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may change. Robinhood is not a bank. Hey,

0:41

everyone. It's Adam Grant. Welcome

0:45

back to Rethinking, my podcast on the science

0:47

of what makes us tick. I'm

0:50

an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you

0:52

inside the minds of fascinating people to

0:54

explore new thoughts and new ways of

0:56

thinking. My

1:01

guest today is the legendary social

1:03

psychologist, Elliot Aronson. He's

1:06

a pioneer of the study of

1:08

cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable tension we

1:10

feel when our attitudes and actions

1:12

conflict. He co-authored a

1:14

book on dissonance that I think should be

1:16

required reading for all humans, Mistakes

1:18

Were Made, But Not By Me. He

1:21

also wrote The Social Animal, an

1:23

award-winning textbook beloved by generations of

1:25

psychology students, now in its 12th

1:28

edition. Elliot is the only

1:30

person ever to win the triple crown of

1:32

awards from the American Psychological Association

1:34

for research, teaching, and writing. And

1:37

he won the William James Award for lifetime achievement.

1:40

He's 91, and I'd love to be as

1:43

sharp any day as he is today. There's

1:48

so much I'm excited to talk about today. Elliot,

1:51

you're a legendary teacher. I know that

1:53

generations of students have admired your wisdom

1:55

and also your kindness. doing

2:00

is inviting or

2:02

maybe challenging your TAs to give a guest

2:05

lecture. Why? I

2:07

love teaching the introductory

2:09

social psychology course.

2:12

And it's always been a huge course.

2:14

Like at the University of Texas, we

2:17

would have about 600 students in there.

2:19

And even at the University of California

2:21

Santa Cruz, we would get 300, 350

2:23

students. And I always thought

2:27

it would be a nice

2:30

introduction for my TAs.

2:33

They were leading sections.

2:36

And I thought if they could get a

2:38

chance to address

2:40

a huge audience, it would

2:43

sort of defang the entire

2:45

process. The undergraduates are

2:47

very empathic of the graduate students,

2:49

who may be a little bit

2:51

nervous at the beginning. And that

2:54

shows and the students are with

2:56

them. It's

2:58

a very nice experience. Well,

3:00

it's something I started doing after seeing

3:03

that you had role modeled it. And

3:05

our PhD students just raved about it

3:07

as a very meaningful challenge and also

3:09

a chance for them to connect with

3:11

the students on a different level. Now,

3:15

I was reading a little bit about some of

3:17

the students who had gone through this experience with

3:19

you. And I came across a

3:21

hilarious story from a former TA

3:23

Larry White. Yeah, it

3:26

was a rainy day.

3:28

And there I am in the

3:30

auditorium waiting for Larry and he shows up

3:32

and he shows me his backside where he

3:35

slipped in the mud and

3:37

landed right on his ass. And

3:40

he's covered with mud. And he said,

3:42

I don't know

3:44

what to do. If the students

3:46

ever saw my backside, they would

3:49

be laughing at me. And

3:51

I said, no, no, no. What you have to

3:53

do is show them your

3:55

backside and tell them exactly

3:58

what happened. to

4:00

them that you were nervous about the lecture.

4:04

And that's one of the

4:06

reasons why you were distracted and you

4:08

slipped and fell. And then you turn

4:10

around and show them your backside, and

4:13

they will love you for it. And

4:16

he did that, and it worked exactly

4:18

that way. The students gave him a

4:21

standing ovation, and I think it was

4:23

partly because of that

4:25

pratfall. There's a great coda

4:28

to the story, which is, he

4:30

said a student came up to thank him

4:32

afterward, and that's how he met

4:34

his wife, Hester. I

4:37

did know that, and I have forgotten, but it is a

4:41

wonderful coda, and I happen

4:43

to know that it's a marriage that has

4:46

lasted for quite a while.

4:48

Yeah, I think about you, Elliot, every time I make

4:50

a mistake. I think your

4:52

brilliant paper on the pratfall effect really changed the

4:54

way that I think about mistakes. And I guess

4:57

a personal example was, I remember

5:01

right when I was getting ready to interview

5:03

for a job at Wharton, I was

5:05

invited to speak at a conference here about

5:07

a month beforehand. And I arrived

5:09

in Philadelphia and realized I had

5:12

forgotten to pack pants. All

5:15

I had was pajama pants and sweatpants.

5:18

And I think it was 10pm, and my talk

5:20

was at 8am the next morning. And there was

5:22

nothing I could do, except

5:24

I had a cousin who was in school here. He

5:27

was bigger than me, but I borrowed his pants. And

5:29

then I walked in to give the talk, and I

5:31

opened, thinking of you, with the story

5:33

of how I forgot my pants, and I really

5:35

wanted to apologize for how ridiculous I looked. I

5:38

felt like a clown. And

5:40

it was the warmest audience reception I had

5:42

ever gotten at an academic conference. So

5:45

unpack this for me. What did your research

5:47

show about why this is effective? Well,

5:50

what we think it showed

5:53

is that if a person

5:55

seems really terrific to begin

5:57

with, he may be a little little

6:00

intimidating. He may make the

6:03

people who are evaluating him

6:05

feel not so

6:08

good by comparison, but

6:10

when he makes a pratfall, when

6:13

he falls down or forgets his

6:15

pants or something like that, it

6:18

makes people feel closer to him.

