Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 180: Dolly Chugh, How Good People Fight Bias

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

We all have biases, and only by acknowledging them can we make a conscious decision to not act on them. That's one of the teachings of our guest this week, award-winning psychologist Dolly Chugh, who studies the psychology of human bias. She's also the author of the book, "The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias." Chugh also discusses the role meditation can play in helping to combat acting on our biases. The Plug Zone Website: http://www.dollychugh.com/ Book: http://www.dollychugh.com/book See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I think at some fundamental level of this show and all of the work I do is about a really radical and empowering idea, which is that the mind is trainable. So if I'm an evangelist, my gospel, which I think translates into good news, is that the mental states we want are all skills.

They're not factory settings that can't be tinkered with. And so those include peace of mind, you know, equanimity, happiness, sense of connection, calm, focus, gratitude, generosity, and I think it extends all the way to working with our biases, including racial biases, gender biases, tribal and partisan biases. I would biases, gender biases, tribal and partisan biases, I would say those isms, tribalism, sexism, racism are three of the most pernicious forces in our public life globally. And Dolly Chug, who is a professor at NYU, is here this week to talk about how we can develop the skills to deal with our biases in healthier ways. And I guess your question might be, you may have a lot of questions at this point,

but one of your questions may be if you're anything like me and maybe on the sort of selfish end of the spectrum, well, why would I want to do that? Well, there's the big, idealistic answer, which is if you're less caught up in the biases that have been injected into you by the culture, by your parents, or whatever, well, then you're going to be, you're going to be helped make the world be a better place because you're not acting them out so blindly and maybe helping us contribute to having a more equitable society. But here's a more selfish answer, which is that increasingly the numbers show,

we are working in teams, and increasingly there are data to demonstrate that the teams that function the best are diverse teams. So in other words, if you wanna have success, you need to be able to work with lots of different kinds of people. And if your biases are getting in the way of you working effectively with people who are different from you, or hiring people into your company, then you're being potentially materially hindered in your efforts towards success. Dolly is a tenured professor and an award-winning tenured professor at the New York University

Stern School of Business, so she studies implicit bias and something she calls bounded ethicality, which is unintentional, unethical behavior. And she's teaching this stuff in an MBA context, so she knows how to make this content palatable and attractive to folks who are learning how to go into business. And I think her framing is incredibly, this is just my opinion, but her way she goes about this work is incredibly useful. We just named two of her precepts that I find super refreshing and healthy. One is that shame, there is a, she talks a lot about the dis-utility of shame in this context.

Shaming people and making them feel terrible for whatever biases they have, which are probably not ones they invited, is especially implicit bias, is a terrible strategy for getting people to behave in a more ethical fashion. And she is very brave. And just being open about her own unconscious bias or bias that was lurking in her unconscious that she's been able to bring into the sunlight. She'll hear her talk about this. The other concept she has that I find deeply useful is that we all like to think of ourselves as good people.

You know, it's kind of a false binary where you're either good people or bad people. That's not actually the way it works. We're all complex. And so if we can reframe this and think of ourselves as good-ish people, that puts us in a mindset where we're willing to learn and grow and do better.

That, I find, as I said before, and as somebody who's trying to get better at this stuff for both idealistic reasons and crash reasons as a businessman and journalist, I find that really helpful. Maybe I should stop talking about Dalai's work and let her do it. Here's Dalai Chug. Normally I ask people how they got into meditation, but you're not deep in there yet. So we're gonna we're gonna shove that to the back of the podcast. Let me ask instead how did you become so interested in the issue of bias? Oh my gosh. I think it's all

research is me search. Some people like to say and some of this is just about me trying to grapple as a human being in a complicated world where I, you know, I'm a professor and I sometimes mix up two black students for each other who look nothing alike or I find myself, my kids will come home and say something about this great heart surgeon who came as a guest speaker at school and I'll say, what did he say? I know. So this stuff is happening all the time to me, to me, through me.

And so a lot of my research is about trying to understand how I can sort of understand and deal with and get better around these issues. Were you ever, have you ever, are you still ever on the wrong end of bias? In other words, are you the victim of it? Sure, I think so. I'm a, your listeners can't see it, but I'm a brown-skinned woman.

And so there's a number of ways in which that shows up in my daily encounters in the world. My husband wears a turban and has a beard, and so airports are always fun for us. Are you sick? He is, and I was raised Hindu, but we're sort of just a medley in our house, both. And so, absolutely, I think there's,

I'm a children of immigrants. I was born in India, was six months old when my parents came here. So, and I think I've had the opportunity to sort of feel it and see it being biased from every angle, the ways in which I hold that biases, the ways in which I receive other people's biases. And certainly I think women are navigating a mind field of interesting gender biases. Especially right now. Especially right now. So I was honest with you before we started rolling about one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you,

which is that I'm writing a book about how to be a better person. Yeah. And I think one of the, I mean, this is not a controversial, I don't think, controversial assertion or what it is definitely not as it is definitely not an original observation. But one of the big problems when it comes to human behavior right now is bias. And I think that shows up in sexism, racism, but also tribalism. And so I'm interested to know what have you looked at.

I know you've looked at race and sex and racism and sexism, but have you also looked at political bias? I don't look at it directly. And even race and gender while I do run studies that look at those issues, and particularly interested in the way the mind works and how that shows up in any number of biases. So that could flow into everything from race and gender

and tribalism to sexual orientation or disabilities or any other sort of Place where we have some association that somehow we've internalized, you know, I say peanut butter you say Jelly do I My mind automatically went to smoothie Really? I love it. All right, if I say twinkle twinkle, you say.

There you go. So somehow twinkle twinkle little star became a thing that you associated together in your mind. And there's all these other associations we've internalized in our minds where we associate certain groups of people with certain attributes. And we may not remember when that became part of how we thought or that we even thought of it as a thought. It was just part of the flow of our unconscious mind.

And what I'm interested in is how that flow of our unconscious mind, which is the majority of our mind's work, how it sometimes leads us away from being the person we mean to be, or the people we mean to be. That's what I'm interested in, is that gap. So, I'm thinking of, and I don't know how you feel about this individual, but he's a colleague of yours, Jonathan Haia. Yeah. I've never had him on the show, but I want to, he's a psychologist. He's a psychosocial psychologist. He's down the to. Down the hall for me. Okay. So he uses this metaphor. I don't even know if it's his, maybe just a common metaphor of the mind is like an elephant with a rider on top.

And we think we're the rider or the conscious part of our brain is the rider. But the elephant is much bigger and has much more power. And but we are unaware of elephant much of much at the time. Do you agree with that analogy? Yeah, I think it's right. Is that kind of what you were talking about? And I do believe it is his, it's from one of his earlier books, not his current work.

Yeah, I think he helps us, his metaphors are always very on point in sort of painting a picture of what's going on that's not visible. And so this idea that so much of the mind's work is happening on autopilot or something else is sort of working us as the elephant is working the rider. You know, there's one, there's one study that shows that in any given moment, I want to snap, but I think that might make the microphone go crazy. That's fine, go, go.

Okay, snap. And that moment that there's 11 million thoughts happening in our minds. But almost all of them are happening outside of our awareness. 40 of them are happening consciously. So I'm probably thinking consciously about what I'm saying, but then a whole bunch of things that I'm processing the colors in this room that I'm knowing how to sit. I'm not thinking consciously about those things. Those are in the 11 million outside of my awareness.

So if that much of the mind's work is happening just as it should, the brain is built to do incredibly complex things in a busy dynamic world. That's what we want our mind to be able to handle is 11 million things per moment. But it also means there's some of that stuff going on that we're if we sort of were to look at it, we'd be like, whoa, whoa, mind, where did that come from?

That's not quite how I thought we were going about navigating the world. Like, in terms of our, in terms of our, in terms of our, exactly. So I'll give you an example. Recently, I had a horrifying moment where I took my saying yes. Exactly. So I'll give you an example. Recently, I had a horrifying moment where I took my son to see Frozen, which the play was great. I worked for Disney, so it was the best play ever. And I don't know if this is the way they cast it every night,

but in the night I was there, the two girls who are the stars, their parents come on at the beginning. Their parents were black. Okay. And it took me a minute to realize, oh, those are the parents. Oh. That's the king and queen.

