MIT Neuroscientist: How to Wire Your Brain for Optimism Today - Dr Tali Sharot

0:00Optimism as well as optimism bias is actually correlated with success. is correlated with success in every domain, business, sports, academia, politics. It's kind of like this cliche thing where you have to think that you're going to get the gold in order to get the silver. Are people that have an optimism bias happier? Yes, absolutely. Our happiness is mostly related not to actually what we're doing at the moment, but what we believe we'll be doing later on. I'm going to ask you what I consider to be probably one of the biggest existential questions, which is, are our brains a consequence of nature or nurture?

0:42Dr. Tali Sherot is a world-renowned neuroscientist leading research on decision-making, optimism, emotion, and human behavior. As a neuroscience professor at MIT and UCL and director of the Effective Brain Lab at University College London, she investigates how our minds form beliefs, make choices, and maintain hope work that has reshaped our understanding of optimism and influence. Her best-selling books, The Optimism Bias, The Influential Mind, and Look Again, apply brain science to improve everyday decision-making and create behavioral change. Every thought that you have, every emotion that you feel, every decision that you make is happening up here.

1:15So if you want to understand yourself, if you want to understand society, we kind of need to start by looking inside. If you are under high stress, then that can actually lower your optimism. Right now we're living in chronic stages of stress. Does that mean that we right now live in a world in which we are more pessimistic? So emotion is contagious. How I feel will impact how you feel. If I'm stressed, you're going to be a little bit more stressed. And if my facial expressions is of happiness, of joy, you will slightly mimic those. Your face is like mimicking the other person. It actually translates into a feeling.

1:58What is the thing that fascinates you the most about our brains?

2:06Dr. Sharrott, thank you for joining me. For those who don't know you, can you tell them what is it that you do for a living and why is it important? Sure. So I'm a cognitive neuroscientist, which is basically a combination between brain science and psychology. And I mix in a little bit of behavioral economics as well. So I try to understand the brain mechanisms that give rise to how people act every day, how they interact, how they make decisions. We look all the way from the biology all the way to the behavior. And, you know, studying, you are your brain. Basically, every thought that you have, every emotion that you feel, every decision that you make is happening up here.

2:51So if you want to understand yourself, if you want to understand society, we kind of need to start. by looking inside. Why is this important to you? Why did you decide to pursue this career? Well, I mean, I think the first reason was actually pure curiosity, right? What's like more interesting than studying the brain? And that is the real reason. But I think over time, we're very, it's kind of a bonus, a huge bonus to find out that what we do is actually helpful. It's helpful for science, but it's also turns out it's helpful for people just in their own life to try to change their behavior in a way that makes them happier, that makes them more productive and also for institutions and larger society as well.

3:48So the information that we put out there over the years turns out was helpful for all the way from just like the person to the company, to the industry, to society. You're now a leading voice in the field. You've you've worked with some of the best leading institutions like UCL and MIT. Can you describe a little bit farther, what have you studied in the past and what are you doing right now that equips you to be a subject matter expert? What have I studied in the past? Okay. So my interest is mostly in how people process information, how they make decisions and how their feelings influence these decisions and how we just see the world, the beliefs that we kind of generate from the information and from the people that are around us.

4:48And then, so that's what I study. I have what's called an academia and lab, but it basically is, you know, a team of PhD students and postdocs and some undergrads, both at UCL and at MIT. and they all work on some questions within this kind of very, very broad theme. And so, you know, they do experiments, they do surveys. Our experiments could be just giving people different tasks and seeing how they solve them, but also it could be putting people in what's known as a functional MRI scanner. So we can look at their brain activity while we ask them to process information or make decisions. so we can look at the system level.

5:34We look both at healthy individuals. We look at people with different psychopathologies as well, such as, for example, depression, anxiety. And we also look at a lower level. For example, we can give people different medication to see how that influences the things that we're interested in. such as like how they make decisions, how it changed their emotions and so on. What is the thing that fascinates you the most about our brains? I think it's kind of, it's the overall idea that what we experience as being, or what we experience as happiness, or what we experience as a thought is like, is a biological reaction.

6:24You know, it's a combination from between a chemical reaction and an electrical reaction. And that somehow then becomes something that I'm thinking about, right? Okay, can you explain that in a simpler way? Sure. Like my word now comes out of my mouth. I feel that I am producing it in some way. It feels beyond material. But in fact, what it is, it is neurons in my brain, which is very much material, talking to each other with electrochemical signals. And that produces a word that comes from my mouth into your ear, into your brain and changes the way that you think, right? And so that is just fascinating that this thing that happens every day is based on a material thing.

7:20You can hold your brain, I mean, not your brain, you can hold a brain of a deceased animal in your hand And that thing is basically what is generating the interaction between us. Fascinating. So what makes us, what makes our personality within our brains? Because I feel like I'm myself and sometimes I try to separate myself from my brain and I tell my brain what to do. But according to you, we are the same thing. Perhaps I use this as an approach, right? Maybe to do certain things or not to do certain things. But what's your take on this? Yeah. So when you say you try to tell your brain what to do, something like that, right?

8:03Yeah. But you are your brain. So it's your brain telling your brain. And that makes sense because, you know, it's not one unified thing. We can have different motivations or conflicting thoughts within our brain at the same time, right? And so what feels like you are telling your brain, it's something like your brain is trying to uplift one kind of thought or one motivation over the other. On one hand, you're sitting on the sofa and you want to just have a beer and watch TV. But another part of your brain is telling you, get up, put your sneakers on and go out for a run. And all of these things exist at the same time.

8:49And it might be a little bit of like a war between these signals. And the question is, who wins? Interesting. So do we all have the same brain and then we all suffer or we all go through the same war? Yeah. So on one hand, our brains are extremely similar. The differences are minor between one brain or the other. The structure of my brain looks quite like yours, right? So, you know, most people, there are some differences, but overall, the structure of our brain is very similar. The way that it works is very similar. People are so much more similar than different. And you can see that if we do an experiment, in many of the experiments that we do, most people react the same way.

9:35If I put like a stimulus in front of you, most people will react in the same way. However, there are differences. And despite the fact that those differences are like, they're small in terms of percentages, these are the things that we pay attention to, right? So on one hand, we're all the same, but that little sprinkle of differences between us is what we actually notice on a daily basis. Sometimes too much, right? Sometimes we focus on these differences a bit more than we should, and that can create conflict. On the other hand, some differences are wonderful to focus on. And when someone is naturally better at something, how does science explain that from a brain point of view?

10:24Okay, so then, you know, despite the fact that the differences between us are minor, even in terms of genetics, right? Most of our genes sequences will be the same, but a small amount will be a little bit different. And those differences come out in how we look, in how we behave, in what skills we're good at. And so basically almost anything about us, whether it's a personality or a skill, it's usually the combination of two things. Usually there is a genetic component to these things. How big the genetic component differs a little bit regarding to what exactly we're talking about. And then there is nurture, right?

11:11How we grew up, what access did we have to resources, our experiences. So it will be the combination of these two things. I'm going to ask you what I consider to be probably one of the biggest existential questions, which is, are our brains a consequence of, or the performance, the future performance of our brains, a consequence of nature or nurture? So you just told me you have a twin brother. Is that an identical twin or a non-identical twin? Identical twin. Identical twin. So you're like a perfect case, right? So you guys have exactly the same genes. I'm assuming you grew up in the same environment, in the same family.

11:56So you had the same nurture to some extent, but of course there's some differences in your experiences because you're not doing the same thing. You're not interacting exactly with the same people. And so if I don't know your brother, but, you know, if you look at yourself and your brother, you probably see that a lot of things are the same because you have the same genes, but some things are different. Right. And that's a perfect case of seeing that you could see, I don't know, if you look, do you look the same? Very similar. Yeah. So because your genetics are 100 % the same, you look extremely similar to each other because that's the genes.

12:31And I'm assuming you have some skills that are similar. You're good at something and he's good at the same thing. But also there's probably some differences that you're good at something that he isn't or vice versa. You're interested in something that he isn't or the way that you interact with people. And that is based on, you know, just random different experiences that you both had that difference between you. And in fact, the number one way that people study the genetics, like how much genes are important for anything, whether it's a personality trait, extrovert, introvert, or like, you know, musical abilities is by looking at twins.

