Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 287: Can You Change Your Relationship With Fear? | Dr. Abigail Marsh

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

There’s no shortage of fear these days -- the virus, the climate, racial injustice, political tumult… I could go on. But can you change the way your brain reacts to fear? Moreover, can you train courage? Abigail Marsh says yes; overcoming fear is a trainable skill. She’s an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at Georgetown University. She’s also the author of the book Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between. This is a classic TPH podcast conversation: an ace scientist whose area of expertise illuminates key aspects of the human condition. Enjoy. Where to find Dr. Abigail Marsh online: Website: http://www.abigailmarsh.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/aa_marsh Book Mentioned: Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between by Abigail Marsh: https://bookshop.org/books/the-fear-factor-how-one-emotion-connects-altruists-psychopaths-and-everyone-in-between/9781541697195 We care deeply about supporting you in your meditation practice, and feel that providing you with high quality teachers is one of the best ways to do that. Customers of the Ten Percent Happier app say they stick around specifically for the range of teachers, and the deep wisdom they impart, to help them deepen their practice. For anyone new to the app, we've got a special discount just for you. If you're an existing subscriber, we thank you for your support. To claim your discount, visit tenpercent.com/reward  We would appreciate it if you can take a few minutes to help us out by answering a survey. The team here is always looking for ways to improve. Please go to www.tenpercent.com/survey. Thank you. Other Resources Mentioned: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: https://bookshop.org/books/the-goldfinch/9780316055420 Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg: https://bookshop.org/books/lovingkindness-the-revolutionary-art-of-happiness/9781611808209 The Overstory by Richard Powers: https://bookshop.org/books/the-overstory/9780393356687 Clara Barton: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton.html  Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App access for Frontline Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dr-abigail-marsh-287 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. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. Dan Harris. We care really deeply about supporting you in your meditation practice and feel that providing you with high quality teachers is one of the best ways to do that. Customers of the 10% happier apps say they stick around specifically for the range of teachers

and the deep wisdom these teachers have to impart. For anybody new to the app, we've got a special discount for you. And if you're an existing subscriber, we thank you for your support. To go claim your discount, visit 10% dot com slash reward. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash reward. And if you're already a subscriber, thank you for your support. Hey guys, there is sadly no shortage of fear these days, fear of the virus, if you have climate change, racial injustice, political tumult, I could go on.

But here's the question, can you change the way your brain reacts to fear? Moreover, can you train courage? Abigail Marsh says, yes, overcoming fear is a trainable skill. She's an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at Georgetown University.

She's also the author of the book, Fear Factor, how one emotion connects altruists, psychopaths, and everyone in between. This is, in my opinion, a classic TPH podcast conversation and ace scientist whose area of expertise illuminates key aspects of the human condition. I really enjoyed this. Hope you will too.

Here we go. Abigail Marsh. All right. Well, nice to meet you. Thanks for doing this. Absolutely. It's a pleasure. So how did you get interested in fear?

That's a great question. So my initial interest in social psychology, which is the discipline I have my degree in, was because I'm interested in facial expressions and nonverbal communication in general, but how people communicate with one another. And a little research had been done over the years about why facial expressions look the way they do. And I found that a particularly interesting topic, because they do look remarkably consistent

across cultures, which suggests that there's something evolved and at least partly innate about them. And that's really amazing, right? I mean, that's one of the, you know, key pieces of evidence that broke the back of radical behaviorism decades ago, that emotional expressions are interpretable across cultures. It must be really important if that's true. And some people had spent a lot of time looking at the reason that angry expressions look a particular way or happy expressions, but nobody had really touched fear, fear is such a fundamental emotion. It seems really important

to know why we would communicate it to each other and how people interpret it and other people. And it really was a flashable moment. It was based on the combination of courses I was taking as an undergrad where it occurred to me that the reason that fearful expressions look the way they do is to elicit support and care from people who see them because they mimic the appearance of an infantile face. Mm-hmm.

Big eyes. Yeah, high brows, big eyes, the very sort of rounded appearance of the lower face, and they make you look infantile. And that particular connection can help us understand so much about our nature as a social species, what emotions are for, what kinds of social behavior we can expect from other people around us. That one observation really has a lot of implications.

So, as kind of expecting you to say that you had some lifelong struggle with fear, but in fact, it sounds more like an academic interest. Well, I mean, you know, the saying research is me-sourge. I'm sure, I mean, I wouldn't say I've had a lifelong struggle with fear, but I would say I'm probably above average in terms of capacity for anxiety. And I've certainly had experiences where I was frightened for my life and had the good fortune to be helped by other people around me and so I am a hundred percent certain that that made me interested in this topic to begin with Are those things you're comfortable discussing? Oh sure

I mean, it's not only one thing but certainly the most important I mean, it's not only one thing, but certainly the most important relevant event is the event that happened when I was 19, when I was in a car accident on a big freeway in Washington state, in the state five. And as I was driving over a bridge to get back to my hometown late at night, I swore to avoid a little dog that ran in front of my car. And the combination of swarving and then unfortunately hitting the like anyways, sent my car into these fish tails and eventually donuts across the freeway and wound me up stranded in the fast lane of the freeway on this overpass with no way of escaping and no phone and

cars and sammys whizzing by me so fast they were making my car shake. I was sure I was going to die. I mean I was one of those things you know they tell you times slows down when you're feeling intense fear. That's true. I know, no, why? I didn't know why then. And I really didn't know what to do. I thought I was sure I was going to die until a stranger appeared next to my car, having, as I later figured out, run across the freeway. Again, in the dark to rescue somebody he'd never met before. He got my car, he figured out why I couldn't get my car back on. He threaded his way through these barrage of oncoming traffic to get us back across the freeway.

