November 20, 2025 • 60 mins
This week, Scott sits down with his longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Alia Crum—one of the world’s leading researchers on the science of mindsets. Dr. Crum’s groundbreaking work investigates how our subjective beliefs and interpretations can produce real, measurable changes in behavior, physiology, and psychological well-being.
Drawing inspiration from research on the placebo effect, Dr. Crum explores how mindsets influence everything from health and stress to performance and interpersonal effectiveness. She and Scott discuss the mechanisms through which mindsets shape objective reality, and how deliberately shifting our mental lenses can lead to meaningful transformation in our lives and organizations.
This conversation is especially personal for Scott, who first met Dr. Crum during their graduate school days at Yale. They revisit early philosophical chats while highlighting how far her research—and its real-world implications—has come.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think that what meditation does, what mindfulness does, is
it helps you realize that you have mindsets, that the world,
your beliefs aren't just sort of a reflection of reality
as it is, that like could be this way or
could be that way, and you kind of like sit
back and you sort of see the kind of absurdity
of it all. So that's part of it. But then
(00:23):
what right, then you need to go live your life,
like then you need to get back in the game.
And so it's you know, it's stepping back in and
say now I'm going to live my life and I'm
going to choose to view stress as enhancing.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
the depths of human potential. I'm your host, doctor Scott
Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist and Columbia professor. On this episode,
we have my dear friend, doctor Ali Crumb, whose research
focuses on how changes in subjective mindsets, the lenses through
which information is perceived, organized, and interpreted, can alter objective
(01:02):
reality through behavioral, psychological, and physiological mechanisms. Her work is
in part inspired by research on the placebo effect, a
remarkable and consistent demonstration of the ability of the mindset
to elicit healing properties in the body. She is interested
in understanding how mindsets affect important outcomes outside the realm
of medicine, in the debates of behavioral health and organizational behavior.
(01:27):
More specifically, she aims to understand how mindsets can be
consciously and deliberately changed through intervention to affect organizational and
individual performance, physiological and psychological well being, and interpersonal effectiveness.
This chat was very sentimental to me personally. I met
doctor Crumb in graduate school at Yale, and we connected immediately.
(01:48):
I remember fondly our deep chats, and I'm so proud
to see her become such a superstar in the field.
I hope you find this chat just as informative as
I did. So, without further ado, I bring you doctor
Ali Crumb. Oh my god, Allie, how do you look
exactly the same?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I mean, you look exactly the same. It's so good
to see you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So good to see you too. I mean like you're
exactly like you know Yale dance. What was some party, jon,
I think it must be something.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
The memory have of you in my mind is like
exactly the same. Anyway. Congratulations on keeping your health and
vitality in youth, and for your amazing, amazing ascendency in
the field of psychology, successes and research and everything. It's
been such a delight and honor to watch you sore.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh my gosh. Well I feel the same about you,
Scott at like seeing you brings me right back to
New Haven. You know, I remember going to your dissertation.
I remember meeting your mom right outside of the Hall
of Graduate Studies, and you know, just to we were
just you know, we were so such kids then, but
(03:03):
at the same time, you know, I think both of us.
I was drawn to you because I got a sense
that this was your passion, right, this was your calling,
and you weren't doing it to get some credentials. You
were doing it because you knew it mattered. So it's
been fun to watch from afar and listen to all
your work.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And likewise, thanks, thanks. Well let's let's let's back up
before we even met. Let's back up to your undergraduate
at Harvard Hall. You were a TA for a very
special and popular course and happiness by Tall. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yes, Tall Ben Shahar changed my life.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Can you tell me a little bit about that? Experience
and uh, and then how it like influenced you for
the research you've continued to do for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I mean, I think in order to understand the effect
that that class had on me, it's important to share
a little bit about my childhood. So I grew up
in a household. My father was a teacher of transcendental meditation.
He was a master of the art of aiketo. He
started a foundation called Windstar Foundation with John Denver, the
(04:15):
singer songwriter, where they would host speakers retreats where people
would come basically to study in the mind body arts.
And so I grew up going to all these retreats.
You know, my summers were filled going to meditation and
aiketo seminars and retreats. And so when I got to Harvard,
(04:37):
I realized, you know, fairly quickly, that that was not
a normal upbringing, that that wasn't the status quo for
the other students there. And you know, for a while
I was a little bit lost. I was feeling, you know,
sense of imposter syndrome, a sense of like, you know,
I've learned a lot, but I haven't learned all they know.
(04:59):
And terms of you know, the academics but it wasn't
until I met Tall, Benjahar, Ellen Langer, and Harrington that
I realized that, you know, even though my childhood was unique,
it was it was actually being researched at the time
from a neuroscientific standpoint. You know, the rise of positive
psychology was happening. The nerve excuse me, the neuroscience of
(05:24):
meditation was just beginning, and people were starting to take
this work really seriously from a scientific standpoint. So that class,
you know, it didn't necessarily like open my mind to
things that I hadn't learned or heard of before, but
it made me feel at home. It made me feel
(05:44):
like I belong.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
So you did some you contributed to some seminal research
even as an undergrad in Harvard with I think UH
paved the way for a career on mindsets and stress.
So can you talk about some of that seminal research.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, the original research that I did. You know, I
mentioned I had sort of been I had experienced the
power of the mind to affect the body, both through
watching my dad teach meditation, teach aikito, and the martial arts.
Also as an athlete, I was an elite gymnast for
a number of years and then I was a Division
(06:20):
one athlete at Harvard. I was an ice hockey player,
and I was taking a class actually with Ellen Langer
at the time, and she said, you know, you know,
I think I came back all sweaty from a practice
to lab or class or something, and she was like, ah,
you know, exercise, that's just a placebo And I was
(06:41):
sort of like, wait, what, you know, what are you
talking about? And you know, but I caught my attention,
and you know, I think at the time, I was
really struggling with this sense, this question of like what
is enough exercise? Like I was training two to three
hours a day, and then I would like go work
out after practice even further. And it kind of got
(07:06):
my attention. I was like, what if it's all in
my head the benefits of what I'm doing? So I
started researching placebo effects. Actually, sequentially, Anne Harrington was teaching
a class on the history of medicine and she made
a comment one day in class that said, she said,
you know something like, you know, in many ways, studying
(07:26):
the history of medicine is like studying the history of
the placebo effect. And so these two things kind of
got in my head. Wow, you know, what is the
placebo effect? How strong is it? And I did a
lot of research looking into that. And then the study
that Ellen and I did was looking at hotel housekeepers.
(07:47):
We found that they were getting a lot of exercise
but weren't aware of it. And what we found was
if we could make them aware of that helped them
to see not only are they getting above and beyond
the Surgeon General's requirements, they are you know, they're probably
getting more exercise than most people in the United States.
(08:09):
That that shift in mindset didn't just change how they felt,
but also had measurable changes on their blood pressure, their
body fat, their weight, and so forth. So that really
kicked it off for me.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, that's pretty revolutionary research, pretty revolutionary foundation.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Thank you. Yeah. I think what it did was it
it brought two fields together that hadn't been integrated before.
There was all this work on behavioral health being you know,
the modern medicine, right, we need to eat well, we
need to exercise, we need to stop stressing, we need
to stop smoking, and it brought the research on placebo
(08:48):
response into that and said well, yeah, we do need
to do all those things, but also we need to
pay attention to our beliefs, to our mindsets, to how
we're thinking about these things.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, for sure. And then when you got to Yale,
you worked on you continued this research. You published this
paper in twenty eleven called mind over Milkshakes, a classic
classic in the field. Mind over milkshakes not just nutrients
determine grellin? Is that? He said? Response, So can you
(09:20):
just tell you what is grelin? You know, and I
know it's related to hunger, but give me a little
more technical description, and you know, how does our mindset
affect that?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah? Well, first of all, do you remember I think
I asked you to read a draft of this paper
back in New Haven. Maybe it hadn't made it such
an impact yet, but.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I remember two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Something like that. We were sitting at a restaurant somewhere
in New Haven and I've given it to you to
read because I was struggling with how to frame it.
But you were really helpful.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Oh yeah, isn't that funny?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
It is funny. It's awful circle. But yeah, so this study,
quite frankly, this is my favorite study I've ever done.
It mostly because of how profoundly it changed my life
as a result. So Grellin is a hunger hunger hormone.
Her medical experts call it the hunger hormone. It helps
(10:21):
regulate hunger and metabolism. So, you know, I don't know
what time it is. I think you're in New York,
so maybe you've already eaten lunch, but I haven't yet.
So my grellin levels are slowly rising, and the purpose
of that is to send signals to my brain and
body that I need to seek out food. So rising
(10:41):
levels of grellin signal hunger. It also rising grellin slows metabolism,
just in case we don't get the food that we need.
And then, theoretically, or at least you know, prior to
the study, it had been assumed that in proportion to
the amount of salaries you consume, Grellen levels will drop.
(11:04):
So say I go out after we chat and I
have a giant hamburger and a milkshake, then my grell
and levels will plummet. Step telling my brain, okay, you
can stop feeling hungry, stop searching out food, and I'm
going to rev up the metabolism to consume the food
that you just ingested. So you know, actually, these these
gut peptides, these hunger hormones hadn't really been fully discovered
(11:28):
until the late nineteen nineties, and we're still just now
figuring out what they do and how they work in concert.
But what we were interested in in this study was
does our body's physiological response, and in particular, our bodies
grell in response. Does that differ? Might that differ if
(11:49):
we have different beliefs about the food that we're eating.
So in that study, we worked with the Yale New
Haven Hospital and we gave people well the exact same milkshake,
so it was about a three hundred and fifty calorie milkshake,
and we either told them that it was six hundred
and twenty calories high fat, high sugar, or one hundred
(12:13):
and twenty calories one hundred and forty calories low fat,
sort of sensible diet shake, and we had them hooked
up to an IV we were measuring grillen levels through
their bloodstream. And what we found was that even though
the shakes were exactly the same, when people thought they
were consuming an indulgent shake, their body responded as if
(12:35):
they had had more food. So the drop in grellin
was about three times as great compared to when they
thought they were consuming a sensible kind of low fat
diet shake.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
That sounds like a big effect statistically, can you like
subjectively describe what that difference is if that makes sense totally?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So well, First of all, the findings were signific get
important in the sense that no one had ever documented
just any physiological change based on the belief, So that
was one thing that was important. But the second reason
why this study was important was realizing actually the direction
(13:17):
in which the belief had an effect. So I went
into this, remember like thinking, okay, placebo effects are basically,
you know, if you think you're going to be healthy,
you'll have a healthy response. So I assumed that the
sensible shake, if you know, if it made any difference
at all, that would be the better mindset to be in.
