Angela Duckworth on the Hidden Forces Shaping Your Kid's Behavior

0:00Dr. Aliza Pressman:So many families are overwhelmed by the food choices out there. That's why I'm such a fan of Little Spoon. Their plates are heat-and-eat meals with superfoods and veggies, great for picky eaters and getting mealtimes on the table in minutes. And their lunchers are better-for-you versions of the classics we all grew up with, perfect for backpacks and busy days while still delivering real nutrition and all-day fuel with over 10 grams of protein per meal. Feeding the kids doesn't have to be complicated. Little Spoon makes it easy with real, nutritionally balanced meals and snacks designed for every stage.

0:35Dr. Aliza Pressman:It shows up ready to go, takes the pressure off, and somehow still gets devoured, veggies and all. No artificial dyes, flavors, or sweeteners either. And you know what? That's a win we can take any time. Get 30 % off your first online order at littlespoon.com slash humans with the code humans. That's L-I-T-T-L-E-S-P-O-O-N dot com slash humans with the code humans for 30 % off your first order. I hope my daughters make better choices than I did. And I hope part of that wisdom is to understand the power of the situation, to understand that if you want a gritty kid, an honest kid, a kind kid, you need to set them up in situations physically and socially that will make all of those positive character strengths happen, unfold in a very natural way.

1:36Dr. Aliza Pressman:I'm so excited to welcome Dr. Angela Duckworth. I think you all know her because of her massive book, Grit. But if you don't, she is a brilliant psychologist. She's a MacArthur Genius Grant winner. And in addition to her number one New York Times bestselling book, Grit, she has a new book called Situated. And this conversation is almost like the prequel to Grit, kind of the way we can set things up to promote more grit and flourishing. So have a listen. And I'm so glad to have her here on Raising Good Humans to talk about what it really means to set our children and ourselves up to thrive. I'm Dr.

2:19Dr. Aliza Pressman:Aliza Pressman, developmental psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, associate clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, and the host of Raising Good Humans podcast. I am so glad you're here. I wanted to start kind of talking about creating that deliberate environment based on who your child is and how that relates to being situated. I'll start with the very probably creative question of like, what do you mean by situated? I think it's a great question, Aliza. What I mean by being situated is that you are around people and in places that really do bring out your very best self.

3:08I think in some ways the idea of being situated is obvious and in some ways so abstract as to be incomprehensible at first. But just as an example, when I teach classes at the Wharton School, I have MBA students who are in their 20s. They're not in childhood. They're not even in adolescence, but they're still growing up like the rest of us. And I like to ask them to remember a time in their life where they were really gritty. They were incredibly passionate and persevering. And nobody has a problem remembering a time that they really worked incredibly hard towards something that they cared about.

3:50And they really did feel like they were at their best. Then I asked them to think about a time that was the exact opposite, right? Where they're like, you know, kind of lazy, dragging their feet, procrastinating, not getting things done, not feeling confident, not feeling like they loved what they were doing. And there's no problem recalling episodes like that in their lives. And I have the same stories. I ask them those questions because I just, I think it brings home in a tangible way, The difference between being situated in a great place with people who are role models for you, who are encouraging you, who believe in you, and around objects that remind you of your values and the opposite.

4:36And I think that there's a world of difference between a great situation and a situation that is your enemy in every way.

4:45Dr. Aliza Pressman:And I'm thinking about even your students, even the very nature of where they are is offering them opportunities to be around people who kind of bring out the best in them. Yeah, if you're getting an MBA, that's the hope. It's not a cheap thing to do, as you know, nor is moving to Philadelphia if you're going to the Wharton School. But yeah, the decision to get an MBA or these decisions that all of us make, those are decisions whether we are mindful and conscious or not. We are always putting ourselves in situations that will influence us. And as somebody who is a fellow student of human nature, you know the research on how easy it is to overlook the power of the situation.

5:36I think many psychologists have studied it. I don't know if anybody's made a greater contribution than Lee Ross, who coined the term the fundamental attribution error, to describe the mistake that we make when we see a person of any age, but including children, behave a certain way, say a certain thing, even feel a certain way, and attribute it entirely to just who that person is. and to ignore, well, what situation? What was everybody else saying? What was everybody else doing? What were the objects that were within view? What culture were they in? And I think this fundamental attribution error is in some ways where this book all starts because if we're not aware of our situations and we only focus on what's inside the head, then we're missing, I think, a very important part of the picture, not only when we think about other people, but when we think about ourselves.

