That Background Hum of Worry in Every Important Conversation — Here's What It Is and How to Quiet It | Claude M. Steele

0:03Hey, everybody, it's Dan Harris. Welcome to the 10 % Happier podcast. Today, we're talking about social anxiety. Whether you consider yourself to be socially anxious or not, we all interact with people pretty much every day who are different from us. The difference could be gender, it could be age, it could be position on the power hierarchy at work, It could be race. It could be political persuasion on and on. And so these differences, according to my guest today, create stress and even physical agitation. The term that my guest uses is churn. Said guest is Claude M. Steele, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of a new book, Churn.

0:45We're going to talk about how to deal with churn and much more after this quick break. We'll see you soon. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I've got exciting news. If you love this show, but do not love listening to the advertisements, a subscription to my app, 10 % with Dan Harris, now includes a private ad-free feed of the 10 % Happier podcast available on whatever platform you choose, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right inside the app itself. Plus, along with an ad-free listening experience, the app also gives you a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers, exclusive live stream events with me and many of our incredible instructors, and robust and supportive discussion threads where you can ask questions, share your struggles, and connect with our growing community.

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4:46Claude M. Steele, welcome to the show. Great pleasure to be here. Let me start with a very basic question. What is churn? Yeah, churn is, you did a great job in the introduction. It's the tension we have in diverse settings of the sort that you described, where you're bringing people of different backgrounds and identities together in important settings. It's the tension we might have about, you know, what should we say? How should we say it? What should we do? How should we do it? A general concern about how our identity is going to affect our experience in the setting, whether we'll be accepted, whether we'll be valued, whether we better be on the lookout.

5:25Churn is that thought, I think it's experience, the everyday word for it is just plain worry and trying to figure out how to cope with this situation and the ambiguity it presents. That's what churn is. It is a tension of that sort. The more important the situation, it's important to stress, the more intense the churn can be. If we're just sitting on a subway car, churn would be pretty light. There's no consequences for us. There are no stakes involved. But if we're in an employment situation or we're in a classroom or we're in a traffic stop, the churn can be a pretty intense emotional experience.

6:10And that's what the book refers to is that emotional experience. Somebody like me, who I have all the privileges, straight, white, male, born into an upper middle class family, on and on, all the advantages that one can have in this society. Does somebody like me experience less churn than somebody who's from a marginalized group? You can probably live comfortably and meet your needs without having to be in many situations that are diverse, where you have to, in order to get your needs met, deal with people from different backgrounds and different identities. So just given the organization of society, the privilege that you describe may keep you from having to do that as much as other people might have to do.

7:04that is, let's say, an African-American. In order to meet one's needs, they have to transact with the mainstream society on a regular basis to buy clothes, get food, to go to school. Because of that organizational fact, they may more often in their daily lives encounter the experience of churn. What about in interactions with anybody who works for me Or if I'm at a party and I'm talking to somebody who's from a different generation, uh, or if I'm interacting with a barista who's a different race, like if it strikes me that talking across any of these forms of difference, it doesn't have to be race.

7:51It can be age. It can be, uh, uh, hierarchical. There's always the fear of fucking it up, you know, like of saying the wrong thing. Republicans, Democrats. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. You could experience it in all those situations. You won't experience it very much if the stakes are low. In the case of the barista, for example, it doesn't make too much difference to your life how that interaction goes as long as you get your coffee. uh and but if it if the interaction is with co-workers in your uh you know in your office and in your workplace or if it's uh with um you know um your doctor or your lawyer uh or with the police officer who pulls you over uh then then churn could get to be much more intense i would imagine one of the big theaters for churn that everybody, no matter what your age, race, gender is, would be dealing with your boss.

8:55There's no doubt about that. For most of us who have bosses or colleagues that have some authority over us, depending on how you put it, churn can be significant there because you don't want to, you know, you're worried. Is my identity, is my political orientation? Is my gender? Is my sexual orientation? Is that going to be a factor in my relationship with this person who has the authority over me? And you don't know for sure. You don't know that it will. It's not like you're jumping to conclusions. But the question is open. There's ambiguity there. And that's what Chern is trying to wrestle with, is trying to get a sense of how can I feel in this?

