How to Take Smarter Risks in Life & The Lies You Tell Yourself

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1:22Michael Noll: Today on Something You Should Know, why are objects in that mirror closer than they appear? What's the point there? Then we are taking fewer risks than in any time in history.

1:35Allison Schrager: It is starting to come at a cost. I've been talking to some neurologists about this, that if you grow up not taking the risks you're supposed to as a kid, a lot of sort of brain development doesn't happen. And that might be why we're seeing more risk aversion amongst young people.

1:51Michael Noll: Also, why your cat can never enjoy dessert like you do. And you understand what propaganda is, but do you know about inner propaganda?

2:01Allison Schrager: Inner propaganda is really a set of stories that we sell to ourselves that become the beliefs that we buy into. Our brain is optimizing for what it's interested in, which is survival and stability. And the problem is because it's our brain, Therefore, we don't even challenge it.

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3:41Michael Noll: Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. I'm sure you've seen that warning on your car's rearview mirrors a million times. It says objects in mirror are closer than they appear. But have you ever asked yourself, why? Well, that's what we're going to start with today.

4:27Michael Noll: I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So why would car makers deliberately install a mirror that makes you misjudge distance and then put a warning on it that objects in the mirror are closer than they appear? Well, it's because the passenger side mirror is curved outward, and that curvature makes cars behind you look smaller and therefore farther away. But there's an important payoff. You can see a much wider area next to and behind your car. A flat mirror would give you a more accurate sense of distance, but a much bigger blind spot. So engineers deliberately trade accurate distance perception for a wider field of vision.

5:10Michael Noll: So that little warning on the mirror is essentially saying, we distorted reality a bit because it makes you safer. And that is something you should know.

5:23Michael Noll: Risk is one of those words that sounds like a warning. That sounds risky usually means maybe you shouldn't do it. But think about almost anything important in life. Changing careers, investing your money, starting a business, falling in love, having a family. There's risk in all of it. And if you spend your life trying to eliminate risk, you may also eliminate a lot of opportunity. So maybe the goal isn't to avoid risk, but to get better at taking the right risks. And that may be especially important now, because my guest says we've become increasingly risk-averse, often without realizing what the caution is costing us.

6:07Michael Noll: Allison Schrager is an economist who studies risk. She is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion, and author of the book Worth the Risk, the seven myths that keep us from taking the chances we need to take. Hey, Alison, welcome to Something You Should Know.

6:26Allison Schrager: Hi, thanks so much for having me.

6:28Michael Noll: So I find it really interesting that you say we're taking fewer risks than we used to. How do we know that?

6:36Allison Schrager: Well, it shows up in a lot of economic indicators. Anyway, we often feel like we're living in these fraught times and we see headlines about everyone getting addicted to sports gambling and all these things, the risks that really matter are actually in decline. We've become less likely to move. We've become less likely to change jobs. We're less likely to start a business. And all of this is showing up in sort of lower economic growth and actually slower wage growth.

7:03Michael Noll: But it's a generational difference, right? It's not that overall people are taking less risks than they used to. It's just that as younger people mature, they are willing to take less risks as adults. It's a generation thing.

7:19Allison Schrager: We say that about every generation. And there's a reason we say that about every generation is because each generation is getting progressively more risk averse. I'm a borderline Gen Xer. And for some reason, Gen Xers have sort of grabbed this mantle that we're this amazing risk takers because we were latchkey children. But really, like we took less risk than boomers. and millennials took less risk than us and Gen Zers take less risk. And that's partially just because as we become wealthier, as we have more technology to manage risk, we just start taking less risk. And so we see this sort of increasing risk aversion across generations.

7:57Allison Schrager: And I think it's just getting to the point, some of it's desirable. It's nice not to have a risky life. I think we in some ways feel good that teenagers aren't going around causing mayhem as much anymore. but it is starting to come at a cost particularly oh i've been talking to some neurologists about this that if you grow up not taking the risks you're supposed to as a kid a lot of sort of brain development doesn't happen you know like all these neural pathways that teach you how to be a smart risk taker as you get older just aren't there and that might be why anyway we're seeing more risk aversion amongst young people we're also seeing them when they do take risks not maybe taking the best ones, for instance, sports gambling, rather than investing in an index fund.

8:43Allison Schrager: So I think what we're seeing is this combination of people, it's harder to take risks. We've set up a society in a lot of ways where it is more expensive and the downsides feel more precarious, but we're also raising generations to be more risk averse, and then they feel unprepared to take on risk.

