I can get really good at one thing, chess, then I can apply the same kind of relationship to the internal state of stress or arousal, what have you, when trying to navigate a new e- a, a new environment of another kind, a physical practice or a relationship challenge or something of that sort that, that, you know, what we're really talking about here is an algorithm that can be directed at different, uh, pursuits, as opposed to growth mindset is applied in one context and not another. Um, so w- what of that? Um, people who are incredibly-... good at accessing growth mindset in one domain of life, does that mean that they'll be good at accessing growth mindset in another domain of life? What's the, the, um, the carryover or the spillover?

    2. DYDr. David Yeager1:07:31

       Yeah. Uh, it's a great question. It comes up a lot. Um, the Michigan State psychologist, Jason Moser, studied this and they measured growth mindset about your intelligence, the classic one, your personality, your morality, your social relationships, your emotions, et cetera. And the question is, is there kind of, like, one growth mindset that applies in all the different ways or are there totally narrow mindsets that have nothing to do with each other or is it something in between? And the finding was that there is an overall association. If you think one trait can change and be developed, you tend to think another trait can be changed and developed. And just empirically, it's hard to separate that from people's general tendency to disagree w- or agree with items that could b- be what the common factor is, but it kind of makes sense. However, there's also very domain-specific mindsets. So there are people who think, "Yeah, I can get smarter, but I can't change my shyness," and other people who think, "My relationships are never going to get better, but I can learn to play the cello." You know, and vice versa. And when you want to predict behavior, turns out that the closer you are to that domain, the better the prediction is going to be. So if I want to know if you're going to quit playing the cello or not, I'm going to ask you your cello mindset. That's going to do way better than, in general, can human qualities change? But if I'm going to intervene, at what level should the intervention happen? If I only change your cello mindset, well, you're right. Like, what if cello isn't your thing in life? Now, are you going to be fixed mindset for your relationships in school and did I not really help you? So, um, the, kind of the empirical answer currently is, if it's a domain that someone could be really defensive about, it's better to be a little vaguer about it. Classic example is Iran, how parents work on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is obviously a big issue right now. Their science paper in 2011 changed mindsets about group conflict in general. Can an ethnic group or a national group ever change? They didn't go to people in Israel and say, "Palestinians can change," 'cause they're like, "No, they can't. That's not po- it's not possible." But if they said, "You know, sometimes leaders change, and when leaders change, the group's priorities change, and they become more amenable to negotiation. And when that happens, things can change." If that was done at a more general level, then both Israelis and Palestinians were more open to a peace process. So I think if it's something you're very defensive about, I, I tend to think back up and do the more abstract mindset. Another example is, I remember I was in graduate school at Stanford, and one of my RAs was so excited about our work and he went to a party and talked about it. It's like that, you know, very Stanford thing to do, is talk about research at a party. And he's like, "Oh, yeah, math ability can change. You don't have to be dumb at math forever." And the person he talked to was so offended. She was like, "Are you telling me I could have done better in high school math and I just didn't try hard enough? And my life could be different? I could be an engineer right now. Like, I like my life. Why are you telling..." It was this, it went down this road of, like, how dare you tell me it could have been different? And I, who knows, maybe he had bad delivery and had 14 margaritas and that's, uh, who knows what happened. But I think the idea is like, if, if someone's got a reason to think about that fixed mindset as comforting in some way, that they don't have to feel bad about something that could have been different, it's probably not smart to go after that in a very specific way. But if someone's not defensive, generally the, the closer to the domain, the better, because they're going to see the application. Otherwise, they have to use it by analogy, and ana- we know analogic reasoning is, is tough 'cause it's hit or miss.

15. 1:11:36 – 1:19:08

    Challenge, Environment & Growth Mindset

    1. DYDr. David Yeager1:11:36

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:36

       We love stories of people that have come from a place of being really back on their heels, um, or even just dissolved into a puddle of their own tears to, uh, doing well again, maybe even soaring again. It's sort of the, the, the common thing is that this is the, the classic American, uh, story, although it's true of, of people all over the world, I imagine it's just-

    3. DYDr. David Yeager1:11:56

       Right. It's not always true in America either, but yeah, this-

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:58

       Right. Some people rise-

    5. DYDr. David Yeager1:11:59

       But we love the story.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:00

       Yeah, some people crash and burn, but it seems like everybody loves a comeback story.

    7. DYDr. David Yeager1:12:03

       Right.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:04

       I don't know, there's something about that.

