No Stupid Questions - 90. If America Is a Train Wreck, Why Am I Doing Fine?

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

Why do so many Americans say they’re satisfied with their own lives but upset about the way the country is going? Why don’t other countries experience the same gap? And what do horror movies have in common with Coca-Cola enemas?

I wouldn't intentionally go to a hospital and ask them to operate on me or give me a Coca-Cola enema. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, if Americans are generally happy as individuals, why are we so frustrated as a nation? We're going to hell in a handbasket as a country, but my own life is pretty good.

Angela, I recently came across a Gallup poll, which found that only 17% of Americans are currently satisfied with the direction of the United States. That's a little depressing. We'll say depressing, but probably not so surprising. And I will say that number has been falling over recent years in the U.S. But here's the thing. The same poll found that 85 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life. Almost the exact opposite, right?

Yeah. So we can discuss some of the other numbers in the poll later because the breakdown is interesting. But how do you explain this astonishing gap between personal satisfaction and our satisfaction with, quote, the way things are going in the U.S.? When I first heard of this statistic, it was a pretty widely publicized poll. I thought about what it means to be asked, How satisfied are you, Angela, with the way things are going in this country? Should we try that right now? Should I pretend to be Monsieur Gallup? Yes, you could be Monsieur Gallup. Gallup.

Okay, Angela Duckworth, how satisfied would you say you are with the current direction of the United States? If you're giving me a scale of, you know, really dissatisfied to very satisfied? Say zero to 10, 10 being optimal satisfaction, zero being I'm moving to, you know, Nigeria, Canada, fill in the blank. Yeah, I'm close to zero. Ooh, borderline moving to Nigeria or Canada. I think you're more like a two and a half. Yeah, I'm definitely exaggerating there. I mean, I'm not going to move, but it has crossed my mind. I just feel like relative to where things

were, I don't know, 10, 20 years ago, there's a lot to be concerned about. Can you give me a moment when you think direction of the country would have pulled at 10 across the country. That's a good point. Would it have been 1776, 1789? Would it have been maybe 1945? 1945 probably was, right? End of World War II. But now when you ask me, how are things going in the United States? My thoughts immediately turn to politics. I'm an optimist by disposition, as you know, Stephen, but the polarization of the left and the right, it doesn't feel like things are coming together. It feels like they're coming apart. It doesn't feel at all like a positive forward direction politically for the country.

Why does your mind immediately turn to politics? Because as far as I know, you don't really care that much about politics or follow it. Well, it's a very good question, Stephen, because as you know, I am pretty out of touch with contemporary or historical politics. So, like, how do you even know what's going on in the United States, Angela? How do you know enough to be so miserable with the future of the country? I think when occasionally reality impinges upon my own personal life, when a very good friend wants to discuss what's going on, you know, what do I think about such and such and so and so, then I wake up a little bit and I get myself out of whatever I was working on. And I say, like, what's going on? Who's invading where? I guess also there is a kind of zeitgeist of unrest, distrust of our fellow, like we're annoyed with each other. I feel like it's palpable. So I would be shocked if you hadn't picked up on that because, yeah, it's really hard to not, even if you don't consume a lot of media. But I think what's interesting about this is it's a good illustration of the power of negative media or media generally. And we've done a Freakonomics Radio episode about this not long ago called Why is U.S. Media So Negative? And the answer is that we have,

as we've discussed on the show before, a built-in negativity bias. Right. The bad is stronger than good effect, which was the title of the Roy Balmeister paper that first documented this. And major outlet American journalism in particular exploits our negativity bias to maximize profits and then social media algorithms kind of add fuel to the fire. It doesn't even have to be bad news. It can just be concern or alarm. Even the weather, right? Especially the weather.

Every time it's going to rain, it's like a catastrophe. I happen to know someone very closely, someone who I happen to live with, who may or may not be my spouse, who, since COVID, has made a habit of turning on cable news in the morning. Sometimes she will watch an outlet that aligns somewhat with her political philosophies. I should say her political philosophies are well thought through and fairly heterodox, just for the record. But then sometimes she will intentionally watch a channel that is probably the furthest from her political philosophies. To avoid confirmation bias or to be more even in her consumption?