(13:40):
And what we found was exactly the exact opposite, right,
assuming you want to maintain or lose weight. When if
you're consuming something in the mindset that you're eating sensibly healthy,
it conveys to the brain a sense of uh scarcity
or restraint, this sense of like I didn't eat enough.
(14:03):
And what that does is it perpetuates grell In perpetuates
the hunger signals, slows metabolism and so forth. So the
mindset of sensibility or restraint or scarcity actually counteracts the
hard work that you might be doing, actually reducing your
colort intake. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
It does? But the effect you found of three times
less is that the equivalent of literally going from signaling
that it's time to eat versus like I don't feel
any hunger at all, or is it like just not
as strong or I guess I'm trying to like quant
(14:45):
qualify qualify it, not quantify it.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, I don't know. It was threefold greater compared to
the sense.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Definitely an important effect. It's definitely port effect.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
But how much did that affect their subjective sense? And honestly,
I the subjective sense is less important than the physiological
sense important in this case. And I think everybody's different.
And I think, you know, I've since that time wanted
to do my sort of dream study is you know,
(15:19):
because I was just they were sitting in there for
two hours, right, we're measuring their response to the shake.
So it's like, okay, how much does this really matter?
But you know what if we could take somebody over
the course of a month, right, and not only change
their diet, but change their beliefs about what they're eating.
(15:40):
So maybe they're starting a low carb diet or low
fat diet or whatever it is. But if they believe
that it's enough, will that actually change weight, change their
body composition and so forth. But we haven't been able
to do that because, as you can imagine, it's hard
to deceive people for a long period of time, and
(16:04):
we wouldn't want to deceive them for a long period
of time.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Hill, I want to take a moment to make a
few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you
all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
comount called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself
and realize your full potential. In this book, I offer
a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your living
(16:33):
beliefs and take control of your life. Are you tired
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(16:56):
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(17:16):
for Human Potential dot Com slash SAC. That's Center for
Humanpotential dot Com slash s a C. Okay, now back
to the show. No, that's cool. That's really cool. Well,
you've done some really great extensions of this work. In
twenty thirteen, you teamed up with Peter Salve, who was
(17:38):
he head of the Yale Graduate School at that time.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
I think, yeah, he was I think Deane when we
started to work working together, and then provost when I left.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah. Great, And this guy called Sean Aker was a
call author in this paper as well. But you're the
lead author. I want to state for the record, you're amazing,
Ali Crum, And this paper is rethinking stress the role
of mindsets in deterring the stress response. And so what
I want to talk about on this paper is you
developed a measure called the stressed mind the stress mindset measure.
(18:11):
Can you give me I'd hate to put you on
the spot, but can you give me? Give me one
or two items like, how do I know if I
score high on this measure?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, of course you love you love self report.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I love psychometrics.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I do too, so we have that in common. So this, uh,
the Stress Mindset Measure. The s MM asks questions like
experiencing stress enhances my performance and productivity. So do you
strongly you know? Do you disagree with that? Agree with that?
Strongly agree with that experiencing stress depletes my health and vitality.
(18:54):
That one is reverse scored experiencing stress. Yes, I think
we had a health and performance vitality. Oh, it enhances
my learning and growth. So we wanted to cover these
sort of three dimensions health and vitality, learning and growth,
(19:15):
performance and productivity.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
And for the record, these items are you know if
you score high in this it's not the majority of
participants who tend to think this way, correct. I mean,
most of us don't think when I say stress to
every person on the street, they don't think, oh, that's
going to be improve my performance. So what percent what
were percentages and things?
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, I think our you know, we've studied this now
in many different populations, It's been translated in many different languages,
and the average score is always almost always below the midpoint.
So you know, categorically you would put that into the
(19:59):
belief that stress is debilitating. The only group at least
that I've sampled in my life so far that is
on average in the enhancing side of the scale over
the midpoint are Navy seals. So and it makes sense, right,
you know, these these are people who are literally choosing
(20:22):
to go into some of the most stressful experiences you
could dream up, in part because they know they can
handle it and they know they'll they'll thrive under That
makes sense.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I mean, I'm sure that like the whole West Point Cadet,
you know, vibe is that you know when they come in.
And so you found this is so cool. You found
that those who show higher on the scale showed moderate
cortisol reactivity and high desire for feedback under stress. Now
(20:58):
that's not this is not normal, This is not the norm.
So explain, explain the really important implications of this kind
of these changes to cortisol and your desire for feedback
under stress.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah. Well, well, first of all, it's important to kind
of take step back and understand what this measure is. Right. So,
you know, the truth about stress is that it is
a paradox. Right, There's lots of research showing that stress
can have damaging effects on our health, on our learning,
on our growth, on our well being, and so forth.
(21:35):
But if you actually dive deeper into the literature, you
realize that you know, it's not all bad. And in fact,
the body's stress response was not designed to kill us, like,
it was not designed to hold us back. It was
designed to help us rise to the occasion, to meet
the demands we're faced with. In fact, Hanselier, who sort
(21:57):
of you know, humorously called the father of stress, when
he first wrote about stress, he wrote about the stress
responses non specific, right, it's just the body's reaction to
the challenges that it faces. And he also talked about
you know, not just stress as only bad, but stress
as being both distress when it causes negative effects and
(22:20):
use stress when it actually helps the brain, body system, grow, learn, perform.
So we want to distinguish between kind of what is
the true nature of stress, which is, like most things
in life, a paradox, many types of outcomes are possible,
and what we're interested in, which is our belief or mindset,
(22:42):
the core assumption that we have about the nature of stress. Now,
if you probe somebody further, they might say, well, I
get that it could be good here, and da da dah.
They can get all nuanced in their thinking. But you know,
we when we operate, when we act in the world,
we are acting based on these default assumptions. Our first
inclination is going to be based on where on that
(23:04):
scale did we stake our claim on average, And so
there's variability in that. Even though on average most people
are on the stress of debilitating side, there's variability in
people's beliefs. And what we find is that that variability matters.
So people who believe hold the mindset that stress can
(23:25):
be enhancing, they show more adaptive cortisal response and I'll
talk about that in a second, and they also show
more willingness for feedback. And it makes sense, right if
you think that stress is bad for you, and then
you're faced with something stressful in your life, how do
(23:46):
you feel right now? Not only are you stressed because
something just happened, but now you're stressed about the stress,
and you're upset that you're stressed, and you're a little
depressed that you have to deal with the stress, and
you're worried about, you know, the cardiovascular ramifications of this stress.
So the mindset itself just made the stress worse. So
(24:10):
emotionally it changes. Motivationally, we also are influenced by our mindset.
So if you believe that stress is debilitating, that it's
bad for you, that it's going to kill you, what
are you motivated to do? You're motivated to either yeah,
to like get the hell out of there, like either
(24:30):
pretend that this problem isn't there, you know that your
boyfriend or girlfriend didn't just give you negative feedback, or
to overcompensate, to overreact to like make sure this problem
goes away. So those two responses, either hyperactivity around the
stress or you know, avoid and hypoactivity show up physiologically,
(24:54):
so either people freak out or they check out. And
what we found is people who believe that stress can
be enhancing. There's somewhere in the middle. They're like, Okay,
I didn't want to be dealing with this stress, but
it's here, and the stress response is designed to serve me.
So what do I have to learn from this? How
can I engage with this in an appropriate, thoughtful, useful way.
(25:19):
What feedback do I actually need to hear? And that
shows up physiologically in you know, moderate levels of cortisol,
which is important because most people get this wrong. They
think cortisol is all bad, but actually, you know, cortisol
is linked with attention, focus, engagement, right, So you want
to be somewhere in the middle with respect to cortisol.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
You know, there's a there's an old saying that goes,
when you worry, you suffer twice, and you have to
be thinking that it's you know, you have the stress,
but the whole avoidance and we should use the word fear,
is that enhances. Yes, these reactions and these and these
(26:01):
these physiological responses that cause damage to your body quite frankly,
and your mind. So in some ways it's like a
double whammy. You know, it's you have the stress itself
and then you also have the avoidance response. So it
just seems like the more you can have this stress,
it's enhancing mindset, the more you're kind of like avoiding
(26:23):
a double whammy. Does that make any sense totally?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
You know? And some of the work that I did
with Peter Salave and he coined the term emotional intelligence
back before Dan Goldman, yes, yeah, and David Caruso. But
one of the things I remember Peter talking about, and
later Mark Brackett and others is this idea of dirty discomfort.
(26:48):
So you have clean discomfort, which is like the stress
or the fear or the sadness, and then you have
dirty discomfort, which are your judge ment and concerns about
the discomfort, like I can't believe I'm feeling this way.
I shouldn't be feeling this way. This is going to
be harmful for me and so forth, and so you know,
(27:10):
it's it's nuanced, right. The goal is not to you know,
get rid of all negative feelings, right, It's to feel them,
but not make them doubly damaging, as you say, not
make them worse. Right, There's enough to learn from them,
and that's important, I think, you know, to say with
(27:31):
respect to this stress is enhancing mindset, is you know,
sometimes people misunderstand that. They think, oh, that means that,
you know, you should seek out more stress in your life,
and it's like, well, no, like, if you care about
anything in life, you're going to experience stress surrounding it.
(27:52):
In fact, you know, the definition of stress, at least
that I use is stress is the experience or anticipation
of encountering challenges in your goal related efforts. That's super jargony,
But like you know, for all intensive purposes, what matters
is that you only experience stress in domains that you
(28:12):
care about. Right, if I told you that Johnny was
failing school, you wouldn't really be stressed about that unless
you were Johnny or your son was Johnny, or you
cared about the Johnnys of the world school. So we're
gonna have stress in our life. You don't need to
seek it out. A stress is enhancing mindset. Also doesn't
(28:36):
mean that the stressor is a good thing. And I
think you know you know this with all your work
on trauma and your great book that you just wrote recently,
Like you know, when you say you can rise above
right trauma, it doesn't mean that like the trauma was
a good thing, like stress, the stressor is not a
good thing, but going through it can lead to enhancing outcomes,
(29:02):
and that mindset makes those outcomes more likely.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, it seems like a bedfellow of a cow Dlex
growth mindset, but applied to a different demean exactly.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah. No, Carol's work has been very inspirational. I think
her use of the term mindset to kind of define
a core belief that we have about the nature of
intelligence as fixed or malleable is just so profound and important.