And then he just disappeared. He's like, you know, do you need me to follow you? You know, look so good. I'm like, no, no, I'll be okay. I'll be okay. And he said, okay, you take care of yourself then. And off he went. And tonight, I still to this day, I don't think I said thank you.

I don't know anything about Emrahubias, and I know that I owe my life, and it really inexorably changed the way that I think about people and social behavior. Well, it's a dramatic story and actually connects to the thesis, to the extent that I understand it, of your book. I'll just repeat the title, which

I will have stated in the introduction. The fear factor, how one emotion connects altruists, psychopaths, and everyone in between. This is an example of extreme altruism that you just share with us. With that out of doubt, he absolutely risked his life to save me. He deserved a medal for what he did at the very least. And what's so interesting about people like him is that there's a really common tendency to assume that people who do heroic things, to help others or fearless, you hear that word used all the time with reference to heroes. And what my research has shown is that that's absolutely not true. That actually there's a much more interesting relationship between fear and courage and

altruism. So, what is it? So what seems to be the case is that truly fearless people tend not to help other people. For example, people who are psychopathic are one of the key features of psychopathy is a fearless disposition as failure to respond to threats or punishments or the potential for harm. And certainly people who are psychopathic do dangerous things, but they're very unlikely to do heroic things because that requires picking up on the fact that somebody else is afraid.

If you are doing something heroic, you're usually saving somebody else from danger. Somebody else is afraid and you're acting to help them. And what seems to be the case is if you don't experience fear strongly yourself, you also don't pick up on that emotion and other people. You have trouble detecting what other people are feeling it. You certainly don't appreciate why that state is bad and why you would want to alleviate it. And so you're very unlikely to do anything to help when other people are afraid. And so people who are very altruistic, you're not to be the opposite.

They're people who are acutely aware of what it means to be afraid. And so they can empathize with that state and other people. And when they encounter people who are in extreme distress, they're much more likely to help. And so rather than being fearless, they're truly brave. They have courage, which is a virtue, whereas fearlessness is really not. So a couple of questions about this. Can we train this ability because I think about myself here, okay, I think about myself

all the time. You know, I have a lifelong relationship to fear, anxiety, phobias, panic. I don't know how altruistic I am or heroic I am. I'm not trying to needlessly self-denigrate here. But I'm curious, I feel like this is an area where I could grow. Is that a doable thing? Absolutely. All it takes to overcome fear is a stronger motivation. You know, again, the interesting thing about people who are psychopathic, who have also worked with extensively, is that they don't have any stronger motivation other than their own well-being, right?

Nothing motivates them beyond that. They don't have principles. They don't particularly care about other people. And so most of us have the capacity to be really brave, as long as the thing that we are moving toward is more important to us than the risks that might otherwise drive us away. And so for example, you have a child.

My guess is that even confronted with the thing you are most phobic of, if I don't know, if you're like, say, a dog phobia, like if your son was being attacked by a dog, my bet is that you would be running in there to tear him away from the dog, no matter how afraid you are of dogs. That's because you love your son

and his welfare is so important to you that it would overcome, at least momentarily, your fear for yourself. And that's exactly what happens when altruists do what they do. It's just what's interesting about many altruists is that they seem to be motivated by other people's welfare, even when they don't know those people. That's the remarkable thing about them,

as you know, most of us, I've jumped into a pool to save one of my kids who thought she was drowning. Well, she was briefly drowning. She couldn't swim yet, fully clothed on my pocket. And it didn't feel brave at all. It just, you know, she was screaming, and I can still, it's like her sound of her voice is like ice in my brain. Just remembering, you know, mommy help.

And I was just in, you know, it's like, my kid just terrified. I just think she's gonna drown. I'm there. There's no thought involved. And what was interesting to me after this was a lover was I was like, oh, that's what the altruist I've worked was say they're feeling when they decide to help other people.

They say they're feeling and thinking almost nothing They you know somebody needs help. I'm gonna help them and but again What's so interesting about them is that they respond this way even to the distress and Danger of people that they've never met Right, so is that trainable? I know that I would dive in in any circumstance. I can imagine to save my son But to save my son, but to save you who until now I never met. The 19 year old version of you, I certainly had not met on a highway.