6:34Dr. Aliza Pressman:It's also the most so much more hopeful because you can actually do something. This is like action oriented. Well, you know, I think some would argue like, oh, it's not healthy or recommended or even honorable to think about our situations because we should really focus on what we can control. And what we can control is our attitude and our mindsets and our goals. I think that you can control things inside you. And like you just said, I think you can control many of the things outside of you. And the profound point that's, I think, hard to make. I hope I did it well. But, Lisa, I think the profound point is that so much of human behavior is reactive.

7:27It's like we just, you know, eat what's in front of us. If the plate is big, we eat more. I mean, research shows that those statements are true. Like, you know, small plates, small portions. You just sort of eat what's in front of you. If your phone is in your hand, there's a very good chance you're going to look at it or pick it up, like, you know, bring it to your face. Like, if it's in another room, it's a lot less likely. In so many ways, our physical and also our social environment are pulling us like gravity to do certain things. And we can be oblivious to it. I think that was the point of the lifetime research of Lee Ross.

8:08I think the point that I would like to make is that if it's true that the situation is like gravity, this invisible force that's exerting a pull on us to do certain things, to say certain things, to walk a certain way, to talk a certain way, then we should choose which gravitational forces are doing that pulling. and we should be intentional about it. We should become aware of our situations and we should have a sense of agency. I don't know that that's the obvious aspect of situations, not only that they're important, but also that we can change them. But I think we can.

8:43Dr. Aliza Pressman:Yeah, and I think you're talking not about changes that are out of our control. You're talking about the things that we actually, the smaller things. I think mentioning the phone is a great one and I know you're doing research on this as well. But that's a very simple thing that can adjust a lot of what's happening for young people and old people alike. And so I don't think it's about the neighborhood that you're growing up in. You can't necessarily make certain changes. Sometimes you can. But I think I find this very hopeful when you really focus on, okay, well, what about this can I shift? So I want to focus on that with you.

9:27Dr. Aliza Pressman:And maybe you can give some of those examples that are completely in some ways in our control because we can make the choice. Can you talk about some of the ones that feel a little bit less big? I think the objects in your personal space are a great place to start because the idea of immigrating to a different country or picking up and moving like Taylor Swift did to Nashville, Tennessee, so that you could become a country music star. Those are big. let's not start there but maybe let's get there let's start with our personal space that's what's within three feet of you and scientists who study you know proximity and stuff like they will often define that as a very important boundary you know three feet is different from even four feet or five feet and why is that i think it's because within three feet is within reach you don't have to get up.

10:19And what we can drink or eat or look at or pick up without getting up has a greater gravitational pull. And I want to make the argument that this metaphor of gravity is actually the perfect way to think about the gravitational pull, the psychological pull of the objects that are within sight and within reach. One of the studies that I did with teenagers in collaboration with the Gallup organization, but also in other data collection efforts with large school districts. Very simple research study. You just ask students, where do you keep your phone when you are studying for a big test? And there are five options.

11:03The closest one is, oh, right next to me with the screen up and the sound on. Don't want to miss any notifications, right? The farthest option is in another room. And I have asked an analogous question, by the way, of adults about like where they keep their phone when they're sleeping. The great majority of American adults, it turns out, keeps their phone within reach, within three feet. Absolutely. On the nightstand. That's true for their kids as well. And very few American adults or kids like do charge their phone, keep it overnight in another room. Why does this matter? Well, if the psychological pull of temptation is like gravitational pull, like a function of distance, right, then you would guess that this physical distance from that temptation will also create that psychological distance to resist the temptation.

11:55And that's what we find. So when we match the data from phone position to academic achievement, we find the farther the phone, the higher the GPA. And I know that's correlational, but I've done experiments, too, where you randomly assign kids to learn that when they edit their personal spaces, when they decide that they're not just going to use willpower to get off their phone, to study, you know, to do the things that they want to do, whether that's working out or, you know, really like anything that you have on your list of important goals, that rather than like just forcing yourself to do it, Like you could just use your personal space to your advantage.

12:39Put the things that you don't want to do far away and put the things that you do want to do close to you. You know, it's true for kids. And just to say one thing about those American adults, I've, you know, been surprised to see that so many of, I guess, my peers in this country are, you know, sleeping next to their phones. I'm not somebody who sleeps with their phone in their room. I think for some people, they don't care. Like it's not something that they are trying to manage and they don't care that they're on their phone until they go to bed. And they also don't care that the phone is the first thing that they look at in the morning.