And what we're doing here is we're trying to you know,
(29:38):
expand that. But it's different right now. The topic is
stress and the modifiers are you know, is stress enhancing
or debilitating, not necessarily growth or fixed? Right, So it's
we have mindsets about all sorts of things, and they
turns out they matter, They.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Do matter, and we can, you know, get even nerdier.
You proposed a metacognitive approach to mindset change. Just when
you thought it didn't get nerd enough, you create your
stress mindset scale. What is the metacognitive approach that you
(30:22):
published in twenty twenty three where you evaluate your rethink
stress of mindset intervention from twenty thirteen. Yeah, anyway, I'm good.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I'm so glad we get to nerd out together, Scott.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
It's been too long.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
We need a better term for this, but it's so crucial, right, So,
the truth of stress is a paradox our mindsets matter.
If we know the goal is to get people to
adopt more of a stress is enhancing mindset because we
know that's useful for them, how do we do that?
(31:00):
So one approach could be to just try to convince
them that that's the true mindset, right, Like, that's the
right way to think about stress. And in fact, we
did that in that early study with Peter Salave and
Sean Aker. We worked with ubs bankers who were going
through layoffs after the two thousand and eight financial recession,
(31:23):
And what we did was we gave them three minute
video clips that shared the science science of stress, anecdotes, etc.
But they were oriented towards one or the other of
these truths. So, you know, one group in the study
saw all the information that kind of reaffirmed how bad
(31:44):
stress is for you, and the other group saw all
the information that showed that stress, you know, actually wasn't
designed to be that way. It was designed to support
your immune system. And narrow your your attention and ways
that can support you. We found is over the course
of the week, just watching those videos did change their
mindset and it did have effects on their health and performance.
(32:08):
But I left that study feeling like, you know, that
wasn't really ideal because it's not fully true, right, Like
we're not lying to people. Everything that we put in
those films were you know, was based on evidence or
it was a true anecdote, but it wasn't the full picture, right.
(32:29):
So then I was left with this question of how
do we get people into the mindset that stress can
be enhancing, not by kind of you know, you know,
trying to teach them or getting them to see that
that's the true nature of stress, but by getting them
to see that that mindset is useful. And so what
(32:52):
we decided to do was to create an intervention where
people learned the true nature of stress. They learned all
the whole messy story of stress. It can be the
worst thing for you, right, and some people really thrive
and grow from stress. All of these things are true,
and your mindset about it matters. It can shape your attention,
(33:14):
it can shape your feelings, it can shape your motivation,
it can even change your body. So you choose, right, like,
how do you want to choose to view stress? Right,
do you want to view it as debilitating or do
you want to view it as enhancing? So by meta mindset,
what we mean by that is we inspire people to
(33:36):
adopt the mindset a particular mindset, such as the mindset
that stress can be enhancing, not because they're manipulated into it,
but because they choose consciously that that mindset is a
more useful one to have.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Well, so it's just like a flexible stress mindset, Yeah,
strategically flexible.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, it's sort of like you know, I think that
what meditation does, what mindfulness does, is it helps you
realize that you have mindsets, that the world, your beliefs
aren't just sort of a reflection of reality as it is,
that like could be this way or could be that way,
(34:18):
and you kind of like sit back and you sort
of see the kind of absurdity of it all. So
that's part of it. But then what, right, then you
need to go live your life, Like then you need
to get back in the game. And so it's you know,
it's stepping back in and say now I'm going to
live my life, and I'm going to choose to view
(34:38):
stress as enhancing.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's mine. Okay, your piano, I don't know, but I
can beatbox.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
No. So I mean this is this, there's a whole
there's some extensions, so many offshoots of this. I mean,
there's some fascinating stuff found that you can change cancer mindsets.
You know, a brief mindset focused digital intervention was effective
at improving physical, social, emotional, and functional h r QO
(35:18):
L Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
You gotta love jargon. Yeah, so you know, we did
the stress mindset stuff that stuffs still ongoing so important
as you know. Sadly, well, we can come back to this.
But I thought, you know, we would do this research
and then everybody would learn about it, and then everybody
would have a stresses enhancing mindset.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I think, sadly, you need to write that book.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I'm working on it. Yeah, But sadly, I feel like
our culture has even taken a step back in you know,
having this belief that stress is bad, all stress should
be avoided, we should protect everyone from stress and so forth.
But we can talk about that. The cancer work is
(36:09):
really near and dear to my heart, this is work
that I've done with Shan Zion, former grad student in
the lab, Lydia Shapira, and others. Jonathan Barrack and we
wanted to understand what are mindsets that people have about cancer.
And you know, what we learned is that, you know,
(36:30):
like stress, there's you know, cancer is complicated. It doesn't
just have one effect on people's lives, but people have
mindsets about it. Three of the mindsets that we know
people hold are you know, either you view it as
kind of an unmitigated catastrophe. My life as I knew
it was over, Nothing will ever be the same. Why me,
(36:52):
poor me? You know, Yeah, the cancer is a catastrophe.
But people can also view it more as something that's manageable. Right.
They have a mindset that, yeah, I'm diagnosed with cancer.
This is not what I would have hoped for. It's
not what I wanted, but I can manage this. I
can handle this. And there's a third mindset that we
(37:16):
see actually quite frequently in people with cancer, and that
is that cancer can be an opportunity. So again, that
doesn't mean you wanted it doesn't mean it's a good
thing in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Growth potential for postmatic.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Growth exactly the experience of going through cancer. Can yeah,
help you reorganize your priorities, help you, you know, deepen
your values, help your self actualize, help deepen your relationships,
and you know, unlike stress actually in the normal population,
when you look at people with cancer, this is actually
(37:52):
pretty strong, right, And I think when you're really faced
with tough things, you kind of are forced to see
the light, to see the silver linings. But here again
there's lots of variability. And what we find is that interestingly,
these mindsets aren't correlated with the severity of cancer. So
you have people who have stage four metastasized cancer who
(38:17):
believe it's an opportunity, feel like it's manageable, and you
have people with stage one, you know, no big deal
kind of cancers that feel like their whole life's over.
And here again these mindsets matter in shaping how people feel,
how they're motivated to engage with treatment, how their bodies
(38:39):
are responding physiologically, and what they pay attention to in
the treatment. And the intervention that we designed is also
a metacognitive strategy to changing people's mindsets. So you can imagine,
you know, we didn't want to go in and say, hey,
you who just was diagnosed with cancer, you should think
this way or this is the right We don't do that.
(39:01):
What we do is we showcase stories from former, you know,
people who have been formally diagnosed their cancer survivors talk
about the role of their mindsets in the cancer journey.
And they're not just the people who had great mindsets
for the start. They're people who initially felt like this
(39:23):
was a catastrophe and then realize the impact of their mindsets,
chose more useful mindsets and reaped the benefit of doing that.
So the intervention is watching others talk about their mindset,
and what we show in that study is that, you know,
that intervention, which is a total of about an hour
(39:44):
long of documentary style films, changes mindset and that confers
the benefit on health related quality of life. So health
related quality of life is, you know, basically, how well
are you functioning? Are you getting up and doing the
things that you want to do? Are you you know,
you feel good about your relationships. Are you physiologically in
(40:04):
terms of symptom sort of managing Okay, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
There's another category of people that you might want to
consider in your further studies on the topic. There was
a woman who got a lot of press for the
way she handled this her cancer diagnosis. She was told
that she had stage four cancer and maybe had two
years left to live, and she decided she was going
to completely surrender to it. Actually not. She said, I'm
(40:30):
not going to fight. I'm not going to fight a
battle with cancer. I'm going to enjoy my life for
two years and accept it. Except that I only have
two years left. And I just don't like you. You don't
hear that about that option often enough, you you find
like you're almost like feeling pressure to fight it to
you know, oh yeah, what are you doing to fight it?
What are you doing to you know, fight the battle
(40:51):
with cancer? Cancer? She's like, I don't want to fight
the battle with cancer. I want to enjoy my life.
And uh, and so that's just it might be an
interesting if there's you can get word enough sample of
people like that.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
One hundred percent. I'm so glad you brought that up,
because I think it's going from a place another place
where people mis interpret the work. You know, and you know,
having the mindset that cancer is an opportunity, your cancer
is manageable, doesn't mean you're kind of happy about cancer.
It also doesn't mean you're sort of denying it. It
(41:24):
also doesn't mean you're a hundred percent going to beat it, right,
It's just to get there. The first step is really
to acknowledge and accept the reality of your diagnosis. Yes,
And it's only when you do that that then you
can choose how you're going to handle that, how you're
(41:45):
going to approach it. And that might mean going all
in and getting the treat every single you know, treatment
that you can, or it might mean you know, I
don't want to do that. I want to live out
the rest of my days, you know, doing something else.
But you can only get there through acknowledging it and
through having a mindset that is useful.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, I want to shift a little bit to what
happens when you get information about yourself and how that
changes those actual things without you trying to change them.
So that's a long witted way of talking about a
study that you were a co author on with Turnwald
(42:26):
at colleagues in twenty nineteen. Learning one's genetic risk changes
physiologic physiology independent of actual genetic risk. I mean that's mindful.
I mean it's just so mind blowing to me. Okay,
because so many of us are able with twenty three
and meters, right, we're able to find out all this
(42:47):
information about our genetic risk estimates for this and that, Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity,
all sorts of diseases. What did this study find about
just merely learning about that?
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, this was such an interesting and fun study to run.
We got people into the study. Under the study guys
that we were looking at how you know, personalized medicine,
how we could create sort of personalized fitness plans, and
this was very believable. In the Stanford area, lots of
stuff on genome mapping and personalized medicine were happening at
(43:25):
the time, and we in particular were interested in one
gene called the CREB one gene, and that gene had
been linked with obesity and weight through exercise capacity pathways.
So people with the risk aalele of the CREB one
(43:46):
gene were essentially associated with less cardiovascular efficiency when they exercise,
So you would run, you feel like not very good it,
you know, it's sort of painful to run. And the
theory was that was linked with part of the reason
why these people had higher rates of obesity. What we
(44:09):
were interested in in the study was what do do
your beliefs about your genetic risk influence the physiological effects
of that gene? Right, So not just you know, well,
first of all, you know, twenty three meters was big,
(44:31):
lots of this genetic you know, genotyping was getting more
and more you know common. And the theory was, I
think that if you got information about your risk for
certain things, that that would motivate you to you know,
compensate and engage in behaviors that would make you healthy.