That's a different kettle of fish. Yeah. Yeah, so it's almost certainly trainable. When we know this mostly because we see lots of variation across time and across cultures, which means that there are forces that can move this capacity around. That makes it sound simpler than it is, right? There are lots of difficulties in trying to shape behaviors in any kind of sustained or meaningful way. I mean,

you probably know the psychology literature on the ability of most nudges to make meaningful changes in behavior is pretty spotty. It's hard, but we know that it's possible because people are becoming more altruistic toward people who are more removed from them all the time. It's happening constantly. And as cultures become more industrialized, people social networks tend to get broader and more diverse. And that seems to generally improve the way we respond towards people that we don't know yet,

particularly the way we respond to strangers and are willing us to help them. And so that can tell us a lot about the kinds of experiences that, you know, during development or during our lives will make us more likely to be altruistic. And it's both simple and difficult. It's having social experiences that leave you believing that the people around you are deserving of help, that the people around you are mostly good and would help you if they could. And for the most part, luckily, we live in a culture where that's usually true.

Most of our real sense, the moment where we're all, you know, on social media all the time, I fully expect people to think I'm just completely naive and full of it to say that. But again, here's where it helps that I work with people who are psychopathically. I know the bad people are out there. There's no doubt about that. Some people just aren't nice and they're never going to be nice. But what working with psychopathy has taught me is that they're really different from the average person. Most people are not like them at all. And so most of us in daily life have mostly really positive social experiences.

And to the degree you can have those positive social experiences with a diverse sort of wide array of people, it helps you contextualize all those people you haven't met yet and you're even more likely to sort of believe that those strangers that you encounter are still kind of in this general abstract idea you have of a person who is part of your social network and you'll be more likely to care about their welfare as a result.

So, let me see if I can restate that. We evolved for bias and the savanna of somebody showed up who had looked a lot different than you and your tribe looked. You would, I think probably justifiably be suspicious. So you wouldn't feel necessarily a lot of at least at first a lot of altruism. We have this innate by this other have this innate by this othering tendency. But at least from what I'm hearing for you, that the edges have been shaved off of that because societies and in particular the United States

has become more heterogeneous. We're seeing different types of people on TV and on our social media. And that has in some measurable ways raised our altruism baseline? Maybe. So, yeah, I would say that that's in large part, I think, what's happening. I mean, the first thing I should say is that the capacity for altruism, the capacity

to want to help other people is a very fundamental part of who we are as a species, everybody, regardless of culture. And again, with the exception of people who are highly psychopathic and they're quite different from other people, and so that's useful to remember. But there's this wonderful hypothesis that has been coming out of the comparative biology, anthropology literature called the self-domestication hypothesis. The idea is basically the survival of the friendliest. Among certain species that have become highly social and highly cooperative, it's very clear that they've become self-selected over time for a high level of cooperative, docile, friendly nature. And dogs are maybe the most obvious such species. That is how they differ from their wild type cousins, the wolves. They are just much friendlier and less aggressive and more cooperative with humans. But what's interesting is that all the features

that differentiate domesticated species from their wild-type cousins are also markers of humans. And what makes this different from all of our non-modern homo sapiens cousins. And so it's very clear based on all the sort of skeletal evidence and as well as behavioral evidence that we are basically self-domesticated. We evolve to be cooperative and to be pretty docile.

And to usually assume that other people can be trusted, at least as a source of the baseline assumption. Now, that all breaks down when you have intergroup conflict in particular. When you're interacting with somebody that you think may be a threat to your group. And what's so interesting about that is that is actually a result of altruism, right?

Because you wouldn't care about your group unless you're an altruist. I get past, don't care about their group, they just care about themselves. And so what's so hard about humans is that the deep and profound ways that we become, you know, sort of one with our group and that we treat their welfare as as important as our own is the reason that we have these very deep between group and midi sometime if we perceive that members of another group are somehow hostile to our own threatening our own or threatening the resources of our own. And so to the degree that you live in a culture where life is not framed as a battle between groups, you are more likely to treat novel new strangers

as not threatening the welfare of your group. And so to treat them as a potential ingroup member, which is great. And to some extent, the whole world is becoming progressively that way now, because all the modern technologies we use are really expanding the boundaries of what we all think of as our groups. The only downside is that they also are having these prenecious effects on feelings of threat from other groups, and that will tamp down altruism really effectively. And so those are the sort of push-pulls that we're all prone to. I wonder if there isn't another pushpull here, because another dimmer view of modernity,

which I've heard argued to my ears convincingly, is that as we have larger social networks, but weaker ones, and particularly in the West, we're under the sway of this idea of individualism rather than communitarian values. And obviously, communitarian values had their problems where lots of people were trampled under foot in lots of cultures. But individualism has its discontent as well where with these weaker social ties, I've

heard it argued that that's leading to this epidemic of depression, anxiety, suicide, addiction, et cetera, et cetera. How do you incorporate that argument into the rosier one that you seem to gravitate towards? Well, I don't think they're necessarily in conflict with one another, unfortunately. In general, we know that well-being is a really strong promoter of altruism. And this has been shown in every way you could possibly imagine. But what I mean is subjective well-being. People sense of sort of life satisfaction, purpose in life, feeling