Well, no, I would say it's not to avoid confirmation bias or to be more even. In her view, she wants to see what the crazy people are saying. Oh! Because it's important to understand those arguments. Like know thy enemy. There you go. Yeah. But also, I will say

this. If I walk into the kitchen, let's say on 10 days in a given month, that channel is on probably six of those days. So I'm not quite sure I buy the argument that it's purely opposition research at this point. Here's why, though. It is unbelievably entertaining. Like I don't like horror movies. I don't even like thrillers. I don't get it. I yet, it seems that people really do get off to a degree on wallowing in horror, whether the horror is a horror film or horrible news expressed in the most horrible way. And because so many people are doing that, I think people like you and I, who may not have as much attraction, we get caught up in it. and I who may not have as much attraction, we get caught up in it.

That's just kind of a soft masochism, right? I do think the bad is stronger than good instinct that we have. Just to say how I understand that concept, it is that when we have a good event and a bad event, what draws our attention and also what carries weight in our consciousness, what we keep thinking about is the bad event, not the good event. There's an asymmetry there. And the evolutionary explanation is if you have three good things that happen in a day and three bad things or three things that might threaten your life, maybe you should disproportionately allocate your conscious awareness to the bad things, because guess what? They might end your life. In other words, bad is stronger than good for good reason. I mean, to me, the interesting thing in the Gallup poll, the twist of all this or the further mystery is

why does that not play out apparently when we think about our own life? Why do we only say, oh my gosh, we're going to hell in a handbasket as a country, but my own life is pretty good. That was entirely my interest in this as well. What astonished me was this gap that I interpreted as a mismatch. In other words, how can it be that 85% of us are satisfied with the way things are going in our lives, but that only 17% of us, the same people, are satisfied with the direction of the U.S.? And the gap, we should say, is not quite at its all-time high. It's currently at 68 percentage points. Which is huge. It's like the Grand Canyon.

You almost couldn't invent a poll that could get a gap as big as that. It's second only to last year's gap, which was 71 points. And just to help draw the picture of what this poll is getting at, And just to help draw the picture of what this poll is getting at, I'll give you a little bit of detail on the people who are more satisfied with their own lives first, okay? Weekly churchgoers, college graduates, and wealthier people are more satisfied on average with their personal lives. And I can just affirm for you, Stephen, that is not a, well, maybe that's just 2021. For you, Stephen, that is not a, well, maybe that's just 2021. That's always the case, that education, participation in formal religion, and income are all positively,

reliably correlated with personal life satisfaction across cultures and across history. And we should say, you said participation in formal religion, but as, for instance, Bob Putnam, the sociologist, argued in his book Bowling Alone, it doesn't have to be religion. But as, for instance, Bob Putnam, the sociologist, argued in his book Bowling Alone, it doesn't have to be religion. It could be different social or charitable or even familial networks, which have weakened a lot in the U.S. for the past 50, 60, 70 years. But religion remains one that is fairly strong. So I just wanted to put in that pitch for secular networking as well. Yeah, I don't think anybody would say that religion or religious services are the only way to be in a social network. But religion has been singled out as a particularly robust predictor of happiness. And we have overall very strong religious belief in this country.

Now, if I were to ask you, what sort of person would you say is most displeased at this moment in time with the direction of the U.S.? What would be one category that you feel you would find a lot of people professing that direction? So probably the people who don't like the current political party in their state. There you go. Or in their country, if the presidential candidate that you voted for lost, or at least other people thought they lost, you're going to be unhappy. Yeah. When this Gallup poll was taken quite recently, and there's been a Democrat in the White House for over a year now, this said that 30% of Democrats are satisfied with the direction of the U.S., which isn't a very high number. So if only 30% of Democrats currently are satisfied with the direction of the U.S. while a Democrat is in the White House, what share of Republicans would you say are currently satisfied with the U.S. direction? I mean, half as many or less. Right. That'd be a good guess. So 15,

maybe 10 if you wanted to be aggressive. How about 4% in this poll? Wow. So satisfaction and direction of the U.S. is strongly correlated with political party. And it rises when your party is in power and it drops when your party's out. Makes sense. If we were to go back just before the 2020 election, when Donald Trump was president, Biden was just running, it was the Republicans in this poll who were pretty optimistic about the direction of the US and it was the Democrats who were pessimistic.

And then it just flips. I think one thing that distinguishes us is that we have a lot of very extreme left and very extreme right. And in a lot of countries, or in this country 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, when the media worked differently, those would be considered fringes and you wouldn't hear about them. Now you're talking about magnification through what, social media?