(44:53):
And a meta analysis had been done to show basically
that that just wasn't true at all, Like people would
being told they at risk for all these things and
it just didn't motivate them to be any healthier. So
that was interesting. But what we were interested in was
even more kind of fundamental, which was, if you believe
that your genes make you bad at exercise, will that
(45:17):
actually will that just the belief.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Will change the genes?
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Change, yeah, change the express the genes. Yeah. And so
what we did was we this was also within subjects
study like the milkshake studies, so it was the same
people did the same VO two max test. It was
a cardiovascular efficiency test. This was done at the Human
Performance Lab run under Scott Delt and so we hooked
(45:45):
them up. We were literally measuring the amount of oxygen
they were intaking and how efficiently they were able to
convert it to carbon dioxide through their lungs. And we
did one exercise test, very stringent. It's sort of like
a stress test, if you know, if you've ever done one,
or a VO two max test. And then we had
(46:09):
them do the exact same test one week later, but
before they did it, we gave them their genetic result.
So we gave that on this very official looking pamphlet
and we said, you know, we just want to give
you some important information that we got from your genotype.
And they looked at it and half were told they
(46:31):
were they had the risk allele, that they were the
people who were likely to have lower exercise efficiency, or
they were told they had the protective allele, that they
had the good gene. Right like this, they had the
type of gene that made them good at exercise basically,
and then we had them run again the exact same test.
(46:53):
Now what was interesting about this is we had their
actual genotype too, and so we had their actual genotype,
and then we randomized them to getting the information, so
the information they got was randomly determined. So therefore we
can separate the effect of the actual gene on the
(47:13):
outcome and the perceived genetic risk on the outcome. And
essentially what we found was the perceived genetic risk mattered.
When people thought they had the risk aaliele. They converted
oxygen into CO two in a far less efficient rate.
They also, you know, felt hotter, more pain less, motivation,
(47:37):
you know, all a lot of other effects as well.
But the physiological results were really interesting, and it was
fully shaped by belief, not their genetic risk.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Just to quarify some I'm understanding this methodology correctly, they
were given accurate information about their genetic risk, right. You
didn't have a condition where people were given because I'd
be interesting too, a condition where people were given them
opposite of.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Yeah, sorry, I didn't explain that, so people, yeah, no,
this is good. So we had their actual genetic risk,
which is actually three types. You're either the risk allele,
the protective allele, or the heterozygo, which is sort of
right in the middle. And what we did was we
(48:31):
took each of those two three groups and we randomized
them to getting to being told they're either protected or
at risk.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
So it was actually accurate for everyone.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Some were right, So people who were actually protected. Half
were being told they were protected and half are being
told exact opposite.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, And so then we can kind of we can
look at if you just compare the people who were
told they were at risk versus told they were protected,
regardless of what their actual genetic risk was. Just that
information changed their exchange rate of carbon dioxide and oxygen
(49:15):
and carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Changed it in a direction consistent with what they were told.
Is that the idea exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
So the belief, the belief that you are you know,
your genes make you less efficient when you exercise protect
created that reality.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
That's I mean, that's I just can't express enough how
my mind was when I read when I when I
read that paper. Yeah, it's amazing, and it's time to
be thinking of studies that I want to conduct, you know,
because there's the g WOSS approach is now starting to
(49:56):
show not great predictability, but that there's something there with
like predicting IQ for instance, and an academic achievement potential,
you know, you know, and it's you're statistically significant effects.
It's explaining maybe what like two to fifteen percent of
the variants of the outcome. It's I mean, that's something.
(50:18):
And so it makes me wonder, what if you start,
what if you tell people their risk for like IQ,
for instance, like high er will IQ? Does that actually
alter the expression of the genes that the GOS studies
are starting to show are relevant. I just think that
would be such an interesting study and potentially controversial, I understand,
(50:39):
but I'm just very curious.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah, and I love that idea and how far does
it go? Right? Again, this was another one of those
studies where our effects were very temporary, right, in part
because it was an experimental manipulation. We were deceiving them,
some of many of them about their genetics risk and
that was important to do for the science, right, we
(51:03):
wouldn't know otherwise. But you know, if you want to
do sort of a long term study of like, oh,
how does learning that you're you know, you're all the
aggregate of your genes lead you to have high IQ
and how might that affect you over decades? Right, that
would be really interesting, But we got to be careful
in how how we you know, glean that information as
(51:27):
you know, you know, these messages matter.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
That's why I would want to do the studies. Is
the way my mind was thinking about it is that
can help show I mean, in a way, this is a
modern day version of the Pygmalion effect. You know, this
is like a modern day fancy genetics update on that.
You know, is is it a self fulfilling prophecy our
(51:51):
genetic is our genetic expression the way we think a
self fulfilling prophecy on our genetic expression. But you know
it's to me, it's still on the similar wi, you
know totally.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
I had that same thought as you were sharing your ideas,
and I think, you know, some of the reviewers on
our paper had a similar question, which is like, you know,
how important is it that this is genetic information? Like
if you know, what if it was just like family
history or you know, in the Pygmalion study it was
the Harvard Aptitude test, like you know, at that time
(52:25):
that was really important information that you believed. And in
the day of age we're living in, or at least
you know, we were. I think we're changing slowly, but
genes are like every you know, there's something that's like, oh,
that's just hardwired. Right. If your genes, you know, predispose
you to something that's meaningful, that's real. But at the
(52:49):
end of the day, that's just information, just like some
test or you know, your family history or otherwise.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
That's exactly right. Is that great? I want to end
this interview by discussing a very fruitful collaboration you've you've
got going with Jared Clifton at University of Pennsylvania. You
guys are quite the duo, him looking at beliefs about
the world at large and you obviously having a very
(53:20):
illustrious career looking at beliefs and how it can affect physiology.
So what does that mind meld look like? I saw
that you recently published a paper in the American Psychologists.
Is that right? Greece this year?
Speaker 1 (53:34):
That's right?
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, I mean that's like a dream for psychologists to
publish in the American Psychologists. So congratulate. It's probably not
he's probably not.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Your first international psychologist, but.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
That's a good point. That was very American centric of
me to say that. Thank you for putting that out.
But have you have you been in the American Psychologists before?
And tell me about this paper a little bit.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, No, that was the first time. Yeah, and thank
you for that. I do you know, I remember reading
you know, you know the American Psychologists. It has like
the picture of the psychologists. I remember reading articles from
some of my heroes and that. But yeah, I'm really
excited about the partnership that I've started with Jared Clifton.
I know you know him from Penn bok Hair similar
(54:20):
Pen Roots. Jare is doing really critical work, I think,
looking at the beliefs that we hold, the mindsets we
hold about the nature of the world as one big place.
And you know, as just as I've extended Carol Dweck's
work from looking at your core beliefs about intelligence to
(54:42):
looking at our core beliefs about other domains like stress
or cancer, or exercise or diet or our genes. Right,
what Jar's doing is looking at what are our core
beliefs about the world? Right, Like do you believe the
world is dangerous or safe? Do you believe the world
(55:05):
is abundant or scarce? Do you believe the world needs you?
Scott Barry Kaufman or could it just live without you? Right?
These are again neither true or false, Right, or wrong.
There's lots of evidence to support either side of these spectrums.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Spectrum, but there's a lot of evidence that.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
The world needs you, Scott.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
You say there's evidence for the world.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Right, Well, the world. I believe the world needs you.
I believe the world needs me, right.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
I believe that's actually objectively true. Though that's where I'm
disagreeing with you, my men.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
A mindset knows that it's not objectively true, but it
is a mindset that serves me and keeps me motivated
to do what I can to actually have that be true.
But anyways, we did we got off on tangent there.
But you know, so Jare's work is was really methodologically
advanced because instead of just like coming up with, you know,
(56:10):
the beliefs that he thought mattered about the world, he'd
decided to take a systematic approach to uncovering what are
all the possible beliefs that people could hold about the
nature of the world. He looked at you know, many
thousand tweets, He looked at all the great religious text
philosophical texts, you know, surveys in different countries and so forth.
(56:32):
And you know, I think my contribution to that work
has been to kind of help define the type of
belief we're talking about here. So these aren't you know,
nuanced kind of you know, takes on the world that
could could be falsified, like the world is flat or
(56:57):
you know, the world was made by God. Right, These
are simple adjectival and evaluative beliefs about the nature of
the world, and they tend to have these modifiers like
it's fixed or malleable, it's enhancing or debilitating, it's abundant
or scarce, these adjectives that characterize the essence of what
(57:20):
the world is. And in that paper what was fun
to write about with Jair is, you know, when it
comes to the world, our beliefs are omnipresent, right, Why
because we never leave the world, at least you and
I haven't yet left the world. And so personality psychologists
(57:45):
and social psychologists used to get in these epic debates
about like is it the person like is it their
personality that's shaping their behavior or is it the situation? Right,
And obviously like the situation matters. You know, your level
of introversion and quietness is going to differ if you're
in a movie theater or a party. But on the whole.
You know, whether you're more extroverted, it's going to shape
(58:07):
how talkative you are. But what jar and I talk
about in this paper is that personality as defined as
this is who you are on average across many different situations,
is not. It's here too, also about a belief about
a situation, right, it's in this case, it's a belief
(58:30):
about the situation of the world, this place that you
never leave. So that's a little philosophical, but we're doing
lots of fun work kind of trying to codify what
are these beliefs, how do they matter, Like, what are
the mechanisms and what's the role that they play in
shaping not just you know, our health and performance, which
(58:50):
has been my focus, but who we are, how we
show up in the world.
Speaker 2 (58:56):
Such deep, deep, profound and important work. Ali and I
started off saying, I'm so proud of seeing your your journey.
I just want to conclude by reiterating that, and I
really view you as, you know, one of the brightest
lights in our field, in this generation, at this time
in human history. And I'm honored to be in the world,
(59:18):
in the world with you.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
Thanks so much, Scott, and I really you know, when
I look back at my days in grad school, which
were stressful and uncertain, and you know, in many ways,
research was research. I started the stress research during that time.