if they have strong social ties, et cetera. And it's a bi-directional relationship. So the higher your level of well-being, the more likely you are to be an altruistic, the more altruistic you are, the higher your level of well-being in general. Of course, these are all massive generalities with lots of individual variation. And so, in general, the kinds of forces that promote well-being tend to also promote altruism. And some of those are objective variables. So, for example, as cultures become more prosperous, and people are not suffering extremes and deprivation,

that tends to be a good thing for prosociality. And I say this that what I'm not saying is very wealthy people are the nicest and people who have fewer resources and fewer privileges are not nice. I definitely not saying that. But what I'm saying is there seems to be a positive relationship between flourishing and prosociality, which is a really good thing. Because otherwise, we'd have this horrific falcony in bargain to make, which is, you know, people can either do well

or they can do good. But we have to pick one. And at least if you look across geographic regions, that doesn't seem to be the case. That regions in which people are reporting higher levels of well-being, you also tend to see higher levels of pro-social behavior. And interestingly, one of the variables that is also appears to be positively associated with these variables is individualism, the cultural variable, which is so interesting,

because of course individualism, it has pernicious effects. There's no question about it. There's not one, you know, there's cultural variables don't tend to be better or worse than any sort of absolute sense, but they all have cost and benefits. In general, and actually a former Georgetown undergrad who was a student in one of my classes, published a cool paper a couple of years ago

showing that in general cultures all around the world are becoming more individualistic as time goes on. Not a huge surprise, I think most people would have figured that out. And that one of the predictors of cultures becoming more individualistic is prosperity. So as cultures become wealthier. And again, we're not talking the extreme wealth. We're just talking about rising up out of

very little levels of wealth. Individualism tends to rise. And individualism as it's meant in this kind of research is thinking of the individual as the unit of society and people's goals, tending to sort of revolve around individual goals, individual expression, and individual being. So in relatively more individualist cultures, people tend to make major life decisions about where to go to school,

what kind of a job to pick, what gender expression they prefer, who to marry, all of these things are based on their own personal preferences. What they believe will is sort of the most authentic choice that is the most in line with what they like, rather than the degree to which their choice is beneficial for their group.

And so when you think about individuals in that way, it's not that surprising. The individualism is associated with bobeying because people are making choices based on the things that they prefer. But again, it does have these downsides, and in one of them may be this atomization. And so probably what's the case is that there's some balance between individualism and a more collectivist focus that is sort of ideal. And that balance may differ across cultures in terms of what is most likely to maximize both individual well-being and the well-being of the group. But it is not true that individualism

is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to promoting both personal well-being. I mean, we know that it's positively associated with personal well-being. Although, again, we may reach some asymptote where it's not anymore. And it does seem to promote altruism, particularly towards strangers, not towards people that you're close with, but most cultures, everybody's altruistic towards people that are close with. But there is something interesting about how individualism may promote more

prosocialty towards strangers in particular. Much more of my conversation with Abigail Marsh right after this. Hey, I'm Ericia, 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 newer series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance.

But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Roo, of course. In our series, RuPaul bore naked. We'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Let's go back to this question, because I think you've kind of brought us here a little bit, at least,

to whether this sort of altruism in the face of fear is a trainable skill. What are the ways in which one can train it? What are the ways in which one can train it? So the ingredients that seem to be necessary for altruism, one of them is having some sort of baseline level of emotional and social sensitivities. So having enough emotional sensitivity that you recognize when somebody else is experiencing

extreme distress. And most people have enough emotional capacity to recognize what others are in distress, but there is some evidence actually that having experienced extreme emotions yourself makes you more likely to help others in the future. So people who have experienced significant distress or trauma themselves seem to be more likely to go on

and help others in the future. Possibly because it gives them a greater capacity for empathy, I tend to believe that that's true. You have to know what it's like to suffer to really empathize with somebody else's suffering. Yeah, my wife had a brain tumor when she was eight and went on to become an incredibly compassionate doctor. I had no problems ever and where makeup

and talk to television cameras for living, so do the math. Well, there you go. We've solved the questions. I leave a need into the study. Yeah, I know I think, you know, the compassion is born out of suffering to some degree, not inevitably, but the relationship is clearly there. But not the most fun way to train the skill.

Well, I do think it's important to have experiences in the world, right? Even, for example, to go out and just help people. Like, if you want to become more compassionate, just start helping people because, you know, the people who are out in the world who are helping people, that is a form of suffering in itself, unfortunately, you know, empathizing with other people's suffering is, you know, can bring a lot of distrust along with it. And I know there's an interesting debate about whether, if you have compassion, well, then it doesn't make you suffer to see other people suffer. And I have my doubts about whether it's really possible to be compassionate and not

feel any suffering and response to other people suffering. But in any case, having experiences in the world is, I think, an important part of being somebody who can be emotionally sensitive to others. Just to be, just sorry to cut you off on that point, I don't know that the argument, I'm not an expert in this, I don't know that the argument is that the difference between empathy and compassion, empathy, which is like the pure feeling of somebody else's pain and compassion, which is that plus the desire to lean in and help. I don't know that the compassion nullifies all of the suffering. I just think it adds an enobling aspect, an empowering aspect that protects you against burnout.