13:12So what you do is you look at twins who are identical, 100 % genetics the same, and the twins that are not identical. So they're only 50 % genetics the same. In all cases, you try to look, usually there's some studies you do differently, but people who grew up in the same families. And then you could look, let's say I measure your extroversion, and I measure your brother's extroversion, and I do the same for the non-identical twins. And so now I can see, I can do these correlations, how alike are the identical twins to each other on a trait, let's say extroversion, versus how like are the non-identical, 50 % of the genes are the same on this trait of extroversion.

13:53And now I can calculate how much the genes are important for that specific trait by comparing this, right? And then what often people find is that when it comes to personality traits, it's often a right 30 to 40 % genetic. Oh, wow. And the rest is not. Fascinating. One difference in between my brother and I, at least this is what my mom claims, is that I've always been more optimistic than him. I'm so happy we get to have this conversation because you are a leading expert in optimism. So in very simple terms, what is an optimism bias? So by the way, optimism, and we've done this tween study ourself, it is about 30 to 40 % genetic.

14:40Like everything else, I think it's about, we found 33%, but that's the genetics. And then the rest, which is, you know, 60 something, 67 % or so comes from just other things. So, you know, that makes sense that you may not have the exact same level of optimism. So what is optimism and optimism bias? So it's actually not the same thing. So optimism is not that you said it was the same thing. I'm just going to explain it. So optimism is having a positive view of the future, positive expectation. Optimism bias means that your expectations are more positive than the evidence that's in front of you.

15:22So what it means is, for example, that we might overestimate the likelihood of experiencing positive events in our lives, such as having talented kids or a successful career or being financially successful relative to what ends up happening. So our expectations are higher than what ends up happening or maybe higher than the data that we have. So, for example, a doctor could tell you, you know, based on your genetics, you are 70 percent likely to have Alzheimer's, but you still think that it's only about 50 or 40. Right. And then also at the same time, and this is actually so you overestimate the positive and underestimate the negative.

16:03So underestimate the likelihood of, for example, having Alzheimer's, having different medical problems, getting divorced and things like that. And in general, people tend to also imagine the future as better than the past or the present. Interesting. Okay, so I'm going to give you my own, not version, but like how my mom at least says that I am optimistic. It's very strange to say, to mention my mom. But so basically, I am optimistic or I have an optimism bias. Maybe you can tell me what is it that I am in the present more than in the future. So if something happens now in my personal or professional life that is negative, I tend to genuinely almost always think that there's a positive reason behind it.

16:53And my brain unconsciously identifies the positive reason, hangs on to that. And then I move forward with that rather than thinking that maybe in 10 years down the line, my life would look in this very positive way. What am I? Yeah. So you're kind of the glass half full, right? Yeah. So a lot of time people use, despite the fact that we use optimism mostly, like, you know, scientifically, we look at the word as related to future perception, not to the present. In the general population, people usually use the word optimism just as, you know, positively bias in general. And they say, oh, the glass half full.

17:32So something, you know, you don't look at this bad thing that happened here. You try to look at the positive thing that is down here. But often when people do that, it does impact the way that they think about the future. So let's say something bad happened, you opened a restaurant and it didn't work out that specific restaurant. So you may, you may tell yourself, okay, you know, this one didn't work out. Maybe we didn't choose the best location for it. But for example, we learned a lot about how to, you know, select a better neighborhood and the chef was actually really good. So I'm going to take him to my next restaurant.

18:10So you're kind of looking at the negative and you're something bad that happened, right? The restaurant didn't work, but you're seeing what you've learned out of it. And, you know, and what positive came up, oh, you found that great chef that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise. But by doing that, what you're actually doing is you're telling yourself, well, the next one will be better, right? This negative thing happened. I'm seeing the positive part of it. And that positive part means that I can take that positive to make my next step better, right? I've learned something. So the next restaurant will be even more successful than all my past restaurants.

18:46So usually there is a relationship by seeing the glass, you know, half full. It usually means that people say, well, the glass is half full now. That has positive implications for the future as well. Is this something, is it, is this a good trait? Yes, no, absolutely. So in general, optimism, as well as optimism bias, which is kind of like a bit being a little bit unrealistic, is actually correlated with success. It's correlated with success in every domain, business, sports, academia, politics. So even though people sometimes have expectations that are, you would say, perhaps unrealistic, it helps them, it motivates them.

19:32It's kind of like this kind of cliche thing where you have to think that you're going to get the gold in order to get the silver. So maybe your expectations are higher than what actually ends up happening on average, on average. But by having those higher expectations, you're getting higher than other people or better than what you would otherwise. Right. So if you're thinking like, oh, none of my restaurants would work out. They're not going to because you're not going to put in the effort and the time. You have to imagine that they're going to work out extremely well for them to work out pretty well.

20:05Does that make sense? Yes. So I'm imagining the person listening to this sitting at home and thinking, all right, I understand now that being optimistic or having an optimism bias is correlated to success in life. How can I be more optimistic or how can I have a higher optimism bias? Yeah. And that's actually not easy. So despite the fact that I'm saying, well, it's only 40 % genetics, which is a big amount, and the rest is like nurture and what you experience, that doesn't mean actually that changing yourself is easy at all. At the same time, it has been shown that some change is possible. So, for example, there are studies by a professor called Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania.

20:57And what he did, he took a bunch of individuals who were quite pessimistic. In fact, they had at least mild depression, if not greater depression. And we do see a huge correlation between not having optimism and optimism bias and depression. People with depression, mild depression, they tend to have no bias at all, meaning it doesn't mean they're more accurate. It just means that their arrows in predicting are not systematic. So sometimes they're over predicting the positive, but also over predicting the negative, right? So they're not more accurate. They're just not systematic in their prediction in one direction.

21:40That's mild depression. And then as you get closer to the severe depression, you get a pessimism bias where people expect the future to be worse than the past of the present. They expect things to be worse than the evidence is in front of them. So they overestimate the negative, underestimate the positive. Anyway, so Martin Seligman took individuals that did not have an optimism bias, did not have optimism. And what he did, he trained them to think like an optimist. So what do optimists tend to do? They tend to take something good that happened to them. And let's say you're an engineer and you worked on a project and it was hugely successful.

22:22So the optimistic person would look at this and say, oh, this happened because of me, because of my traits. This engineering project worked well because I'm very analytical. And I'm really good at managing teams. So by relating a positive event to your traits, it makes it more stable. And so if it's stable, I can do it again and again and again in the future. And they relate it not only to one trait, they kind of like generalize, right? So, okay, it's because I'm good at thinking analytically, I'm good at managing teams. That also means I'm probably going to be a good husband because I can kind of manage like my children and work as a team, you know, so they broaden it.

23:09So one positive event becomes something that means something stable and generalizable. For negative events, they do the opposite. So if the engineering project didn't work well, they don't say, ah, this is because I just cannot think clearly. I'm bad at like managing teams. No, they say, well, it didn't work well because, you know, we made this one mistake because we didn't put enough time thinking about this thing. And next time I will put more time thinking about it. So they don't relate it to their stable personality, which means they don't think it means anything about the future. I'm not going to make this mistake again.

23:45To the contrary, I learned from it. And they don't generalize it. They're not saying, oh, my engineering project didn't work. So that means I'm going to be a bad father. Right. Pessimists do the exact opposite. it. So something bad happens, they're like, oh, it bad happened. It happened because of me, because of trait. I can't change. And not only am I, you know, bad at engineering stuff, I'm bad at everything. I can't think at all. Right. And when positive things happen, they were like, oh, they just happened to be, you know, successful. It wasn't something that I did. And therefore, I can't repeat it.

24:15So what Martin Seligman did, he trained people to think like an optimist. You know, people, you know, explained, they kind of walked through what happened to them on a daily basis in their life. And they tried to interpret how did we get to this good thing? Or how did we get to this bad thing in an optimistic manner? And, you know, after a while, it kind of became a habit, this way of thinking. And so they started doing it on their own. And so that led to more positive outlook of the future. How long does it take for us to become optimistic? So first of all, you know, I mean, there was change.