I you know, having people like you in my life
(59:45):
made it possible, made it doable, made it fun, and
most importantly, people like you reminded me of why we're
doing this right, We're not doing it for ourselves. We
are doing it for the world. So thank you for
the work that you do and all the sincerity and
the you know, really just the kind of joy that
(01:00:07):
you bring to it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Thank you. Thanks for letting having me remind myself about
all that as well is really important as well. So boy,
thank you so much and yeah, talk soon to be continued.
I think that what meditation does, what mindfulness does, is
it helps you realize that you have mindsets, that the world,
your beliefs aren't just sort of a reflection of reality
as it is, that like could be this way or
could be that way, and you kind of like sit
back and you sort of see the kind of absurdity
of it all. So that's part of it. But then
(00:23):
what right, then you need to go live your life,
like then you need to get back in the game.
And so it's you know, it's stepping back in and
say now I'm going to live my life and I'm
going to choose to view stress as enhancing.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
the depths of human potential. I'm your host, doctor Scott
Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist and Columbia professor. On this episode,
we have my dear friend, doctor Ali Crumb, whose research
focuses on how changes in subjective mindsets, the lenses through
which information is perceived, organized, and interpreted, can alter objective
(01:02):
reality through behavioral, psychological, and physiological mechanisms. Her work is
in part inspired by research on the placebo effect, a
remarkable and consistent demonstration of the ability of the mindset
to elicit healing properties in the body. She is interested
in understanding how mindsets affect important outcomes outside the realm
of medicine, in the debates of behavioral health and organizational behavior.
(01:27):
More specifically, she aims to understand how mindsets can be
consciously and deliberately changed through intervention to affect organizational and
individual performance, physiological and psychological well being, and interpersonal effectiveness.
This chat was very sentimental to me personally. I met
doctor Crumb in graduate school at Yale, and we connected immediately.
(01:48):
I remember fondly our deep chats, and I'm so proud
to see her become such a superstar in the field.
I hope you find this chat just as informative as
I did. So, without further ado, I bring you doctor
Ali Crumb. Oh my god, Allie, how do you look
exactly the same?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I mean, you look exactly the same. It's so good
to see you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So good to see you too. I mean like you're
exactly like you know Yale dance. What was some party, jon,
I think it must be something.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
The memory have of you in my mind is like
exactly the same. Anyway. Congratulations on keeping your health and
vitality in youth, and for your amazing, amazing ascendency in
the field of psychology, successes and research and everything. It's
been such a delight and honor to watch you sore.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh my gosh. Well I feel the same about you,
Scott at like seeing you brings me right back to
New Haven. You know, I remember going to your dissertation.
I remember meeting your mom right outside of the Hall
of Graduate Studies, and you know, just to we were
just you know, we were so such kids then, but
(03:03):
at the same time, you know, I think both of us.
I was drawn to you because I got a sense
that this was your passion, right, this was your calling,
and you weren't doing it to get some credentials. You
were doing it because you knew it mattered. So it's
been fun to watch from afar and listen to all
your work.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And likewise, thanks, thanks. Well let's let's let's back up
before we even met. Let's back up to your undergraduate
at Harvard Hall. You were a TA for a very
special and popular course and happiness by Tall. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yes, Tall Ben Shahar changed my life.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Can you tell me a little bit about that? Experience
and uh, and then how it like influenced you for
the research you've continued to do for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I mean, I think in order to understand the effect
that that class had on me, it's important to share
a little bit about my childhood. So I grew up
in a household. My father was a teacher of transcendental meditation.
He was a master of the art of aiketo. He
started a foundation called Windstar Foundation with John Denver, the
(04:15):
singer songwriter, where they would host speakers retreats where people
would come basically to study in the mind body arts.
And so I grew up going to all these retreats.
You know, my summers were filled going to meditation and
aiketo seminars and retreats. And so when I got to Harvard,
(04:37):
I realized, you know, fairly quickly, that that was not
a normal upbringing, that that wasn't the status quo for
the other students there. And you know, for a while
I was a little bit lost. I was feeling, you know,
sense of imposter syndrome, a sense of like, you know,
I've learned a lot, but I haven't learned all they know.
(04:59):
And terms of you know, the academics but it wasn't
until I met Tall, Benjahar, Ellen Langer, and Harrington that
I realized that, you know, even though my childhood was unique,
it was it was actually being researched at the time
from a neuroscientific standpoint. You know, the rise of positive
psychology was happening. The nerve excuse me, the neuroscience of
(05:24):
meditation was just beginning, and people were starting to take
this work really seriously from a scientific standpoint. So that class,
you know, it didn't necessarily like open my mind to
things that I hadn't learned or heard of before, but
it made me feel at home. It made me feel
(05:44):
like I belong.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
So you did some you contributed to some seminal research
even as an undergrad in Harvard with I think UH
paved the way for a career on mindsets and stress.
So can you talk about some of that seminal research.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, the original research that I did. You know, I
mentioned I had sort of been I had experienced the
power of the mind to affect the body, both through
watching my dad teach meditation, teach aikito, and the martial arts.
Also as an athlete, I was an elite gymnast for
a number of years and then I was a Division
(06:20):
one athlete at Harvard. I was an ice hockey player,
and I was taking a class actually with Ellen Langer
at the time, and she said, you know, you know,
I think I came back all sweaty from a practice
to lab or class or something, and she was like, ah,
you know, exercise, that's just a placebo And I was
(06:41):
sort of like, wait, what, you know, what are you
talking about? And you know, but I caught my attention,
and you know, I think at the time, I was
really struggling with this sense, this question of like what
is enough exercise? Like I was training two to three
hours a day, and then I would like go work
out after practice even further. And it kind of got
(07:06):
my attention. I was like, what if it's all in
my head the benefits of what I'm doing? So I
started researching placebo effects. Actually, sequentially, Anne Harrington was teaching
a class on the history of medicine and she made
a comment one day in class that said, she said,
you know something like, you know, in many ways, studying
(07:26):
the history of medicine is like studying the history of
the placebo effect. And so these two things kind of
got in my head. Wow, you know, what is the
placebo effect? How strong is it? And I did a
lot of research looking into that. And then the study
that Ellen and I did was looking at hotel housekeepers.
(07:47):
We found that they were getting a lot of exercise
but weren't aware of it. And what we found was
if we could make them aware of that helped them
to see not only are they getting above and beyond
the Surgeon General's requirements, they are you know, they're probably
getting more exercise than most people in the United States.
(08:09):
That that shift in mindset didn't just change how they felt,
but also had measurable changes on their blood pressure, their
body fat, their weight, and so forth. So that really
kicked it off for me.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, that's pretty revolutionary research, pretty revolutionary foundation.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Thank you. Yeah. I think what it did was it
it brought two fields together that hadn't been integrated before.
There was all this work on behavioral health being you know,
the modern medicine, right, we need to eat well, we
need to exercise, we need to stop stressing, we need
to stop smoking, and it brought the research on placebo
(08:48):
response into that and said well, yeah, we do need
to do all those things, but also we need to
pay attention to our beliefs, to our mindsets, to how
we're thinking about these things.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, for sure. And then when you got to Yale,
you worked on you continued this research. You published this
paper in twenty eleven called mind over Milkshakes, a classic
classic in the field. Mind over milkshakes not just nutrients
determine grellin? Is that? He said? Response, So can you
(09:20):
just tell you what is grelin? You know, and I
know it's related to hunger, but give me a little
more technical description, and you know, how does our mindset
affect that?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah? Well, first of all, do you remember I think
I asked you to read a draft of this paper
back in New Haven. Maybe it hadn't made it such
an impact yet, but.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I remember two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Something like that. We were sitting at a restaurant somewhere
in New Haven and I've given it to you to
read because I was struggling with how to frame it.
But you were really helpful.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Oh yeah, isn't that funny?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
It is funny. It's awful circle. But yeah, so this study,
quite frankly, this is my favorite study I've ever done.
It mostly because of how profoundly it changed my life
as a result. So Grellin is a hunger hunger hormone.
Her medical experts call it the hunger hormone. It helps
(10:21):
regulate hunger and metabolism. So, you know, I don't know
what time it is. I think you're in New York,
so maybe you've already eaten lunch, but I haven't yet.
So my grellin levels are slowly rising, and the purpose
of that is to send signals to my brain and
body that I need to seek out food. So rising
(10:41):
levels of grellin signal hunger. It also rising grellin slows metabolism,
just in case we don't get the food that we need.
And then, theoretically, or at least you know, prior to
the study, it had been assumed that in proportion to
the amount of salaries you consume, Grellen levels will drop.
(11:04):
So say I go out after we chat and I
have a giant hamburger and a milkshake, then my grell
and levels will plummet. Step telling my brain, okay, you
can stop feeling hungry, stop searching out food, and I'm
going to rev up the metabolism to consume the food
that you just ingested. So you know, actually, these these
gut peptides, these hunger hormones hadn't really been fully discovered
(11:28):
until the late nineteen nineties, and we're still just now
figuring out what they do and how they work in concert.
But what we were interested in in this study was
does our body's physiological response, and in particular, our bodies
grell in response. Does that differ? Might that differ if
(11:49):
we have different beliefs about the food that we're eating.
So in that study, we worked with the Yale New
Haven Hospital and we gave people well the exact same milkshake,
so it was about a three hundred and fifty calorie milkshake,
and we either told them that it was six hundred
and twenty calories high fat, high sugar, or one hundred
(12:13):
and twenty calories one hundred and forty calories low fat,
sort of sensible diet shake, and we had them hooked
up to an IV we were measuring grillen levels through
their bloodstream. And what we found was that even though
the shakes were exactly the same, when people thought they
were consuming an indulgent shake, their body responded as if
(12:35):
they had had more food. So the drop in grellin
was about three times as great compared to when they
thought they were consuming a sensible kind of low fat
diet shake.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
That sounds like a big effect statistically, can you like
subjectively describe what that difference is if that makes sense totally?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So well, First of all, the findings were signific get
important in the sense that no one had ever documented
just any physiological change based on the belief, So that
was one thing that was important. But the second reason
why this study was important was realizing actually the direction
(13:17):
in which the belief had an effect. So I went
into this, remember like thinking, okay, placebo effects are basically,
you know, if you think you're going to be healthy,
you'll have a healthy response. So I assumed that the
sensible shake, if you know, if it made any difference
at all, that would be the better mindset to be in.