That's my weak understanding. That's actually exactly how I would describe it. That's a really good description. I think as actually a better description than I could have come up with. I like that a lot. There are some people who argue that compassion, you know, turns the whole thing into a positive experience. It prevents you from suffering and response to other people suffering. And, you know, I don't know if I really believe that. It's not the only way to increase one's altruism.

Another really important way, because again, most of us do have altruistic motivation for people we're close to. But the kicker is, how do you expand that past our own immediate circle of loved ones? And that's a little more complicated answer, but a big part of it seems to revolve around this idea of humility, around the idea of thinking of yourself as embedded in a larger whole rather than as being somehow

more important or more central or fundamentally special compared to other people. This took me by surprise actually when I started studying the the extreme altruist I study that they themselves never describe themselves as extraordinary or heroes or special. And many of the altruistic kidney donors I've worked with for example emphasize that they're really no different than anybody else. They really believe that anybody, given the information that they had, would also want to donate a kidney to a stranger. And I do believe that many more people might want to donate a kidney to a stranger than or aware of it. But I think that's actually incredibly important to not think of yourself as more

special or better than anybody else. I mean, it makes perfect sense, right? If you believe that you are the most special person, then why would giving away half of your kidney resources, for example, be a good bet, because you're the most important one. So those kidneys have the most value in your body. But if you believe that everybody has sort of comparable worth that you're just one of many people out there, none of whom is more important than the other other and this person's gonna die without a kidney

And you're probably gonna be fine with it without it Well, then giving the kidney to the other person seems like a completely obvious decision And that's the way most of the altruist I've worked with seem to think of it that why is this person's welfare any less important than anybody else's and By the same token why are they any more special why shouldn't's. And by the same token, why are they any more special? Why shouldn't it be them? They have a kidney to give. They should just do it.

And humility is something that can be trained, to some degree. It's not a hard-wired trait. It doesn't seem to be. How would you train it? And wouldn't it be harder in a culture dominated by an individualistic outlook? So that's actually not true.

That's a really interesting and important point. That individualism is not the same thing as narcissism, but it's more about sort of individual expression and authenticity that can certainly go hand in hand with believing that each one of us deserves the capacity for authenticity and individual expression, which is nice. Again, it's nice that these are not necessarily competing norms.

There are lots of ways to increase one sense of humility. Gratitude is a big one. In general, thinking about things you're grateful for, keeping a gratitude journal, these are just really positive things to do. They seem to generally lead people to greater sense of well-being. And they also increase your sense of humility because you are thinking of all the ways that you're fortunate due to forces outside of yourself, right? All the things that you have to appreciate, which I think naturally lends itself to a more sort of humble

perspective on your own successes. Experience as a nature, interestingly, seemed to be a great way to generate a sense of humility. There's an interesting relationship between exposure to nature and prosociality. And I wouldn't say it's a rock solid finding that I'm 100% sure is true, but I will definitely say that it seems to be true and what are the downsides of spending time in nature. And having experiences of awe, when confronted with

the majesty of a night sky or a sunset or mountains or towering trees, seem to promote a sense of a night sky or a sunset or mountains or towering trees seem to promote a sense of a small self. You know, a self is very small and embedded in a much larger universe. And that sense of a small self, that's just, you know, one atom particle in a much larger sea of people, is a really nice way to promote a sense of humility. What about meditation? Yeah, that's a really nice way to promote a sense of humility. What about meditation? Yeah, that's a really great question.

There's some evidence that forms of meditation that are designed to promote your feelings of well wishes and beneficence towards others may promote altruism for some of the same reasons. So this would be compassion meditation or loving kindness meditation. They seem like they should work for some of the same reasons. So this would be compassion meditation, or loving kindness meditation. They seem like they should work

for some of the same reasons. It's just compassion meditation, loving kindness meditation, or just sort of boot camp. Like you're training yourself to experience these feelings of compassion of well wishes for others, which necessitates thinking of others as worthy of doing well, of being in good health

and being happy, which I think sort of automatically levels your perspective on this playing field. So that promotes humility. And then learning to extend that emotional state outward toward more and more distant people, towards even people that are difficult or who you find intrinsically unlikable, towards yourself, you know, I think feeling compassion for yourself rather than feeling extreme emotions like guilt and shame and self-criticism is also important for altruism. It's important to be able to figure out yourself as well for your foibles. So there is some pretty good evidence, I think, that pro-sociality can be promoted by compassion,

the love and kind of meditation. Not every study shows that. So again, I think scientific studies you think in terms of probabilities, how likely as a particular outcome to be true. And I would say I think it's more likely true than not than these kinds of meditation promote altruism, but I think we're still in the process of making sure that's true. I'll just point out that I'm an avid practitioner of loving kindness meditation and I still have two kidneys.