24:54I don't remember the exact numbers in his paper, but it's not the people flipped completely. Okay. There's some change. And how long, I think, I don't remember. It was like in the matter of like weeks to a few months. I don't think it was like a year, if I remember correctly. And is there a correlation in between optimism or optimism bias and narcissism? Not that I've ever seen. No. Okay. Interesting. because it just through the example of the engineer where he thought that this went well or because I did something good maybe it sounded a bit narcissistic so just wondering if there was a correlation to it um yeah no and narcissism is not my expertise but if I remember correctly um the narcissists are not necessarily thinking that things will happen well for them, right?

25:48I think the narcissist tends to like think everyone is against me, right? And when bad things happen, they can't think, well, you know, everyone's, you know, they're all idiots and like everyone is like going against me. And I think that means that they think that's going to happen again and again. It's interesting because when I think about an optimistic person, I can clearly tell you the people in my life that are optimistic and the people that are pessimistic too. So it's a trait that comes, it's an evident trait in someone. What are your thoughts on this? That you can see it? You mean you can see it clearly?

26:27Yeah. Yeah, I think so. But I feel it's, you can often observe it, but it's like something deep. So you do have this tendency nowadays and maybe in different cultures, people are told they need to reflect confidence. They need to kind of convince other people that they are going to succeed. But that's not always what they feel or believe inside. And I think it is possible to kind of be able to diverge and like see the difference between these two things. So I agree with you that often I have a sense of, oh, that's a pessimistic person. That's an optimistic person. But it doesn't have to be like a loud thing, especially, you know, I mean, depression and pessimism is often a quiet thing.

27:28But even optimism doesn't have to be a loud thing. It's more of a, I would see it, I feel it in other people more than a quiet confidence and a quiet faith in the future and yourself rather than, it's actually the opposite. I feel like the optimists, they don't feel the need to reflect that and convince people because they have it within themselves. And how can we self-diagnose if we are optimistic or pessimistic? Actually, it's not very easy because people get it wrong all the time. I think you're right that it's easier for us to see it in other people, but it's not that easy for them to see it in themselves.

28:13Because we often have people come into our lab and they actually often believe that they're pessimistic or they say, I'm a realist. They all say that, right? Yes, yes. And then we do, and it's especially true, I think, it's according to culture, like especially in European culture, there's more of like, oh, you know, I mean, now it's changing a little bit, I have to say. But it used to be that in the U.S. it was more about like optimism is a good thing. And in Europe it was like, oh, you know, it's more about like seeing things how they are. But in fact, that has nothing to do with what people actually are.

28:48Because they come into the lab and they're like, oh, I'm not an optimist. But then we do the test. We have them predict what is about to happen. And then we see what actually happens and we can measure it. And 80 % of the individuals have an optimism bias, 80 % of people. I mean, and there's like a scale, you know, some people have a slight optimism bias. Some people have a larger one. But yeah, we find that there is little correlation between what people believe they are and what they actually are. And I think part of it is because the optimism bias is sort of an error in belief. Like we actually think this is going to happen.

29:30We actually have this confidence. And so you don't know what reality is because you already believe in what you do. So it's hard for you to see the dissociation.

29:45I've seen a correlation. This is my personal perspective, but a correlation in between positive parents and positive kids and negative parents and negative kids. For the parents listening to this episode, how or what is it that they should do in order for their kids to be more positive? So one really important thing, and I mean, this is one other way to answer your question, but how can we become more optimistic? and this is especially important for kids, it's a sense of control. One reason that we are optimistic or people are optimistic is because we have a sense that we are in control of our life, that we can steer the wheel in the right direction.

30:26And so if I can, you know, if I have control, I can get to where I want to go, right? But if I feel like I don't have control, well, then I'm not going to go. I'm not going to get to the good place because, you know, The river will take me wherever it wants to take me. So a really important thing is to instill a sense of control in children. And that's especially important for two reasons. One is that children have less control over their lives, right? Because the parents make a lot of decisions for them. And so it's a good time to get children to feel that they have control. And also anything that you kind of instill early in life is more likely to take root.

31:05And so how can you do that? For example, have them make their own decisions. I don't mean they can decide whatever they want, but let's start with something simple. Let's say for dinner, you know, you want them to have vegetables, but instead of saying, you're going to have the carrots now, you can say, well, would you rather have the carrots or would you rather have the cucumbers? You know, give them two or three options. Or even better, have them make their own salad, right? So they have agency. So it's good to give kids an option. Sometimes, in fact, the children don't want to make their own choices.

31:39They realize that they don't know. So you might say, do you want to choose what to wear today or do you want me to choose for you? So they can say, oh, I want you to choose, but it's still their choice. So they still have agency. So making sure that the children have agency is, I think, number one way. It could be also things like, you know, this study was actually on older individuals, but it would work well from, it was on elderly. but it worked for children, was they gave the elderly plants to take care of. So they had to water them and they saw them grow. So if the child has something that they care for, it could be a plant, it could be a little puppy or something, again, or a fish, you know, maybe depending on their age, they have to water it.

32:25You know, if it's a plant to water, if a fish to feed it, they see it grow, they're in charge of it. So this sense of agency. And kind of related to that is, and again, related to the idea that you're not telling them what to do, you want to give them the knowledge and information that they could make the good choices, right? So, you know, explain to them, you know, I think this has this advantages and, you know, I would do this. But so you kind of like continuously, via natural conversation, give them the knowledge that they need to make their own good choices. And if we're in a relationship where we just meet someone and one person is optimistic and the other person is pessimistic, is this relationship, is it going to be a healthy relationship?

33:17Should we stay in this relationship? Yeah, I think actually this is not unusual because there is an advantage somewhat to have two individuals with perhaps differing tendencies or different point of view. So definitely, I think, you know, on one hand, it can cause some conflict. But on the other hand, it might be a good, especially for a person who's pessimistic, to be around someone who's optimistic. Maybe we'll rub off on them. And the other hand, like, you know, despite the fact that pessimism is related to depression, so it's not necessarily a good thing. Perhaps if someone is extremely optimistic.

34:02So what has been found is most people are mild optimists. They're not the extreme. But when you do get to the extreme version, you can take unnecessary risks. Right. The kind of the person who bikes without a helmet, the person who's like the financial risk is way over what you should. So for these individuals, it might actually be a good thing to get someone that has different opinions, right? So you kind of balance it out to some extent. I think that probably a pessimist with an optimist is better than two pessimists, right? Because then you can get into quite a dark place. And calling someone a pessimist, is it an insult?

34:47Do we all need to be optimistic? Yeah. Well, first of all, I think, you know, in general, most people are not one thing. Yes, we can measure what you are at the certain time, but two things are important. One thing is you can be in general, you're an optimist, but you could be pessimistic about one part of your life. So I might be really optimistic about my professional life, but somewhat pessimistic about my personal life. Right. So you can have these different views because at the end of the day, what happened to you does matter and your experiences do matter. So it's not that the optimist is always optimist about everything in their life and the pessimist is always pessimist about everything in their life.

35:33That's one thing. The other thing you could change with your mental states and mood. and also you can change throughout life. So let's talk about these two things. For example, we find that optimism is relatively high in kids and teenagers and then it goes down, down, down and it reaches rock bottom in your midlife. So midlife depends on actually in different countries that's different things, but it's around 40, 50. That's quite low. And then though it starts going up again, optimism rises and rises and rises until quite late in life. And then it kind of stays there. So that means that, again, even if you're an optimist or you think you're a pessimist, you might just be like somewhere along this line, right?

36:21So it's kind of this kind of, and this is on average, of course, some people will have different trajectories, absolutely. But on average, people have this kind of U-shape. And the other thing is, on top of that, your optimism can change just at a certain time. So we find, for example, that if you are under high stress, then that can actually lower your optimism temporarily. And then when stress goes away, it can go back up. So for example, we've done a few studies. One study was with firefighters. Firefighters have days where they're relaxed, they're just cleaning their engine. Other days, it's life-threatening events.