And regular media and being elected to Congress, let's say. I mean, there's 435 of them. So the fact that there is 10 on either side, that if you're on the opposite side, you might consider total lunatics is not really that surprising. But when those voices are amplified because they get more microphones, then it changes the perception for everybody. But I feel like the actual middle is very, very large in this country and almost never discussed. So, Stephen, if I'm towards the low side of the scale on like, how are things going in the United States? Where, I'm curious, are you?

Well, actually, we budged you from a zero to a two and a half. So you're kind of standard, really. I would say that I'm nowhere near as negative about the future of the country. If I had to put a number on it, zero to 10, I don't want to be the ostrich with the head in the sand. I don't think I am. But I would say about a six and a half to seven and a half. Wow. I mean, look, if this were school, that's a C plus. So I'm not saying it's great, but let's just think for a second about what it means to create and live in and sustain a society.

Infrastructure, electricity, education, law and order, access to food, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Compared to the rest of the world over history, we're doing it about 9.9. But then on the flip side, you don't want to say, well, and I think a lot of people are having this conversation right now about Putin and Ukraine. Is this 1939 Germany? Is this 1941 Germany? Is it neither? And that's the kind of misjudgment one does not want to make again. So I'm not saying that Pollyannish is the way to be, but I do believe that a little bit of perspective can go a long way. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela discuss why other countries might

not experience the same gap in individual versus national satisfaction. Is it going to affect your personal life if, for example, the communists prevail and the nationalists lose? Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about the poll on national satisfaction, let's hear some of your thoughts on the topic. We asked listeners to send us voice memos about moments when the broader direction of their country actually did affect their personal lives. Here's what you said. Hello, British person here. When Brexit happened, I was unbelievably

embarrassed to be British. I work in research, so I have lots of friends from all over the world. And it felt like my country had become racist overnight. And I just, I felt so ashamed. So like a lot of people, the 2016 election messed me up. I'm half Mexican and half Caucasian. election messed me up. I'm half Mexican and half Caucasian. My mom, she immigrated from Mexico when she was a kid, so I grew up identifying as that, but I present as white. I found the election results shocking. I remember turning to my mom the day after the election and I'm being like, I feel like half the country hates me. And she was like, it certainly feels that way, doesn't it? Hi, Stephen and Angela. This is Irina. After completing my undergraduate degree in the UK, I remained working there under a visa with hopes of becoming naturalized as a citizen.

And at the time, I had, in a very privileged and youthfully rash way, made it part of my expat identity to denounce my American-ness and had gotten fully behind things like free health care and smaller portion sizes at restaurants. But after the 2016 election, instead of feeling like I was lucky to have escaped, I suddenly felt like I had abandoned this country that I didn't even understand anymore during a really important time. So while many of my friends stateside were threatening to move to Canada, I actually made the move back. Plus, with Brexit looming, my future in the UK felt less encouraged and certainly less expansive.

That was, respectively, Yvonne Couch, Susan Astorga- Kemp, and Irina Wong. Thanks to them and to everyone who sent us their thoughts. Now, back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about the gap in America's national versus individual satisfaction. When I read this poll, the first thought I had went back to first-year anthropology and this concept of emic and etic. You remember this? I did not take first year anthropology or second year or third year anthropology. Tell me about emic and etic. It's a way that anthropologists talk about looking at a society or a group from two different

viewpoints. Emic is from within the social group and etic is from outside. It also made me think of this concept that I know even less about, these Japanese concepts of hone and tatame. Hone is how a person truly feels and what they actually want, whereas tatame is often a very different portrayal of that same person in a public setting where their private or personal desires are not expressed. And so I was thinking, well, maybe Americans, we just have our own way of having two totally different and maybe contradictory impulses to describe the world. One from within, where I really know it intimately and I'm mostly happy with it.

And one from ourselves looking out and saying, oh my goodness, I'm pretty cool. But out there, it's just a show. It's like NIMBYism. Not in my backyard, damn it. Yes, not in my backyard. It was like, oh, is there some asymmetry where we hold inconsistent beliefs, but we're motivated to hold them because one is about ourselves and we have a self-serving bias to think positively. And then the other is about other people. But honestly, Stephen, I don't think it's that deep. I don't think it's a cognitive error. I just think when you say, oh, how do you think things are going in the United States?

