Speaking of Psychology - What can science teach us about the benefits of religion? With David DeSteno, PhD

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

For thousands of years, people have turned to religion to answer questions about how to lead a happy, moral and fulfilling life. David DeSteno, PhD, a psychology professor at Northeastern University and author of the book “How God Works,” discusses how the structures and traditions of religion contribute to people’s well-being, what behavioral scientists can learn from studying religion, and how those lessons can be applied outside the context of religious belief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For thousands of years, people have turned to religion to answer questions about how to lead a happy, moral, and fulfilling life, how to meet life's challenges, and how to be resilient in the face of hardship. And for many people, religion's answers have proven satisfying. A 2019 Pew Research poll found that people who described themselves as actively religious, those who were affiliated with a religion and attended religious services regularly, were more likely to say that they were very happy than people who didn't go to services or who were unaffiliated with any organized religion. Why is that?

How do the structures and traditions of religion contribute to people's health, happiness, and well-being? What can behavioral scientists learn from studying the religious rituals that scaffold people's lives from birth to coming of age to marriage to death? And can those lessons be applied outside the context? of religious belief. What about the perennial question that pits science against religion? Can one be a scientist

and still believe in a higher power? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. David Destano,

a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, where he directs the social emotions lab. Dr. Dosteno studies the ways in which people's emotions influence their social behavior and moral decision-making in areas including trust, altruism, cooperation, resilience, dishonesty, and prejudice. In recent years, he's been particularly interested in what behavioral science can learn from religious traditions about how to help people improve their well-being and lead happier lives. He explores this topic in his book, How God's a Life, How God's,

works, the science behind the benefits of religion, published in September, and in a podcast by the same name, which debuted in September. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Distan. Hi, Kim. Thank you for having me on. Many discussions of science and religion are framed in terms of conflict, that these are two opposing ways of looking at the world. But in your book, you argue that scientists can learn a great deal from studying religion, particularly behavioral scientists. So let's start with them As a research psychologist, what sparked your interest in religion and made you decide that it was something you needed to study? Yeah, thank you for that question.

I want to be clear that I didn't have an agenda in this. I didn't start out on this line of work to prove religion was beneficial or harmful to people. I just simply followed the data like any good scientist. And for a long time in my lab, we study things like how people become more kind and compassionate, how they form connection, how they become more resilient. And every time we would find some new mechanism or some new strategy or life hack to help this, I'd look around and see it being used in all types of religious rituals. And I finally had one student who was very much interested in meditation itself. And what its original theological purpose was according to the Buddhists,

which is not to improve your memory, not to raise your standardized test scores, but to reduce the suffering of all sentient beings. And so we ran some studies where we actually show that after eight weeks of meditation, people became more spontaneously kind. That is, we would use actors and have them looking like they were in pain and needing help. And we would find people who were engaged in meditation compared to randomized controls would suddenly become more willing to help them. And so what I began to realize is a lot of the work we were doing, a lot of the mechanisms we were studying,

have been intuitive by religious thinkers long ago. For scientists, that's humbling, right? It's always when someone has your idea, that's humbling enough but when they beat you to it by thousands of years. It's really humbling. And, you know, I don't think we're going to learn much about the nature of the cosmos or the biology of disease from religion. But it would be strange if thousands of years of thought meant to help people meet the

challenges of life didn't have something to offer. And so the analogy I use is, you know, sometimes when pharmaceutical companies are looking for medications to help people, they will look to traditional cultures. And sure, a lot of those medications that traditional cultures use might not help, but some do. And we found wonderful medications to treat different types of cancer and other ailments from those examinations. I think we should do the same when it comes to psychology and human well-being. You know, we've done that a little bit with meditation. We know it reduces stress and anxiety, but mindfulness can't be the only spiritual technique that has something to offer. And so my argument here is let's put our isms aside.

We can't answer the question, does God exist? Any scientist worth their thought will tell you, you know, they may see no evidence of it, but they can't prove the finality that God doesn't exist. So let's not argue about that. Let's respect everybody's views, put those to the side and focus on what we can focus on, which is how these practices make life better for people and what knowledge, what wisdom can we take from that? One of the central themes of your book is the power of ritual. First of all, how do you define a religious ritual and what makes it different from any other type of habit ritual?