13:17If you don't care, then keep your phone wherever you want. But if you do care, then I think, you know, you should you should edit that situation.

13:25Dr. Aliza Pressman:That point is you're you're getting into a whole other thing that I wanted to ask you about, because it's true. I have a few friends who are like, I'm not looking at social media anymore. It's ruining my life. It's making my nervous system unhinged. I'm so – like I'm done. And they go off and on and announce it to me fairly regularly. And I never have because I don't really have an intense relationship with social media. And I definitely – You don't need to delete Instagram from your phone because you're like, I don't have a problem, right? Yeah. But I definitely think that's just my orientation and I would not count on that with someone else.

14:09Dr. Aliza Pressman:I would not count on leaving cookies out for me. That would be a stupid thing for me to do. And so I would announce I'm not eating cookies. Yeah. And then maybe not have the cookies within three feet of you. Within three feet because I definitely. It's a profound point. What tempts one person isn't necessarily what tempts another. And the fact that, you know, many of us have, you know, ambivalent relationship with our phones doesn't mean that everybody does or with everything on those phones. I mean, for my husband, Jason, like, you know, the other day we were eating French fries. We have this like new ritual, which I really like, which is to have a burger and fries the first week of every month, which is to say that we are not eating burgers and fries for the rest of the month.

14:55But yeah, we're trying to make them good burgers on fries, make it count. But if there is a plate of fries in front of Jason Duckworth, like he will just go all the way to the end. I mean, even if they're cold and soggy, like he just, you know, like, and, but it's not true for everything, but I do think it's just a question that we can all ask ourselves. Like, what do we want to do more of? Let's friction down those things. Like, you know, a lot of people say they want to read more. Like many people who like consider themselves readers, I'm astonished at the drop in reading, actually nationwide at all ages.

15:28If you do want to read more, put books everywhere, put them on your nightstand. Like, you know, when we moved into our house, there were fewer books than there were televisions. That said a lot about, you know, the former inhabitants of the house. It's like, well, you know, televisions are everywhere. Like, that's what you're going to look at. If you want to watch television more, that's a great strategy. If you want to watch it less, make it harder. Yeah, exactly. Like take out the televisions, which is in fact what we did. Not all of them, but most of them. So it's a really simple principle.

16:00What's surprising to me is how overlooked it is. When I do research on kids and adults and I lay out all the different ways that you can manage your behavior. And I say, you know, willpower, you could also like think differently, you could reframe, you know, food is, you know, like fuel. There are all these ways that we can regulate ourselves. Universally, you know, at all ages, it's like, oh, yeah, we should probably like fix the situation rather than rely on willpower. But then in the very same breath or in the very same survey, if you ask like, well, what do you do? People are like, oh, I use willpower.

16:37So I think it can be in some ways obvious, but in some ways tragically overlooked, You know, the tweaks that we can make to our situation so that we wake up in the morning and we go through our day and we go to bed at night, the things that we want out of life, the people that we want to be because of the situations we've created for ourselves, that all of that comes easier.

17:01Dr. Aliza Pressman:So that's another one of the things I so appreciate about the way you talk to young people. I'm totally focusing on young people just because. I think we both love young people a lot. Yeah. It's good to talk about them. And also to your point, like we, the adults, the constantly developing adults get to think about like, in fact, I just realized, okay, I'm not feeling super challenged by the phone situation. I have many other challenges. And also I'm trying to instill really good habits in my young people. Yeah. So they need to not just expect that the reason why I don't take Instagram off my phone is because I have willpower.

17:47Dr. Aliza Pressman:They need to just see it off my phone because I'm also modeling. So I think there's something there where we can, as the adults, think like, what am I good at and what are my values? And are there some things like not as natural to the other people in my life? Are some things more natural to them than to me so that we give them the opportunity to see that situation? in our lives. We both agree that like kids show up differently, you know, they, they have very different temperaments. And I, I, I strongly believe that there are, you know, some kids where you hardly have to ask them to study, you know, say please and thank you, you know, clear their plate, you know, clean up their room.