9:02Michael Noll: You said a moment ago that if adolescents, young people don't take the risks they're supposed to? What are the risks they're supposed to take?

9:11Allison Schrager: Well, I mean, I don't want to endorse any bad behavior, but to some degree, a lot of it is just spending time with friends and doing stupid things. You know, not that they should be drinking and being promiscuous, but they're doing a lot less of that. They're certainly doing a lot less socializing, and it is a lot of the risk-taking does happen in groups. And, you know, this neurologist I spoke to was saying that she's a professor at Vassar, that she sees these really under-socialized kids showing up, and then they're more likely to do binge drinking, because they haven't taken those smaller risks or more controlled risks when they were younger.

9:47Michael Noll: Yeah, well, I have this sense about younger people today, and the last couple of generations of younger people, that they were brought up in a world where they were told to be careful. The world is a dangerous place. And, you know, when you hear that message, you are more cautious and take less risks. Yeah.

10:12Allison Schrager: And I mean, more people survive childhood now. I mean, that's good. But on the other hand, you know, there is a cost to that. There's this sort of central truth to financial markets that, granted, people in financial markets like to pretend isn't true either, but we tend to delude ourselves in all areas of life, that you can, there's no extra reward in finance without taking on more risk. And anyone who tells you differently is defrauding you or charging you a very high fee. And that's just a hard truth no one wants to accept. But it's true in life too. If you shut children out of risk, they're just going to get less out of life.

10:47Allison Schrager: And I think that might be contributing to a lot of the sort of unhappiness. Younger people are taking less risk, but they're also really unhappy. And particularly the sort of lack of risks around socialization is very concerning. I spoke to a professor at Tulane who was telling me she took a bunch of the girls in her class out and they were saying they're afraid to date. And I assumed that was driven by risk aversion, mainly about being hurt or, you know, maybe even, you know, violence or whatever. And she said, no, they're just afraid to be out on a date and have an awkward conversation with someone they don't know well.

11:19Allison Schrager: I mean, I mean, that is part of dating, unfortunately.

11:21Michael Noll: but uh even that scared them that is so strange because you know how you get better at conversation having conversation yeah exactly and so if you avoid it you'll never get better at it so how

11:37Allison Schrager: does that help but also yeah i mean a lot of the evidence for getting to be a better risk taker is you know it's important to take risks and have them not go well and realize you know it wasn't the worst thing. And then you feel better about taking risks again. So yeah, you go and you have a bad date and you realize the world doesn't end or you realize, okay, this is how I can save this date and keep it going by being more practice at conversation. But they're just not getting these experiences.

12:02Michael Noll: Well, that is, I think, what you just said is so important about risk taking that often doesn't come up in the conversation. And that is by taking risks and failing, you realize it's not so bad much of the time. I mean, some risks have huge consequences, but most everyday kind of risks, it's just not the horror you think it's going to be.

12:25Allison Schrager: No, but we've set up this idea. I mean, we certainly see this with especially a lot of young people, especially I live in New York, and a lot of the kids in school feels so, and it might be just a social media thing. They feel like they're being watched and monitored, and they feel like if they have a setback, if they make a mistake, it's going to be there forever and haunt them for the rest of their lives rather than just adolescence is a time where you should be doing stupid things and making mistakes, saying stupid things. It's part of your developmental process. But they feel so inhibited for a lot of reasons that they can't afford to do that.

13:01Michael Noll: I want to understand, and you're the perfect person to ask this, this idea of risks in financial markets because my understanding, and I've read a bit about this, that it isn't as risky as people think in the long term, that, yeah, things go up and down, but if you invested money in almost anything 40 years ago and diversified it, you'd be doing pretty well.

13:32Allison Schrager: Most of the time, yes. It's certainly not a guarantee. I mean, that wouldn't be true if you invested in Japan, But often, yes, because really when you invest in the U.S. stock market, you're investing in the U.S. economy. So if you own almost all the stocks, you own the U.S. economy. And if you believe the U.S. economy is going to grow, then your stock portfolio will also grow with it. If we have a period of just economic calamity, maybe not. It's certainly not a guarantee that more time makes it safer. But especially if you diversify. Again, one of my points here is that it's not just go out and take any risk.

14:12Allison Schrager: There's a skill to risk taking. And what financial markets does and the financial field does is try to get your arms around how to get the most out of your risk. So how to get the biggest bang for your risk buck. And what you pay for risk is you risk loss. So how to design a good financial portfolio is how to get as much return while minimizing downsizing downside risk as much as possible. And it turns out it's really actually quite easy. You don't have to pay anyone to do it. You just have to own as many stocks as possible. That more or less works. And then, you know, as you get closer to retirement, you want to think about managing the risk that the whole stock market could collapse like right before you retire.