(13:40):
And what we found was exactly the exact opposite, right,
assuming you want to maintain or lose weight. When if
you're consuming something in the mindset that you're eating sensibly healthy,
it conveys to the brain a sense of uh scarcity
or restraint, this sense of like I didn't eat enough.
(14:03):
And what that does is it perpetuates grell In perpetuates
the hunger signals, slows metabolism and so forth. So the
mindset of sensibility or restraint or scarcity actually counteracts the
hard work that you might be doing, actually reducing your
colort intake. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
It does? But the effect you found of three times
less is that the equivalent of literally going from signaling
that it's time to eat versus like I don't feel
any hunger at all, or is it like just not
as strong or I guess I'm trying to like quant
(14:45):
qualify qualify it, not quantify it.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, I don't know. It was threefold greater compared to
the sense.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Definitely an important effect. It's definitely port effect.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
But how much did that affect their subjective sense? And honestly,
I the subjective sense is less important than the physiological
sense important in this case. And I think everybody's different.
And I think, you know, I've since that time wanted
to do my sort of dream study is you know,
(15:19):
because I was just they were sitting in there for
two hours, right, we're measuring their response to the shake.
So it's like, okay, how much does this really matter?
But you know what if we could take somebody over
the course of a month, right, and not only change
their diet, but change their beliefs about what they're eating.
(15:40):
So maybe they're starting a low carb diet or low
fat diet or whatever it is. But if they believe
that it's enough, will that actually change weight, change their
body composition and so forth. But we haven't been able
to do that because, as you can imagine, it's hard
to deceive people for a long period of time, and
(16:04):
we wouldn't want to deceive them for a long period
of time.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Hill, I want to take a moment to make a
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all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
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and realize your full potential. In this book, I offer
a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your living
(16:33):
beliefs and take control of your life. Are you tired
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(17:16):
for Human Potential dot Com slash SAC. That's Center for
Humanpotential dot Com slash s a C. Okay, now back
to the show. No, that's cool. That's really cool. Well,
you've done some really great extensions of this work. In
twenty thirteen, you teamed up with Peter Salve, who was
(17:38):
he head of the Yale Graduate School at that time.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
I think, yeah, he was I think Deane when we
started to work working together, and then provost when I left.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah. Great, And this guy called Sean Aker was a
call author in this paper as well. But you're the
lead author. I want to state for the record, you're amazing,
Ali Crum, And this paper is rethinking stress the role
of mindsets in deterring the stress response. And so what
I want to talk about on this paper is you
developed a measure called the stressed mind the stress mindset measure.
(18:11):
Can you give me I'd hate to put you on
the spot, but can you give me? Give me one
or two items like, how do I know if I
score high on this measure?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, of course you love you love self report.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I love psychometrics.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I do too, so we have that in common. So this, uh,
the Stress Mindset Measure. The s MM asks questions like
experiencing stress enhances my performance and productivity. So do you
strongly you know? Do you disagree with that? Agree with that?
Strongly agree with that experiencing stress depletes my health and vitality.
(18:54):
That one is reverse scored experiencing stress. Yes, I think
we had a health and performance vitality. Oh, it enhances
my learning and growth. So we wanted to cover these
sort of three dimensions health and vitality, learning and growth,
(19:15):
performance and productivity.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
And for the record, these items are you know if
you score high in this it's not the majority of
participants who tend to think this way, correct. I mean,
most of us don't think when I say stress to
every person on the street, they don't think, oh, that's
going to be improve my performance. So what percent what
were percentages and things?
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, I think our you know, we've studied this now
in many different populations, It's been translated in many different languages,
and the average score is always almost always below the midpoint.
So you know, categorically you would put that into the
(19:59):
belief that stress is debilitating. The only group at least
that I've sampled in my life so far that is
on average in the enhancing side of the scale over
the midpoint are Navy seals. So and it makes sense, right,
you know, these these are people who are literally choosing
(20:22):
to go into some of the most stressful experiences you
could dream up, in part because they know they can
handle it and they know they'll they'll thrive under That
makes sense.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I mean, I'm sure that like the whole West Point Cadet,
you know, vibe is that you know when they come in.
And so you found this is so cool. You found
that those who show higher on the scale showed moderate
cortisol reactivity and high desire for feedback under stress. Now
(20:58):
that's not this is not normal, This is not the norm.
So explain, explain the really important implications of this kind
of these changes to cortisol and your desire for feedback
under stress.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah. Well, well, first of all, it's important to kind
of take step back and understand what this measure is. Right. So,
you know, the truth about stress is that it is
a paradox. Right, There's lots of research showing that stress
can have damaging effects on our health, on our learning,
on our growth, on our well being, and so forth.
(21:35):
But if you actually dive deeper into the literature, you
realize that you know, it's not all bad. And in fact,
the body's stress response was not designed to kill us, like,
it was not designed to hold us back. It was
designed to help us rise to the occasion, to meet
the demands we're faced with. In fact, Hanselier, who sort
(21:57):
of you know, humorously called the father of stress, when
he first wrote about stress, he wrote about the stress
responses non specific, right, it's just the body's reaction to
the challenges that it faces. And he also talked about
you know, not just stress as only bad, but stress
as being both distress when it causes negative effects and
(22:20):
use stress when it actually helps the brain, body system, grow, learn, perform.
So we want to distinguish between kind of what is
the true nature of stress, which is, like most things
in life, a paradox, many types of outcomes are possible,
and what we're interested in, which is our belief or mindset,
(22:42):
the core assumption that we have about the nature of stress. Now,
if you probe somebody further, they might say, well, I
get that it could be good here, and da da dah.
They can get all nuanced in their thinking. But you know,
we when we operate, when we act in the world,
we are acting based on these default assumptions. Our first
inclination is going to be based on where on that
(23:04):
scale did we stake our claim on average, And so
there's variability in that. Even though on average most people
are on the stress of debilitating side, there's variability in
people's beliefs. And what we find is that that variability matters.
So people who believe hold the mindset that stress can
(23:25):
be enhancing, they show more adaptive cortisal response and I'll
talk about that in a second, and they also show
more willingness for feedback. And it makes sense, right if
you think that stress is bad for you, and then
you're faced with something stressful in your life, how do
(23:46):
you feel right now? Not only are you stressed because
something just happened, but now you're stressed about the stress,
and you're upset that you're stressed, and you're a little
depressed that you have to deal with the stress, and
you're worried about, you know, the cardiovascular ramifications of this stress.
So the mindset itself just made the stress worse. So
(24:10):
emotionally it changes. Motivationally, we also are influenced by our mindset.
So if you believe that stress is debilitating, that it's
bad for you, that it's going to kill you, what
are you motivated to do? You're motivated to either yeah,
to like get the hell out of there, like either
(24:30):
pretend that this problem isn't there, you know that your
boyfriend or girlfriend didn't just give you negative feedback, or
to overcompensate, to overreact to like make sure this problem
goes away. So those two responses, either hyperactivity around the
stress or you know, avoid and hypoactivity show up physiologically,
(24:54):
so either people freak out or they check out. And
what we found is people who believe that stress can
be enhancing. There's somewhere in the middle. They're like, Okay,
I didn't want to be dealing with this stress, but
it's here, and the stress response is designed to serve me.
So what do I have to learn from this? How
can I engage with this in an appropriate, thoughtful, useful way.
(25:19):
What feedback do I actually need to hear? And that
shows up physiologically in you know, moderate levels of cortisol,
which is important because most people get this wrong. They
think cortisol is all bad, but actually, you know, cortisol
is linked with attention, focus, engagement, right, So you want
to be somewhere in the middle with respect to cortisol.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
You know, there's a there's an old saying that goes,
when you worry, you suffer twice, and you have to
be thinking that it's you know, you have the stress,
but the whole avoidance and we should use the word fear,
is that enhances. Yes, these reactions and these and these
(26:01):
these physiological responses that cause damage to your body quite frankly,
and your mind. So in some ways it's like a
double whammy. You know, it's you have the stress itself
and then you also have the avoidance response. So it
just seems like the more you can have this stress,
it's enhancing mindset, the more you're kind of like avoiding
(26:23):
a double whammy. Does that make any sense totally?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
You know? And some of the work that I did
with Peter Salave and he coined the term emotional intelligence
back before Dan Goldman, yes, yeah, and David Caruso. But
one of the things I remember Peter talking about, and
later Mark Brackett and others is this idea of dirty discomfort.
(26:48):
So you have clean discomfort, which is like the stress
or the fear or the sadness, and then you have
dirty discomfort, which are your judge ment and concerns about
the discomfort, like I can't believe I'm feeling this way.
I shouldn't be feeling this way. This is going to
be harmful for me and so forth, and so you know,
(27:10):
it's it's nuanced, right. The goal is not to you know,
get rid of all negative feelings, right, It's to feel them,
but not make them doubly damaging, as you say, not
make them worse. Right, There's enough to learn from them,
and that's important, I think, you know, to say with
(27:31):
respect to this stress is enhancing mindset, is you know,
sometimes people misunderstand that. They think, oh, that means that,
you know, you should seek out more stress in your life,
and it's like, well, no, like, if you care about
anything in life, you're going to experience stress surrounding it.
(27:52):
In fact, you know, the definition of stress, at least
that I use is stress is the experience or anticipation
of encountering challenges in your goal related efforts. That's super jargony,
But like you know, for all intensive purposes, what matters
is that you only experience stress in domains that you
(28:12):
care about. Right, if I told you that Johnny was
failing school, you wouldn't really be stressed about that unless
you were Johnny or your son was Johnny, or you
cared about the Johnnys of the world school. So we're
gonna have stress in our life. You don't need to
seek it out. A stress is enhancing mindset. Also doesn't
(28:36):
mean that the stressor is a good thing. And I
think you know you know this with all your work
on trauma and your great book that you just wrote recently,
Like you know, when you say you can rise above
right trauma, it doesn't mean that like the trauma was
a good thing, like stress, the stressor is not a
good thing, but going through it can lead to enhancing outcomes,
(29:02):
and that mindset makes those outcomes more likely.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, it seems like a bedfellow of a cow Dlex
growth mindset, but applied to a different demean exactly.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah. No, Carol's work has been very inspirational. I think
her use of the term mindset to kind of define
a core belief that we have about the nature of
intelligence as fixed or malleable is just so profound and important.