    9. DYDr. David Yeager1:12:05

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:05

        Um, there, the, uh, the hero's journey, the, the, um, Hero of 1,000 Faces. Is that the, that the book? Joseph Campbell?

    11. DYDr. David Yeager1:12:13

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:14

        Um, yeah. Um, and it's written into so many movies and books and, and real life, uh, uh, stories. I can't help but superimpose today's discussion onto something like that, right? That, um, you know, that life is a series of, um, efforts to apply growth mindset from learning how to walk, right? Is what presumably is part of that, right? I don't know any child that just stands up and walks, um, early on to, to the things that we, we really think, uh, we can perform well at to, um, finding ourselves like really back on our heels. And, and so are there any data, um, or theories even that point to the use of growth mindset and stresses enhancing mindset in coming from a real place of deficit? N- not just from trying to do better and learn new things, but from a real place of deficit, a real place of challenge. I think it's important for our audience to hear because I think a number of people do feel back on their heels-

    13. DYDr. David Yeager1:13:08

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:08

        ... um, in one or more domains of life.

    15. DYDr. David Yeager1:13:11

        Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think that the data suggests that growth mindset becomes most relevant to your next behavior the more challenge you face.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:21

        Mm-hmm.

    17. DYDr. David Yeager1:13:22

        And so for a long time, what that meant is if you maybe were a lower achieving student-... and we're going to, and we're going to evaluate growth mindset by looking at your grades, you should see bigger gains for low-achieving students compared to high-achieving students.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:35

        Mm-hmm.

    19. DYDr. David Yeager1:13:36

        Part of that could be an artifact. If you already have straight As, we can't give you more As. It's impossible, right? But, um, you know, in, in general, ch- psychological treatments like a growth mindset tend to work better for people who kind of factually wouldn't have them and could plausibly benefit from them. Where the story becomes more interesting is that often your kind of own individual difficulties are associated with your environment, and the environment is really what allows you to apply your growth mindset over time. So it mi- might make you right now need a growth mindset more, but it might make it harder for you to act on it. And so the, for people who like complex three-way interactions, the idea is that, uh, treatment for growth mindset should work best for individuals who face the most challenges but are in the most supportive environments. And one is, like, baseline, why do you need it? And the other is, over time, what's going to help you keep using it? So to be very concrete about this, in, uh, in one paper we published in 2019, uh, The National Study of Learning Mindsets, it was published in Nature, we evaluated growth mindset in this large national sample and the, the question wasn't, does it work on average? The question was, where does it work and for whom? 'Cause we had, there were lots of replications already and th- and sometimes people tried it and, like, "Well, it didn't work here." Okay, well, what's, that's a puzzle. How do we figure that out? And the finding was low-achieving students in high schools, um, that had a more supportive classroom culture where you got th- where you got the long-run effects. And in the, in the, in the four-year results, it's low-achieving students in high schools that offered more advanced courses. So if you're a low-achieving student

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:22

        Mm-hmm.

    21. DYDr. David Yeager1:15:22

        ... and you agree with the mindset, it's like, "Great. Get me pre-calculus." "Oh, we don't offer that here." Right? Or it's a toxic environment in some way. Their teachers are untrained. They're first-year teachers. There's lots of poverty in the school. I- if you don't have the structure to support the striving, you don't get the long-run effects, especially if the effects you're looking at are increases in equality of opportunity. So for me, the message is, like, y- think about growth mindset and psychological interventions as one tool in a toolkit to help people achieve their goals, but we can't forget about the entire field of sociology that tells us a lot about the allocation of resources through which people can even be afforded the chance to pursue their goals. And so, uh, what I like about that finding, which by the way, came from a collaboration with sociologists who thought, "You psychologists are absurd." They were like, "You think your little mindset is going to, like, change inequality? Like, you're gonna make an argument to 15-year-olds and that's your plan for improving the American economy? That's absurd." I was like, "Well, I don't know. Might... It could do something." And, uh, psychologists are skeptical of sociologists. They're like, "Look, how l- how often do we have huge changes in law and policy, but people don't, don't take advantage of the resources that are available to them? Let's change the behavior so they take advantage." We kind of came together and said, "What does it look like to consider both the structure and the internal psychology?" And I think this was a very important point because people tend to choose one or the other. Either we're going to lobby for new laws to reallocate resources or we're going to optimize the psychology of the individual, and I think our perspective is to find ways to bring those two together and kind of do both. Um, and ultimately, it's not a deficit-based perspective of you have a deficit and we're fixing that. Growth mindset's more like, well, it's an asset-based perspective. What I mean by that is w- we're not giving someone motivation in growth mindset. We're presuming people already kind of want to do well. They want to impress others. They want to be meaningful. They want to contribute. But there's a barrier. The barrier is when you strive and then inevitably struggle if you're pushing yourself beyond your abilities, people make you feel dumb for that struggle. So we are, we're trying to remove that cultural and social barrier that's preventing people from their natural goal pursuit, and that comes deeply from Carol Dweck's original work at the intersection of developmental and social psychology. The basic claim in developmental psychology is the human being is an active learner who's trying to figure out the world. Right? This is classic Alison Gopnik, you know, Susan Gelman. Infants are meaning makers trying to interpret the world and wanting to do well, and eventually they're socialized into beliefs that prevent them from acting on that basic neural desire to learn, grow, develop, et cetera. And f- and growth mindset is really, it's not trying to be a magic pill to give an unmotivated, disaffected kid a shot in the arm of adrenaline so they go out and learn. No. It presumes agency and love of learning and kind of, like Dr. Beck, you said, presumes the goodness in kids and tries to remove whatever kind of garbage beliefs they've learned from social context. And then our long-term studies then show how you, once you do that, if they're also in a context where you can act on that love of learning, then you can see long-run effects that are far more than what a lot of people have said you could get even in r- even a disadvantaged context.