And oh, they were the actors. Yes. The parents were black. But the the the the stars, the girls are white. Oh, I see. Elsa and whoever. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it.

I'm sure it's wonderful. I can't believe I'm forgetting the name of Elsa's sister, but I bought my brother, my brother, my son, one of the dolls on the way out. But anyway, the parents are black, and I remember, and I was like, oh, they must be some, I don't know what they are, but they're not the king and queen. Right. And then I was like, oh, they're the king and queen. But then I was like oh, they're the king queen right but that was my bias You know working against me. Yeah, and so yeah, that was sometimes when if I'm looking honestly at my It's horrifying it absolutely and you know My book is peppered with mortifying anecdote after mortifying anecdotes my own biases showing up

and so I see more defined anecdotes of my own biases showing up. And so I see so much of the work that I'm trying to do is not about making people's biases go away because we don't actually know how to do that, but it's about helping us notice our biases when they do show up so that we can deal with it. And we have all these motivated reasons to not want to notice them. So one of the things that I think you do that's really deeply helpful in this era of, you know, this is me saying this not you and you may or may not agree,

I think there's a kind of political correctness that has taken hold that can be useful because it's just people who haven't had power for a long time being able to speak. But on some levels, it's just people who haven't had power for a long time being able to speak. But on some levels, it's actually really counterproductive because it induces shame. And I don't think you're ever going to get anybody to change by telling them that they're awful.

And what you do that I find is really useful as you talk about these mortifying things that happen in your own mind in a way that tells me, okay, I don't have to be so ashamed that I had this, not so great association when I saw a black man and woman walk on stage as king and queen and frozen. And it's not my fault, the culture injects these biases into us and to see them clearly is to then be able to not be owned by them. Exactly. The noticing. That's the work. The noticing. I mean, the thesis of my book is that

we have put ourselves in this tight corner with no window and that tight corner with no window is our good person identity. Most of us care about being seen as and feeling like a good person, according to research on what's called moral identity, and even though like we may not all define good person the same, but whatever your definition is, most of us don't want to be shamed into not being seen as a good person or being sort of labeled that way. But the problem is the definition a lot of us are using for good person, and this is why it's such a tight corner, is binary. It's, you're a good person or you're not. You're a racist or you're not. You're a sexist or not, and there's no room for growth. There's no room for mistakes. What I'm trying to offer is a different way of thinking about our identities,

which is being a good-ish person. A good-ish person is a work in progress, and it's, you know, I want to be really clear, because sometimes people think I'm saying we're letting ourselves off the hook, but I actually think I'm pushing us to a higher standard than good person. Because good-ish person means when things happen, when I make the mistake, the frozen incident, instead of just explaining it away, I have to notice it, because that's what I do as a good-ish person. I notice these things. I learn from them.

My brain activity actually goes up because I'm in what Carol Dwack, psychologist at Stanford, calls a growth mindset. And when I'm in a growth mindset, I view myself as malleable. I view my skills as malleable. And in that moment, when an error makes itself known, my brain activity is exactly, oh, pay attention, pay attention to the error. When I'm in the opposite of that, a fixed mindset where I don't view myself a work in progress, I'm a good person or I'm not binary, then my brain activity actually goes down when I notice that error.

Because there's nothing to be learned here. I just need to disregard or explain away what just happened. I love this so much. I think is is so constructive and I wonder in this era of at times excessive political correctness and Twitter mobs and virtue signaling and all the sort of the bad parts of having people who have for too long been held down being empowered right I think that there's so much good in the fact that we have a much more sort of multicultural culture. But in the bad part of it, the sort of mob mentality, could we ever create a world which I think you're kind of describing where seeing, naming, admitting, these kind of otherwise embarrassing, implicit biases could be the moment where we give ourselves a pat on the back because you saw it and therefore your odds of acting on it

have just gone down. I think that's right. I'll offer another layer on how to think about the, what you're describing at the political correctness phenomena. Another way to think about it is through the framework of heat versus light. And so in trying to make any sort of change, one approach is to educate others and meet them where they are and think about their comfort. And that would be sort of where I tend to usually fall is I try to use myself as an example. I try to, the teacher in me comes out. But there's other people who use forms of heat, which don't worry about the comfort of others that come down really hard on others. And I used to

be when I started writing this book, frankly, a little judgy of the heat folks. And I was sort of pitching my book to publishers as I was going to be the light-based person. Then I started learning more about research around social movements and history of social movements. And what I learned is that the movements that are most successful are the ones that have heat and light and that movements that have relied exclusively on sort of more radical or more moderate, either of those, have not moved forward as much in terms of actual change. And that's when I realized that I think I was sabotaging

what I cared about by being dismissive of the heat and judging it harshly. I don't like being on the receiving end of it and I sometimes am as a professor. I deal with lots of people, young people, undergrads and people in their 20s and 30s who are very much at the forefront of I think what you're describing. So I don't always like receiving the heat.

And that said, I think I've trained myself to be more appreciative of the fact that there are people willing to bring the heat. I'm not one of those people, but I'm grateful there are people like that. But I want to be clear, I'm not saying heat is never necessary. I'm just saying excessive unnecessary use of it

is totally counterproductive. Yeah, and I think the key in what your argument is the shame piece of it and how it shuts down learning. And so what I'm trying to encourage people to do is even if that excessive political correctness targets you, you're the target of it. If you can receive it in a good-ish mindset, you're more likely to find that morsel in what they're saying that's useful. In the good person mindset, there is just no way you're going to hear it.

I know I don't want to make that mindset. But most people aren't. If we're talking about affecting social change, which is what the heat bringers are trying to do yeah? I feel like they're undermining themselves because they're forcing People the people whose minds they want to change not to listen to them and so that's where because Often, you know, I'm a journalist on us both to say is but often I agree with you know, I mean I want us to I want people to be treated fairly, let's just say. I want there, we're in the richest country in the history of the planet.

I don't think we should have such educational disparities between white people and people of color. I feel confident, as a journalist saying that, but do I think that shame is gonna bring that change about? I don't. I think actually conversation and light is going to bring that change about? I don't. I think actually conversation and light is going to bring it about. Does that mean you should never use heat? No. I just think that you should be careful and so. Careful in these of it. And don't use it in a way

often. I think we devolve into virtue signaling, which is people are using it to make it, to raise their stature among their peers as opposed to actually trying to do something construct. Absolutely. And I think your last point is a really interesting one. I think it's interesting in the work you've done on meditation. I think there's sort of a similar kind of signaling that's going on there where it's not about the actual practice that's more about the signaling to the world.

But your first point, I'll offer one more layer on it, which is sometimes what the impact of heat is, is not on attitude change, but it's on the norms, changing norms. And there is research that by Princeton psychologist Betsy Pollock, who shows that sometimes the changing of the norms will, which is essentially the changing of the norms will, which is essentially the changing of behavior, even if it doesn't change the attitude, that's okay. It actually gets us the sum of the impact we want.

So you can't always assume you'll be able to affect the way people think, but people, you know, if nobody litters on the beach, nobody litters on the beach, as soon as one person litters on the beach, everyone starts littering on the beach, nobody litters on the beach. As soon as one person litters on the beach, everyone starts littering on the beach. Norms really shape behavior. And so just by shaping the norms, which heat does do, you potentially are shaping behavior without even changing

attitudes. That's a really, that that strikes me as a really good point. But it, but nonetheless, I remain somewhat wary of, I think, I hear probably, I think we probably agree on this. I think we do. I think we do. I think I've just come a pretty long way in the last three years of having a less of a reflex against it. I think my reflex against it was pretty strong three years ago.

