Essentials: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Dr. Alia Crum

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now, my conversation with Dr. Alia Crum. Well, great to have you here.

(laughs) Great to be here.

Yeah. Just to start off, you know, you've talked a lot and worked a lot on the science of mindsets. Could you define for us what is a mindset and what sort of purpose does it serve?

We define mindsets as core beliefs or assumptions that we have about a domain or category of things that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals. I can, uh, distill it down for you. So mindsets are an assumption that you make about a domain. So take stress, for example, the nature of stress. What's your sort of core belief about that? Do you view stress as enhancing, good for you, or do you view it as debilitating and bad for you? Those mindsets, those core beliefs orient our thinking. They change what we expect will happen to us when we're stressed, how we explain the occurrences that happen or unfold when we're stressed, and also change our motivation for what we engage in when we're stressed. Sort of distilling down those core assumptions that really shape and orient our thinking and action.

Mm-hmm. I've heard you say before that mindsets simplify life in some way by constraining the number of things that we have to consider. Um, and it sounds to me like we can have mindsets about many things as, as you said. Uh, many people are familiar with our colleague Carol Dweck's, um, notion of growth mindset, that if we're not proficient at something that, uh, we should think about not being proficient yet, that we are on some path to proficiency. But what are some examples of mindsets, um, and how early do these get laid down, or do we learn them from our parents? So w-

Yeah, sure. So I think it's important with, with Carol Dweck's work, a lot of people kind of get focused on growth motivation and all these things. But her work really originated from thinking about what she called as implicit theories or core beliefs about the nature of intelligence or ability, right? So do you believe that your baseline levels of intelligence are fixed, static, set throughout the rest of your life? Or do you believe that they can grow and change? And the reality is, as it always is, complex and it's a bit of both and it's all these things. But as humans, we need these simplifying systems to help us understand a complex reality. But they're not inconse- inconsequential, right? They, they matter in shaping our motivation. And as she has shown, if you have the mindset that intelligence is malleable, you're motivated to work harder to grow your intelligence. If you have the mindset that it's fixed, why work harder at math if you don't think you're good at it? What our work has aimed to do is to expand the range of mindsets that we are, uh, studying, focused on, and also understand and expand the range of effects that they have. Uh, so I mentioned, you know, mindsets about stress. We've also looked at mindsets about food and healthy eating. So do you have the mindset that foods that are good for you, healthy foods are disgusting and depriving? Or do you have the mindset that healthy foods are indulgent and delicious? Generally, people, at least in our culture, in, in the West, have this view that stress is debilitating, healthy foods are disgusting and depriving. And those mindsets, whether or not they're true or false, right or wrong, they have an impact. And they have an impact not just through the motivational mechanisms that Dweck and others have studied, but as our lab has started to reveal, they also shape physiological mechanisms by changing what our bodies prioritize and prepare to do. We've looked at mindsets about exercise. Do you feel like you're getting enough or do you feel like you're getting an insufficient amount to get the health benefits you're seeking? Uh, mindsets about illness. Do you view cancer as an unmitigated catastrophe or do you view cancer as manageable? We've looked at mindsets about symptoms and side effects. Do you view side effects as, you know, a sign that the treatment is, is harmful or do you view side effects as a sign that the treatment is working? Again, these are sort of core beliefs or assumptions you have about these domains or categories. Uh, but they matter because they're shaping, they're synthesizing and simplifying the way we're thinking, but they're also shaping what we're paying attention to, what we're motivated to do, and potentially even how our bodies respond.