People are not asking themselves, how happy do I think other people are with their lives, all 300 million of them. I think they just think about politics and economics. I do know a little bit from working with Ed Diener and then also Louis Tay. These are two leading researchers in well-being, and they have specifically looked at what goes into your answer. Hey, Stephen, overall, how satisfied are you with your life? And Ed Diener worked with Gallup for many years, all the way up to his recent death. Diener specifically looked at how do questions of my own personal well-being match up to questions of how do you think this country is doing overall? And they did it not only in the United States, they did it for the whole globe. And one of the

things they found is that in an individualistic society like we have, we're more easily able to separate, hey, Stephen, how's your life going? From, hey, Stephen, how do you think the country's doing? Whereas in countries that are typically less developed, they have lower GDP and they're less likely to be in the Western Hemisphere. These communitarian cultures tend to have a closer link. It's less likely that someone would give you one answer for their personal life and an entirely different answer for how things are going in their country. So it's kind of American to be able to feel that your life is different and kind of walled off in a way from the national direction.

kind of walled off in a way from the national direction. But then I'm also thinking about when you live in a country where nationalism is not as prominent or maybe national media is not as large as it is in ours, the degree to which your own personal life and fortunes are intertwined with the state or the government or the community, especially when it's much smaller. So I could imagine that the gap could be quite different depending on your circumstances, just literally how much you feel the national direction of the country affects you. Right. 85% of us are disturbed by the direction of the U.S. But then think about Ukraine being invaded by Russia. How much do we

Americans feel that kind of existential threat? Does that event make anyone take a perspective check and say, oh, wait a minute, maybe I'm over assessing the degree to which we are in the toilet? Because think of the multitude of ways in which things could be much, much, much, much, much worse. I mean, my parents grew up in China during the communist revolution. And if you ask them like, hey, is it going to affect your personal life? If, for example, the communists prevail and the nationalists lose, they would have said, oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, they fled the country because they were on the losing side and they didn't want to be tortured or killed or imprisoned. So there's clearly that reason why we can remove ourselves from how things

are going in the United States. Also, I wonder whether the difference between the left and the right in this country, which seems to be about as far as it could possibly be, but maybe if we took a global perspective and we saw what was going on in Peru, in Ukraine, in other countries, we would see yet larger differences between parties that are vying for power. For example, I think most Americans believe that democracy is a good political system. I think most Americans, to some extent, believe in capitalism, a free market, not a communist state. So if we could take a global perspective, we would see that our left and our right aren't as extreme as they might appear. I do wonder how we as humans individually think about ourselves or other individuals versus the population. Maybe it's just because we have a really hard time assessing how a big, let's say, complex dynamic system works. And therefore, we assume a lot of not just mystery, but downside

to it, whereas ourselves, we understand. And there's also just the size issue. So if you think about the direction of the country, that just sounds impenetrably large, impenetrably complex and dynamic. I don't usually quote U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who I believe is one of your favorite politicians. Ha, not a Ted Cruz fan. So Ted Cruz is someone I would not describe as a pro-social rationalist, which is, you know, maybe a phrase that I would apply to you and probably to me to some degree. But he was recently talking about the fundamentals of political conservatism. And here's what he tweeted.

He said, let me suggest a simple principle. Big is bad. Big government, big tech, big Hollywood, big universities suck. It's very U.S. senatorial language, I have to say. Did he say suck? Yes, he did. Oh, gosh. Furthermore, any accumulation and centralization of power is fundamentally dangerous for individual liberty. So that sounds like a kind of standard small C conservative argument in 2022 although i would have to say if ted cruz were president and he were trying to ramp up some defense department or education department or transportation department then he would say big is good yeah he would say economy of scale etc etc because

that's the way politics works but when i read that i thought hmm you know i do think a lot of we individuals have a really hard time getting our mind around the big, complex, dynamic system that is a country and the future direction thereof and all the political and social and economic elements attached to it. So what do you say to that, that we're decision-making research over the last 50 years, if there's anything that's been shown to be really reliable is that we're not very good at calculating, computing, synthesizing lots and lots and lots of information, some of which was uncertain. Like when you asked me, Angela, how do you think things are going in the United States? Think about how many dimensions that problem. Also, I don't even know what people's lives are like in, you know, Idaho, right? I have no idea.

So here's what people do. We start with our own life and then we extrapolate a little. Now, in this case, I don't think we're extrapolating from our own personal well-being to the national direction, but we might be extrapolating from, oh, I really hated that city council person who was just elected, and I hate what's going on in my daughter's school. So I'm very dissatisfied. I don't know that people are sitting there and thinking for minutes or hours about how collectively the entire country is going socially, economically, politically, and culturally.

socially, economically, politically, and culturally. So if we were to summarize, we might say that it's natural, or at least American, to feel better about one's own situation than the surrounding direction. In terms of prescription, especially from you, the positive psychologist, who I have to say, if we were to put some kind of negativity sounding Geiger counter on your voice. It's a little more negative. I don't blame you because that was the nature of the question, but you actually have sounded distressed during this conversation. And for that, I almost want to apologize that I brought to you a question that distressed you so.