And why essentially are rituals so powerful? That's a really good question. You know, religious thinkers for a long time have been trying to define. rituals and it's hard to define a ritual based on a certain set of actions because sometimes those actions are part of rituals, sometimes they're not. I mean, what's the difference between lighting a candle so I can see my food better versus lighting a candle for Shabbat or for some other religious purpose? You know, you're doing the same action. And so really, the best definition out there is that rituals are actions that are done with a special intention. And besides that,

there's not much that combines them all. You know, sometimes people do them in synchrony. Sometimes they sing. Not always. Sometimes they chant. Not always. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes it's together.

But really what it is is an action that has some intention and special purpose attached to it. But what is brilliant behind religious rituals in the way they exist now is you can think about them as mechanisms that leverage our mind and our body. One thing we always see in. in many rituals are people doing things in unison. You know, we will stand and kneel in unison. We will sing or chant in unison. Well, there's work from my lab and others that shows when people do things in unison,

even if they simply move their arms in time in unison with each other, it makes them feel more connected, more compassionate, and more likely to help each other. We know that when you chant or when you say the rosary or sing Hindu kirton, it reduces your breathing rate. And by reducing your respiration rate, it slows your heart rate, which then through the vagus nerve singles to your mind that this is a safe environment, one that's more able for connection. And so what you're seeing is these mechanisms are packaged together in ways that aren't

just random acts that we give attention to, but that actually work on our physiology and the mind's hidden language to accomplish certain goals. And so the beauty about religious rituals, it's not just saying, let's just light a candle and this act we're going to say is special. But they've intuited over time ways to manipulate our physiology and our thinking to help achieve the goal that they want. And so, you know, one of the best terms I've heard is you can think about the rituals as debugged technologies.

Over the millennia, they've been honed to have effects on our mind and body, to leverage our physiology, to help us nudge our minds toward the, goals we want to achieve in that ritual. You arranged your book around the human life cycle and discuss how different religious traditions can help people at different times in their lives, from birth to childhood, to coming of age rituals and adolescence to adulthood and finally death and mourning. What are some of the more compelling examples of rituals you looked at that help people at these different times?

Let me, yeah, let me start with the end, because to me in some sense, that is some of the most compelling that I have seen. So as you say, the book is laid out along the path of life. And I try to look at both the convergences in these rituals, because in some senses, those things that you mentioned on the road of life are commonalities we all face. But then do some face, for whatever reason, have slightly potentially better packages of ritual elements. So if you think about grief and loss, you know, it's something no matter who you are in life, you're going to come to that time when you lose somebody you love likely. And one thing that all religious rituals do in that instance is we all eulogize the person who has passed,

which seems kind of normal because we all do it. But if you think about it psychologically, it's kind of odd at first. If I just lost a job that I really love or if my wife, who I dearly love just decided she was going to divorce me, I wouldn't want to think about that job or my wife because thinking about what I've lost would make the pain that much worse. Yet it's something we always do when somebody passes. And there's wonderful new research, relatively new research by the psychologist George Bonano, who's one of the leading bereavement researchers in the world, who shows that it's people who can consolidate positive memories of the deceased who pass through grief more resiliently.

And by that, I mean, in a quicker time and with less debilitating anxiety or depression. But on top of that, if you look at certain rituals, there's even, other elements that are packaged in. One of my favorite is the Jewish ritual of sitting Shiva. So if you haven't been to Shiva, many things happen, but it's a seven-day period of morning. And the first thing that is true is it is called a mitzvote, which is a sacred obligation. When someone passes, you must go to their house. You must bring them food. You must visit them. You must help them out. That's providing what's called in psychology instrumental support, which is one of the leading predictors of helping people through grief.