9:41How much can I trust this situation? How comfortable can I be in this situation? I have a great example in the book. I opened the book with a story about a parent-teacher conference. Imagine a parent-teacher conference. The student is a seventh grader, and he's African-American. His parents are African-American. And the teacher is white. And this is, as the parents get ready to go to the conference, this is important to them. It's not a passing thing. This is their son's important school experience, and they know how their group can be stereotyped in society. They know how people might look at, they don't know for sure that they will, but they know that they might see, you know, not see him as having the greatest, strongest abilities, or maybe take a small transgression on his part is something indicative of an underlying aggressiveness problem.

10:41And this is such an important opportunity for them to talk to the teacher and thus the school, make sure that these people are trying not to see their son through the lens of these stereotypes. So as they get in the car together to go to the meeting, they're talking, you know, let's don't jump to race right away. It may have nothing to do with that, But what kind of teacher is this? And do you think these stereotypes would play a role for her? Do you think that she's colorblind? Do you think she's comfortable with the realities of race in the United States? Or what do you think? So as they arrive at the meeting, they're in full churn.

11:21They're sitting on the edge of their seats. This is an important meeting, and they're ready to sort of, you know, deal with the ghosts of history, so to speak, in this situation, to make sure, to ensure as best they can that their son is given the benefit of the doubt. The teacher, on her part, has probably an equally strong form of churn going on as she prepares for the meeting. she knows the stereotype of her identity, in this case, her racial identity. And she knows that she tries really hard to serve the interest of her students and to be sensitive to the needs of minority students. But how can she convey that directly to the parents?

12:06And so she worries that even a slightly negative comment about the young man that may be intended to really foster his development could be mistaken as racist, given the stereotypes about her identity that are relevant in that situation, that it raises that possibility. She doesn't know that she will be seen that way, but she knows she could be seen that way. And so the ambiguity, the tension that she faces getting ready for this meeting is that, oh my goodness, I don't want to be seen that way. It would be so painful to have them see me that way. So here's a, she too is in churn, an intense form of churn.

12:52This is the analysis of what can be uncomfortable about being in diverse settings, is our vulnerability to being seen through the lens of negative stereotypes about one or another of our identities. when we come together in a diverse way, as in this parent-teacher conference, that can happen. One thing I want to stress right at the outset, I'm going into the darkest part of the analyses here, but I want the listeners to know that the analysis gets very helpful in just a bit, because there is a remedy for churn. And I would like to feel that the remedy for churn is manageable by all of us, available to all of us, much more so than we think, and has been an underappreciated pathway to low-churn interactions, to trusting in a situation.

13:47It's something we haven't thought about as much, but it's something that I think can be very powerful in these kinds of situations. I want to emphasize your point about how we're going to get to churn mitigation strategies forthwith, but let's stay on the level of the problem for a while. When we're in churn, what is happening to us psychologically and physiologically? That's a very good question. What's happening to us psychologically is that we've got, you know, kind of another motor running in the background of our thinking and processing a motor that affects both our emotional reactions, the intensity of those reactions, blood pressure, Skin conductance would be how we psychologists would measure that kind of thing.

14:33And cognitively, at the level of thinking, it's like we're multitasking. We're doing two things. We're, in addition to doing the task in front of us, talking about in that example the performance and the promise and so on of the young student, we're also monitoring how we're seen and whether we are confirming stereotypes about our identity and we're busy kind of worrying about that. So it's as if you have a worry tape going on in the back of your thinking that's absorbing some of your mental energies and focus and can probably interfere right there in the immediate situation with how well you perform in it, how well you do, how natural you feel, how comfortable and authentic you feel in this situation.

15:22I like to think about this on the level of the brain as well. And let me tell you the way I think about it and understand it. And then please fact check me. I've been very interested in the research around what's called psychological safety. I know you're familiar with this, but just for the audience, psychological safety is essentially in an organization. And it could be a professional organization or any group of humans, a family, a sports team, a volunteer organization, how comfortable do the people on the lowest end of the hierarchy feel speaking up and speaking their minds and telling the truth?