14:53Allison Schrager: So you want to think about that. But it really diversification is probably the only what we call free lunch in finance and that you really isn't that hard. And odds are you'll do well. The last 40 years were just extraordinary, though. I'm not sure that will ever happen again. I was just writing a column and because I was talking to my brother and I was talking about Nantucket, you know, one of the most, you know, this little island off Massachusetts full of very rich people. And I spent summers there as a teenager. And I was like, you know, it's crazy. You know, a house there in the 90s was five hundred thousand dollars.

15:31Allison Schrager: And now like the average house is more than$4 million. And my brother pointed out to me that actually isn't that crazy, considering the stock market went up even more. And I'm like, that's not true. And then I looked, and if you invested$500 ,000 in 1995 in the S &P 500, you'd have$8.5 million now. And that's if you don't reinvest the dividends. With the dividends, you'd have$12 million. I mean, if you look at stock growth going back to the 20s, that is insane. That is not normal. It could be our new normal. I don't know. But it has been a really remarkable run for stocks.

16:07Michael Noll: Well, but it's been going on for 100 years. I mean, to say it's not normal, something that lasts 100 years seems pretty normal to me.

16:16Allison Schrager: Well, it's been going up for 100 years. I mean, there's been, you know, obviously, there was the Great Depression and there was the global financial crisis. But it's been up exponential in the last 40 years. And that could just be, you know, to some degree, as I said, Stocks going up reflect growth in the economy. And you could argue that with technology now is just on an exponential curve and technology makes us more productive. So the stock market goes up with our productivity. Does that make sense?

16:44Michael Noll: Yeah. Yeah, sure.

16:45Allison Schrager: Yeah. So it could be that this exponential growth is our new normal because we've reached a point where technology is improving at an exponential rate. So it could be that or it could just be a fluke. We don't. That's the whole point of risk. You never know. If you're investing in the stock market, odds are it's the best way to get rich. It's the most reasonable way to get rich, better than becoming a tightrope walker celebrity. But it's still never really a guarantee.

17:12Michael Noll: I want to talk about some of the myths about risk that you write about that a lot of people buy into and the consequences of doing that. And we'll do that when we come back. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless.

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18:39Michael Noll: Finding a doctor is hard enough. Finding the right doctor, even harder. Someone who takes your insurance, has an available appointment when you need one, and feels like someone you can actually open up to. That's where ZocDoc comes in. Download the ZocDoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews, find the right fit for you, and book instantly. Because getting seen by the right doctor matters. ZocDoc. Ready to be seen? Download the ZocDoc app today. My guest is Allison Schrager. She is author of the book, Worth the Risk, the seven myths that keep us from taking the chances we need to take.

19:18Michael Noll: And so let's talk about some of the seven myths about risk. And you pick one to start and jump in.

19:27Allison Schrager: Well, the first one is that you know what safe is. I mean, I was thinking a lot about safety, you know, because there have been two big bad risk events, say, in the last 20 years, the financial crisis and then the pandemic. And in both of them, you noticed how people spoke about safety a lot. You know, with the financial crisis, it's like, oh, we thought we had a safe asset, you know, when no asset is really, truly safe. Or with the pandemic, it was we can go back to normal when it's safe, as if it's ever been safe. And it struck me as just really extraordinary that we've all sort of imposed this idea of safety on everyone.

20:08Allison Schrager: because in financial markets, I don't think a lot of people realize this because, you know, whatever derivative or stock market gets all the attention. But the most important asset in finance is the safe asset. Now, you could quibble about what is a safe asset if anything's really safe. But it's super important because my mentor is Robert Merton. You know, he's a finance professor at MIT. And he sort of really created with a couple other people the field of modern finance. And he always told me there's no uniform definition of risk. The only, because, you know, if you look it up, it's like some people say it's upside.

20:45Allison Schrager: Some people say if it's a risk, it means it's a bad thing is going to happen. So the only real definition we have of risk is it is what safe isn't. So safety is what defines risk because risk is its complement. So when we keep re-specifying what we mean by safe or pushing safe on people, when it's not safe to them, we've sort of forced them to misspecify risk in their own life. And that is a big reason why people don't feel comfortable taking risks, is to feel good about taking risks. You, one, not only have to manage it, but you have to be really clear on what the risk is, what you're risking for.