It's not giving them a like or a message on Facebook. It's showing up when you're needed. And so it makes sure that the community does this and repeatedly for a period of days. Mirrors are covered in a household during Shiva. It might seem kind of strange and there's a theological reason for it. But there's also psychological research that shows when you look into a mirror, whatever emotion you are feeling becomes amplified. So if you're feeling happy, you get happier.

feeling sad, you become sad. Or at a time of grief, that would mean more grief. So by covering the mirrors, what you're doing is reducing grief a bit. You sit low to the ground or on low chairs or on the ground. There's new neuroscience research that shows, well, if you sit low to the ground, ergonomically, that's going to start to cause discomfort in your lower back and knees. And then when you get up to welcome people, it goes away. There's new neuroscience research that shows when you have mild onsets and offsets of discomfort

like that, it reduces rumination and grief. People come together and in groups of 10 called a minion, 10 or more, to say prayers together and chant them to recite them together. Again, there you see that synchrony happening, synchrony that we know we have experimental evidence that increases feelings of compassion willing to help each other. And so this is just one example, but what you can see is these aren't random elements. They, through the ages, have figured out certain nudges to the mind and the body that help us deal with whatever challenge we're facing. So you write about how people who are not religious

can derive psychological benefits from secular rituals. Are the effects the same if someone, say, joins a chorus or an orchestra or joins a softball team or even becomes a mason, for example, are there psychological and physiological benefits that are similar to those that are derived from essentially performing together? That's what you were just talking about. Yeah. So, there are two parts to that. One is, you know, people often say, well, aren't these benefits of religion? And just to be clear, you know, besides the work you mentioned from Pew, there's research from the Mayo Clinic and research from the Harvard Center for Human Flourishing Program showing that people who engage in the activities of their faith, not just saying, I believe,

but actually engaging regularly in the activities of their faith, predicts lower mortality, better cardiovascular health, better mental health, all types of things like that. So as a scientist, what that tells me is something that they're doing matters. And one thing that people often say, as you suggested, well, isn't it just coming together? And sure, community is an important part of well-being for humans. Being lonely is terrible for mental and physical well-being. But the data suggests that the benefits are more than just what you get from joining into any club. And I think that's because in these faith traditions, there are these other practices that bring people together.

And we can talk, you know, more about them. But that example of rituals I just said that not only bring people together, but build that sense of community and belief. And so, yes, if you engage in actions like synchrony, like I was saying. So rather than saying prayers together or chanting together, do other emotions together, that will make you feel closer to one another. we have data in my lab to show that. But the data also suggests that when you add on these other elements of belief, et cetera,

that the effects are stronger. So we don't really know how much stronger overall. So the best that I can say right now is if you do these rituals in a very secular way, you will get benefits from them. Is the benefit exactly equivalent to what you would get if you have on, if you add on the multi-layered aspects of belief? We don't know that for sure. So not to be flippant, but is there a difference if I'm, say, in a chorus singing the Verdi Requiem

versus singing the sound of music? Would I be getting different benefits because it's non-secular music? In that case, I don't think so. But there are certain rituals where the belief element is strongly important. So, for example, one area is if we look at healing rituals, right? We know that the placebo effect is very powerful. In fact, it accounts for about 30% of therapeutic effect of any medication. And, you know, people hear the idea of the placebo effect.

They think of that as kind of a derogatory thing or a derisive thing. But it's actually not. It's the evidence of the body to heal itself. And physicians have been using this forever. And so there's wonderful evidence suggesting that belief in something and its ability to heal you can actually account for a good deal of the healing that goes on. In fact, there's something amazing that even called open label placebos, which are, plasibos work for you, even when you know they're placebo, if you believe in the placebo effect. And so I think what belief really does

from a psychological standpoint is it sets your mind's expectations and predictions about what's going to be, what's going to happen. Whether you ascribe that happening to the influence of a divine being, or whether you ascribe that happening to the belief of the power of something else doesn't matter in the sense of how it's going to affect your body. But I think that element of belief is where you can get a stronger benefit than just the actions of the breathing or singing on its own. So a few moments ago you were talking a little bit about meditation of, right? It's a religious practice that's been studied by scientists.

But it's also moved into the secular world as well. How do the scientific findings about meditation fit into the traditional religious understanding of the purpose of meditation? Yeah. So, you know, meditation has been being studied scientifically for, you know, a decade or two now. And a lot of that actually happened because the Dalai Lama himself is very open to scientific study of it and actually funded a lot of research. But initially, it was picked up by cognitive neuroscientists who were interested in what does it do to your brain. And so, you know, we found out wonderful things. Meditation actually alters the physical structure of your brain. It increases your memory.