And what we're doing here is we're trying to you know,
(29:38):
expand that. But it's different right now. The topic is
stress and the modifiers are you know, is stress enhancing
or debilitating, not necessarily growth or fixed? Right, So it's
we have mindsets about all sorts of things, and they
turns out they matter, They.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Do matter, and we can, you know, get even nerdier.
You proposed a metacognitive approach to mindset change. Just when
you thought it didn't get nerd enough, you create your
stress mindset scale. What is the metacognitive approach that you
(30:22):
published in twenty twenty three where you evaluate your rethink
stress of mindset intervention from twenty thirteen. Yeah, anyway, I'm good.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I'm so glad we get to nerd out together, Scott.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
It's been too long.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
We need a better term for this, but it's so crucial, right, So,
the truth of stress is a paradox our mindsets matter.
If we know the goal is to get people to
adopt more of a stress is enhancing mindset because we
know that's useful for them, how do we do that?
(31:00):
So one approach could be to just try to convince
them that that's the true mindset, right, Like, that's the
right way to think about stress. And in fact, we
did that in that early study with Peter Salave and
Sean Aker. We worked with ubs bankers who were going
through layoffs after the two thousand and eight financial recession,
(31:23):
And what we did was we gave them three minute
video clips that shared the science science of stress, anecdotes, etc.
But they were oriented towards one or the other of
these truths. So, you know, one group in the study
saw all the information that kind of reaffirmed how bad
(31:44):
stress is for you, and the other group saw all
the information that showed that stress, you know, actually wasn't
designed to be that way. It was designed to support
your immune system. And narrow your your attention and ways
that can support you. We found is over the course
of the week, just watching those videos did change their
mindset and it did have effects on their health and performance.
(32:08):
But I left that study feeling like, you know, that
wasn't really ideal because it's not fully true, right, Like
we're not lying to people. Everything that we put in
those films were you know, was based on evidence or
it was a true anecdote, but it wasn't the full picture, right.
(32:29):
So then I was left with this question of how
do we get people into the mindset that stress can
be enhancing, not by kind of you know, you know,
trying to teach them or getting them to see that
that's the true nature of stress, but by getting them
to see that that mindset is useful. And so what
(32:52):
we decided to do was to create an intervention where
people learned the true nature of stress. They learned all
the whole messy story of stress. It can be the
worst thing for you, right, and some people really thrive
and grow from stress. All of these things are true,
and your mindset about it matters. It can shape your attention,
(33:14):
it can shape your feelings, it can shape your motivation,
it can even change your body. So you choose, right, like,
how do you want to choose to view stress? Right,
do you want to view it as debilitating or do
you want to view it as enhancing? So by meta mindset,
what we mean by that is we inspire people to
(33:36):
adopt the mindset a particular mindset, such as the mindset
that stress can be enhancing, not because they're manipulated into it,
but because they choose consciously that that mindset is a
more useful one to have.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Well, so it's just like a flexible stress mindset, Yeah,
strategically flexible.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, it's sort of like you know, I think that
what meditation does, what mindfulness does, is it helps you
realize that you have mindsets, that the world, your beliefs
aren't just sort of a reflection of reality as it is,
that like could be this way or could be that way,
(34:18):
and you kind of like sit back and you sort
of see the kind of absurdity of it all. So
that's part of it. But then what, right, then you
need to go live your life, Like then you need
to get back in the game. And so it's you know,
it's stepping back in and say now I'm going to
live my life, and I'm going to choose to view
(34:38):
stress as enhancing.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's mine. Okay, your piano, I don't know, but I
can beatbox.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
No. So I mean this is this, there's a whole
there's some extensions, so many offshoots of this. I mean,
there's some fascinating stuff found that you can change cancer mindsets.
You know, a brief mindset focused digital intervention was effective
at improving physical, social, emotional, and functional h r QO
(35:18):
L Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
You gotta love jargon. Yeah, so you know, we did
the stress mindset stuff that stuffs still ongoing so important
as you know. Sadly, well, we can come back to this.
But I thought, you know, we would do this research
and then everybody would learn about it, and then everybody
would have a stresses enhancing mindset.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I think, sadly, you need to write that book.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I'm working on it. Yeah, But sadly, I feel like
our culture has even taken a step back in you know,
having this belief that stress is bad, all stress should
be avoided, we should protect everyone from stress and so forth.
But we can talk about that. The cancer work is
(36:09):
really near and dear to my heart, this is work
that I've done with Shan Zion, former grad student in
the lab, Lydia Shapira, and others. Jonathan Barrack and we
wanted to understand what are mindsets that people have about cancer.
And you know, what we learned is that, you know,
(36:30):
like stress, there's you know, cancer is complicated. It doesn't
just have one effect on people's lives, but people have
mindsets about it. Three of the mindsets that we know
people hold are you know, either you view it as
kind of an unmitigated catastrophe. My life as I knew
it was over, Nothing will ever be the same. Why me,
(36:52):
poor me? You know, Yeah, the cancer is a catastrophe.
But people can also view it more as something that's manageable. Right.
They have a mindset that, yeah, I'm diagnosed with cancer.
This is not what I would have hoped for. It's
not what I wanted, but I can manage this. I
can handle this. And there's a third mindset that we
(37:16):
see actually quite frequently in people with cancer, and that
is that cancer can be an opportunity. So again, that
doesn't mean you wanted it doesn't mean it's a good
thing in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Growth potential for postmatic.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Growth exactly the experience of going through cancer. Can yeah,
help you reorganize your priorities, help you, you know, deepen
your values, help your self actualize, help deepen your relationships,
and you know, unlike stress actually in the normal population,
when you look at people with cancer, this is actually
(37:52):
pretty strong, right, And I think when you're really faced
with tough things, you kind of are forced to see
the light, to see the silver linings. But here again
there's lots of variability. And what we find is that interestingly,
these mindsets aren't correlated with the severity of cancer. So
you have people who have stage four metastasized cancer who
(38:17):
believe it's an opportunity, feel like it's manageable, and you
have people with stage one, you know, no big deal
kind of cancers that feel like their whole life's over.
And here again these mindsets matter in shaping how people feel,
how they're motivated to engage with treatment, how their bodies
(38:39):
are responding physiologically, and what they pay attention to in
the treatment. And the intervention that we designed is also
a metacognitive strategy to changing people's mindsets. So you can imagine,
you know, we didn't want to go in and say, hey,
you who just was diagnosed with cancer, you should think
this way or this is the right We don't do that.
(39:01):
What we do is we showcase stories from former, you know,
people who have been formally diagnosed their cancer survivors talk
about the role of their mindsets in the cancer journey.
And they're not just the people who had great mindsets
for the start. They're people who initially felt like this
(39:23):
was a catastrophe and then realize the impact of their mindsets,
chose more useful mindsets and reaped the benefit of doing that.
So the intervention is watching others talk about their mindset,
and what we show in that study is that, you know,
that intervention, which is a total of about an hour
(39:44):
long of documentary style films, changes mindset and that confers
the benefit on health related quality of life. So health
related quality of life is, you know, basically, how well
are you functioning? Are you getting up and doing the
things that you want to do? Are you you know,
you feel good about your relationships. Are you physiologically in
(40:04):
terms of symptom sort of managing Okay, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
There's another category of people that you might want to
consider in your further studies on the topic. There was
a woman who got a lot of press for the
way she handled this her cancer diagnosis. She was told
that she had stage four cancer and maybe had two
years left to live, and she decided she was going
to completely surrender to it. Actually not. She said, I'm
(40:30):
not going to fight. I'm not going to fight a
battle with cancer. I'm going to enjoy my life for
two years and accept it. Except that I only have
two years left. And I just don't like you. You don't
hear that about that option often enough, you you find
like you're almost like feeling pressure to fight it to
you know, oh yeah, what are you doing to fight it?
What are you doing to you know, fight the battle
(40:51):
with cancer? Cancer? She's like, I don't want to fight
the battle with cancer. I want to enjoy my life.
And uh, and so that's just it might be an
interesting if there's you can get word enough sample of
people like that.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
One hundred percent. I'm so glad you brought that up,
because I think it's going from a place another place
where people mis interpret the work. You know, and you know,
having the mindset that cancer is an opportunity, your cancer
is manageable, doesn't mean you're kind of happy about cancer.
It also doesn't mean you're sort of denying it. It
(41:24):
also doesn't mean you're a hundred percent going to beat it, right,
It's just to get there. The first step is really
to acknowledge and accept the reality of your diagnosis. Yes,
And it's only when you do that that then you
can choose how you're going to handle that, how you're
(41:45):
going to approach it. And that might mean going all
in and getting the treat every single you know, treatment
that you can, or it might mean you know, I
don't want to do that. I want to live out
the rest of my days, you know, doing something else.
But you can only get there through acknowledging it and
through having a mindset that is useful.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, I want to shift a little bit to what
happens when you get information about yourself and how that
changes those actual things without you trying to change them.
So that's a long witted way of talking about a
study that you were a co author on with Turnwald
(42:26):
at colleagues in twenty nineteen. Learning one's genetic risk changes
physiologic physiology independent of actual genetic risk. I mean that's mindful.
I mean it's just so mind blowing to me. Okay,
because so many of us are able with twenty three
and meters, right, we're able to find out all this
(42:47):
information about our genetic risk estimates for this and that, Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity,
all sorts of diseases. What did this study find about
just merely learning about that?
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, this was such an interesting and fun study to run.
We got people into the study. Under the study guys
that we were looking at how you know, personalized medicine,
how we could create sort of personalized fitness plans, and
this was very believable. In the Stanford area, lots of
stuff on genome mapping and personalized medicine were happening at
(43:25):
the time, and we in particular were interested in one
gene called the CREB one gene, and that gene had
been linked with obesity and weight through exercise capacity pathways.
So people with the risk aalele of the CREB one
(43:46):
gene were essentially associated with less cardiovascular efficiency when they exercise,
So you would run, you feel like not very good it,
you know, it's sort of painful to run. And the
theory was that was linked with part of the reason
why these people had higher rates of obesity. What we
(44:09):
were interested in in the study was what do do
your beliefs about your genetic risk influence the physiological effects
of that gene? Right, So not just you know, well,
first of all, you know, twenty three meters was big,
(44:31):
lots of this genetic you know, genotyping was getting more
and more you know common. And the theory was, I
think that if you got information about your risk for
certain things, that that would motivate you to you know,
compensate and engage in behaviors that would make you healthy.