16. 1:19:08 – 1:24:54

    Goal Pursuit, Brain Development & Adaptation

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:09

       It's so interesting because what we're talking about here is psychological theory playing out in the real world, but also, um, kind of, like, n- deep notions of the human spirit. Like, uh, we are a species that, um, seems to organize our experience in terms of stories of ourselves and others, but that, um, when it comes to things like strivings and learning, um, are really always in a constant state of either...... being more, to borrow the words of a, a friend of mine, either back on our heels, flat-footed, or forward center of mass, right? Um, and what we're talking about today is being forward center of mass, at least in certain areas of life. I mean, the, the fact that the reward systems of the brain where the, you mentioned them earlier, these mesolimbic reward pathways that basically deploy dopamine, um, and other things, of course, um, are so associated with striving and achieving, striving and achieving, and presumably underlie much if not all of our human evolution, assuming we're still evolving. Lately, I, sometimes I wonder. But, um, some pe- would argue we're devol-

    2. DYDr. David Yeager1:20:13

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:13

       ... devolving, but I, I would argue we're still evolving, um, especially with this new burst in AI. It's all about math nowadays, folks.

    4. DYDr. David Yeager1:20:20

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:20

       A few years ago, it was all about neuroscience, and neuroscience is still really important, and the two share, but it's all about math lately. Um, so I, I like to just think of the human animal as so different than the other animals of the planet, like, we're the curators of the planet. The house cats might be striving, but they're clearly not doing as well as we are in terms of managing the way the world goes. So what, do you think that this is, like, a basic, um, algorithm within human beings to look at ourselves, look at the environment, see challenges, overcome challenges, develop technologies? It's just kind of like a, a, it's like the same way my bulldog used to like to gnaw on things, you know, he liked to chew and pull. We just want to learn and grow. Do you, do you think it's inherent to who we are as a species, maybe even what sets our species apart from all the others?

    6. DYDr. David Yeager1:21:05

       I mean, that's, that's a profound question, and I think that's, that's a good one to debate. The, what, what I've been really taken by recently is Carol Dweck's secret life as a neuroscientist. She has this great psych review paper that contradicts a lot of r- received wisdom about the prefrontal planning regions of the brain and the kind of amygdala and the hippocampus, the, you know, the affective regions and the memory creation regions. And the, the classic argument in, going back to Plato and the Phaedrus, right, is that the rational acting part of the brain plans out what it wants, makes all these calculations, and then has to tame the emotional part in order to make those goals into a reality. And so the emotion, you know, the amygdala, the mesolimbic, that's this unruly horse that the charioteer has to harness, you know? And I think that Carol argued, and I think other people have argued too, I've, I've seen Adriana Galvan and Ron Doll and others argue this, that, um, the affective regions are often the teacher and the prefrontal is the student, and that makes sense if you think about how humans are goal directed. Think about how a kid learns to walk. They don't do that for theoretical reasons. Uh, they don't just, like, look at people walking and be like, "I want to learn how to do that."

Episode duration: 2:26:09