21:21Allison Schrager: And as long as we sort of have this idea that the safety is this pervasive thing that is obtainable and that it's the same thing for everyone, people will never feel really comfortable taking risk.

21:33Michael Noll: But the goal isn't to find safety. The goal is to play the game.

21:38Allison Schrager: It is. Well, the goal is to reach your potential and live your best life and get what you want out of life. And that's just not going to happen unless you take risk.

21:48Michael Noll: Well, another myth that you talk about, well, you say it's a myth, but I think a lot of people believe it to be true, is that we live in very precarious, risky times.

22:00Allison Schrager: You know, which is kind of ridiculous if you really think about it. Now, obviously, it's safer than it was in the Middle Ages or even, you know, the turn of the last century. You know, when, you know, people would die young before we had good sanitation, when, you know, the odds of getting cholera were high. But even compared to, say, 20, certainly compared to 50 years ago, it's even less risky around then. I think we tend to idealize the 1960s as this time when we had all the security, when you could just go to high school, get a union job, have a guaranteed job for life, have a gold-plated pension, and face no risk at all.

22:36Allison Schrager: But really, it's much safer today in a number of ways. First of all, I mean, the people who had those sorts of jobs actually weren't that many people. Particularly, it was mostly white men. You know, if you really look at risk for most people in the economy, it wasn't such a golden era. And right now the economy serves way more people, way more diversity of kinds of people, and they're a lot safer for it. even you know when I was pitching this book I was talking to an editor and he said to me he's like I read that you think that things have never been safer and I just thought you know that's absolutely ridiculous I was on my bike the other day and I was thinking if I fell and broke my back I'd you know have to spend a fortune on medical care and this could bankrupt me and I was like well first of all more people than ever have health insurance which is a great win second you know if you fell and broke your back on your bike even 30 years ago, medical care was not nearly what it is now.

23:36Allison Schrager: Now you could actually be cured. Before, you would be an invalid, potentially disabled from ever working again. So that would have been even worse. I don't think we appreciate the low-risk society that we've actually created for ourselves. And in some ways, in some aspects of it, it's not good because it's holding us back from getting what we really want out of life. But really severe downside risk has been largely sort of reduced in a level I don't think people really appreciate. And I think that makes them more scared.

24:04Michael Noll: Well, think about when people say, well, you know, that's very risky. That's never said in a way where the point is, and you should do it. It's always, well, that's very risky, meaning you probably shouldn't. The word risky doesn't mean go for it. It means don't go for it.

24:26Allison Schrager: Yeah. And we see this change in language over time. I mean, granted, originally risky did always mean that. But around the time of exploration, it started to have a more positive connotation around it. But what we see in the 19th century, which in some ways is a golden era of us being great risk takers, in my opinion, is you see sort of more positive connotations around risk. But we see starting like the 60s and 70s that started to sort of flip back. And we started to really sort of associate risk as being negative, something to be managed, something to be eliminated in our lives. And so that negative connotation has largely come back.

25:05Allison Schrager: And as I said, safety now is sort of something is what we should be aiming for. And we see that as that. I didn't say where that data comes from. It's Google Ngrams, which looks at newspapers and books, just how we're using these words.

25:19Michael Noll: Yeah, that's the thing. Safety is the goal now, it seems. in a lot of ways, in finance, in personal behavior. Like safety is the gold standard. If you can be safe, then that's better than not.

25:36Allison Schrager: Yeah, and I've just really been struck by this in the last decades about how we're hearing this more and more is the goal is safety rather than feeling like you've lived a full life, a satisfying life, like you've achieved what you want. And if the goal is safety, then you're never going to get what you want. Again, it's that sort of belief that people keep falling for in finance that you can get more and not risk loss. It just doesn't work that way.

26:03Michael Noll: Yeah. Well, and part of it too is you can, like your editor, you can take any situation and make it sound horrible. Well, what if I fell off my bike and broke my back? Well, okay, that would be horrible. But you can do that with anything. You can find a very particular story, weave it together and say, see, risk is bad because this could happen. Well, yeah, it could not happen either.

26:29Allison Schrager: Yeah, I mean, something bad is going to happen to you and everyone you love at some point in your life. It is sadly inevitable. But, you know, that can't, but bad things could also happen to you anywhere. I mean, you could, you know, go to a party and get into a car accident, but you could also get hit by a meteor or have a pipe explode while you're home. I mean, it's just, there's no way you can just completely achieve safety anyway. But if you chase it, the only thing you're going to sort of ensure isn't safety, but that you'll never get what you want.