37:01And what we found is when it was life-threatening events and they were quite stressed, optimism bias was actually reduced and they were able to make predictions that were more accurate. So you can see the evolutionary reason for this, right? Survival. Yes. So on one hand, you have to be the firefighter, you have to be brave and take risks. But on the other hand, And, you know, maybe a huge optimism bias is not so great. You need to make decisions that are a little bit more clear to some extent. Right. So and we've and but OK, so that could be a positive thing. And we see that change from day to day.

37:43You know, depending on how stressed you are, your optimism bias can change. We've done this as well with students in the university. We brought them in and we wanted to stress them out. So we told them that they're going to have to give a talk in front of us and some judges. We'll videotape them. We will rate them and we'll put it online on YouTube. And this was a surprise topic. They didn't have any time to prepare. So the students got quite stressed. And then we gave them our test to see about optimism. And we saw that when they were stressed, optimism bias went down. And this didn't happen if they came in and we just said, oh, you just need to write an essay, but no one's going to read it, no one's going to judge it.

38:27Then the optimism bias was, you know, as it usually is, which is pretty high. So stress induces a change in how we process information and can reduce our optimism bias. This could be, you could see the evolutionary roots for this, right? If I'm going out hunting, you know, there's a line coming my way. I need to see my risks a bit more clearly. But in life today, we can get stressed about things that are not really life-threatening. You know, you could be stressed because there's a long line at Starbucks. And that stress that you feel in your body can change the way you process information and your predictions of what will happen in the future and have an impact on you.

39:13When we feel more pessimistic because life is more stressful, what should we do in those moments to feel good again, to feel more optimistic or have an optimism bias? Yeah. So I think two things which are kind of related to each other. One is try to think, is there any way that you can alter the situation? Again, sense of control, sense of agency. And related to that is, okay, I am in a bad state because of A, B, and C. I want to get here. If you think through about what you can do to get there, you're like, okay, so the first thing I could do is do this. Let's say you had a hard, difficult breakup a few weeks or months later, and you're still feeling bad.

40:04You're like, well, I really want to have another relationship. Well, it's good to have that feeling. and you say, well, but I'm never going to find someone. And then think, hey, what can I do? Right. So think like, okay, maybe I can join these different clubs. Maybe I can do this and make a plan of what you can do and then start step by step. But just having this plan and having this very detailed plan on its own will create a sense of more optimism than before. So whether it's your personal life or your professional life, you know, you just lost a job and you want to, you're not where you want to be professionally.

40:41And you say, well, this is where I want to get to. Okay. That's great. But that seems really far away. How can I get from here to here? What are the steps along the line? And once you have those steps, there's a sort of a blueprint. And that makes us believe that it's more likely, right? Because if there's a blueprint, you think, well, the probability just went up and that's, that's optimism. And also during those very stressful and maybe more pessimistic moments, some people drink alcohol. What's your take on alcohol and how it influences our optimism or being pessimistic? I don't know of any study that tested people under the influence of alcohol.

41:23Mostly what alcohol does, it reduces inhibition. I don't know how that will impact our predictions of what will happen. Yeah, I don't really, I don't really know. Is there anything that we should avoid while we are feeling more pessimistic? I don't know if there's something you should avoid, but, you know, you talked about stress and we just said stress relates to pessimism, at least temporarily. So, you know, one question is, how can I reduce stress? And you had experts on stress, but, you know, there's a few ways that are obvious. And one is physical activity, exercise. Perfect way to reduce stress.

42:06And if stress is reduced, optimism will come back. So anything that works for you to reduce stress, you know, for me, it is physical exercise for other people. It might be meditation or something else should then influence how we see the future because stress is related to how we see the future. And exposure to sun, does it affect us in either way? I don't know. I love the sun. So for me, sun equals happiness. But, you know, that's just in general, you know, as long, of course, you know, sunscreen, hat and all of that. But yeah, enhances vitamin D. Are people that have an optimism bias happier?

42:46Is there a study that? Yes, absolutely. So optimism and optimism bias is related to happiness because our happiness is mostly related not to actually what we're doing at the moment, but what we believe we'll be doing later on. So you can be at the moment like, you know, out in the rain and like cold, but you're waiting in the bus because you're about to like meet your girlfriend who you haven't seen for like, you know, two weeks. And so you'll be super excited and happy because of the anticipation that you're about to meet your partner. Despite the fact that at the moment it's raining and cold and vice versa.

43:28You can be out on the beach. It's beautiful and sunny. but you just had a terrible, or you expect, okay, so you're planning to break up with your girlfriend and you know that's gonna happen tonight, you're gonna feel really not great. So what we believe will happen in the future impacts our happiness today. There's a great study that shows this where a group of scientists at Harvard asked people who were about to go on vacation for every day before vacation, how happy they were, every day of vacation, how happy they were, and every day after vacation, how happy they were. And you want to guess what the happiest day was?

44:04After vacation? No, it was the day before. The day before vacation, they were still working. They were in the office, but in their mind, they were on vacation. And in their mind, it was really, really wonderful. And that was the happiest day. When they went on vacation, it could be good. It could be wonderful, but it was never quite as good as it was in their mind the day before. Because when you're on vacation, there's great moments, but also you have to get on and get on the plane or whatever. So the day before, what they imagined was only the great stuff. And that's what made them happy. So it is the anticipation that really has the largest impact on our feelings at the moment.

44:46And on the other hand, the dread, dreading the bad stuff, has a very negative impact on your feeling at the moment. This just reminded me of a personal example. So years ago, I was having a conversation with friends and we were all saying, why is it that when we are getting ready to go out and we're having maybe the pre-drinks, we still didn't go out for dinner. We still didn't go out, I don't know, to the nightclub. But that moment is so much more fun and happier than the actual thing that you're looking forward to do. Yeah, absolutely. And there was a great ad campaign of Match.com. This was a very long time ago now.

45:29But they did something brilliant. The ads were not about two people who got married because they met on Match.com. The ads were showing people getting ready for their first date, right? So it was like showing the person choosing like the outfit or like combing their hair. And it was all the excitement and the anticipation of what could be. And as you say, that is more often than not the best moment. And that's actually what Match.com could promise. They couldn't promise you to find your soulmate, but they could promise you to have that really great anticipation before you meet the person, which could be a total letdown, right?

46:09Amazing. Fascinating. I was thinking on how can I use this from a marketing standpoint in our company? Is there anything in relation to... It works with food, right? I mean, often I order something and in my mind, I'm like, oh, so excited. And I imagine this pasta or whatever it is, right? And the anticipation is a huge, a huge part of the whole experience. Even when you order like a package, we were trying to figure out about how to study anticipation. And my friend was like saying, ooh, when he waits for a package to come, he's really excited even at the anticipation of whatever he ordered on Amazon.

46:51It's true. That happens to me too. I am much more excited about the package arriving than when it arrives because I need to go downstairs. I need to open it. I mean, it's raining. Then actually, maybe I leave the package for a few hours until I open it. But before that, I'm checking on DHL. When is it arriving? Is there anything in relation to optimism or optimism bias that we didn't talk about that we should talk about? Well, maybe one interesting thing that we should mention is that optimism is mostly people's expectations of their own life and maybe their family, their children, but not generally what will happen in the world.

47:30In fact, what we see is that there's what we call private optimism, but public despair. So actually people have pessimistic beliefs related to their country and the world in large. And again, this goes back a little bit to control because we have a belief that we can control our own life, but we don't think we can control what's happening in our nation or what's happening globally. And so we don't necessarily have optimistic beliefs about that. In fact, we often have pessimistic beliefs about these things that we feel we cannot control. So these things happen at the same time. There's private optimism, but public despair.

48:11So interesting.

48:17I'd like to talk about emotions and how our emotions affect our memory. Because I know that your study also covers in depth this particular topic. So if I was a 10-year-old, how would you explain this to me? So how do our emotions affect our memory retention? So we tend to remember things that are emotional, good or bad, just a rousing thing with more detail and vividness than things that are just mundane, right, that don't elicit emotions. So if you think back to something very significant in your life, so in people's life, it could be like their wedding day, like the birth of a child or anything else that's significant.

49:09There's a lot of public events, you know, people who were alive doing, for example, 9-11. If we go back, a lot of people remember the day that JFK was shot or things like that. So things that are arousing or the death of Diana. So people who are alive at that time could go back and really remember where they were and details regarding the day. However, we, despite the fact that these memories, you could kind of, it feels like it's a video playing. You kind of click play and it plays in your mind like a video. They're not necessarily as accurate as we believe they are. So it feels like, oh, I remember exactly what I was doing and where I was and who I was with and I can see the colors.