15:59And there's been some research that shows that organizations that have the, and even teams within organizations that have the highest level of psychological safety perform the best. And I think about this through the way what we know about the brain. And again, I'm looking for you, Claudia, to eventually fact check me here if I've run afoul of the facts. But what you want in an effective conversation and an effective interaction is for the rational, logical, creative part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, the newest part of the human brain to stay online. And the amygdala, the fear center, the lizard brain, the oldest part of our brain to stay offline.

16:45Because when we're scared, when we're stressed, the prefrontal cortex cannot fully flower and flourish. And so I think a lot to the best of my ability about keeping people's prefrontal cortex online and not activating the amygdala. It obviously is going to happen. And sometimes, you know, you just can't prevent it. But to the best of my ability, that's what I'm thinking about. So how does all of that land with you? Yeah, that is a perfect description of what can happen when a person is under this kind of in churn, under the kind of threat of being seen through stereotypes, stereotype threat. In fact, there's research which shows exactly that pattern of brain reaction for participants when they're under stereotype threat.

17:36Women performing very difficult math. They're very committed to being good at it. They are very good at it. But they're in a high-stakes situation, and they're performing at the frontier of their skills compared to the men in exactly that same situation. Women, because of the stereotypes out there about their math abilities, their STEM abilities, they have a pattern, just as you describe it. There's a suppression of activity in the prefrontal cortex, the rational part of the brain. They need to do well on the task in front of them. And there's an increase in activation in the amygdala, which is sensitive to threat in the situation.

18:17So there is precisely that pattern of brain reaction when people are under this kind of identity threat and are in churn. Churn looks like that. Why does this happen? Why does interacting across lines of difference, why is it so fraught? That's a very central question in our work. I think the dominant feeling is that these kind of tensions reflect prejudices and biases and the like. Again, while not diminishing the importance of those phenomenon, prejudices and biases, I'm pretty convinced at any rate that this is something different than that. I think what's threatening about it is that I just don't want to be seen and treated in terms of those stereotypes in situations that are important to me.

19:12I just don't want that to happen. And I'm trying to cope with that as a threat in a situation that's important. It could be a classroom, a workplace, and so on. It could be a doctor's office, a traffic stop. I'm trying to cope with the possibility that I could be seen and treated that way. How do I respond to it? So I think that's what initiates it, triggers it. And I think it's often misinterpreted. We don't know how to interpret it. Does this reflect me being prejudiced and biased? No, I'm arguing it reflects a pretty rational reaction to a perceived threat in a situation based on my identity.

20:00I'm a bit older, and that's an identity. And there are circumstances where I'm with younger people, and they might have views about older people. Maybe they think of older people as not being as up-to-date on issues and the like, or maybe not being as tech-savvy as other people. And in situations where those things are important, the possibility of being seen that way and treated that way is threatening. And I'm in churn trying to cope with it. Well, how do I cope with this? How do I convince them I'm not this way? What's the best way for me to proceed in this situation? When I'm with just older people, I'm a lot less worried about that because we're all older and, you know, and we're not going to, I'm pretty confident we're not going to see each other in terms of these ageist stereotypes.

20:54So I can relax a little bit more. But when the situation becomes diverse, that's where the threat enters the picture. And part of my brain races into churn while I'm trying to deal with the task at hand. I really resonate with what you said about going into churn around age. I'm a little bit younger than you. I don't know your exact age. I'm 54 and I interact. I'm considerably older than you. You should feel no threat. Okay. What I do feel threatened with is I work with and sometimes work out with a lot of younger people. And as soon as we get into a technical discussion or somebody's trying to show me how to do something on my phone or I need to share screen on Zoom, and then I'm screwing it up and then my mind's like, oh, everybody's thinking I'm old.

21:50I'm the unk who can't, you know, function in this setting. And then I lose my ability to, like, hold it together. Yeah, to pay attention to what's right in front of you. Whereas if you were younger and that wasn't an issue, you know, you just automatically, without a second thought, so to speak, without any churn, you just pay attention to what they're telling. Oh, you do it this way, huh? Oh, okay, all right. But when we older people are, this triggers a worry in us that, oh my goodness, they're going to think the worst of me here based on those stereotypes I know that are out there about older people.