27:00Michael Noll: Well, you know, risk is one of those topics I think people think they understand, but there's so much more to it. And I appreciate you explaining all this. I've been talking with Alison Schrager. She is an economist, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at Bloomberg, and author of the book, Worth the Risk, The Seven Myths That Keep Us From Taking the Chances We Need to Take. There's a link to her book in the show notes. And, Allison, thank you. Thanks, Mike. This has been wonderful. Finding a doctor is hard enough. Finding the right doctor, even harder. Someone who takes your insurance, has an available appointment when you need one, and feels like someone you can actually open up to.

27:39Michael Noll: That's where ZocDoc comes in. Download the ZocDoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews, find the right fit for you, and book instantly. Because getting seen by the right doctor matters. ZocDoc. Ready to be seen? Download the ZocDoc app today.

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28:32Michael Noll: When you hear the word propaganda, you probably think of governments and politicians trying to influence what you believe. But there's another kind of propaganda that may be even harder to recognize. It's the propaganda you tell yourself. Right now, your brain is selling you a story about who you are, what's true, and what you're capable of. and you may be buying into that story even if it's wrong or holding you back. So where does this inner propaganda come from? How do you recognize it and how do you stop believing it? Owen Fitzpatrick is a social psychologist who has studied propaganda firsthand in places like North Korea, Rwanda and Afghanistan.

29:19Michael Noll: His TEDx talk on mind control has been viewed more than 1.4 million times And his latest book is Inner Propaganda, Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times. Hey Owen, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you so much, Mike. Pleasure to be here. So I imagine everyone knows what propaganda is, but the term inner propaganda is not one I don't think I've heard before your book. So explain inner propaganda.

29:49Allison Schrager: Inner propaganda is really a set of stories that we sell to ourselves that become the beliefs that we buy into. We think that we logically arrive at conclusions by taking the information that comes into us from the world, and then from that, painting a picture for ourselves about exactly what's going on. But really, our brain is selling us a story, optimizing for what it's interested in, which is survival and stability. and so in order to ensure survival and stability it constructs the reality it wants us to perceive and the problem is because it's our brain it sounds like us therefore we don't even challenge it and so many of the erroneous or limiting beliefs that we find ourselves having happen as a result of this exact phenomenon sometimes we talk about inner speech but for me it's always been much stronger than that whenever i feel for example whenever i struggle with depression or anxiety whenever I feel myself in a negative mood, it doesn't just affect me in terms of how I feel.

30:48Allison Schrager: It affects how I perceive the world and what I believe about the world. And so the more I put that together, the more I traveled to various different countries like North Korea, Rwanda, Iran, and Afghanistan, the more I began to start to put the pieces together. And I realized our brain is the ultimate propaganda machine. And the more we know about it, the more we can do something about it.

31:09Michael Noll: So give me just a real common everyday example of what you just described of your thoughts and beliefs clouding your vision of the world.

31:21Allison Schrager: So let's imagine you're scrolling through your phone and you see a friend of yours is on vacation in a beautiful island in Greece and they're swimming and they're having the best time. Now, a part of you is happy for them, of course, but another part of you might be struggling because you're working so hard, you're stressed out, and you look and you see how good they have it. That immediately makes you feel a little bad. But that bad feeling that you feel doesn't just stop there. When you feel that feeling, it will also dictate and determine how you perceive what's going on around you. So let's imagine you send an email and you don't get a response back, or you text a friend and you don't get a response back the way you would expect it to.

31:55Allison Schrager: When you're in the wrong kind of emotional state, you're more likely to perceive that as something dangerous. So your brain will start to manufacture the reality that you think is going on. So before you know it you've spiraled into a sense of believing well maybe my friend actually doesn't want to get in touch maybe they're ignoring my text messages and before you know it you've built an entire reality that is inside your mind but nonetheless it feels real to you in that moment this is an example of the propaganda that we find ourselves falling for because it doesn't arrive as a negative thought or as something we're worried about it arrives as the truth and the most important thing is for us to recognize when we're experiencing this truth and understanding that it's not nearly as real as we might think it might be.

32:41Michael Noll: Can you ever trust what you believe? Can you ever have a situation where you're just right on, you're dead center, perfect? Yeah, this is really, really true. Or is it always going to be tainted by other factors that you may not even be aware of?

