Short Wave - Can Optimism Be Learned? (Like Right Now?)

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Optimism is often thought as a disposition, something you're born with or without. So can it be learned? On today's show, Maddie talks with Alix Spiegel, co-host of NPR's Invisibilia, about "learned optimism." We'll look at what it is, the research behind it, and how it might come in handy in certain circumstances, like maybe a global pandemic?See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there. Here at the show, we are trying to learn a little bit more about you and how podcasts fit into your life. If you can help us out, there is a short, anonymous survey online that takes about 10 minutes. It's at npr.org slash podcast survey, all one word. We'd love to have your input. It really helps. NPR.org slash podcast survey. Thanks. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Maddie Safai here. So today we've got a special shortwave guest, Elise Spiegel, one of the hosts of Invisibilia, NPR's podcast about human behavior. Hey, Elise. Hey, I am a fan of this podcast, so I am very happy to be here. Good. I'm so glad you're here. So you've brought us a story today about a very helpful feeling that seems really hard to hold onto at this moment. Yeah. I mean, recently for reasons that are.

probably not that hard to figure out. I've been thinking a lot about optimism. And as I was thinking about it, I stumbled across this website of this very interesting organization, Optimist International. I'm immediately suspicious, which now that I think about it, probably says how much of an optimist, am I always. Okay, so what is this group? Well, I wanted to find out myself. Ooh. So I pulled up the website of my local D.C. chapter, which featured the optimist creed.

Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Wear a cheerful countenance at all times. Be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. Elise, I don't know if I could cut it in this group. I know. That was, by the way, Jake Fratangelo, an officer with the D.C. Club. So what did you find out about this group? Well, it's actually a service organization for people dedicated to helping others. Over the years, they've raised all kinds of money for like children

with cancer and homeless families and local schools, all powered by the force of optimism, which Jake believes we need more than ever. This is really the first time as an adult. I'm looking out into of the world and kind of seeing a need for not just personal optimism, but like existential optimism. Huh. What does he mean by existential optimism? I think he means optimism as a kind of fundamental, willed philosophical approach. I mean, I think a lot of us conceptualize optimism as part of temperament. Yeah, for sure. That's kind of how I think about it. Like it's your disposition. It's a thing.

that we either have or were born with or born without, like, I'm a glass half full kind of person. Right, which is why I was so intrigued when I came across a bunch of work on something called learned optimism. Something that would be super handy right now. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people like to roll their eyes at optimism. But there is, you know, a sizable amount of research about how it makes a difference in a range of outcomes in your professional life, in your health, and notably, in your response to disasters. So today on the show, we go under the hood of optimism and look at the research that shows how you can learn it. Because these days, even committed optimists like Jake are struggling to look on the bright side.

When my one-year-old and my two-year-old are both screaming and I have a conference call and so does my wife, it's not my most optimistic moment. All right, Elise, so where does this story? about optimism start. It starts with a man named Martin Seligman. I'm professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. So Martin Seligman is an incredibly influential psychologist who first made his name in the 70s with a series of experiments first on dogs and then on humans, which demonstrated what he called learned helplessness.

Hmm. Learned helplessness. What does that mean, Elise? Well, to explain, let me just walk you through. one experiment that he did. He took all of these humans and he subjected them to these very, very loud noises. But there were different groups. So like in the first group, people had a button, which they were told would stop the noise if they pressed it. And that button did work. And in the second group, they were told the same thing, except the button didn't work. So that second group could push the button, but it didn't stop this horrible noise. Yes. Oh, my God. That sounds very frustrating.

I know. But the interesting thing was that when the Broken Button Group was invited back and put in a kind of similar situation? They expected that there was nothing they could do, so they didn't try. Most of them had learned to be helpless. Right. But after working these experiments for a while, what Seligman began to notice was this strange thing. One third of people I could not make helpless in the laboratory. They would just continue to press the button or lever or whatever.

So why does he think that some people were more resilient than others? Well, that brings me to the subject of explanatory style. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. I know some of those words, Lee. I know them. All right.

Just hang with me. So this is actually a core concept in behavioral science. And it's about how do you explain the cause of the problem in front of you? See, whenever we come up with an explanation, we're unconsciously making a series of assumptions. Seligman talks about three. The first has to do with whether or not you think that the problem is permanent or temporary. If you fail an examination, for example, and you think the cause is, I'm stupid, well, stupidity is permanent. It's not very changeable.

Whereas if you thought I had a hangover, that you're not. That's changeable. I might argue with him on some of that, but I get what he's saying. Yeah, I hear you. But anyway, the second assumption has to do with control, whether you think you have the ability to control the outcome or not. And the third is whether you think of the painful thing in front of you as a bad thing that is happening in just this one situation or as pervasive, something that always seems to happen. You're rejected by someone you love and you might think I'm unlovable. On the other hand, you might think this is just not the right man for me, and that's local.