That's okay. On the other hand, it's good to have that color in your palette, you know, as a positive psychologist. So how would you be prescriptive here? I would say that if we learn anything from that poll, it is that the questions that we are asked aren't necessarily the ones that we're answering. That's one thing. aren't necessarily the ones that we're answering. That's one thing. Second, maybe not only because we're American, but particularly as Americans, we're able to answer differently about our own personal lives versus how we think politics and economics are going in this country. But that's not true if you're living in a war-torn country or in an impoverished country where there really is

more of a relationship. In terms of prescriptions, Stephen, like what to do with all this, I think that for me, and I'll reveal my personal bias here. Because you usually play it so close to the vest, we should say. I know, I'm cryptic and distant. Look, if you are like so many people in this poll

feeling like overall, your life is pretty great. And if you are like so many people in this poll feeling like overall your life is pretty great. And if you are like so many people in this poll, somewhat dissatisfied, then do something. Like, what are you doing? Don't just go on Twitter and get more indignant. What would you like to see different and go and do something, especially if you feel like your life is so great and things are so bad. Why not spend an hour that would make things better? I'll make a slightly parallel argument to the general argument of this conversation. I will say that the current direction of the podcast ecosystem is absolutely terrible. Is it really?

It is rife with misinformation and disinformation, consolidation and homogenization. So manyizations. But I think this podcast is A-OK. Fantastic. No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the episode, Stephen jokingly interviews Angela as Monsieur Gallop.

The global analytics firm does have a namesake, but he wasn't French. Iowa-born journalist George Gallop founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, the precursor to Gallup, in 1935. His first major success came three years earlier, when Gallup correctly predicted in the first scientific political survey ever conducted that his mother-in-law would win secretary of state in Iowa. Later, Stephen wonders when in American history the direction of the country would have polled at 10 across the board. Unfortunately, George Gallup wasn't on the scene in 1776, so we don't have relevant data from the country's origin. And Gallup only began polling American satisfaction with the direction of the United States in 1979. However, the Institute does have data on presidential job approval going back to President Harry Truman in 1945. As Stephen predicted, that year, the president enjoyed an all-time high approval rating of 87%. Ironically, seven years later, Truman also had the lowest ever presidential approval rating of just 22%.

Finally, Stephen jokes about requesting a Coca-Cola enema at the hospital. A 2021 article from the Journal of Health and Allied Sciences actually documents two cases where this treatment was successfully used to remove large masses of hardened feces from a patient's colon. Please don't try this at home. That's it for the Fact Check. Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela discuss the difference between people who preserve and treasure new things and those who use them as much as possible right away.

What about plastic slipcovers on furniture? What's your position on that? Having grown up with many, many relatives and neighbors who had the whole house like laminated, I have to say, maybe that's why I don't like to preserve things. That's next week on No Stupid Questions. For that episode, we want to know, are you a person who savors or someone who devours? And tell us a relevant story that comes to mind. As a kid, did you tear open your presents?

Or did you keep them on the shelf in the original packaging? Did you eat your Halloween candy as quickly as possible? Or did you hoard it for months? To share your thoughts, send a voice memo to nsq at Freakonomics.com with the subject line, user or preserver. Make sure to record someplace quiet and please keep your thoughts to under a minute. Maybe you will include them on the show. No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics

Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and Freakonomics MD. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This show was mixed by Eleanor Osborne. Our staff also includes Allison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Gabriel Roth, Morgan Levy, Zach Lipinski, Julie Canfor, Mary DeDuke, Brian Kelly, Jasmine Klinger, Emma Terrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jacob Clemente, and Alina Coleman. Our theme song is And She Was by Talking Heads. Special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chapel Music. Thank you. have a question for a future episode, please email it to nsq at Freakonomics.com. To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening. There have been periods in U.S. history where our Congress, for instance, was much more vicious than it is right now. They would like beat each other with canes, didn't they? Yeah, and pulling guns and knives and literally wanting to kill each other.

In a way, we've replaced that sort of violence with Twitter. The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.