18:28I think though, for all kids, um, no matter their temperament, they benefit so much from modeling. Why is that so important now? I don't want to sound judgy, but I'll confess this is very judgy. When I'm at an airport or, you know, a park and I see very young kids who are doing the things that young kids do, you know, like trying to get mommy's attention or daddy's attention. And sometimes, and with greater frequency, it feels those kids have screens in their hands, in which case they're not doing the kinds of things that little kids do. They're like just, you know, they're like amazingly adept with like, you know, thumbs like, you know, like they're like, they're like scrolling through, they've, you know, figured out how to do things with two fingers, with three fingers, with their thumbs.

19:17Sometimes though, those parents, it seems, have intentionally not given their one, two, three, four, five, six, seven year old a screen. But many of those parents are themselves on screens. And so what are you doing if you're modeling, you know, basically looking at your phone every few seconds? I mean, you know, these kids are like, mommy, look at this. And the mom does eventually look over. But like, you know, your child is watching you do what you think is important or what you seem to think is important. And I think your point about being intentional as a role model, I don't think that means being perfect, but I mean, you are being watched.

19:58And modeling is the first and earliest, most foundational form of human learning there is.

20:05Dr. Aliza Pressman:I remember when my oldest was four and people here have heard me tell this story, but it was when BlackBerrys were around. They were a thing. They were a thing. And I thought I was very good about screen time, but she made a Lego BlackBerry. And I was like, okay. I'm obviously delusional about my use of the BlackBerry. Okay. I have a BlackBerry story, but it's not a BlackBerry. So on Mother's Day, I got my Mother's Day card and my daughters were still, you know, young enough to be like drawing mommy and, you know, like, and the card is me on my laptop. Like, you can only see the very top of my head.

20:48And then there is this like, you know, like the sort of like, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. So how old were they? I don't know, like kindergarten, first graders. It's like, oh, that's what my kids see. It is sobering. It is sobering.

21:00Dr. Aliza Pressman:It is sobering. It might be a good exercise, not to make anybody feel bad, but just like it does let you know, like, okay, this is what they see, regardless of what I think I'm doing. The thing that matters is what they're observing. So I do think that, you know, beginning with our personal spaces is empowering. I think if you do little experiments, I mentioned that my husband, Jason, will just finish all the fries. And again, some people have no problem finishing the fries. Like in many cases, Jason is like, I cannot eat this gallon size, you know, container of fries. I shouldn't anyway. Try this.

21:38Like literally push the plate farther away than you can reach. I guarantee it will reduce what you eat off that plate. And if you really want to go all in, you can do what I did the other day with Jason. I was like, watch this. It was like being a magician. I just laid my napkin lightly over the plate. So now it was out of reach. And also like he just couldn't see them. Yeah, you just otherwise would have to peek under the... You have to peek under. And it's just, you know, there's a reason why advertising is so colorful and like attention grabbing. It's like, it's, you know, when you can't see it, it's not real.

22:14In fact, Danny Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics and was a great psychologist and I'm very appreciative to say he was a mentor of mine. He's like, what you see is all there is. Meaning if it's out of sight, it really is out of mind. And Jason could just experience it. It's a wonderful experiment to do because you're like, hey, let me just see what happens. in an instant, Jason's desire to reach for a fry went down from like nine and a half to like two, just because he'd have to get up out of his seat and reach over to my side of the table. And also he couldn't even see it. So I think it's a simple, but it's a profound way to get a sense of how much your situation is beckoning you to do things that you in your better judgment may or may not want to do.

23:03I mean, obviously it's not the only aspect of your situation. And I have thought a lot about, you know, the people who we surround ourselves and how, as you've observed, you know, how important that is, you know, role models and otherwise. But I think starting with your personal space is a great, like, you know, it's a great, like, step one, you know, like, you know, learning about your situation 101 really does begin with the objects.

23:26Dr. Aliza Pressman:And it's so, by the way, easy to do as a fun activity, like with Jason and the French fries, because then you get kids, how effective it is. So you're, you can do it with your kids. And then I think that's great.

23:43Dr. Aliza Pressman:Can we talk about the snack drawer standoff for a second? Because in a lot of houses, once kids hit a certain age, snack time stops being simple and it stops being very much in your control. So what worked for little ones does not fly with teens who suddenly have opinions about everything and totally different schedules and half the time you're reading the pantry too because parenting older kids is a totally different thing. That's actually why Kodiak Chewy Bars have become an any age, any person snack. In our house, that person includes me. The s'mores and chocolate chip flavors have seven grams of protein per serving and they're made with whole grains and real ingredients.

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