So back in our loud noise experiment from earlier, I'm guessing the people in the experiment who saw the situation as something more temporary and controllable, those were the ones that kept pushing that button or lever or whatever. Probably. I mean, it wasn't specifically tested in that study, but Seligman built off this research and found that optimists in general tend to, make the assumption that whatever they're experiencing is temporary, just this one time, and that there is something they can do about it. Whereas pessimists, it's the opposite. So what Selokman wanted to know next was how much control do we have over which explanatory style we default to? So what did he do? Well, he did what many of us do when confronted with a problem. We go to the town of Twinsburg, Ohio. Twinsburg every year has a twins convention.

At least I'm not joking. I legit have twin cousins who live there and have definitely been to that convention. Really? Yes, yes. That's kind of hilarious. Yeah, it's wild. I know. I found this documentary online where all kinds of twins are showing up at the convention,

talking about, you know, the joys and pains of sharing your genetic material with another person. You know, if I wanted mustard on my sandwich growing up, my mom assumed she did. or vice versa. So Seligman did studies with twins he met in Twinsburg. And after giving them a bunch of different questionnaires, which aimed to measure optimism and pessimism in genetically identical people, what he found... We found it was 50% heritable.

So basically 50% of optimism and pessimism is related to nurture, not nature. And so therefore it could be controlled. Exactly. I mean, other twin researchers have come up with a lower rate. For example, there's this very famous researcher named Robert Plowman who did a similar study and came up with 25% heritability, which, you know, that could potentially mean that you have even more control. Yeah. So anyway, Seligman decides what the hey, let's see if we can't teach people the explanatory style typically associated with optimism. So can I just go out and, you know, adopt this explanatory style?

Well, here's what Seligman did to figure that out. He conducted a whole series of studies, including this massive years-long study with middle school kids who are at risk for depression in the Philadelphia suburbs, trying to teach them prophylactically a more optimistic explanatory style. The way that they did it was that they had hourly sessions for about 12 weeks where the kids were taught first to identify. the underlying assumptions that they were making, which actually is kind of hard. And then they were taught to challenge those assumptions and come up with other possible explanations for the behavior that was troubling them. Right. So, for example, imagine an 11-year-old girl in a cafeteria. And all of her friends rush by her and they don't sit with her. And she's saying, I'm a reject.

No one likes me. permanent, pervasive, uncontrollable. So a girl like that would be taught to just kind of stop and look for a different kind of explanation. She looks down the cafeteria as she sees all her friends at another table, and she realizes this is the volleyball team. And the reason they're not sitting with her is not that she's a reject, but she's not a volleyball player.

And in most of the schools, two out of three, it really did seem to help in reducing the development of depression in the kids in this study. You come close to cutting the rate of depression in half over the next two years as they go through puberty. Wow, that's wild. Okay, Elise, so let's return to the situation at hand, us kind of emotionally dealing with this pandemic. Let's. So for most of us, you and me included, we are in our homes waiting. out this global pandemic. We don't know when we will be allowed to return to the lives we worked

so hard to construct. We don't even know if those lives are ever coming back. And as we look out at the future, there are going to be some underlying assumptions that each of us carry into our evaluations of our own circumstances, some totally reasonable where we might not have much control. My biggest worry is if I don't have a job, I have a more. How am I going to pay for this? How is this going to happen? She's got patients who are dying. I just don't think there's any real way for us to avoid it.

But some of the conclusions that we come to, they might be a product of the habit of a negative explanatory style. And those negative assumptions are not necessarily true. So you're kind of saying, as we go through our days, it's kind of, you know, it's good to watch yourself and ask yourself questions about these underlying assumptions. that we make, these conclusions that we come to about ourselves. Yeah. And in some cases, I think it's a good idea to argue with them. How do you meet people if you're not going to crowded places? Since I'm younger, there's people with way more experience in my industry.

Do we have a baby and then our family can't see them? Being afraid that I'm going to be like one of the 20% that this hits like severely or something or that my partner is going to. I've always just told myself that we'll pull through. we always have. I just know inside that it's all going to be okay. Okay, Elise, I really appreciate this. This is awesome. I'm going to be keeping in mind my assumptions from now on. That's a good thing. Thanks, Maddie. And, you know, stay safe. This episode was reported by Elise Spiegel, produced by Yo-Wei Shah, and edited by Viet Le and Deborah George. The facts were checked by Emily Bonn. I'm Maddie Safaya. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.