22:29And it puts us in churn and that interferes with our functioning in that situation. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. IQ bars are better for you. Clean plant protein bars packed with fiber and brain-boosting nutrients with zero added sugar. You no longer have to choose between healthy or delicious snacks. IQ bars, plant protein bars are packed with high-quality ingredients to help keep you physically and mentally fit. You won't find any unrecognizable ingredients on their label. The number one ingredient in their bars is almonds. IQ bars are free from gluten, dairy, soy GMOs and artificial sweeteners.

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25:26we've talked about the problem yeah i think we've got given the problem a good airing uh so let's pivot to what do we do about it uh and i know you've written a whole book about that but like i'll start with a very broad question uh what do we do about it there's an approach that we can all take in our lives as individuals and and even in in larger situations even in institutions, corporations, an approach we can take that reduces this churn and gives us a way of responding. That's where the hopefulness comes in, is that there is a pathway to coping with it that can reduce our stress, our churn, and that pathway is trust building.

26:07That's the proposed answer in this line of thinking, is that what that churn between the parents and the teacher, for example, is reflecting a kind of difficulty in trusting each other. Can I really trust that I won't be misread, mistreated in this situation? That's something I don't think we've appreciated as much as we should, is that it is fundamentally an issue of trust. One way of putting it, as I try to in the book, is this conflict between remembering and forgetting. Both the parents and the teacher have this mental conflict. Do I remember how my group can be seen in society and perhaps in this situation because that's relevant here?

26:53Or do I just forget that and trust that I won't be seen that way? I can just relax here in this situation. That's a kind of way of capturing the kind of trust that I'm talking about. If I can decide, if the teacher and the parents can decide, oh, I'm going to be safe here. I know this person. I've seen her do this. There's sort of a reservoir of trust that has been built up between these parties. then the conversation can go forward without all that churn. And the information can be, and the thinking between them can be unobstructed. It can be quite calm and constructive, as I say. That's the pathway to the hopefulness here, is that there is an antidote to churn.

27:44And that antidote is trust and the ability to build trust. And that's what the book marches us through is look at this at the just between individuals, how how trust building can reduce churn. How do we operationalize this beyond that very specific example? There are so many other situations in which we're giving feedback that are not teacher-student and maybe not over a racial divide. It could be I'm giving a feedback to anybody on my team and they're going to be on the lookout for, you know, am I safe in my job and how can I deliver feedback in that situation? or to my son who might feel like he's got a localized stereotype of not working hard enough on his homework.

28:31And I'm not seeing him clearly because I'm looking at him through that lens. So how do we broaden what you call the wise feedback formula? A bit of a story about where the term wise comes from. It was an ethnography done by a very famous sociologist Irving Goffman of gay life in San Francisco in the 1950s when that identity was heavily stigmatized, not just stereotyped, but deeply stigmatized. Gay men of that era had a term for straight people who they knew they could trust, and they called them wise. Oh man, he's wise. You don't have to worry about him. He sees our full humanity despite the stigma that we have to deal with in this society at this time.

29:23So that's where I come up with the term wise. It is behaving in some way that people understand that you see their full humanity even though they're different, and even though there are stereotypes about that difference, if I can manage somehow to convey that. So that becomes kind of the operational question that the book tries to develop. Well, how can I be wise with people? Well, I think the focus should be on building trust. And there, I think we humans have some good intuitions, and we probably do it in a maybe without being aware of it as such, we probably do it quite commonly in our lives.

30:11We know how to build that trust. And I think that is a mode of functioning, as a way of behaving in our important settings. That is a general strategy for being wise that allays this identity threat, enables churn to go very low, and to make our interactions with each other more constructive. There are many examples in my life where I've experienced friendship like that across identity divide where people really just got to know me and figured out what I needed and tried to help me get it. I trust that person then. I trust them. I don't worry that my identity is a problem in that situation. Some of the closest relationships I've ever had are from friendships like that where people, you know, help me cope with a real life situation.