But I just think about it in my own life, you know, when I'm pushed into a corner and made to feel like a defective human that isn't fertile ground for change for growth and change. Yeah, I was having a conflict with somebody recently and and he was trying to get me to change. He was he was asking me for help in something, but also really criticizing me. And I said, you're asking me for help while punching me in the mouth. And I feel like that's not the right conditions for me. I don't feel like helping you right now because my mouth is bleeding. So I don't know.

There's something in there that feels. I'm with you. Yeah. So I'm. So I used, I used, you know, the other day I used terrible, I can't believe I'm admitting it, but I used sugar to bribe my kids to do something the other day. I do it all the time. Right? So, and I knew that was not the right way to get them to do it, and yet I also knew it would work. And so in some ways, I think what you're saying is, listen folks, if you want people to

listen to you, hand them a cookie, you know, validate them a little before you crush them with your criticism. And the research would support you on that, that if you really do want to engage people's ideas and minds, and you do need to validate their identity, you need to give them a little sugar not completely attack them. Before we went down this road, what I was really trying to say, and I think it was a fruitful digression, is that I just love that you're willing in your book to talk about these embarrassing internal moments,

and I think it would be great as a culture if we were allowed to say the forbidden, you can, I mean, in some ways, you can get away with it, right? So they study it. Well, also you're a woman of color. Oh, good point. But I'm a white male.

And so it's much more difficult. I'm willing to do it, but I will take key for it. And I think in a way that's different. I suspect I will take key in a way that's different than you will. Yeah, that's such an... You've actually just given me an idea. We should... As we, the researchers, we should run a study on that.

That's a testable thing, and I don't know if anyone has tested it. I see where your intuition is coming from. Let's just say, at the very least, I feel less comfortable. Yeah. And I think it would be healthy as a society. I'm thinking it allowed, so I'm sure I'm getting myself in trouble in lots of ways here because this isn't an area where I've done enough deep thinking. But I have this intuition that if we could all just admit this stuff, and it wasn't verboten, and what you weren't going to be under

a mountain of shame every time you admitted it, but in fact, the point was to admit it so that you could not act on it. That would be a healthier world. Absolutely. And I think what I call that, what you're wishing for, and I'm hoping you're wishing into the universe, is making your learning visible. I think where people get themselves into lots of hot waters when they try to defend a particular mistake, as opposed to saying, I think I made a mistake, or I'm struggling with this this and I'm trying to understand and learn from it. And so making your learning visible is something that I've actually, you know, been talking to a lot of companies and organizations and executives since my book came out and

they'll say if there's one thing you could recommend to us, you know, what would it be? Should we change this way of hiring or this or this? And I I always say the one if you could do only one thing I would have your senior executives start talking openly about their learning in this area Until the senior executives are willing to acknowledge their own unconscious biases and start working on those issues themselves No amount of diversity training or unconscious bias training is going to have any impact on anyone else. So you think we're dealing with this at 10% happier which is a startup company that teaches people how to meditate through an app and so we have you know like we're right now I think 17 or 18 full-time employees and we've just started we have a committee on diversity inclusion and we're going to bring in a firm

to help us do better at this and and we've heard a lot and the early advice that we're and we're going to bring in a firm to help us do better at this. And we've heard a lot in the early advice that as we're going about this learning process, it's very important to have buy-in from the highest level of the company for people to speak comfortably about this. But you think it would be important for somebody like me to get up in front of the company and say, oh, I met this person the other day. And to be honest, my first impression was based on the fact that he or she was in a wheelchair or whatever the color of this skin, I reached a lot of rapid conclusions that were wrong.

You think saying something like that, which is a fraught thing to say, is actually a healthy move. I think it's a healthy move. And I think what's important is that you frame it in, and here's what I'm learning about myself. I think that you're making your learning visible. What you don't want to do is create panic that everyone's going to think, oh, God, Dan's, what's he judging about me right now? I was under this illusion that he was seeing me objectively.

And now I have to worry about all these stereotypes he's bringing. But that's not what you're saying. What you're saying is, wow, I caught myself. And I think depending on where I would make sure that when you're, if you're going to start doing that, the work you've done to educate yourself about how the human mind works, that your employees have had the same opportunity. So they're hearing this in the context of, wow, there's stuff that, you know, here's what Dan knows and what I now know is that

there's a lot of work in the human mind that takes place outside of my awareness. Some of that stuff that's happening outside of my awareness is not consistent with who I mean to be. The trick is to notice it, and then once you notice it, figure out what to do about it. And so you are simply saying that I'm doing the same work I'm asking everyone else to do. But it's going to take courage for me to emit some of this stuff. Here's what might help build the courage. What the research says really clearly is that when people who are the target of a particular

bias, so let's say if a black person speaks up when someone says tells a racist joke versus if a white person speaks up in that same moment, the white person has more impact than the black person. And the black person will be viewed as whineer than the white person in that particular scenario. Similarly, there's other research that's been done that shows that managers who advocate for diversity or white manager, who hires a person of color, takes no real hit to their reputation or performance evaluation, but a black person or a woman who does the same thing

does take a head crown. So everything's context, right? If you're saying, you're making your learning visible and then at the same time doing some really egregious things, no one's going to take you seriously. You're going to be viewed as a hypocrite. But if you're making your learning visible and it's in the context of them seeing you as somebody who cares deeply about these issues, I think you'll actually create a ripple effect of learning. We're on another digression, but since we're here and since I'm thinking a lot about

sort of the internal culture at 10% happier Because it matters so much to me and the people matter so much to me and I want everybody to be happy and productive. Yeah I one of the big concerns I've had as we go through this process of diversity inclusion diversity and inclusion work is Is that we lapse into this kind of precious, you know, virtue signaling, fundamentally instance here, yeah, way of conducting ourselves as opposed to, by contrast, I, one of my homes here at my primary home here at ABC News is nightline, And we have an incredibly diverse staff, mostly female, a lot of different ethnic extractions. And it is very comfortable and very joky.

And people are constantly kind of like touching the third rail and making jokes and stuff like that. And an atmosphere that I'm very comfortable with. Whereas I feel like sometimes when I'm at 10% happier, as we're working with this stuff, that it can lapse into kind of like very careful language, the void of any irony or humor. And so you have any thoughts on how we can bring

a sort of spirit of levity. I'll just say one last thing. I had a conversation once with a prior guest on this podcast, a woman, a wonderful woman named Seven A. Celaci, who's a meditation teacher, and she's of Ethiopian extraction. And we were talking about this very issue and comfort and being able to say, you know, to try things out and say things so you're not just sitting there so scared that you don't say anything. And she said something like, well, you can talk to me however you want because you know

you, Dan, no, I'll never kick you out of my heart. Oh. And I thought, okay, well, that creates an atmosphere where I can grow. But if I'm scared or annoyed, then I don't feel like I can grow. So I, that's a long question. Yeah, no, but I get it. What you're saying is like, if, if, yeah, how do you marry the humor?

Well, I mean, is the humor in the jockey culture ever at anyone's expense? It's at my expense a lot. Good, that's perfect. So I was, that's exactly what I was about to say. Is if it 10% happier, I think, as long as you're the butt of 60% of the jokes, I think that's great.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. I view it as a sign of intelligence if of 60% of the jokes, I think that's great. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I view it as a sign of intelligence if somebody makes fun of me quickly. Exactly. Yes. So, yeah. And so, they're ruthless at night line.

I mean, like I am, they killed me. It's great. I love it. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's the key. As long as the humor that isn't being brought in is about targeting people who have less power, you know, making fun of your staff.

Of course, you can make fun of your staff as long as there's that trust. Not suggesting that that's a bad thing, but I think you can create as long as you you create a permission for it. I see. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Right. And it's also possible that it's just a different vibe that people just don't engage in that kind of humor

in the same way. It's true, it's a different industry. One of the points that our CEO, a 10% happier is made is like, look, nightline may be very comfortable because it's so diverse that people who are from diverse backgrounds feel so comfortable that they can make jokes, but we're a tech company

and tech is largely dominated by white males and as we start to bring in more women and people of color, it's just not as relaxed yet, right? And nor could it or should it be. So I think that's actually an excellent point. I just wanna make sure that we create a workplace that is not so precious, that it's not fun to work in. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

Well, and I think also creating trust. So first, I think you making fun of yourself and like validating when people make fun of you creates a certain level of trust at that level. And your CEO doing that as well is important. But then also them trusting each other. So to what extent are they having the chance to do all the things that build trust, we know whether it's some social activities outside of work or within work, are there opportunities where they're interdependent on each other as opposed to working independently?