So I can't ask what got you into doing this kind of meditation. Well, first I was on a meditation retreat and I didn't have any choice because they were teaching it in the afternoons. Okay, that's a good reason. And so for many years I kind of did it, but you know, and I developed a better attitude when I started to see a lot of the science that suggests it can be really good for you and even potentially impact your behavior. And then I got really into it after I got, and I'm okay, I say this, a tell the story

a little sheepishly, because listeners of the show know this story inside out. So I won't belabor the point, but I had a 360 review and it indicated that I don't know if I would be if I would be fair to summarize the negative findings as indications of psychopathy, but no, kissing cousin. And so I got pretty deep into loving kind of meditation. And I found that it's been really helpful. In particular, I would say the most, maybe the most useful aspect is having an easier, friendly relationship with my own ugliness so that it's not owning is me as much.

And that leaves room for a greater availability. That's an end of one, but that's the way I've experienced it. I think that's really cool. And I think, again, I think what I love about love and kindness and compassion meditation is that in some ways they're very simple, right? You're just training yourself to experience this state for a wider and wider network of people, which in theory should give you a sense of embeddedness in the larger hole, which is just beneficial in so many ways. And I think it is consistent with what we know about altruism that you think of yourself as one part of a larger hole that's not divided into warring

groups. This is the one downside of collectivist cultures that is a little hard to get away from is that the more you define yourselves in terms of a group that you're a part of, the more you have to define some people as not in your group. And so the challenge is to make who we think of as our group as big as possible. And I think the promise of loving kindness meditation is to do to that. And I should say, I've been really fortunate in the research that my lab is right now doing that we're working on some loving kind of meditation protocols with Sharon Salzburg, who, you know, probably know wrote the book, loving kind of meditation. And it's just an amazing teacher in this respect.

That's she's a very good friend and teacher of mine has been on the show many, many times. So wonderful. That is a person I love. She is phenomenal. Oh, it's impossible not to feel true joy after having a conversation with her. Yes. It can have a lot of profound effects. It can be inconvenient too. I stopped eating animal products, which is a gigantic pain in the butt. But it has lots of, I've found a lot of beneficial impacts as well. I agree.

One other thing I read in preparing for this interview, well, Samuel did the preparation and then providing you with a nice little document that I read, shout out to Samuel, that makes my life easier than I deserve it to be. But one of the little things that stood out to me is one way to develop this capacity for altruism in the face of fear is literature. Yeah. yeah. There's a really interesting body of evidence that reading is also one of the reasons that as cultures, you know, and I'm talking about like hundreds of years ago now, as literacy became a thing, as people started to read, that was one of the many forces that seems to be generally promoting this global move towards greater empathy and altruism, especially towards strangers. And it's sort of cool when I really started thinking about it, it does make sense, right?

Because reading about, especially in sort of literary fiction, seems to be one of the big movers, but really any kind of reading that gives you the opportunity to be inside the head of another person has all the ingredients of something that should work because you're really getting a chance to experience another person's internal state and link it to your own experiences, which is a great way to experience empathy. And you're doing it in response to a really just kind of a disembodied mind. You know, when you're reading about somebody on a page, there's no visual cues, there's no, you know, spoken accents are clothing or anything that could mark them as different from yourself.

You're forced to see all the things that you and this person who may be, in fact, very different from you, you know, lives in a culture far away or lives in a different time, maybe is, you know, very different from you in a gravely. You're forced to share their experience. And so there is some evidence that people who read a lot of literary fiction have stronger empathic capacities,

which I think makes a lot of sense. And again, there's really no bad side effects to reading quality literature. And it may make you more empathic. Yeah, I guess you could raise some causation correlation questions there, but I will say that just as a weird build on that notion, for the last 11 or so years that I became interested in meditation and Buddhism, I actually haven't read any literary fiction, except for one, I allowed myself a treat after I finished my first book of reading The Gold Finch,

which is unbelievably good and was really humbling after having written a book and then reading that and realizing how bad I am. Anyway, I recently had a very similar experience because a friend of mine, who's a meditation teacher who comes on the show quite a bit, Seven A. Celacii, sent me a book. This is what of Seb's love languages. She sends people articles and books. So she sent me a book called The Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize. And I started to read it and I had a lot of the similar feelings I had upon reading Donna Tarts book, The Goldfinch, which is,

wow, this person has inscribable genius. I think his name is Richard Powers. I'm just in awe that humans have the capacity to create on their own this amount of beauty page after page sentence after sentence. But the other thing is that this is a book about trees. It's a novel, it has human characters, but the theme is trees. And I don't know if one can have empathy. Yeah, I guess one can demonstrate a lot of altruism

in the direction of trees by like chaining yourself to one to prevent one from being cut down. That happens in this book. I've noticed that I am way more attuned to and care much more about trees as a result of reading this book. Oh my gosh, how wonderful.