It increases your ability to have attention, focus your attention. It reduces stress. But if you talk to the monks like I have and the Buddhist lamas, what they'll tell you is, yes, it will reduce your stress. Yes, it will increase your memory. But that is not its purpose, right? those things happen along the way. Its purpose is as a tool to reduce the suffering of all sentient beings. That is yourself, through meditation, you suffer less as you have less depression, less anxiety,

etc. But it also is designed to awaken in people this sense of compassion and willing to help other individuals who are in need. And so surprisingly, no one had ever looked at that. And so we decided to take that seriously. And so we conducted a study where we brought people from the Boston area who had never meditated before, but were interested in starting. And we assigned them to either meditate for eight weeks where they had training with the Buddhist Lama or we put them on a wait list. So two groups that were equally interested in meditation, none of whom had meditated before.

One got treatment, one got the intervention, one didn't. And at the end of those eight weeks, we bring them into our lab one at a time telling them we're going to give you some memory tests. That wasn't true. When they got to the lab, the real experiment took place in the waiting room. And in the waiting room, there were three chairs, two of which were occupied by actors that we hired, which our participants didn't know. When the participant came in, they'd, of course, take the third and last remaining chair. About two minutes later, another actor came in, and she was on crutches,

wearing one of those boots on her foot that you wear when your foot is broken. It wasn't broken. But she would pretend she's in pain and wince and come in and there is no seats. And of course, the other actors were told to thumb their phones and ignore her. And the question was, what would the true research participants do? And what we found is that on average, only about 15% of the people who didn't meditate decided to get up and give them her chair. And you might say, well, that's pretty terrible. But you see this on the subway or the bus all the time, right?

People just, they turn, oh, yeah, I don't give it my seat. There's a mom with a toddler in tow or a person in pain. But among the meditators, 50% did. Now, that's a threefold difference, which is huge. And we've replicated the study so we know it's not a fluke. And what this tells us is the Buddhist idea was right. Just engaging in this meditation practice after this, you know, eight weeks of time actually increased people's compassion.

We've done subsequent studies where we have, through long shenanigans, I'm not going to bore you with. we have people actually get insulted by actors in a way that usually makes them pretty angry. And then we give them a way that they think they can seek vengeance on this person. Of course, they can't really do it, but they think they can. And what we find is that, you know, after so in many weeks of meditation, people reduce the vengeance they want to take on this person who insulted them. They don't rise with aggression to provocation. And so what this tells us is that, you know, there is some truth here. And, you know, nothing we work on in my lab is this notion of what gratitude does.

And we found time and again that when people feel grateful by expressing their gratitude to God for what they have, to friends, family, to fate, whatever it might be, we find that it makes them more generous. It makes them more patient. It makes them more willing to share what they have and trust other people and not just the people to whom they're grateful, anybody. And if you look at religions, right, every religion has ways to foster gratitude. Christians say prayers of grace when they eat. Jews every day in the morning they get up. They say the moda-ani prayer, which is a thank you to God for returning me to this earth

for another day, et cetera. And so the interesting thing about religion is any behavioral scientist will tell you, we all have intentions. We all have things that we want to do, like in this case be a better person. But unless we have strategies or tools, we don't get there. about New Year's resolutions, right? By mid-January, 25% have failed. By the end of the year, only 8% have been kept all the way through. We need tools to help us reach our goals. And what religions are doing in these rituals is not just telling us how we should be, but giving us the

tools to make it more likely that we can be that way. So meditation sounds kind of magical. And you have talked about finding the next meditation. If meditation itself is so great, why do we need the next meditation? What are we looking for? What do you mean when you say that? Yeah, I mean by that. So meditation is a wonderful tool for becoming kinder, right? Becoming more compassionate.

But there's other things that we want to do in life, right? How do I become happier? And so, yes, meditation will reduce. anxiety, depression, but how does it find, does it help you find meaning in life? Not exactly. So another thing that people do, you know, if you look at happiness across the lifespan, it tends to drop at its hit its nadir around 40 and 50 and then begins to go up. And there's, there's wonderful evidence from psychologist Laura Carlson that shows that as people age, they turn their desires from kind of wanting to get ahead in life, building skills, you know,

building status to focus on friends, family, and service, things that actually have been shown to bring more happiness in life. But although it looks like it's a function of age, what her work is really shown is that it's a function of what she calls a time horizon, which is how long I have left until I die. And so what you see in her work and work with other folks is that during pandemics like we've all been facing now, that age difference goes away because suddenly even young people, even people in their 20s and 30s are thinking, I may not have as much time left. And suddenly they look like they're seniors. They are valuing friends, family, finding meaning through service in life.