These are the things we know that drive up trust. Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after this. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles.

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You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. I have taken a far away from your central thesis, which I don't want to overlook, which is the, what you said before about good-ish. So let's just go back to that because I think that is so powerful. How do we transition from this binary mindset of either I'm a good person or a bad person and I'm definitely a good person to good-ish? How does one make that move?

So it's easier than we think. In the language of psychology, you're activating a growth mindset. You're activating a belief that with effort you can improve. And so one great metaphor that I'm stealing from Corey Hageem who is a curator at TED.com and she helped me craft this metaphor. Think of it as technology. None of us assume that in 2019, we're going to get away without having to update our knowledge of our phones and our laptops and our gadgets from 2018 and 15 and 10.

We all know that every year we're going to have to figure new things out and how do I download this and how do I back up this and get our kids to show us how to use their phones. That's just a given. What if we apply that same metaphor to how we think about issues around diversity or inclusion and bias? That's a constantly changing world that we're going to update our knowledge in all the time. And that's just how the world is.

It's not a reflection of us being flawed in some way. We're activating a mindset, a growth mindset of this is something I'm just going to keep doing. And the researchers on mindset, it's actually sort of simple to activate that mindset. They simply tell people, this is something that can be learned, drawing, math, golf, whatever. This is something can be learned and treated as something that is malleable. And then people can adopt that belief and move forward with it. So if you tell somebody to move out of I'm a good person, come hell or high water into

I'm a good-ish person who is complicated and flawed but has the intention of improving and over time actually you can become less racist and less sexist. Well, I don't want to be really precise there. So let's break that down. So what I'm telling people is navigating issues of diversity and inclusion, building more inclusive communities or workplaces, all of these are skills that can be learned. They're not something you have to be born knowing how to do. So that's the first thing, that's a learnable thing. So good person mindset says, to be born knowing how to do. So that's the first thing, that's a learnable thing. So good person mindset says, I should just know how to do this.

I should know how to be a manager of someone different than me, or I should know how to pronounce names that are unfamiliar to me. And since I don't know how to pronounce it, I'm just going to avoid saying it, or I'm going to shorten it. No, these are things that can be learned. And so the first step is these are learnable skills. And the book I refer to it is instead of just being a believer in diversity and inclusion, you're being a builder. And so you've got skills that you have to build. And then the second piece of it is when you said it'll make me less of a racist or a sexist,

I want to be careful there. I don't use that language very often. It's not obvious that it'll actually reduce your unconscious biases. That we, we, de-biasing is not something as scientists we've figured out how to do yet, but it will make you notice them more. It will make you more willing that when somebody calls you out on something that you go,

oh my God, thank you for telling me that. That was something I totally missed, a blind spot on my part, and then you can figure out what to do about it. But it really depends on how you define racist or sexist or whatever it is. Because if you define it as what your unconscious mind is vomiting up, then we're all hopeless. But if you define it more as your action, in the face of this incescent torrent of nonsense that's in our, and culturally injected, parentally injected biases, evolutionarily injected biases, they're part of the elephant, Then you then then then then actually you can become.

Yes. So by that definition, I'll go for that. You become a better writer on top of the elephant. In other words, yeah, exactly. I am after reading your book, which I loved. I realized I should have called my book 10% woker. Yeah. Exactly. That would have been a good time. Exactly. Yes. You can have it. book 10% woker. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. You can have it. You can have it for your franchise. That's my chapter title. Yeah, there you go. It's only for me in acknowledgements. It's fine.

I just want one little hello. I think I can swing that. But aren't biases good? Didn't we evolve to have biases for a reason? don't I need to know the different shooting a snake As a snake and a stick, you know, right shortcuts are good our brain a hundred percent needs shortcuts to navigate the world There's there's no way we can process 11 million things every moment and a conscious way and it's shortcuts that allow us to do it It's just that sometimes those shortcuts set us up for mistakes. So the architecture is great.

We just have to pay a little bit of attention to what's in the house. And over time, just to dig in on this a little bit before, in terms of building this skill from going from being a believer to a builder. Can you just dig more deeply and say, what are the practical steps we take as we want to get better and better at this? Absolutely. So first of all, we want to just start noticing the ways in which we are in our own daily lives,

perhaps feeding our brains with associations that we weren't even paying much attention to. So for example, look at the last five movies you saw, books you read, podcasts you listened to, whatever media you consume regularly. And think about whose voices were represented, what images were being reinforced, who was the creator of those particular forms of media. Just by doing an audit of your media or your social media,

you can get a sense of where you might be sort of feeding your brain stuff that you didn't mean to feed it. Rick Klaus, who's a senior executive at Google Ventures, and I feature him in the book because he's a white male who spoke really candidly about the surprise he had when he went to this unconscious bias training. Pretty sure he didn't need it. He was, you know, he sort of bachelors, he says, I really thought I was one of the good

guys, a hired women and a promoted women, etc. And I go to this training and they have me do this unconscious gender bias test. And I'm really stunned to see my results or not what I expected. So he was skeptical, but he said, let me go through all my LinkedIn contacts and my Twitter. And in his world, his social media actually plays a really important professional. He has a real influencer in that way.

And he realized only 20% of the people he was connecting to were women across platforms. And he was stunned. And he actively then said, wow, I'm going to change that. I'm going to start looking for who am I overlooking, where are my blind spots? And he says he's not quite up to 50-50, but he's close. And I interviewed him before the Me Too movement

became a national conversation. And he said then, he said, you know, when only 20% of the voices you're listening to are women, every now and then, here's some story about sexual harassment. It sort of feels like a one-off. It says, when I was up closer to 50%, I started realizing I was hearing these stories all the time from people I trusted. And I started realizing I'm really missing something that's happening right under my nose

figuratively. And so I thought that was a great example of to answer your question. A concrete thing we can do is just look at the voices and content we're consuming and do an audit. The second thing we can do is start paying attention to when things do happen. When we notice something happening in the world around us, is this a moment where we can constructively engage with the person telling the joke or the candidate who, the candidate being considered

or not being considered in a hiring process, can we engage more on that issue with a committee? And in the book, I offer some concrete ways to do that, especially for people like me who are not very confrontational and, you know, don't particularly like to get in fights with people. What are ways in which we can have those conversations? Well, tell me more about that because how do you, if somebody says something, I mean, you, I can see how this could go wrong. Absolutely. You could just become like, you know, ostentatiously woke and you're just

constantly policing everybody's, uh, whatever everybody says. That would be very wrong. Yeah. So how do you do this correctly? Yeah. Well, first of all, you don't, you, every incident it, none of us can hit every incident. So the idea that you're going around sort of vigilante style is not the goal. Um, I offer something in the book called the 2060 20 rule, which I borrowed from, I used to be a consultant in a past life, and a fellow consultant Susan and Nunzie O taught me this. 2060 20, and any group of people, when a change comes through, the numbers don't really matter, but let's go with 20 and 60 and 20. There's one group of people that's like, yeah, I'm so in, like just get out of my way. I'm in for the change.