50:00But turns out they're actually not as accurate as our confidence of those memories. But nevertheless, they are stronger in our mind. We can recall them more easily. And that's because of an interaction of mainly two regions in our brain. One is called the amygdala, which is very important for emotion. It's about the size of a cherry tomato, and we have one on each side. And anytime something arousing, emotional happens, the amygdala is activated and basically signals to the rest of the brain. It says, ooh, important, notice. And the amygdala sits next to another region called the hippocampus, which is important for memory.

50:41And so when something emotional happens, they kind of talk to each other. And the amygdala kind of like signals to the hippocampus. And that leads to better consolidation of a memory. It's easier for us to retrieve. But because we're retrieving emotional memories so often, let's say, again, you know, the birth of a child, a wedding, a terrorist attack that we were there for, we change it every time. So every time we recall it, it actually changes because when you recall a memory, you recall a memory of something that happened to you 10 years ago, but now you're different. And so by recalling it, you're kind of changing it and the interpretation of it.

51:23And now it's re-encoded to something different. Let's say a year later, weekly or a month later, you're retrieving it again. And now it's changing again. So at the end, you know, it's often like very different from what it actually was when it happened. Is there an evolutionary reason why the amygdala and the hippocampus are so close together from a neurological point of view? Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, the emotional stuff are the important stuff. They often have an important message that we can use in the future, right? If you were there for something that's really, really bad, right? You should probably avoid that bad thing in the future.

52:08And if you were there for something really, really good, then you should remember that too, because you should do the same thing again and again to get to that good place. So emotion is basically the brain signal to tell us this is the important stuff, whether it's good, whether it's bad, this is the important stuff and we should pay attention. But what's important is not necessarily the details of it, right? If we think about, you know, you saw you were in a car accident and, you know, this big crash. And obviously this is something good to encode because you want to avoid car crashes in the future.

52:48But the details are not matters that much, like the exact color of the car in front of you, whether it was a male or female, these things don't matter so much. What matters is the experience, the kind of, you know, the overall narrative of what it was, the core of what it was, and not necessarily the exact details. often. There are some examples where you can say that's not true, but often it's you need the core of it and the significance of it. And that's why we keep remembering these things and recalling them again and again. But, you know, whether it was on this highway or that highway probably doesn't matter so much.

53:28So it's important that it's encoded and comes back to your mind because it's a guideline of where, what we should avoid and what we should approach. Are sad or fearful memories more potent than happy memories? No. So what's important is the arousal, how arousing it is, right? So if the happy event is super arousing, it will be remembered as strongly as a fearful memory that's very arousing. So it's when you look at the past, it's not about how good or bad things are. It's about how arousing it is. That's the most important part. There is the one emotion that tends to impact our memory, perhaps for the longest, and that's disgust.

54:16So if something is disgusting, that will stay with us and change our behavior for decades. So we're sitting in a restaurant, so it's probably relevant. But if you had a bad experience with the food and it got you really sick, this is something that people tend to avoid that food for many, many, many, many, many years. You know, I have a few memories. For example, I remember when I was a kid, I ate strawberry waffles. And I, for some reason, I got very sick. It might be unrelated to that strawberry waffles, but I was like, since then, I mean, I was probably, I don't know, five, 10. I don't remember how I was, but I've never touched them again, decades later.

54:56Or I remember the first time that I got really sick from alcohol was vodka. So I had too much vodka and it was probably like 20 or so. Very sick. I've never touched vodka. This is quite a few days because I never touched again. That was the only time. So discuss. I remember one time I went to a restaurant, love the restaurant, and I saw a rodent running. And that's something that's really difficult. Despite the fact that I love the restaurant, good food, it's very hard for me to go back to that place. So disgust is something that really is really hard to kind of like delete. That's so interesting.

55:38I was recently reading an article which basically claimed that Bumble, the dating app, revealed that the number one reason why people don't go into a second date is because of bad breath. And even if you ask that same person to reconsider if they want to meet that person again, maybe after one or two months, because maybe they forgot about, they're like, no, that's the one thing that I'm not going to forget. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And disgust is very much related to our olfactory system. And in fact, our olfactory system is very much connected to the amygdala. And this is why, you know, there's smells you remember extremely well.

56:22Not just a bad one. In fact, the good ones as well. If you have a smell that was important during your childhood, it always is really significant. When you smell it, you're like, ooh, this is something. And it can elicit memories. Is it because our nose, so to speak, is very well connected with our amygdala? Yes, the olfactory system is, you know, There's very much a connection to the amygdala, indeed. But, you know, what you're saying about breath, yes, that's kind of a disgust. Because, you know, this is how we evolved. We evolved to have a system in place that if something smells or tastes in a way that makes us, this is very unconscious, but makes us believe that it could kill us, it's bad for us, we will just not go there.

57:19Right? Because these things can kill you. I mean, bad breath doesn't, but we can't dissociate because it is a case that we can use our olfactory system and our taste, which is related to our olfactory system, to figure out what is poisonous and what is not. And sure, we'll make mistakes, but we should be like when it comes to what we eat and what we consume into our bodies, we need to be quite cautious because it can kill us. And that's why the threshold here is very high. And is there a way for us to use this knowledge to our advantage so we can memorize something better? So perhaps if we have a presentation that we are memorizing, maybe smelling something while we are rehearsing it or maybe listening to a song before or afterwards.

58:05So we are invoking a happy emotion. Yes, you could try to do that. What I think is kind of like a more direct way is connecting what you have to say with emotional content or surprising and arousing content. So let's say, let's start with something simple. You want to, you're going to the supermarket and you need to remember what to buy, right? And you didn't write it down. So what you could do is try to like imagine arousing surprising emotional things related to that list. So let's say I have to buy eggs and milk, I might imagine my son taking like eggs from a chicken and then like one falls down.

58:53And then at the same time, like milk is pouring from the sky on him, right? So I'm relating, it's kind of, all of this is surprising, it's imagery, and it's also related to my son, which is like something very emotional always, because it's connected to the self, it's someone that I love. So now I'm never going to forget that I need eggs and milk. So you can do the same kind of thing for anything that you want to remember, right? If it's a presentation or whatever, you could try to have the things that you need to say related to things that are important to you that are not on the slides or not things that are actually saying, but it's like, you know, it's, oh, this relates to my mom or some kind of surprising image.

59:35And in fact, so there's one trick that I do, which is I have to take my medicine, it's antihistamines, every night before I go to bed. And I never remember, did I take my antihistamines or did I not take them? I could put them in these things where it's like weekly thing where it's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But then, of course, I forget to do that. So anyway, so what I do is like I take my medication and then I do something really weird. So I would remember it. Let's say I jump up and down or I go like this. So my brain remembers that I did this weird thing. So then an hour later, when I ask myself, did I take my endoestamin?

1:00:07I'm more likely to remember it because I just jumped up and down or did something strange like that. That's fascinating. You do that every day? I should. But sometimes I don't. When I remember to do it, I do it. Which is ridiculous. There's other better ways to remember to take your medication. But, you know. I want to talk about the news. Every time I watch the news, whether it's in England or in Spain, they all have the same type of emotional charge. They're negative. They're sad. Why? Well, I think, so there's two questions. I wonder if the negative news are more news. Like perhaps it is more of public interest and perhaps it's highlighting what we need to do in order to change when it comes to the world, to these like big, big things.

1:01:10I think in our personal life, the positive is as important as the negative because the positive does tell us, okay, these are the things that you should do again and again, while the negative is like, oh, these are the things that you shouldn't do and change. Maybe even in our personal life, the things that you change may be more actionable than the things that you don't. Yes, but I think it's about like the informativeness of it. my take on this this is what I experience myself when it comes to memory retention if the economy is going well that's not something that all of a sudden I am going to remember the specific data that they've just shared and then I'm going out for dinner and sharing that data but if the economy is not going well let's say they're sharing the next inflation statistic that's something that for some reason is staying more within my memory And then I shared that at dinner.