I love everything about that. So my husband actually was just recommended that book to be the art historian. He read it and he had exactly the same feeling. And I always have had a strangely sort of love relationship with trees. I think it seems around on my family, but I do love trees. And my husband came away from this book feeling exactly that way about trees. And there is something about beauty that I think is so important. I'm so glad that you brought that word up. Because I think it's common to poop who beauty a little bit

as a purely cosmetic and a sort of a fluffy thing to care about. But I think beauty is sort of intrinsic to it all. I mean, there's a reason that we like and virtue and beauty. Beauty is one of those things that gives us a sense of awe frequently that it's obviously profoundly positive experience to be confronted with something of great artistic beauty or great physical beauty, and it does give you a sense of connectedness and a sense of joy. So I think having experiences that give you the privilege of experiencing the joy of

beauty is essential to well-being. My guess is that it also was associated with prosociality because that's so strongly related to the way we feel about nature and it's also related to the experience of reading great literature. Yeah, I love that. There's a lot here. Before we close, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about how we can apply what we've

learned over the past 45 minutes from you about fear and our ability to, I don't know if you like this word, but overcome it in order to exhibit prosociality and altruism. All of that, how can we operationalize it in the face of circumstances globally that provoke so much fear, the pandemic, racial injustice, economic decline, and by the way, injustice as well, political unrest and disagreement here in the United States on and on and on. How can we start to use the wisdom you've imparted in this context? Great question. So fear is obviously an incredibly useful emotion.

I mean, we need it to survive. People who are psychopathic do live less long than other people, I think, in part because they're not afraid enough. I think it's important to appreciate fear for what it gives us, but it's also important to remember that feelings are not truth, and that it's possible to be afraid of something that's not really dangerous or as not as dangerous as we fear it is, and the way that people end up with actual anxiety disorders that prevent them from being able to function or from being able to reach their potential is by taking their fear to literally.

And this is where it takes some judgment. And it takes some perspective about the fact that there are other things in the world that matter other than the thing we're afraid of. This brings us right back to the discussion of altruism, right? It's, you know, it's not that you're not afraid of, for example, I don't know if you're afraid of dogs, but like even if you were afraid of dogs, you would get over that fear immediately

if there was something more important to focus on. And that's really the best way for overcoming fear in general is to remember that it's just one signal we're getting and not always an accurate one. And so when you know that the thing you're afraid of is objectively, not likely to actually hurt you, you need to do the thing you're afraid of anyways. I mean, it really comes back to the age old saying that you have to get back on the horse after you fall off.

Why is that? Because it's scary to fall off a horse. I've fallen off a horse, it sucks. But the reason you have to get back on is because that's teaching your brain that you can handle it. And the worst thing you can do and the face of things that scare you is to avoid them. Because that just teaches your brain that you should avoid them and it solidifies the fear, and that's where people end up with anxiety disorders. And so, I think it's really important as much as we can to try to take the focus off ourselves,

and to focus on the things in the world around us that matter, and go about trying to do good in the world, and trying to master our fear as much as we can. I love the old quote of Shakespeare, he said, the ambition is a good servant, but a bad master. And that's basically the truth of every emotion. Fear is also a very good servant. It's a very bad master. And the best way to overcome fears about all the legitimately scary things happening in the world is to take action, take action to help other people who were worse off than yourself or maybe not even worse off than yourself, but they just need help.

Pour yourself into causes that matter, hopefully in ways that involve getting out from behind your computer screen. Our brain needs the real world. I mean, there's a really cool study that came out just this past year looking at people's patterns of movement around Manhattan over the course of, I forget exactly what period of time it was, but it was weeks maybe. This was done by Catherine Harley at NYU. And they found a really strong relationship between just the diversity of your movements in the world and the given day and your well-being. We're designed to move. We're designed to be an actual physical world doing things. And I think this world that we're living in right now, where we're just sitting behind our darn computers all the day,

gets people in a sort of a tailspin sometimes. And so the best recommendation I can give people is to go out in the world and do things. And do things that you find meaningful, to give you a sense of purpose. Because having a sense of purpose is essential for having a high level of well-being. And it is that sense of purpose

that is the thing most likely to out-compete. The fears you might have of the various dangers that the world carries. So in a COVID context, would an example be like, I'm afraid of getting the virus, so I'm going to wear my mask and take the appropriate precautions,

but that won't stop me from, say, doing volunteer work, or going to a BLM protest, or voting, or whatever it is, I think is going to help other people and make a difference. Exactly. You know, I have neighbors who spend their days making sandwiches for people who don't have enough food right now, delivering things to people who really can't leave their

houses, who might live in your neighborhoods. On the ways that neighborhoods have been really knitting themselves together recently, to make sure that everybody has the things they need during the pandemic has been really sort of awe-inspiring and heartening. Yeah, focusing on helping other people. I mean, one of my sort of personal heroes of Claire Barton, who lived this world, her old house,

that's just down the road from mine here in DC, she was incredibly anxious as a child. She has the wonderful quote where she says that people who had deserved her on the battlefields, right? She was the civil war nurse who founded the American Red Cross and was notorious for going into battlefields and risking serious injury herself to tend to wounded soldiers. And people would see her do these things and think she was fearless and she said, but you know, as a child, I knew nothing but fear. I was an extremely fearful child. And then she

had the experience of caring for her older brother, who had a terrible, terrible injury. And that experience of caring helped her get over her own fear. And even later in life when she was experiencing about depression, which she had many of, she found that the best way to get over her own experiences of depression was to go back out onto the battlefield and tend wounded soldiers and focus on them, rather than focusing on herself.