There's another group of people who's not coming with you and they're never coming with you and they don't like it and they're vocal about not liking it. And she would call them the comfortably miserable on that particular issue. And then there's this big middle group, let's call it 60%. That's the movable middle, but not super engaged on whatever's happening, whether it's a new accounting system or a new way of how do you refer to people of color, like new language. They're just not paying a lot of attention, it's not top of mind for them. And what the 2060-20 rule says is that if it's the first 20, those people want to learn, want to grow,

just find the right moment to talk to them. If it's the other 20, you're not going to get very aware, but get very far, but they are going to suck the energy out of you. They are going to try to pull, they're like the trolls, the internet trolls, but sometimes in real life, their uncle, so and so at Thanksgiving, some of our dinner tables. And there you need to be really careful. What you need to do there is not focus on changing their minds, but focusing on signaling that this from a norm standpoint is not

okay. And then that middle 60 is the group we continually forget. We don't give them any of our attention. And that's the group where we actually could have real impact. They get swayed by either that first 20 or that other 20. And so the 2060 20 rule says make a quick snap judgment. It's not perfect. It's we're using one of our mental shortcuts. Figure out whether you're dealing with 2060 or 20.

If you're dealing with the first 20, go for it. Just put them in. Activate your learning mindset and allow them to do the same. If you're dealing with the bottom 20, focus on signaling that this is not cool from a norm standpoint. But don't get in the long-protracted argument. If you're dealing with the middle 60, people who are not deeply entrenched on an issue are more persuaded

by humanizing stories than by data. So pull up a good story about yourself for someone else. I'll give you an example of my own life. The first word of one of the chapters in the original edition of 10% Happier was a quote so it wasn't my word, but it was a quote from a member of the military who referred to meditation as retarded. I think that was in the edition. Yes.

So that stuck out for me. There's a new edition coming out where that will not be the case anymore. It was explained to me by, I don't want to name any names, just because I don't have permission, but it was explained to me by somebody close to me who has this child the special needs that that one word ruin the book for him and so on the next edition of the book it's out got it and I just found that personal story to be so incredibly powerful and so I guess I was probably in the 60 there yeah on that particular that particular issue. It handled it so skillfully, didn't make me feel ashamed. Right.

He didn't lecture me or whack his finger at me, telling me I'm a horrible person. He's like, he said, look, we grew up in an era where that word was okay, but I'm telling you it's really not okay. And for people who have our parents with kids with special needs or maybe have a brother or sister with a special need, whatever. It's devastating. That's a great example of a strategy, a middle 60 strategy. So if you're around the, but then I guess the question is, are you around the office? And somebody says, makes a joke, that's like kind of borderline.

You've got to make a call. Quickly, is this person in the 20, 20 the good 20 the bad 20 or the 60 And is now the right place to do it should I take them aside? Exactly. It's complex It's complex and that's why the 20 60 20 rule helps because it get you you can work your way through like sort of the funnel of decisions and quickly get to a plan That may it may involve doing something in the moment, or it may involve something more privately outside of that moment.

And one of the things that I try to use as much as I can is a sense of humor in those moments where, be like, oh, they tell the joke, and you're like, my God, you look so young to be so old-fashioned. Where did that go from? That kind of, so you're not even gonna hit it head on. You're going to name it. That's what I mean by busting a norm. You're not going to just let it sit and become like, okay, you're going to, you're going to be like, all right, we all just saw it happen there.

So, okay, so those are two skills. The first skill was doing an audit of your media, social media. The second was training yourself over time to call it out judiciously when somebody says something that's across the line. Are there other skills in terms of looking from Believer to Builder? Absolutely. So other things we can do are to begin to actually take action. So whether that means like, for example, when you were describing your new company, thinking about actual practices that you're engaging in in terms of how you hire people, how you evaluate people. And while my book doesn't get into a ton of depth

on the actual practices, there's a lot of great work out there. For example, there's a book called What Works that's really useful that gives you specific things. Like, for example, interviews, and I am so guilty of this, I've spent a good chunk of my career interviewing people in that kind of bantery way, because I just love funny banter, and I think it's fun to meet someone new and just find the common ground to have funny banter on and spend an interview doing that for 30 minutes. You sort of talk about something related to the job. But that kind of interview, which a lot of industries rely a lot on, actually sets yourself

up for where culture fit is being the thing assessed. Like can I banter with you? And usually we can, the one study showed that the two things that really kind of supported that kind of interview where if you went to the same school or if you had shared a hobby, I wouldn't even say unique hobby, but like marathon running or craft beer brewing kind of thing. But you can see how that would work against

anybody who's not coming from sort of the prototypical background. And so a better way of interviewing is something that's more structured, that's more behavioral, meaning the questions are asking. Tell me a story about a time when you, blah, blah, blah, blah, did something related to the job, as opposed to doing this bantery thing, which is really favoring people who feel really comfortable

with whatever background I'm most comfortable with. So a skill that comes to mind as a possible way to be better at diversity inclusion that you haven't listed. Okay. But I want to see whether you think it would be a good skill, would be meditation. Oh gosh, good, yes. See, do you think, here's how I think it would work, but I'm not a scientist, so you tell me if there's any evidence to see. Meditation is all about dragging what's in the elephant, what's in the unconscious, up I hear how I think it would work, but I'm not a scientist, so you tell me if there's any evidence to see. Yeah.

Meditation is all about dragging what's in the elephant, what's in the unconscious, up to the rider level, right? Yes. So that you're seeing your biases. Yes. It's self-awareness. It's an inner telescope. Is there evidence to suggest that this process can surface these biases in a way that

allows us to surf rather than drown in them? Yeah, and I can't believe I didn't think of it till you just said it. There is one study out there that's, there may be more than one, but there's definitely one study out there that's actually looked at unconscious bias and meditation. Some reason it didn't come forward in my memory until now. And I do believe they showed some optimistic result in that study. So that sounds like something promising that I'm actually going to go back and refresh my memory on.

But meditation, as I understand it, is someone who doesn't practice it, but definitely thinks I will end up practicing it in my life because so many people I respect and care about, it's a central part of their lives. It really feels like something that's coming for me. It has that the non-judgmental, if please correct me if I misinterpret how meditation works, but the piece where you can sit with something without judging it, is a really powerful part of this noticing work that we're talking about. It's what we're, that's why I'm so attracted to what you said before about how you talk about all these embarrassing inner things that happen to you because that's what meditation is.

Yeah. It's been said that if you sit long enough and look at your mind, you're going to see a rapist and a murderer. Yeah. That's the nature of the mind. Yeah. And shame is unhelpful in this context. Yeah. Yeah. Clear non-judgmental awareness of seeing

this as a mind state or a thought that is impermanent. Right. And that is not mine, that I can lay no claim to. Right. Is what allows you not to act on that stuff. And that's what we're doing in meditation. That's interesting. In your book book, you used the seven-second delay from live television as a way to explain it. I thought that was really helpful.

And in some ways, I mean, what I don't know is how much of that unconscious mind we really can, I mean, from a brain science standpoint, can we actually bring it all to the surface? And I don't know if that's been studied or not. I don't know. Look, I mean, it a brain science standpoint, can we actually bring it all to the surface? And I don't know if that's been studied or not. I don't, I look, I mean, depends if you believe on total, on full enlightenment or something like that.

Right, right. Let me just say as a 10% guy, I think it's more about seeing more and more and more incremental. Yeah, so that like over time, you're, you're seeing, oh, how, look at my mind. Yeah.

And then you're more sensitized to it and theoretically less likely to just sort of act this stuff out. Absolutely and you know here's something interesting that I've noticed as you start doing that with yourself like being less judgmental and being I would let's call judgmental is the good person version and non-judgmental is the good-ish person. Still a higher standard though to be clear. As you start doing that, you get better at it. So the more willing I am to notice all my faux pas, the more willing I am to notice all

my faux pas. Like I've really gotten better at it. And then the extra benefit of that is the more willing you are to talk about your faux pas with others. That's the making you're learning visible. The more willing they are to do it with you. And not, I don't mean in the signal virtue signaling way. I mean in the, wow, I'm glad I can sort of share this with somebody. There's something happened the other day, I wasn't proud of it, and I'm glad that there's a way I can work my way through this that isn't the shame path. And so that, the compounding that's happening, just like with interest in 10%, is, I think,

both internally and externally with other people. It's skill building. It's skill building. It's skill building. Is there evidence to suggest that this actually works? Is this part of what you've researched? Of which parts specifically? The part of that is the more willing you become to see your inner foibles. Yeah, so I haven't run studies on that in particular.