1:02:12So you're saying you remember the negative about the world better than the positive about the world. At least when it comes to the news. Yeah. You know, it could be a few things. Maybe there's something more arousing about the negative. Maybe the positive, as I said, like maybe the positive doesn't require you to do something. I'm not sure. Although, you know, it could require you like, you know, when I when you look at the stock market. It's not the best example, but for some people it might be. I mean, it could be when the stock market is going up, maybe it does, maybe there's actionable something to do for some individuals, but maybe when it's going down, there's more, it's more actionable in some ways than when it's going up.

1:03:03Same thing with like, you know, political instability I think if there's political instability And maybe terrorist attacks or things like that Maybe that's more actionable for us Because if we're safe, we don't really need to do anything, right? But when it's like, oh, the market is going down And then you might need to think about like, okay, what does it mean for the business? Do I need to do something? Do I need to put some money aside? Interesting. And I was thinking about another example Why is it that when we break up with someone, we break a relationship, we tend to remember the bad things?

1:03:43I think it is two things. One, it might be more, it might feel better. Because it means like, okay, well, I didn't lose as much, right? Right. And it's also a sort of it's in the same vein. It's a rationalization. Whether they broke up with you or you broke up with them. If you now look at it in a negative way, it rationalizes. Let's say you made the decision, then you rationalize your own decision because it's like, OK, well, that was all the bad stuff. I mean, I'm glad, you know. Is it like a protection mechanism? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So rationalization means like you are rationalizing your decision and now you feel better about it.

1:04:32Even if they broke up with you, you could still rationalize it in the same kind of way. So now you're feeling better about like, OK, it's a time for me to move on. And why is it that when someone dies, we usually remember the good things about this person? Yeah. Well, I think there's, I mean, as long as you didn't kill them, there's nothing to rationalize. I mean, it's not a decision that you made. It's not an action that you took or anything that you could do anything about. Yeah. And I think it's the, it's a good question because would we feel better if we had, if we remembered also the negative?

1:05:19I don't know. It could also be kind of a cultural thing where you're not, you know, there's all these sayings that you're not supposed to speak badly about, you know, the deceased. It could be this cultural thing of respecting the dead as well.

1:05:41I want to talk about influence. Can we all learn to be influential? So again, going back to that nature versus nurture skill. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. We, you know, there's a lot of things that we automatically, intuitively do, which is wrong, which is not helpful. And it's absolutely something that we can learn. And, you know, I think the word influence sounds really bad. When you say the word influence, people think about these people online, they're trying to sell you creams or politicians. or like, yeah, marketing people. But in fact, we are influencing people around us all the time.

1:06:22And in fact, we should do that, right? If you're a parent or an uncle, an aunt, I mean, you should influence the children, your children, because you are the model. You are the one who should teach them about, you know, what is good, what is bad, how to interact in the world. Whether it is, let's say you are, you have students, it is your role to influence them. If you're a teacher, if you're a journalist, maybe there you can say, well, sometimes again, it kind of feels a bit, but your team, you know, it is our role as leaders, whether it is within a family, whether it is anywhere in a social environment to influence.

1:07:07If we don't, if you're a parent who's not influencing your kids, that is really bad. That is, you know, that's not a good thing. so it's the same word but it's kind of especially in the social media era it has this negative connotation what is what are the most common mistakes that people make when they're trying to influence somebody else yeah um so the most common mistake is to kind of go to someone and say look you're wrong and i'm right and here let me explain to you why i'm right and you're wrong Here's the reasons. Here are the data. Here's the rationale. When you do that, the person in front of you will simply shut down.

1:07:46I mean, no, we don't like to hear that we're wrong, right? We will shut down and we will immediately stop listening to what you're saying and start thinking about why actually you're wrong and I'm right. And, you know, coming up with other reasons why actually I'm right and I'm going to show you that I'm right. So that's the worst case, the worst thing that we do. And in fact, what we should do is the exact opposite. We should start with what do we agree on, right? Start with the things that we do agree on, the things that we do have in common, and go from there. We actually did a study where we put people in an MRI scanner.

1:08:22And what we found was when they disagreed on something, this was actually financial decisions. They had to estimate the price of real estate. But when they disagreed, their brain kind of quote unquote kind of shut down. They weren't encoding the information coming from the disagreeing partner. But when they did agree on something, then they were encoding the information coming from the agreeing partner. And they took it into account. So, yeah, I think that's the number one mistake. Related to that is, we talked about this a little bit before about control, related to that is the kind of trying to influence by telling people what to do.

1:09:01by saying, okay, this is what you want to do. Do this, right? You know, rather than do that. What you want to do is give people, you can give them options and direct them, right? Even better, have them come up with a solution themselves, right? Guide them, give them the knowledge of what they need and guide them to get to the place that you think is right, but not telling them what it is that they need to do. Can you give me an example? So how can we guide them and not tell them? Yeah. So, for example, let's say you have, let's take myself. OK, I have students which I need to help them find their research topic.

1:09:47Right. The worst thing I could do is come and say, listen, I think you should do this thing. Here's a research topic. You know, here's how you should do it. Go do that. Right. The reason is they won't feel like it's their their thing. They won't feel agency over it. Right. And even if they end up doing it, they won't be as motivated. They won't be committed. But if I say, look, what do you think about these topics? Here are two or three topics. You know, what are you thinking? Where are you going? This is why I think this is interesting. That is interesting. And then they make a decision or I kind of say, did you think about this general area, but not like tell them what the research question is?

1:10:30You know, what do you think will be an interesting research question? So I can guide them towards specific places, but not tell them, here's the experiment. Go do it. And then do emotions play any role when it comes to influencing someone? Yes, absolutely. So emotion is contagious. How I feel will impact how you feel. If I'm stressed, you're going to be a little bit more stressed. If I'm happy, you'll be a little bit more happy, even if you don't know me. And the reason is that we have these mechanisms where you are unconsciously mimicking my facial expressions. and if my facial expressions is of happiness, of joy, you will slightly mimic those.

1:11:15Even if it's like someone sitting on the tube just in front of you, you know, who's happy and smiling, you kind of like start smiling a little bit yourself. You probably don't notice. But then because your face is like mimicking the other person, it actually translates into a feeling. So a lot of times our feelings impact our facial expressions, but it can go the other way, right? I can make it like that and it makes me feel angry. I can feel like that, it makes me feel happy. So that is one reason why your emotion impacts another person. And it's actually, there's an evolutionary advantage to that.

1:11:51Because if someone is scared, you can see like, oh, they're scared. There might be something around us that is dangerous. You should be scared because if you're scared, then you might start looking for what, where the danger is and protecting yourself. Or if I'm like super excited, there might be something really good going on. So it's good for you to get excited because that will actually cause you to try to find the good stuff, right? So it makes a delusionary sense for emotion to be contagious. And so you're influencing people around you by how you're actually feeling. So if you're a super stress manager, you're going to make your employees stressed as well.

1:12:30Interesting. And is there a particular emotion that influences more than others? Because I've recently spent some days with a very close friend of mine who's also a father. And I saw that when he wanted his kid to do something or not do something was either by punishing the kid or by rewarding the kid, which is basically a sad emotion or a happy emotion. And those were the two main choices. In general, I think it is better to change people's behavior by highlighting the goal, the reward, rather than the punishment. And there's a few things for this. One is that there is a relationship between our likelihood of action and reward.

1:13:21So in life, to get the good stuff, let's say it's a chocolate cake, a promotion, a love, we usually need to do something. We need to act. I'm thirsty. I need to hold this water, right, and have a sip. So there's action related to reward. So our brain has kind of evolved to have these connections in our brain between reward and action. So when we expect something good, a go signal is activated in our brain, and it makes action more likely. In contrast, the bad stuff, usually to avoid the bad stuff, not always, but usually we just need to not do something. So if the tea here is super hot, what I actually need to do is nothing.

1:14:01I just, nothing. Or if, you know, to avoid like deep waters, untrustworthy people, the best way is just to stay put. And so in our brain, there's a connection between inaction and expecting something bad, like a punishment. And so when we expect something bad and no-go signal is activated deep in our brain, goes all the way to our cortex and makes motor action less likely. Of course, we can overcome this. We're a sophisticated individual. But our immediate reaction to something bad is not to do something and to good it is to do something. So if you're trying to get people to do things, if he's trying to get his son to do his homework or to organize his room, it's better to highlight the positive.