Because it gets you out of that ruminative state that we know is so bad for well-being and health. You've written that fear gets bored easily and leads to habituation. How do you, I see that in myself that I'm less scared of the virus right now. And for some reasonably good reasons in that I live in a part of the world where transmission is quite low right now, case load, hospitalization, death rate, all quite low in the part of the world where transmission is quite low right now. Case load, hospitalization, death rate, all quite low in the part of the Northeast where I live. So, you know, last night my aunt and my cousin came over with some kids and played with my

kids and, you know, we kind of threw caution to the wind a little bit. And the one level I'm thinking, okay, well, is this just a worthwhile risk for the well-being of our children? Or is it, I've become habituated to the risk and I just can't stay vigilant that long? Yeah, probably a little bit of both. I mean, we're learning more. So for example, if you all were getting together outside,

I think the evidence has become more and more clear over time that transmission of this virus is less likely outside. And so I've become much more comfortable spending time outside with people than I used to be because of the data coming in. So that's been kind of nice. But yeah, I know people who live in parts of the country that the virus transmission is very low, who are still living such a coistered existence in the pandemic that they remain very, very afraid of even objectively not that risky encounters. And I do think that taking obviously smart precautions

because we don't want to risk catching it mainly, I mean, for me, I'm not in any particularly high risk categories. I don't want to catch it. I mean, the stories are obviously, you know, and it's clear that none of us is truly completely safe from the virus, but mostly I don't want to give it to anybody else. I would feel awful if that happened. And so I do take reasonable precautions, but I'm not fooling myself that we can ever

bring our risk of any bad outcome down to zero. That's not the goal of life. We have to take reasonable precautions, which if, you know, any two people will differ, but I think, you know, I think it's ridiculous for people to argue against wearing masks, because it's a very small cost with what appears to be a very big benefit associated with a preferentially spending time with other people outside. If the weather's nice, there's not much of a downside and it's clearly much safer.

And just going out and having little encounters where you realize that, you know what, we can keep going, we can keep doing some of the things that we enjoy, maybe not exactly the same way. But to bring the odds of catching the virus down to zero at the expense of eradicating every other thing that matters in life for an indeterminate amount of time, in my book is not a reasonable sacrifice. Even though everything is just such a colossal mess on a federal level, that doesn't mean that each one of us can't try to do our best to protect ourselves and the people

around us while still doing the things that are necessary to keep ourselves and our families and our loved ones going. You were talking about the people arguing against masks, I find anti-maskers to be extremely frustrating myself, but I wonder if there's some fear there too, fear of submitting to the finger wagging nanny state experts, fear of somehow diminishing your masculinity, et cetera, et cetera. Does that land today? Sure, absolutely.

We all have very different amounts of access to good information and good resources. And so my general baseline assumption is that most people are doing the best they can. Most people think they're doing the right thing most of the time. And so I do believe that people who are very resistant to wearing masks in general, and there are obviously exceptions to this, believe that they are making their choices for reasonable causes. And it's just unfortunate that we don't have, you know,

better national messaging from trusted authorities that would just say, look, I mean, this is just, you know, there's no downside, you know, that it's not gonna lead to a fatal buildup of carbon dioxide or I've heard some crazy rumors floating around. And this is not only gonna benefit you, but it's gonna benefit everybody else around you. And if we all do it for a little while, then we'll

really make a difference. And let's all do it together. And unfortunately, the way, you know, I think what's so interesting is that right now, bad information is cheap and you can get it anywhere. And so I think this is one of the reasons that people have a lot of fears about things that are not as big a risk as they worry, because there's so much bad information out there and fear sells. You get eyeballs by selling conspiracy stories and fear mongering.

And so I don't necessarily blame people who have a lot of paranoia, meaning strong fears about things that are not actually dangerous because people are feeding them information like this. You're very skillfully, even though you're not 11 kind as practitioner, and I'll say this in closing, you very skillfully expressed, and I agree

with it, some compassion and understanding toward people with whom we disagree, those who are wearing masks to see that they may have reasons, even though we disagree with them that are reasonable in their minds for doing what they're doing so Bravo to you Professor Marsh. Thank you very much. Absolutely. It's been a real pleasure Big thanks to Abigail. I got a lot out of that really appreciate it one last thing before we go We would appreciate it if you would do us a solid, if you

would take a few minutes to help us out by answering a survey, the team here is always looking for ways to improve. So if you want to help us out, hook us up. Please go to 10% dot com forward slash survey 10% dot com forward slash survey. Thank you. Big thanks as well to the team who work so hard to put this show together 2 and a half times a week. Samuel Johns is our senior producer. Marissa Schneidermann is our producer. Our sound designers are Matt Boynton and Anja Sheshek of Ultraviolet Audio.

Maria Wertel is our production coordinator. We get a ton of really helpful input from our TPH colleagues such as Jen Poient, Nate Toby, Ben Rubin, and Liz Levin. And before I go, of course, big thanks. As always, to my ABC News colleagues, Ryan Kessler and Josh Koham. We'll see you on Friday for a bonus meditation on fear with Sharon Salzburg. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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