But we don't want to face a pandemic to have to make this kind of correction to find a new way to find happiness. And so what you see in religious rituals is before periods of taking stock. So if you're a Jew during the days of all before Yom Kippur is a time to take stock of your life. If you're a Christian, it's during the period of Lent, a time to take stock of yourself. Before each of those, for Christians, there's Ash Wednesday, which is a reminder of your own mortality, right? The priest actually puts ashes on your head and says, from dust you came and onto dust, you shall return. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews say a prayer called the Moda Ani, which has any. it a part that says who is going to live and who's going to die in their coming year before their

time, who by fire, who by sword, who by flood, who by plague. This year, that one kind of hit really hard. And again, it's a reminder that your time here, it may not be as long as you think. And what that does is it begins to shift your values. Like even Laura Carsonson showed that if you make older people say, she said, imagine that you're going to live a lot longer than you thought because there's this new medicine that will help you live a healthier life for 20 or 30 years more than you expected. Suddenly, they start focusing on skills and their idiosyncratic desires as it look like younger people. So just these little nudges can matter. And what you're seeing in these rituals is a way to help us focus at times that we should be taking stock of our

lives on what really matters in ways to bring happiness. And it's why both Jewish scholars, Christian scholars, Muslim scholars have said, you know, it's, it's, don't wait for just once a year either. You know, every day, think about what am I doing? And is, you know, is this what I'd want to do if I weren't going to see tomorrow? So there's lots of examples like that. There's lots of other ways, you know, people now are getting very into taking psychedelics for transcendent experiences. But what they're not adopting is also the rituals that typically surrounded those transcending, those use of psychedelics, which put people in a physiological state of calmness and connectedness so that when that moment of ego death came, it would be pleasurable and not terrifying.

Because right now, you know, 10, 20% of the time, people have these experiences on psychedelics and they're frightening. They're not wonderful. And 8% of the time, they actually seek psychiatric care after. And it's because, as Michael Pollan has said, if you're not in the right state of mind when that moment comes, the experience can go very badly. And what these rituals do is they make sure you're in that frame of mind. So while we're taking the psychoactive chemicals and giving them to people by ignoring

the rituals that put that body and mind in their right frame, where, you know, increasing the odds that things aren't going to go as well as they should. But now that doesn't have to be a religious preparation, right? I mean, there are psychologists who are doing this work right now with psychedelics, and they will also sort of walk people through prepare them so that when you take the psychedelic, you won't have, as you're describing, a bad trip. That's right. So if you look at some of the best research coming out right now is coming from Johns Hopkins, Roland Griffith's Lab.

And I've talked to people there, and what's basically happening is you're absolutely right. The researcher spends time with you. They build that sense of trust and rapport beforehand. They sit with you during it, and if you start to have a bad reaction, they'll hold your hand. They'll put their hand on your chest. And afterward, they will help you make sense of it. In essence, they're doing exactly what a shaman would do without the religious symbology around it.

But because they're putting you in that state of calm, trusting, feeling with them, that's the scaffold that is there to help make sure that the experience goes the right way. Whereas with a shaman, you would do that and he or she would help guide you. But they also sing these chants together and use these drumming rhythms that, again, change people's breathing and respiration rates, make them feel calm, make them feel connected again before it happens. So you're right. You don't need the religious symbology.

And that's the point I'm trying to make here, which is when I talk about this, people say, well, Dave, aren't that cultural appropriation what you're saying? Or if I'm a Christian, why do I want to take a Jewish ritual or a Hindu ritual? And I'm not in favor of cultural appropriation. I would never want to take these rituals and take the actual prayers and the symbols and the theological meaning from them because those belong to the face that that originated them and should be respected. But there are elements of them that can be taken in the breathing people use, in the way they interact together, in the way they sing, in the way physiologically that they interact

during prayer, that can be taken and used in a secular context. And, you know, don't just take it for me. those don't belong to any one religion. You see a lot of those things used in multiple religions just with different vocabularies and different theologies and different symbologies. And so my argument is let's learn what they're doing to the body and mind in a secular sense. Put that under the scientific microscope, see when it matters and how we can use that to help people, while respecting, you know, the cultural symbols and theologies of the religions themselves. So we've been talking a lot about how religion can make people happier and provide comfort. But, you know, there's another side of religion as well, which is the threat of punishment, of eternal damnation.