32:59Allison Schrager: I think it's going to be tainted to some degree, but I think that we have a very binary way of thinking about the truth. We think it's either true or it's false. And I think really what we need to do is be a lot more nuanced in the world today. The big problem is we see things as this is either a fact or it's a fiction, right? It's either true or it's false. And the problem that that gets us into is it's very difficult once we've accepted some things that invert a comma as fact, it's very difficult for us to turn around and say, well, actually, it's not a fact. Actually, it's made up. Actually, it's not true.

33:31Allison Schrager: Because we lose socially as a result of that. So I think it's much more useful to be able to see it more on a sort of a scale of how certain we feel about something. And so you could be thinking about something and feeling a sense of certainty. For example, do you love your children? Do you love your partner? And the answer, I'm sure for most people, would be yes. And they would have a feeling of certainty that would be nearing 100%. Great, that feels right. But there's lots of other situations, lots of other concepts, lots of other ideas that we might feel a sense of certainty about, but then something happens and it completely changes our entire worldview.

34:11Allison Schrager: And so what I invite people to do is to recognize when you have your sense of certainty on a scale, it means that you go in with a form of what we call Bayesian reasoning. So this came from a guy a few hundred years ago called Thomas Bayes. And the idea is that you go into any situation with a prior. That means a current belief. The way I think about it right now is this. And then you look for evidence to see what the evidence does. And the evidence might actually increase your certainty or decrease your certainty. It might give you a little bit more nuance or might make you feel a little bit more certain about whatever it is that you were talking about.

34:45Allison Schrager: The more we think in this way, the more we get away from this notion of is it true, is it false? Because there's different types of truth, really. There's the objective truth, as we mentioned, which is something you verify, which you study scientifically. But then there's believing what you want to believe, a desired truth, or believing what you feel is true, an emotional truth. Not everything is objective truth, even when we describe it that way. And I think the more we see it on a continuum, the easier it is for us to be able to make smarter, better decisions.

35:15Michael Noll: You said at the beginning that the reason that this all happens is all about your brain trying to keep you alive. survival but how does it help you survive if say you lose your job and you start believing i'll never get another job i'm gonna lose my house everything's over how is that helping you survive

35:36Allison Schrager: so when we need to survive there's a few different elements of our psychology that allows us to be able to make better decisions or at least evolves to allow us to make better decisions one of them is known as the negativity bias and this means that our brains are more likely to pay attention to what's negative because in order for us to survive in the hunter-gatherer world, we needed to pay attention to the snakes and the lions and the tigers. We didn't necessarily need to pay attention to the rabbits. Our brain got used to focusing on what's negative because by focusing on what's negative, it means we're watching our surroundings and we're vigilant about what may in fact put us in danger.

36:12Allison Schrager: But there's another aspect to keeping us safe and that is agreeing with our tribe. In many ways, believing what the tribe believes in is the membership fee we pay in order to be part of that tribe. So when you agree with everyone and believe what everyone else believes, that may well be the very thing that limits you. However, your brain is optimized to believe it because it keeps you part of that particular group. So when we do have that experience you mentioned, when we think to ourselves, I'll never get another job, this will all be doomed, everything is going wrong, it's our brain's, not very useful, but our brain's desire to be able to keep us protected that it focuses our attention on this.

36:50Allison Schrager: So it tunes us up and gets, we need to pay attention to this notion. And sometimes it might have the hidden desire of, if I believe like this, then I'll be a victim. And if I'm a victim, maybe I'll get help from someone else in the tribe. But more often than not, it's a simple case of our brain paying attention to all the problems in our life, because that's what has allowed it to survive. The problem is just believing that, as we know, just allows us to buy into a story where we constantly find ourselves struggling. because now we build a narrative as a victim of our world. When I was a therapist, I worked with many people and usually they would come in with either a victim narrative or a villain narrative.

37:28Allison Schrager: They would either say the reason for my problems is because of the world, because of my partner, because of my kids, because of my parents. Or they would come in and say the reason for my problems is because of me. I'm not good enough. I'm useless. I sabotage my life. And my job in both cases was to help them to become more agents, more of a hero in their life. And that means giving them a sense that they could make better choices and they could focus on what they could control in that moment. So when someone believes that everything's hopeless, I'll never get another job, the goal isn't to say you definitely will get another job.

37:58Allison Schrager: The goal is to be able to get them to believe that if they are able to take control of their situation, then they have a better chance to get a better job and better chance to build their life back up than if they don't.