That's been my personal experience. Is that, and it's a lot of it's come through the work on this book where, as academics, a lot of our conversations happen within scientific circles, but with this book, I've been talking to the real world a lot more and hundreds and hundreds of conversations. And that's where I've really started to notice this happening. One thing that does happen is if you'd become known as the person in your workplace or your social circles, as someone thinking about this and trying to grow

in this area, then you do start getting a lot of texts from friends where every time they notice something in their own mind, they sort of notice it for themselves and then shoot it to you. So you do become the receiver of a lot of this. So I think there's also something about how to carry that without getting bogged down in it. But I think that's a small issue to be resolved. But this seems like a fertile area to start studying. It could be, yeah. If this attitude that you're recommending the good-ish person, can we say with confidence that actually

it will improve behavior? Well, oh, sorry. so I think I was being overly precise with what you were asking me We can say absolutely with confidence It's been deeply studied that a growth mindset in other words the good-ish mindset Absolutely improves skill building and behavior and that's been studied by Carol Joechin or colleagues in a whole wide range of domain including bias behavior and that's been studied by Carol Joechin or colleagues in a whole wide range of domains. Including bias. Not necessarily in bias. We're trying to run some studies on that right now, but I feel very confident and I wrote

this book with the confidence that there's every reason to believe that because so much research has been done on fixed mindset versus growth mindset in so many domains, there's every reason to believe it would apply here as well. What I say in the intro to my book is I'm not going to wait 10 years till we have all that research buttoned down from a science standpoint to build that argument. But the logic is really clear on that argument, I think. And so I feel comfortable putting that in print. What I was what I was saying that I hadn't run the studies on is like me particularly talking about it with other people. I haven't run that study. Skeptical question. If I'm listening to this and my basic goal is to be

less stressed, less anxious, a happier person, maybe more successful person, healthier person, why is this something I should spend a lot of time working on? this something I should spend a lot of time working on. Well, I actually, I don't take the stance that it should be. I take the stance, the reason the title of my book is the person you mean to be is that this is for people who are wanting to pay attention to these issues. And I think in recent years that number has grown in the United States and probably beyond. And people are struggling for tools and strategies. So this book was really written speaking to the people struggling for tools and strategies

and feeling helpless. I don't try to make an argument in my work that everyone should think about this. Now do I personally think more people should think about this? I do. But I, when I was writing the book, I said to myself, if I could wave a magic wand and make everybody in one group read this book, who would it be, I said, I would, I would say it's all the people who already think they're good people and already people who don't think they're part of the

problem around bias. That's exactly who I want. Pretty much everybody. Well, yes, but I think there's some that are even more so, people who don't think they're part of the problem around bias. That's exactly who I want to read. Pretty much everybody. Well, yes, but I think there's some that are even more so, like some that are the woke and the virtue signaling crowd would probably be on the extreme end of that. So this book would be for those folks to do it better. Yeah.

And to realize that if you're taking that stance, but in a good person mindset, if we're all carrying around unconscious biases of one sort of another, but you're doing that in that like tight corner with no window, that means you're missing all the ways in which you're not being the person you mean to be.

And so that's the crowd that I, you know, and I have historically been part of that crowd. So I'm speaking very much to myself as well. You mentioned before about the IAAT, I believe you were talking about the IAT in the implicit association test. You were talking about it in the context of the Google Ventures, and the gentleman who took a class and implicit bias.

But the IAT is this test that gets used in a lot of these diversity and inclusion trainings where you are shown a bunch of images on a computer screen and then press a button to see if you're association with the images or negative or positive. It's reports to show what your bias is on things like race and gender. Now a friend of mine, Jesse Single, wrote an article in New York magazine that was a kind of, that read to me as a non-expert, as a devastating take down of the IAT.

And I just, so anytime somebody mentions it, I, my antenna go up. What's, basically his thesis, if I can state it correctly, was you could take the, you, any person could take the IAT one day, and the results, if you took it the next day, would be entirely different, which means that by viability standard, by sort of reliability standards for a scientific test, it's in the toilet. So what's your view on this thing? So yeah, and I'm familiar with his article. So the reliability, the IAT, I don't think any scientist would say it's toilet level

reliability, but it's not super high reliability either. So whenever I recommend that anyone take the IAT, I say that I recommend you take it multiple times on multiple days so that you can get a sense of a trend as opposed to trusting one measure on one day. And that I recommend that this be not the last thing you do to figure out what unconscious biases you have, but the first thing or the next thing you do, this is just one piece of understanding how these unconscious biases might be working in your mind. It's by no means a perfect test, but the overwhelming scientific community views it as a credible measure.

And I think that has been very clearly established in the thousands of studies that have been run and published about the IAT since the late 90s. And so there's been a lot of debate in the media about the credibility of the test, but that isn't the same as peer review by scientists of a test. The peer review by scientists of the test has actually come out with a pretty clear conclusion that this is a useful test. So if I wanted to do an experiment on myself to see if I could reduce my biases, if I could do, yeah, right?

Well, that's how the IAT is trying to do. What is it trying to do? It's trying to help you get one measure of your biases at that moment in time. Right, so what I was going to say is, if I took the test over a week several times, and like averaged out the results, and then followed your advice from your book for a year, and then went back into the IAT, would that be a fair way to measure whether I've improved? So I don't, this was the part where you're talking about

earlier, we're not, I'm not claiming in this book that we can change your unconscious biases. So let's say, like you said, you sort of over time, you get sort of a trend line of where your unconscious biases are. I'm not claiming that you can necessarily change that through anything I'm recommending in my book. What I am suggesting is that you can change the impact of those unconscious biases. So maybe the question would be would meditation change it?

Maybe, and that's the work that I do know there's some work out there on that. And is it fair to say that your view is that it may be the case that biases are unchangeable and really all we can work on is not acting them out. Well, so here's the thing. The biases were learned at some point. We weren't born with them. So peanut butter smoothie for you. Peanut butter jelly for lots of other people or twinkle twinkle little star. That was a learned thing, right? If you grew up in Iraq, that might not be the association you would have there. And the same thing is true, the association between let's say black men and violence, which is an association that sometimes often shows up on the IAT, that that is not something that people are born

associating. That was somehow learned through their lives. And so Beverly Daniel, Tannum psychologist describes that as smog that we've been breathing in since a moment we were born. Sometimes it's visible to us and sometimes that smog you can't see it. It's just in the air. And so anything that is learned could have been learned a different way. So am I willing to say that there's no way to unlearn and relearn those biases? While we haven't figured out the magical strategy on how to do that, theoretically is doable, right? Those are learned and they could be learned differently.

But just like all habits, habits are hard to change. And this, this association in our mind is basically a mental habit. And so some of the most promising research on the changing of unconscious biases is coming from people who are applying habit change techniques to it. Like what? They did something over six weeks where they had people, like, in a really daily way, sort of pay attention to those associations in their minds. I can't remember the exact technique they used,

but it was a pretty high effort ritual that it's hard to imagine someone exerting in a sort of regular life that wasn't for a study they were part of, but it did have some change in their unconscious biases. But what I'm trying to offer is that if we know the smog is what's shaping our unconscious biases, let's begin to shift the smog we're consuming.

That may or may not, I don't have the proof that that's going to change your unconscious biases, but I do know that if you continue with the same smog you had before, you're just going to not even see beyond it. Would you say, I mean, given the fact that tribalism and toxic partisanship is a problem in our country, would you say that your theses and your research and work could be applied in that area as well? Yeah, I mean, to the extent that we've dehumanized each other. So I do talk about how dehumanizing takes place in a whole variety of ways, some of which are well-intended ways and some of which aren't. I think the toxic atmosphere where you're describing is some of the not so well-intended ways of

vilifying others. And anytime we vilify someone or dehumanize someone, we're basically just seeing them as a caricature. And we're not going to... It's very easy to, once someone is a stereotype or a caricature, to not see them in a nuanced way. And so some of the research I was really interested to learn about is when we view someone as less human, like let's say I see a person on the street who's homeless.