(44:53):
And a meta analysis had been done to show basically
that that just wasn't true at all, Like people would
being told they at risk for all these things and
it just didn't motivate them to be any healthier. So
that was interesting. But what we were interested in was
even more kind of fundamental, which was, if you believe
that your genes make you bad at exercise, will that
(45:17):
actually will that just the belief.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Will change the genes?
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Change, yeah, change the express the genes. Yeah. And so
what we did was we this was also within subjects
study like the milkshake studies, so it was the same
people did the same VO two max test. It was
a cardiovascular efficiency test. This was done at the Human
Performance Lab run under Scott Delt and so we hooked
(45:45):
them up. We were literally measuring the amount of oxygen
they were intaking and how efficiently they were able to
convert it to carbon dioxide through their lungs. And we
did one exercise test, very stringent. It's sort of like
a stress test, if you know, if you've ever done one,
or a VO two max test. And then we had
(46:09):
them do the exact same test one week later, but
before they did it, we gave them their genetic result.
So we gave that on this very official looking pamphlet
and we said, you know, we just want to give
you some important information that we got from your genotype.
And they looked at it and half were told they
(46:31):
were they had the risk allele, that they were the
people who were likely to have lower exercise efficiency, or
they were told they had the protective allele, that they
had the good gene. Right like this, they had the
type of gene that made them good at exercise basically,
and then we had them run again the exact same test.
(46:53):
Now what was interesting about this is we had their
actual genotype too, and so we had their actual genotype,
and then we randomized them to getting the information, so
the information they got was randomly determined. So therefore we
can separate the effect of the actual gene on the
(47:13):
outcome and the perceived genetic risk on the outcome. And
essentially what we found was the perceived genetic risk mattered.
When people thought they had the risk aaliele. They converted
oxygen into CO two in a far less efficient rate.
They also, you know, felt hotter, more pain less, motivation,
(47:37):
you know, all a lot of other effects as well.
But the physiological results were really interesting, and it was
fully shaped by belief, not their genetic risk.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Just to quarify some I'm understanding this methodology correctly, they
were given accurate information about their genetic risk, right. You
didn't have a condition where people were given because I'd
be interesting too, a condition where people were given them
opposite of.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Yeah, sorry, I didn't explain that, so people, yeah, no,
this is good. So we had their actual genetic risk,
which is actually three types. You're either the risk allele,
the protective allele, or the heterozygo, which is sort of
right in the middle. And what we did was we
(48:31):
took each of those two three groups and we randomized
them to getting to being told they're either protected or
at risk.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
So it was actually accurate for everyone.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Some were right, So people who were actually protected. Half
were being told they were protected and half are being
told exact opposite.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, And so then we can kind of we can
look at if you just compare the people who were
told they were at risk versus told they were protected,
regardless of what their actual genetic risk was. Just that
information changed their exchange rate of carbon dioxide and oxygen
(49:15):
and carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Changed it in a direction consistent with what they were told.
Is that the idea exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
So the belief, the belief that you are you know,
your genes make you less efficient when you exercise protect
created that reality.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
That's I mean, that's I just can't express enough how
my mind was when I read when I when I
read that paper. Yeah, it's amazing, and it's time to
be thinking of studies that I want to conduct, you know,
because there's the g WOSS approach is now starting to
(49:56):
show not great predictability, but that there's something there with
like predicting IQ for instance, and an academic achievement potential,
you know, you know, and it's you're statistically significant effects.
It's explaining maybe what like two to fifteen percent of
the variants of the outcome. It's I mean, that's something.
(50:18):
And so it makes me wonder, what if you start,
what if you tell people their risk for like IQ,
for instance, like high er will IQ? Does that actually
alter the expression of the genes that the GOS studies
are starting to show are relevant. I just think that
would be such an interesting study and potentially controversial, I understand,
(50:39):
but I'm just very curious.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah, and I love that idea and how far does
it go? Right? Again, this was another one of those
studies where our effects were very temporary, right, in part
because it was an experimental manipulation. We were deceiving them,
some of many of them about their genetics risk and
that was important to do for the science, right, we
(51:03):
wouldn't know otherwise. But you know, if you want to
do sort of a long term study of like, oh,
how does learning that you're you know, you're all the
aggregate of your genes lead you to have high IQ
and how might that affect you over decades? Right, that
would be really interesting, But we got to be careful
in how how we you know, glean that information as
(51:27):
you know, you know, these messages matter.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
That's why I would want to do the studies. Is
the way my mind was thinking about it is that
can help show I mean, in a way, this is a
modern day version of the Pygmalion effect. You know, this
is like a modern day fancy genetics update on that.
You know, is is it a self fulfilling prophecy our
(51:51):
genetic is our genetic expression the way we think a
self fulfilling prophecy on our genetic expression. But you know
it's to me, it's still on the similar wi, you
know totally.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
I had that same thought as you were sharing your ideas,
and I think, you know, some of the reviewers on
our paper had a similar question, which is like, you know,
how important is it that this is genetic information? Like
if you know, what if it was just like family
history or you know, in the Pygmalion study it was
the Harvard Aptitude test, like you know, at that time
(52:25):
that was really important information that you believed. And in
the day of age we're living in, or at least
you know, we were. I think we're changing slowly, but
genes are like every you know, there's something that's like, oh,
that's just hardwired. Right. If your genes, you know, predispose
you to something that's meaningful, that's real. But at the
(52:49):
end of the day, that's just information, just like some
test or you know, your family history or otherwise.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
That's exactly right. Is that great? I want to end
this interview by discussing a very fruitful collaboration you've you've
got going with Jared Clifton at University of Pennsylvania. You
guys are quite the duo, him looking at beliefs about
the world at large and you obviously having a very
(53:20):
illustrious career looking at beliefs and how it can affect physiology.
So what does that mind meld look like? I saw
that you recently published a paper in the American Psychologists.
Is that right? Greece this year?
Speaker 1 (53:34):
That's right?
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, I mean that's like a dream for psychologists to
publish in the American Psychologists. So congratulate. It's probably not
he's probably not.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Your first international psychologist, but.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
That's a good point. That was very American centric of
me to say that. Thank you for putting that out.
But have you have you been in the American Psychologists before?
And tell me about this paper a little bit.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, No, that was the first time. Yeah, and thank
you for that. I do you know, I remember reading
you know, you know the American Psychologists. It has like
the picture of the psychologists. I remember reading articles from
some of my heroes and that. But yeah, I'm really
excited about the partnership that I've started with Jared Clifton.
I know you know him from Penn bok Hair similar
(54:20):
Pen Roots. Jare is doing really critical work, I think,
looking at the beliefs that we hold, the mindsets we
hold about the nature of the world as one big place.
And you know, as just as I've extended Carol Dweck's
work from looking at your core beliefs about intelligence to
(54:42):
looking at our core beliefs about other domains like stress
or cancer, or exercise or diet or our genes. Right,
what Jar's doing is looking at what are our core
beliefs about the world? Right, Like do you believe the
world is dangerous or safe? Do you believe the world
(55:05):
is abundant or scarce? Do you believe the world needs you?
Scott Barry Kaufman or could it just live without you? Right?
These are again neither true or false, Right, or wrong.
There's lots of evidence to support either side of these spectrums.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Spectrum, but there's a lot of evidence that.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
The world needs you, Scott.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
You say there's evidence for the world.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Right, Well, the world. I believe the world needs you.
I believe the world needs me, right.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
I believe that's actually objectively true. Though that's where I'm
disagreeing with you, my men.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
A mindset knows that it's not objectively true, but it
is a mindset that serves me and keeps me motivated
to do what I can to actually have that be true.
But anyways, we did we got off on tangent there.
But you know, so Jare's work is was really methodologically
advanced because instead of just like coming up with, you know,
(56:10):
the beliefs that he thought mattered about the world, he'd
decided to take a systematic approach to uncovering what are
all the possible beliefs that people could hold about the
nature of the world. He looked at you know, many
thousand tweets, He looked at all the great religious text
philosophical texts, you know, surveys in different countries and so forth.
(56:32):
And you know, I think my contribution to that work
has been to kind of help define the type of
belief we're talking about here. So these aren't you know,
nuanced kind of you know, takes on the world that
could could be falsified, like the world is flat or
(56:57):
you know, the world was made by God. Right, These
are simple adjectival and evaluative beliefs about the nature of
the world, and they tend to have these modifiers like
it's fixed or malleable, it's enhancing or debilitating, it's abundant
or scarce, these adjectives that characterize the essence of what
(57:20):
the world is. And in that paper what was fun
to write about with Jair is, you know, when it
comes to the world, our beliefs are omnipresent, right, Why
because we never leave the world, at least you and
I haven't yet left the world. And so personality psychologists
(57:45):
and social psychologists used to get in these epic debates
about like is it the person like is it their
personality that's shaping their behavior or is it the situation? Right,
And obviously like the situation matters. You know, your level
of introversion and quietness is going to differ if you're
in a movie theater or a party. But on the whole.
You know, whether you're more extroverted, it's going to shape
(58:07):
how talkative you are. But what jar and I talk
about in this paper is that personality as defined as
this is who you are on average across many different situations,
is not. It's here too, also about a belief about
a situation, right, it's in this case, it's a belief
(58:30):
about the situation of the world, this place that you
never leave. So that's a little philosophical, but we're doing
lots of fun work kind of trying to codify what
are these beliefs, how do they matter, Like, what are
the mechanisms and what's the role that they play in
shaping not just you know, our health and performance, which
(58:50):
has been my focus, but who we are, how we
show up in the world.
Speaker 2 (58:56):
Such deep, deep, profound and important work. Ali and I
started off saying, I'm so proud of seeing your your journey.
I just want to conclude by reiterating that, and I
really view you as, you know, one of the brightest
lights in our field, in this generation, at this time
in human history. And I'm honored to be in the world,
(59:18):
in the world with you.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
Thanks so much, Scott, and I really you know, when
I look back at my days in grad school, which
were stressful and uncertain, and you know, in many ways,
research was research. I started the stress research during that time.
I you know, having people like you in my life
(59:45):
made it possible, made it doable, made it fun, and
most importantly, people like you reminded me of why we're
doing this right, We're not doing it for ourselves. We
are doing it for the world. So thank you for
the work that you do and all the sincerity and
the you know, really just the kind of joy that
(01:00:07):
you bring to it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Thank you. Thanks for letting having me remind myself about
all that as well is really important as well. So boy,
thank you so much and yeah, talk soon to be continued.
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