1:14:45The positive could be like, oh, if you organize your room, you might find your favorite toy at the bottom of the pile. Or it could be like, oh, if you do your homework, you'll get like an A grade. Or it could be promising them something. It could be like, okay, if you do your homework, you know, I'll give you, you know, you'll get the dessert or something like that. Well, if he would say, if you don't do your homework, you know, you would be a failure and you're not going to get dessert. it more likely will induce inaction and also just have a negative impact on their emotions and their mental health, which is something that you don't want.

1:15:20Now, I'm not saying you never can punish, right? But if you can use a more kind of highlighting progress and goals, that is better. However, if you're trying to get someone not to do something, so you want the kid not to eat the cookie or your employee not to share information, then maybe highlighting the negative is not bad because by highlighting the negative, you're inducing an action. Interesting. So a good manager would use positive reinforcements or rewards to get their team to do something, to move towards a goal. But if this manager wants a given employee to not do something, that would show them the consequences.

1:16:01Yes, exactly. Interesting. So interesting. And should our approach, our delivery change when we're trying to influence a person versus an audience? I think the rules are kind of the same, you know, whether it's one or many. Emotion is contagious, whether it's just I'm talking to you or I'm talking to a whole auditorium of people. Highlighting, you know, presenting them with option, all of that is the same. The thing that is slightly more tricky is it's easier for me to get into your mind if it's just one mind. So, I mean, to kind of change your behavior and change the way you think, I need, as we said before, it's not about me thinking about like, oh, you know, I'm right And here's why.

1:16:53I need to get into your mind. I need to frame things in a way that will convince you, not me. Right? Because the worst thing I can do is like, okay, I think like, oh, I need to convince you. What will be convincing to me? What will be my incentives? What will be my, that doesn't work because you're not me. You have different belief systems. You have different experience. I have to put myself in your mind. That is even more difficult to do if you're standing in front of an audience of thousands, right? Because they have many, many, many different minds. So that is a little bit more tricky. I think, you know, you could have some information, like if you're talking to someone, whether it's you're talking to an auditorium of people or it's marketing, you know, that's why you want to know who your audience are.

1:17:39So you might think, okay, well, these are younger individuals. You know, these are the things that they are familiar with, or these are females, males, or whatever, however you want to segregate your population. It's helpful to know who the audience is because you want to get into their mind. So you still do that, but it won't be as precise, of course, as you're thinking when you're talking to just one individual. Interesting. So you address the audience or the person by presenting them several options so they feel like they're in control. and they're not micromanaged, but also you aim to invoke positive emotions.

1:18:13Yeah, and highlight the progress, you know, of depends. It really depends what we are exactly talking about. But for example, if you're talking about beliefs, another way to go is we talked about emotions. And one way to elicit emotions is a story. So if I'm trying to get my message across, and it could be like I'm trying to explain some scientific data to you, or I'm a politician or whatever I am, you want the data. You want the data to know what's actually true. But just showing the data is not enough. You want to connect it to some kind of story because we are much more likely to be engaged with a story, partially because a story is more likely to elicit an emotion.

1:19:01Pure data doesn't elicit as much emotion as just taking one example and one story. That will elicit our emotion. And, you know, we evolved to learn from stories. We evolved to learn from our neighbor, you know, someone in the family. You know, back in the day, we didn't have science and big data. The way that we learned about the world is just like looking around us and learning from stories of people who lived around us. And to some extent, we're still like that. Sure, we can use math and we can understand graphs. But to some extent, our instinct is still to kind of latch on to a story that will engage our attention and also is easier to recall.

1:19:42I want to talk about technology and how it affects our brains and our mental health. And by the way, I have to admit that you're an expert in all the topics that I'm so interested about. Digital behavior, influence, emotional regulation in our memory and optimism. I mean, it's just fascinating. This is this last one is one that is very, I think, important for everyone, but I definitely see myself identified in it because I did suffer from a happiness point of view when I overly use technology. Why is regular screen time so bad for us and makes us sad and slow and it depletes us from our energy?

1:20:24So I actually don't think screen time is bad for you or has any relation to mental health. I think it's what you're doing, doing that screen time. Because, you know, I mean, I work with a computer all day. You know, I write. I spend hours and hours online doing my work, whether it's like writing or having Zoom meetings with people. I don't think that that necessarily has a negative impact on me. I don't think that maybe if I wrote on a piece of paper, that would be better than using Word to write. People who listen to your podcast, I don't think that will have a negative impact on their mental health, right?

1:21:04Despite the fact that they're doing it on a screen. Yeah. So it's not the screen time that is important. It is what you're doing doing that. Now, that being said, you don't want to just sit down in front of a screen all day. You do want to make sure that you have time for physical activity to do all the other stuff that are important for your physical health and mental health. It is important to have in-person connections. It is important to exercise and do all that stuff and go out of the house to have diversity of experiences. But I think the problem with the science is it's more difficult to do studies about how the things that you do online impact your happiness.

1:21:50And that's why a lot of the older studies, all they did is like just looked at time. And that's why the science is pretty messy because time is not, time online is not a good measure. It's important what you do. So for not only what you do, but it's even more than that. So for example, like social media, my instinct is probably social media is not the best way to spend your time online. Probably if you're, it's hours and hours of social media and just scrolling through, you know, or YouTube or things like that, probably not a good thing. Yeah. But also, even if you're kind of reading the news or just going on Google, it matters what it is that you're consuming.

1:22:33So, for example, we did a study where we had people just send us everything that they consumed online. And what we saw is that people with worse mental health tend to go online and consume information that's negative, that has negative affective tone. And as a result, that negative affective tone makes their symptoms worse. So it's a sort of a feedback loop. I'm in a bad mood. I have like, you know, I have some problems. that without me knowing this, it causes me to go online and consume information that's negative. And then that negative information makes me worse, right? And it's like, continues like that.

1:23:11So here's an example where it mattered what it is that I was doing online. So is it, are you consuming meaningless information that doesn't enhance your knowledge, that is not actionable? Are you consuming a lot of negative information online. To address this, we actually, we developed this plugin that when you download it and let's say you Google anything, it shows you your Google results, but next to every Google results, there's free scores. One score tells you how positive or negative the information is online on that specific webpage. Another tells you how actionable it is. Can it help you and make decisions?

1:23:48And the other is like how likely it is to enhance your knowledge on average. And then you can use those scores to make better decisions. And when we gave this to people, we gave this to a hundred individuals, we found that A, they did make choices that were better. With this information, they then actually consumed information that was more, enhanced their knowledge more, was more actionable and made them feel better at the end of the day. So - And how can we do this ourselves at home? So how can I know if the information that I'm consuming is positive or is actionable. Yeah. And, and just to make clear, the reason we have three scores and not one is that sometimes you need to consume negative information, right?

1:24:29You need to know about like, depending what it is you're, you're looking at, um, you can't live in a world where you're only consuming positive information. You need to know, um, a lot of things, despite the fact that are, that they are negative. And this is why there's these free scores. You need to kind of take them together. Um, what can you do? I think, you know, um, So if, well, it depends what you're doing. Let's start with social media. It's for most people a waste of time. Minimize your time on social media. I would, again, it kind of matters. Who are you following? Is it negative or is it positive?

1:25:06But it's probably just not productive. And you could minimize it by making a rule saying, okay, let's say you do want to look at social media. You say, okay, I'm just going to look at social media. let's say just like early in the morning or late in the night before in the evening I don't know when my mind when I'm like so tired it's like I can't do anything productive and I'm only allowing myself this amount of time half an hour and that's it not kind of going on anytime during the day and it's distracting and it's just not productive for most individuals I guess some people their job is on social media but even in those cases I would say less less is more same thing with things like you know, YouTube or, you know, watching TV online.