There's research that says that I literally don't look at their face the same way I'm looking at your face, that I process their features in a the same way that you might process an object like this microphone I would be more likely the mental activity would look more like when I look at this microphone than when I look at you when I'm looking at the person who's homeless and so with the toxic partisanship that we're seeing and the tribalism, it's like we're viewing everyone as microphones as opposed to like people. What seems like the same process of, you know, diversifying your media and calling out your inner habits of associating Democrats with tree huggers or whatever, you could be used

in this context. It seems like it. Yeah. I haven't gone very deeply. I don't, my book, I think it's described as potentially being politically relevant, but I didn't really think of it as political when I worked on it, but I absolutely can see the relevance area.

You talk about how to show up in difficult conversations outside of your echo chamber. Yeah. You talk about that and like how would you even, for most of us, you know, in a country where we've gone through what's called the big sort where we tend to live in areas where we're surrounded by people who look like us

and vote for the same political candidates. How do we ever even get into conversations where we're outside of our comfort zone? Yeah. Well, this is where, I mean, for all the challenges the internet's posing in our lives right now, this is where social media is really useful because you can eavesdrop on a lot of conversations that you would never have access to or you would never even feel it was polite to eavesdrop on in real life.

So one of the things I suggest is whatever communities you don't feel you're getting access to in a regular way, go on Google hashtags related to black women, let's say, and you'll get a whole bunch of hashtags, and then you can go on Twitter, Instagram, and search for those hashtags, and listen in on the conversations that are happening. And I'm being really deliberate when I say listen in. I don't mean interject, I don't mean hijack, I don't mean argue with, I don't mean try to explain that this doesn't, what they're saying isn't true in your experience. I just mean listen in.

And the same way you eat, drop in a coffee shop, you don't interject yourself in the conversation. And you start to hear conversations that you would never ever have exposure to, even if you lived in the same neighborhoods, that these are private conversations that are sort of being publicly held. And that's a very unique 21st century phenomena that I don't think anybody's ever had before. And the point of this is that you might just start to, it's changing the smog.

Yeah, it's changing the smog. Yeah, it's changing the smog and it's helping you, it's changing the smog and that you're inputting different things, but it's also intellectually, you're just understanding things that you wouldn't understand otherwise. You're understanding that there's varied views on an issue. There isn't a one black perspective on Colin Kaepernick. There's a whole bunch of perspectives. There's as many perspectives as there are black people. You're hearing the debate and the dialogue in a really rich intellectual way.

Talk about something that I think a lot of white people do, which is cookie craving. Yeah. What we all do to be clear, I think, cookie craving is human phenomena. So cookie craving is this desire we have to feel affirmed for our good person identity, to be patted on the back, to be told that we're woke, or that we're, you know, not a sexist, not a racist, and that we are sort of sometimes without meaning to a little more focus on that than on the actual issues. I tell a story in the book about a former student of mine, Rachel Herney-Akk.

Rachel identifies as queer and when she woke up Sunday morning after the Orlando pulse shooting and learned the news, she was devastated. She said, you know, for many of us, the gay nightclub was the first safe place we ever encountered. And now this, this was punctured, this safety. And she worked at a very progressive West Coast company and the kind of place where people would call themselves straight, but not narrow. And so she, she, on the one hand, you would think that's exactly the workplace she'd want to walk into Monday morning and feel the support of her colleagues. But she said she was dreading going to work the next day, and she ended up actually blogging

about it late Sunday night, as she was just so anxious about Monday morning. And what she expressed is that it was the cookie seeking that all her well-intended colleagues she knew would come up to her, but they would tell her about her, their college roommate who came out to them or the money they give to the Trevor Project or any number of cookie seeking behaviors in that work would be on her to comfort them. And she shares that she's the daughter of a pastor. And she said, I noticed something going to lots of funerals as a kid, you know, tagging along with my dad, is that when people were coming up to those grieving, they seemed to be focused more on

their feelings than the grieving of the family. And she said, it felt like that. That this was what was happening. And they were well intended, but I was going to need to be stroking them instead of them taking care of me. So we all do this cookie seeking and part of what we're just trying to do by thinking ourselves as good as not good is give, take the cookie seeking out of our interactions with other people. It's really exhausting for people who are already dealing with being the target of any kind of bias to then also comfort the people around them. If we can sort of validate ourselves as works in progress and get out of that binary, then they don't have to do that for us. Let me get at some of the other concepts you talk about in the book.

Bounded ethicality. What is that? Bounded ethicality. That is that? Founded ethicality. That's super jargonny, and I think it only shows up once in the book, but it's a spin off of those who like books like Nudge or thinking fast and slow by Nobel Prize winners, Richard Thaler and Danny Coniman. The bounded rationality was a big idea in economics

and behavioral economics. It speaks to the fact that the human mind has limited processing power and does a lot of things on autopilot. And that's a pretty intuitive idea, I think, for most of us. Bounded ethicality is the work that I've done with Max Bieserman that says, well, if that same mind, when it goes to Bicereal, is prone to some errors in judgment, because it's going to be more swayed by what's at eye level, mental shortcut.

Why would I assume that same brain wouldn't also be prone to some errors when it comes to what joke to tell or who to hire? So the idea is that if we're going to assume there's some fallibility when it comes to decisions like what cereal to buy, then we also going to assume there's some fallibility when it comes to decisions like what cereal Dubai, then we also have to realize that same brain relies on shortcuts and there may be some fallibility when it comes to issues like diversity and inclusion. I view the good, good-ish evolution as being sort of a more accessible way of explaining bounded at the Caledity.

Final question as we wrap up here. How much optimism do you have that at a time where we're really at our at each other's throats? Yeah. I know you're more focused on sexism and racism, but and those two for sure about big big forces in the culture right now, but also political tribalism, et cetera, et cetera, all of which seem to me to be tied together. Yeah. How much optimism do you have that we can work our way through these issues? Yeah. Well, I think like everyone else,

I'm having better days and worse days, but I will tell you this, I, there was somebody in my sort of community who I had gone back and forth with on some of these issues in a way where I didn't feel he was really seeing my point of view and I'm sure he felt the same way around me. There's a white male and then we didn't see each other for a couple of years and then we ran into each other at an ice cream parlor where we both had taken our kids. And I saw him at the other side of the room and he's someone I enjoy his company a lot.

He's a terrific guy, he's a terrific dad. But, you know, I really didn't want to engage on these issues at the ice cream parlor. And so I was like frozen when I saw him heading towards me and I thought, oh gosh, here we go, you know, it's going to be a thing. Like I'm going to have to do this right in front of the kids. And to my surprise with great grace that I deeply admire, he came up to me and said, I'm so glad I saw you. I haven't seen you in a long time. I'm starting to think you're on to something. I am going to read your book because I'm starting to notice things that I had it notice at the office and I'm realizing some of the issues you've been talking about. There may be something

to it. And in a million years, I didn't see that coming. I really didn't. And so I think we plant seeds and had I not happen to be in that ice cream par that day, I never would have known that he is sort of moving towards some noticing that he wasn't doing before. And did you get him there via light or heat? I think my path is always light just because

I'm too big a wimp for heat. I mean, I wish I could do heat. I really wish I could. I'm just not good at it. So I mean, I don't know how he experienced it, but I don't even think I did that much. All I did was, you know, a couple of like Facebook comments back and forth, but that enough, that's enough to like completely like make me cry. Really? Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what? We all have temperaments that are not, we didn't, that we didn't choose.

That's right. That's right. Um, thank you so much. Yeah. Really appreciate it. It was so exciting for me. Before I go, just plug everything. Like give us the name of the book again.