38:08Michael Noll: help me understand because you tie in the idea of propaganda with this and you talk about you know north korea visit when you visited there but it doesn't sound like propaganda as much as it sounds like a personal belief system so explain the propaganda part to me

38:27Allison Schrager: when i experienced depression i was a teenager when i first experienced depression and anxiety and I struggle with my mental health quite vividly. And whenever I would talk to people or whenever psychologists, you would read a psychology book, for example, it would talk about your negative voice or the negative inner critic. And it never felt strong enough for me because when I was in one of those zones, I didn't feel like I was having a bad day. I didn't feel like I was thinking negatively. I felt like the world was wrong. I was completely and totally brainwashed into seeing the world in this dark way where I saw everything as hopeless.

39:00Allison Schrager: I saw myself as helpless and worthless. So there was no question about it. And when I visited North Korea, I found myself experiencing a very similar example of brainwashing in the people that I had conversations with. They were convinced that this is the way it was. They were telling me stories about the Korean War, which were very different to what I'd learned when I'd studied history in university. And so for me, the more I spent time listening to them, the more it started to remind me of what was going inside my head. There's three things happening. The first is in propaganda regimes, they have the state media where they control what you see, they control what they report in the news.

39:36Allison Schrager: So you only get information that they decide for you to get. Inside your head, when you're in the wrong kind of mode, when you're in the wrong mood, your brain will only give you, this is known as mood congruent cognition. It will only give you information that lines up with the mood that you're in. I call this the interstate media. The second piece is in propaganda cultures, they normally have what we call indoctrination, where they get everyone in the nation to all ascribe to a certain identity, which is the nation's identity, kind of like being part of a cult. But we also have that in our own mind.

40:08Allison Schrager: Our brain tends to try to align us with whatever identity it believes we have. So in the example you gave earlier, when someone is struggling with their mental health saying, I'm useless, I'm never going to get a new job, it may well be that the identity they have for themselves as a victim, as someone who's not very good, as someone who, let's say, artificial intelligence is going to take over from as a result of that particular belief about who they are no amount of reasoning with them is going to work no matter what you say to them they're going to ignore you if it conflicts with this identity of them being a victim or indeed of them being skilled in any way because they don't believe that's true about themselves so we have an internal form of indoctrination and the third element is truth engineering so in a propaganda regime we experience the truth as they use logical reasoning and they use their own evidence or facts to be able to prove this is the way the world is.

40:59Allison Schrager: And similarly too, our brain will rationalize and find ways to be able to prove why this person hates us, why we'll never get a new job. So we don't just feel it. Our brain then uses logic almost coming in at the end to prove why what we believe is true, which goes really counter to the way in which we think. We think to ourselves, well, you know, I know what the truth is but mike he's experiencing propaganda but the reality is i'm experiencing in that moment the form of what we call naive realism where i think that i'm the only one who knows what's real and everyone else is a victim of propaganda once we realize that we're the ones who are actually propagandizing yourselves it gives us the chance to be able to do exactly what we need to do to resist the propaganda on the outside we can start to recognize that whatever we feel is true in that moment may not be and it doesn't mean it's not true it just means we need to start questioning it because by doing so we give ourselves the freedom to really inspect it and investigate it and see whether or not it's not necessarily true but whether or not it's useful for us to believe

42:03Michael Noll: so before we get into what people can do to to counter their own inner propaganda i'm curious since you were in north korea and i i find that whole thing fascinating do the people when you talk to them in north korea they believe things are the way they are and are they okay with it

42:22Allison Schrager: or do they believe it really sucks well it depends who you talk to right the the guides that i spoke to you were when you're there you're very much managed and you're very much shown what they want you to see but i've done a lot of research in terms of north korea itself and what it's like behind the scenes and when i was there one of the guides for example was very prim and proper and very sort of sharp in the way in which she would describe things and very polite and very surface level and very much a big fan the other guide was much realer and had a sense of humor she actually was sarcastic which i didn't expect at all in point yang but we had long conversations we went for a few drinks and we shared different things and for her what was interesting was it wasn't that she was unhappy she had almost accepted the way it was but the struggles that she was dealing with weren't that different to the struggles of the folks that I worked with in terms of banks in London or in terms of big corporations in America.

43:21Allison Schrager: She was struggling with some of the same concerns, the same worries, maybe higher stakes, but she was still worried about her relationships with certain people, worried about gossip, worried about different things that were stressing her out. And initially she didn't even know what a psychologist did. So I had to explain that which is something i've never had to explain to anyone everyone just knows what a psychologist is but over there i had to explain what it was and it turned out that the more she learned about it the more interested she got and then we started to talk about her struggles and then i gave her some thoughts and she had a well at least she described her having a positive experience as a result of that but she was very much under the impression or under the influence of what the general messaging of the DPRK or Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea communicated to her.