1:25:47Great. It's great. Watch a movie or watch an episode, but just have some kind of restriction of how much time you're going to, you're going to do that. So you have time for the rest of the things in your life. I feel like I was, I was thinking about the type of content that I consume. So I think I can have a clear distinction in between positive content and negative content, but there's an in between I mean, I'm not sure where it stands, which is what I define as entertainment. Is that good for us? Is it bad for us? Pure entertainment. Yeah, no, pure entertainment. And in fact, I mean, it depends what pure entertainment is.

1:26:25But if we're talking about things like films or TV, a lot of films and TV actually teach us about the world. They teach you about history. It teaches you about like relationships. It teaches you about emotion. And so I think most, I mean, there's some that are perhaps less and some that are more, but that kind of entertainment is useful. It's just that you don't want to spend hours and hours every day. Let's say there's like one day you're kind of like binge watching. Fine. I mean, you don't have to, but just not, you know, make it such a huge part of your life that you're not doing other things.

1:27:10But if you're kind of like scrolling on YouTube, I mean, I think there's like very like little few moments. There's something really addictive about that. And it doesn't give us anything deep. So you should just really like constrain that. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So the difference in between short form content and long form content, because I feel like when I'm consuming short form content, when I stop using it, I feel like I've wasted my time. Even though maybe I have spent the same time as watching a movie or a TV series, but I feel like I've wasted much more my time because I didn't get anything out of it.

1:27:45And I also feel like I feel more tired. I don't know if this makes sense, but because there's so much content, very different type of content that I'm consuming within a very short amount of time. Whereas when I'm watching a movie, it's the same plot. They're the same characters. They're speaking about the same thing. So it's one thing alone that I'm focusing on. Yeah. Yeah, I think this short form content is mostly unhelpful. I mean, sometimes, you know, I've never been on TikTok. I've never been on Instagram. I do look at Twitter and Facebook. That's kind of an old thing sometimes. On purpose.

1:28:21You never access those platforms on purpose? On purpose, yeah. I've never accessed those platforms. And even like on social media, I don't have my own account. We just use it sometimes to kind of put some articles to the world, right? On Twitter. You're a leading neuroscientist and you don't access social media. Exactly. And I'm sure, and I have, and I made, you know, I made that decision many, many, many years ago when it, when, you know, social media started. Because, and, you know, I can, maybe I'm losing something by doing that, but I think I'm gaining a lot. I think so too. So I think for me, it's a better decision.

1:29:00But, you know, if I do go on X sometimes, I do get some useful information sometimes. I do learn, you know, less so now, but it used to be that I could find some interesting articles in my field or something like that. So, you know, it's, if you feel like you want to spend a little bit of time, if it's useful, sometimes that's good. But yes, if I then just spend, you know, whatever, videos on, it's not helpful. And I think the best way to know is exactly what you're saying. How do you feel? Because most people know. They spend this hour, whatever it is, and at the end, they feel like, well, if that was a waste of time, I didn't gain anything.

1:29:41But it's hard not to go back. So I think people know whether it's good for them or not. The problem is that people don't use that information to change their behavior. There's a wonderful study that was conducted. This was many years ago, so it was conducted on Facebook. So this economist took one group of people and he gave them$100 each to go off Facebook for a month. At the time, Facebook was like the social media thing. And he took 100 people and he gave them$100 for a month to continue doing what they're doing. And they came back at the end of the month. And the people who were off social media for that month were much better.

1:30:22They were happier. They were less stressed. They started playing the piano, reading real books.

1:30:29And they were surprised by it. So they kind of had a feeling. We have a feeling. This is a thing. We have a feeling that social media and scrolling on these things are not good for us, are making us like stupider, if that's a word. More anxious, more stressed. We know that. What they were surprised was that it was even more than they thought. So we kind of know that it's probably not good for us, but we don't even know the magnitude because we were always there. We're always on. We don't stop. To really know what the impact is, you need to change your behavior. Be like, okay, I'm actually stopping or I'm changing the way I interact.

1:31:05And do a little experiment. Do a study. See how it impacts you. So, okay. So they were surprised that it's way worse than they thought. But here's the interesting thing. Despite the fact that they said, I am happier. I'm doing better. at the end of the month, they went straight back. Right? So there's like this, it's actually, this is a characteristics of addiction. A characteristic of addiction is that when, that you don't like something, but you still do it. We call it liking and wanting. It's like, you don't like it, but you're kind of like attracted to it. So you go back and do it. And the more you do it, the more you do it.

1:31:43That's also the thing. And if we do one thing every day, does that define us as addict? So in this case, it doesn't define you as an addict. It could be a habit, right? But, but the problem is, is these habits, which give you nothing, right? But you know, you could, so I think it is at least a good idea to try to put some constraints and to find something to do instead. So for example, you know, once I used to kind of like, look, even though it wasn't for a long amount, I used to do it before like bed, you know, but now just I have a Kindle and I read a book and actually enjoy it better. It's like much more.

1:32:24Better for my sleep, better for everything. What I find also so interesting about that study is that it was done on Facebook. You have not used Instagram or TikTok, but I have not seen anything more addictive than those two things. Not the video game, not, I don't think even a drug or alcohol. These two platforms, TikTok and Instagram, they're insanely addictive. And I think very few people is aware of this. And I don't think we're treating them as such. Yeah. No, I can notice because on Facebook, they have now the little, they do have little videos. And if I go on that, it's something very addictive about it.

1:33:00I think it's, I think this combination of, it's even less effort. So, you know, if you need to read something, it's a little bit more effort to just read it. And so after a while you get tired. But if it's these videos, it's like minimal effort. and there's like, oh, it's like images and speaking. And so it's very kind of catching. It catches your brain, but gives you nothing. Exactly. I was discussing exactly this with a neurologist, a dopamine expert. And he was telling me the science behind it. But he said that basically we're getting very quick rushes of dopamine, of pleasure without the effort behind it constantly.

1:33:40And he said that within human history, it, there has not yet been an invention that equates to that much pleasure with that short timeframe with no effort whatsoever. And this is basically TikTok and Instagram. Yeah. So in fact, dopamine is not related to our pleasure. It's not related to our liking, it's related to our wanting. Wanting. So you can give people a dopa, which enhances dopamine, which we've done in the lab. It doesn't make them feel better, but it can change their behavior. And so this is also what you see with addiction, in fact. So people with Parkinson's, they have less dopamine.

1:34:20The dopamine system is impaired. So they give them medication like L-Dopa, for example, which enhances dopamine. And what you find is that then they start gambling. So these Parkinson's patients, which are giving L-Dopa, which enhances dopamine, they start gambling. But it's not necessarily that they enjoy the gambling it's kind of like you need to do it um so what dopamine does it causes you to kind of to do things to act to kind of feel a want but without the like not necessarily the real pleasure and i think that perhaps um in my experience is a better characterization um of of what you're what's happening online.

1:35:04So you see these videos and you're like, it's not real pleasure, but it's like, you kind of feel like, oh, I need to continue. Right? Right. Wow. I have a last question for you. And I always like to ask this question to subject matter experts like yourself. If you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential piece of advice that we must implement in our daily lives, what would it be? I think it would be to be intentional, right? So be intentional about what you're doing. Think about what it is that I want to do and what about my choices, not just kind of flow. It could be about relationships to be intentional.

1:35:47What kind of relationships do I want? Because, you know, life is very short. And if we're not intentional about our life, then it just kind of goes through without us being able to sculpt it. And this goes back to the agency and control. If we're intentional, we can shape our daily life and our life in general in a way that hopefully is a bit closer to what we hope it would be. Intention. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. I loved our conversation for so many reasons, but the main one is because I feel or I believe that this type of education, this type of knowledge is not the type of knowledge that we are taught at school.

1:36:34For example, in Spain, when you are 10, 12, 14 years old, they teach you what are the most important rivers in the country. and with all the respect to the Spanish education system, which then I was told that is very similar here in the UK and also in the US, that's interesting, but I don't believe that that's useful in life. I think life, because it's finite from a time point of view, it's a matter of prioritizing things and it also, we should be doing that when it comes to our education. So these are the things that we should be prioritizing in my opinion, because they were going to have a direct positive impact into our world, into our lives.

1:37:12So thank you for sharing this with me, with the team and with our audience. And yeah, I'm astonished, incredibly grateful, and I'm living with a lot of things to think. Thank you. It was a fun conversation.