Give us your social media. Anything you want to plug. Oh, you're, wow. Thank you. The name of the book again. Give us your social media. Anything you want to plug. Oh, wow, thank you. The name of the book is the person you mean to be, how good people fight bias. It was endorsed by Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth and Billie Jean King. And there's a TED talk that is on a similar subject

if you'd like to see that. And I love 10% happier by Dan Harris and I think you should read it. Thank you very much. Excellent work. I like the light you threw in there at the end. I'll take a plug anywhere. I can get it even even on my own show. Dolly Chug, thank you very much. I suspect I've been talking about the slot, Lillia, and you know, as I write this book, as I endeavor to write this book about the benefits of not being mean, I suspect that this interview is going to write this book about the benefits of not being mean

uh... suspect that this interview is going to be and and what i hope will be an ongoing relationship is going to be white useful all right let's get to our voice mills here's number one hello dan this is k c thanks for everything you do my habit and the goal booted

style meditation philosophy no not The goal of Buddhist style of meditation philosophy. You know, we're not supposed to use the word goal, but I don't know how to put it. I think I've been mistaken in that. Seems to me, if you're being mindful of emotions and awareness and everything, let's just say sadness. If you're trying to be aware of sadness

and kind of detached from it and let it pass, it seems like we would just end up being zombies. Like if we just are aware of everything non-judgmentally or whatever words we want to use and let them pass, like I said, we would be zombies, but I think I've been looking at that wrong. And I guess the goal of mindfulness is more so to be with what's happening like fatness, like be with fatness, but through being mindful and through meditating, we aren't adding all the extra mental BS that goes along with it, like ruminating about it or thinking about it again, and dragging up this adnet again on purpose because whatever reasons.

So hopefully that makes sense. Thank you. Yeah, so one of those rare questions that you answered for yourself. That's exactly right. A lot of people worry that we are trying to detach. There's a reason why meditation teachers are super-personickety about language, because the goal here isn't to be detached from your emotions. It's to be, it's, it's, but it's teachers often before the term non-attachment or non-identification. So you aren't trying to make yourself into a zombie, you're trying to have a different relationship

to your emotions so that you're not acting them out blindly or overly personalizing them. If you're experiencing anger, you're not telling a whole story about how this is your unique anger. It's actually, it can be viewed as an impersonal, emotional, squall that happens to be passing through the atmosphere. And that can take a lot of the teeth out of the thing. And so it isn't about being a zombie, it's about actually just being a more effective

human who isn't yanked around by his or her emotions because you've got this capacity to be non-attached, not detached, non-attached so that you feel what you're feeling fully, but you don't act on it blindly. Yeah, I don't think I need to say much more because you answered your own question quite beautifully. Thank you. Voice Man number two. Again, this is Steve calling for Minneapolis.

A question about the recent podcast with Mark Epstein. At one point he spoke about his conversations with his father, in which he asked his father to reflect upon that part of himself that he recognized as the consistent part of himself, that he recognized over the course of his life. And that seemed to me to be consistent with a notion of a self. And I wonder how that squares with the concept of selflessness, which seems to be a fundamental part of Buddhist teaching. It seems that really wasn't consistent with the notion of selflessness. So I wonder if you could explain that.

Thank you a lot. Love your app and your podcast, by the way. It's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. So I, I will do my best to explain this with the caveat that I, I get confused about this stuff too. Selflessness is, in my experience, the concept in Buddhism that people get hung up on the most. So Mark Epstein tells a story in his recent podcast

about talking to his ailing father on his deathbed, father was on his deathbed, he had brain tumor, I believe. And Mark had never really spoken to him about his spiritual life. And so he took an immense attempt, about his spiritual life. And so he took an admit in an attempt and he basically said to his father, you try to tune into the feeling of you that's been with you continuously throughout your life.

And just kind of rest in that as, in your ride that out as you expire. Anyway, Mark was of the view that that was a strategy worth exploring. And so, of course, you may say, if you've been listening to any amount of Buddhism, you'd be like, well, in a minute, I thought there was no you. So what are you talking about here? So the way to think about this is the the the phrases that are often or the concepts that are often used in Buddhism are relative reality and ultimate reality. This may sound like the names of bad high school punk bands, but bear with me. Relative reality is the world in which we all move from day to day. You know, we're

all, you know, kind of moving through the world as we conventionally know it, relating to one another, everything seems solid. I am me. I can pound my chest. I have to put my pants on in the morning. Every, you know, things are as they seem that's relative or conventional reality. Ultimate reality the ultimate truth of things is sometimes compared to quantum physics so i'm sitting on a chair right now. On a conventional level looks like a chair but if you had a super powerful microscope you would see it's mostly. Empty space and spinning sub atomic particles. Same is true with you. So on the relative or conventional level, you're you, you're Steve, you know, you, again,

you put your pants on the morning, you make a dentist appointment, you eat, you're you. But on some ultimate and important level, there's no there there. So both things are true at the same time. Internally, you have a sense of you. And to, and Mark is a bit of a contrarian in the Buddhist world because sometimes Buddhists really meditate against this feeling of you. But Mark, I think for reasons perhaps having to do with his psychotherapeutic background, doesn't want to outlaw the sense of self and say that it's all bad

because that would be in his view to deny reality. He likes to quote an ancient Mongolian teacher of the Tibetan lineage, but he was about Mongolian teacher who came up in the Tibetan system, who once said to his student, of course, you're real. You're just not really real. So that's the sort of hard to grasp paradox here. On one level, you are you, and your sense, your inner sense of you is not invalid and not entirely destructive.

But on another level, if you close your eyes and look for some core Steve, you can't find it. And then not finding, so the teaching goes, is healing in and of itself. Why? Because then you're not taking everything, every neurotic obsession that flits through your mind so personally.

And it's the taking of your anger, and I talked about this earlier, as being you and yours that can lead you to feed it and re-upp it and re-upp it in a way that becomes compulsive and erotic and destructive. So it's about this balance, the Buddhist teachers will tell you, holding this balance in your mind, this paradox in your mind between conventional or relative reality and ultimate reality. And I will not claim to have mastered these teachings. And only recently have started to kind of see for myself the ways in which they're useful in a sort of down to earth way.

And again, in my mind, I think there are lots of ways it can be useful in a down to earth way, and probably a smarter person could explain those to you. But to me, it really does come back to, I love the idea of not taking what pops through your head personally, because again, then you're not so caught up in it. And it's the getting caught up in it that can really lead us to do the things we regret, either internally in terms of habits of mind or externally through our behavior.

Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher, will sometimes tell people to pretend that your thoughts are coming from the person next to you. Well, that how useful is that. By the way, we didn't invite these thoughts. Anyway, we can to a certain extent direct our own thinking, but a lot of the stuff that our ego vamits up, we don't know where it comes from. This is the great mystery of consciousness. And so that simple little trick of pretending whatever thoughts are bubbling up through your mind right now.

Actually, they're not yours, they're coming from the person next to you. First of all, I may make you hate the person next to you, but it does kind of decouple you from this process that is owning you so much of your life. And that, to me, is where this rather abstruse esoteric concept of selflessness. That's where the rubber hits the road in my experience. At least one of the areas where the rubber hits the road. So I hope that cleared it up a little bit. I mean, such good questions this week. I hope I'm adding some value there.

I really appreciate the questions. On the subject of appreciation, I want to give a big shout out to folks who produce this show. I'm looking at Ouzi Liu, my colleague who is a glass right now. Hi, Suzi. She's making sure that my voice isn't too loud and making sure that all everything I say is being reported. And then there's Ryan Kessler who does the day-to-day work of producing the show and Samuel Johnson Grace Livingston 10% happier folks who helped me

and Samuel Johns and Grace Livingston, 10% happier folks who helped me stay prepared editorially and also vet and get our guests. So a lot of people doing a lot of work, all of which I come on here and often screw up, but I do feel incredibly grateful to everybody who's doing the work and I feel incredibly grateful to everybody who's listening. If you want to make me more grateful, you can go on rate and review or tweet or Facebook about the podcast that that's always super helpful. No requirement. I'm not going to send the police after if you don't, but we love it when you do. At the very least, thank you very much for listening and I'll see you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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