44:16Allison Schrager: But she also had a mind of her own. She was super smart. She spoke multiple languages. And it was something that really stopped me in my tracks because when I arrived in North Korea, I was expecting everyone to be totally brainwashed. And the more I saw it, the more I realized it doesn't matter where you were in the world. When I went back to America, when I'm in Ireland, it's always the same. People have their beliefs and are convinced of them. And I think we need to recognize that a lot of times, the more convinced we are, oftentimes, the less we've actually spent time thinking through our reasoning and thinking through whether or not we're absolutely correct.

44:50Michael Noll: So I want to talk about what do you do when this happens to you, when you find yourself in one of those slumps where you believe this to be true when it's not. And I would imagine that a big part of it is being able to recognize what you're in when you're in it. Because if you really believe it's the truth, it's not a problem. It's the truth. So there's nothing to fix.

45:14Allison Schrager: That's the most important piece, Mike. The most important piece is to recognize right now this feels true. Right now I'm experiencing inner propaganda. And that's why the notion or the concept itself of inner propaganda is the most important piece. Because once you sort of know that this is inner propaganda going on now, then that allows you to be able to go, okay, so let me check off what is it that I can verify as a fact? What is conjecture? What is an opinion? And you can start to look into the thoughts that you're thinking. One of the exercises I like to give people is start to write out your internal dialogue.

45:51Allison Schrager: So whatever it is that you're saying to yourself in that moment, start to write it out. and then once you've written it out then start to go through it and go okay is this something that i could fact check is this something that i know is true and the more you do this the more you recognize so much of what we think as true well we haven't done any form of evidence control there's no scientific basis of this it's like sometimes i see people will put on comments or texts on a particular post on youtube or instagram or whatnot and they'll say they'll they'll make up a particular statement and then they'll say after it fact but saying fact after something doesn't make it a fact right what makes something a fact is observation is evidence right is being able to test it scientifically if we are building a skyscraper we cannot have a guess at things we need to make predictions in order to ensure that this works in order to make sure that we're able to build it same with building a plane you have to be able to make predictions and therefore science and engineering often require you to have facts but most of the rest of society doesn't really require that you always have facts and so often you'll hear politicians or you'll hear influencers or whatnot they'll say things as if they're true and they're just an opinion or a thought or perspective so i think the first step is to go right now i'm experiencing inner propaganda and it feels true and that's the most important piece is to recognize this feels like it is actually reality.

47:19Allison Schrager: And the more we do this, the more it gives us a sort of an extra bone to be able to go, given that I know that this is going to happen, and I know that I'm, let's say, under the influence, what do I need to do about this? Because we all know what it's like to be, let's say, for example, hangry. This means angry when you're hungry, and therefore you're agitated. But once you recognize you're agitated because you're hungry, you're less likely to go, oh, this person agitated me you're more likely to think well you know what i haven't eaten and that's why i'm snappy and the more we can recognize what's actually going on which is we are under the influence of this in a propaganda the less likely we are to start to think in terms of this is definitely true there's a big difference between being absolutely certain about something and something being absolutely true and just noticing and recognizing those two differences can give us the freedom to some degree stop trusting ourselves so that we can ultimately start trusting ourselves

48:16Michael Noll: well i've always thought of propaganda as something other people use to try to convince us of the truth but this is a new way of looking at it that propaganda can come from within as well as from other people i've been speaking with owen fitzpatrick he is a social psychologist who has studied propaganda all over the world, and he's author of a book called Inner Propaganda, Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Owen, I appreciate your time and thank you for sharing this. Thanks, Mike. Real pleasure. Love the show.

48:56Michael Noll: You know, your cat could lick a bowl of sugar and never experience sweetness the way you do. Cats essentially cannot taste sweet things. Scientists discovered that all cats, from your house cat to lions and tigers, are missing part of a gene needed to make a functioning sweet taste receptor. Apparently, once cats evolved into dedicated meat eaters, detecting sugar wasn't particularly useful. What's even stranger is that cats can taste some things we cannot, including a compound called ATP. It's found in living cells and may help signal the presence of meat. So if your cat seems interested in your ice cream, it probably isn't the sugar that's attracting him.

49:44Michael Noll: It could be the fat or something else entirely. But for a cat, dessert basically doesn't exist. And that is something you should know. This podcast is produced by Jeffrey Havison, Jennifer Brennan, and the executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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