Is that something that you have looked at and is threatening people in that way effective in making them behave ethically? What's happening in your brain when you're being threatened by your religion? Yeah, well, two things there. One, religions can cause guilt and cause shame. And as a psychologist, you study social behavior, I can tell you guilt and shame are extremely motivating and can be very effective in small, brief doses. But used over the long haul are not helpful and cause a lot of pain. And so, again, you know, what I tell people is I'm not an apologist for religion.

You know, Steve Pinker and I always get into arguments about this. And he says, Dave, you're cherry picking. There's lots of religion about religion that's bad, right? It causes people guilt and shame. it's perpetuated discrimination, it's caused war and strife. And I'm like, Steve, you're absolutely right. But I am cherry-picking because I want to know what works and what's helpful. I'm not here to defend religion.

And so my argument is if you look at these practices, religion, so take the theology out for a moment. The tools that religion has developed are powerful tools to motivate us, to shape what we feel and do. They can be used for good or for ill. It all depends upon the intentions of the people using it, just like science, right? I mean, Richard Dawkins has said,

if you want to find the most efficient way to kill the most people possible, science is your friend. He's right. If you want to find the way to save people from COVID, science is your friend. He's right. I think about religion the same way in the sense that the tools of spiritual practices,

I tend to separate from the institutions and the purposes and goals that those institutions have. So yes, religion has caused people lots of pain and cause them to deny science even. But you see that now even with political ideologies, right? We're seeing as a function of political ideology, people deny science when it comes to vaccines and COVID. And so I don't think that's a problem so much of religion

as a much of ideological institutions. But even if that's what you believe, that it's still worthwhile studying how these tools work so that you can prevent and remediate the problematic aspects of them. Last topic that I want to cover here, talked a little bit about how religious or irreligious Americans are these days. A 2021 Gallup poll found that for the first time since they started polling in the 1940s, less than half of Americans said they belonged to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. So given your research, what do you think the effects of that will be? Will people be less happy because they're not engaged in religion or less moral? Or are they replacing religion with something else? So it is true, as you said, that people are leaving traditional faith in droves. But the interesting thing is when you look more closely at those data, most of them aren't

becoming atheists, right? Most of them are calling themselves nuns, N-O-N-E-S, which is none of the above, right? I'm not Christian. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Hindu. I'm not Muslim. But they're looking for new ways to be spiritual. And I think it's because...

they, in leaving these, these institutions that in some ways, there are good reasons to leave for people, they've failed them. There have been, you know, financial scandals, abuse scandals, gender discrimination. Even sometimes you don't just believe the theology. People recognize that they're leaving behind that sense of community and those tools that help them find meaning and meet the challenges of life. And so I think right now we're going through a time period of people are looking for another way. Now, you know, when Nietzsche said God is dead and we have killed him and, you know, the world's going to fall into chaos, he wasn't right. I mean, you know, we become much more secular. The world isn't full of chaos.

You can certainly be a good person without religion. But I do think it fills psychological needs and helps us meet the challenges of life. That is not just the opiate of the mass. It's actually a cultural tool that we've developed to help us meet challenges. And so I do worry a bit that you're going to see declines in well-being that track this leaving of spirituality unless people do find new ways. And to me, that's why I think science needs to take this seriously. If you look at that data, in a dose response framework, people who are more engaged with spiritual practices live longer, healthier, and happier lives. That means, as psychologists, it's our job to figure out why, what are those practices doing?

and if people are giving them up, how can we find ways to replace them? And thus the search for the next meditation. Yeah, that's right. Well, Dr. Destano, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been really fascinating. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www. www.spinkingof Psychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

And if you like us, give us a review. If you have comments for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. That's speaking of psychology, all one word, at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Wynerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condyion. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.