6:20

Now the important thing

6:22

to notice is that a mediocre

6:25

person who has a pratfall

6:27

simply seems that much more

6:30

mediocre for having the

6:33

pratfall. One of the things that I

6:35

took away from this research was that

6:38

although we're often encouraged to

6:40

humanize ourselves and to show vulnerability,

6:43

we shouldn't forget to establish

6:45

our competence. And it's a

6:47

lot easier to get away with showing vulnerability if

6:50

you're successful or if you have high status

6:52

or if you have a track record of achievement.

6:55

It also reminds me of a recent paper led

6:57

by Alison Wood Brooks where

6:59

a whole series of experiments showed that if

7:02

you're successful, revealing your failures on the

7:04

path to success and even some of

7:06

your current failures reduces

7:08

malicious envy. So people are

7:10

more likely to admire you as opposed

7:13

to maybe being out to get you. I

7:15

think that's probably true,

7:17

yeah. I'm curious about how

7:19

you think about the pratfall effect today

7:21

in a world that seems

7:24

to place conflicting pressures on people. On the

7:26

one hand, we're supposed to be perfect and

7:28

flawless. On the other hand, I think

7:31

a lot of people prized authenticity and

7:33

vulnerability. Do you have

7:35

other thoughts on the differences between a good pratfall

7:38

and a bad pratfall? My main

7:40

feeling is one should never

7:42

fake a pratfall. You know,

7:44

if you forgot your pants

7:46

on purpose and

7:49

for some reason the

7:51

audience had a

7:53

clue that that might have happened, I

7:55

think that would be a disaster. You

7:58

don't want to fake it. are we

8:01

all have our vulnerabilities and it's

8:03

good to reveal them in

8:06

the normal course of events

8:08

without the motivation to

8:10

appear human. I know so

8:12

many people who take pride in being rational,

8:15

but what you taught me is

8:17

we're actually much better at rationalizing. Yeah.

8:21

I'd love to hear how did you realize that?

8:23

When did you first come to that discovery? I

8:25

think we are rational beings. We

8:28

are capable of rational behavior,

8:30

but much more

8:32

powerful is our desire to

8:34

rationalize, our need to rationalize.

8:39

Dissonance reduction is

8:41

neutral. It's a tool and

8:44

it has some uses. It helps us

8:46

sleep at night. You

8:48

make an important decision, like a financial decision,

8:50

like what kind of car to buy or

8:53

what kind of house to buy or anything

8:55

like that. And it's a big decision, it's

8:57

an important decision. And

9:00

if it's not perfect, then you're, oh

9:02

gee, should I have bought the other

9:04

one? And

9:06

Dissonance Reduction plugs in. You

9:09

convince yourself it is the best house

9:11

or the best car or the best

9:13

whatever, the best woman that

9:16

you married. Once

9:18

you start reducing dissonance, you can sleep

9:20

at night and that makes you a

9:22

healthier person. That can also

9:24

be used for self-deception.

9:27

It can be used to justify

9:29

a war and to justify sending

9:32

more troops and more troops and

9:34

more troops as you surge

9:36

the war, which is going

9:38

to end up very badly anyway, and

9:41

people get killed. So

9:43

when a person makes a mistake, a

9:46

bad mistake, a cognitive blunder,

9:49

or causes pain to

9:51

an innocent bystander for no good

9:53

reason, I think

9:55

that we try to

9:57

justify that because The

10:01

most powerful distance occurs

10:04

when I do something that

10:06

goes against my own self-concept,

10:09

that belies my own self-concept.

10:11

And that's the irony of

10:13

it, that in order

10:16

to make myself feel better, I

10:18

then set that person up for

10:20

even greater harm because I've now

10:22

convinced myself that he deserved all

10:25

the nasty things I had done

10:27

to him in the past. That's

10:30

one of the dynamics I want to talk more about. I

10:32

remember in Mistakes Were Made, but not by

10:34

me, you wrote about

10:36

some chilling examples of self-justification

10:39

to reduce dissidents. I was

10:41

particularly struck by prosecutors who

10:43

refused to recognize DNA evidence

10:45

that exonerated people they had

10:48

put in prison. I mean, that's

10:50

unfathomable. Because the

10:53

exquisite irony is

10:56

that the prosecutor who

10:58

refuses to reopen the case,

11:01

he's not refusing to reopen

11:03

the case because he's a

11:05

terrible person. He's

11:07

refusing to reopen the case because

11:10

he thinks of himself as

11:13

a good person and a

11:15

competent person who would never,

11:17

ever send the wrong man

11:19

to prison. So if

11:21

he sent somebody to prison for

11:23

10 years and then DNA evidence

11:26

shows up that could

11:28

exonerate that person, he refuses to

11:30

look at it because he sees

11:32

himself as a good and competent

11:34

person who would never send the

11:37

wrong man to prison for 10

11:39

years. Every time I

11:41

hear stories like this, I want

11:43

to sit people down and say, listen, just

11:46

because you're a good person doesn't mean you're not capable

11:48

of doing a bad thing. the

12:00

underlying reasons why people do

12:03

things that would

12:05

seem bizarre without a good theory

12:07

that helps explain how that

12:09

works. You're reminding me of

12:12

when I was early in grad school, Phoebe

12:14

Ellsworth said her definition of social

12:16

psychology was all the forces that ruin your

12:18

life every day. That's very good. That's

12:22

very good. Or

12:25

enhance our lives every day. What

12:28

we've been talking about is something

12:30

that we could call a vicious

12:32

circle. And it can

12:34

work in the other direction also. You

12:37

do somebody a favor. One

12:40

of my students, David Landy, did this

12:42

as an experiment. Oh, this

12:44

is Jekyll and Landy. I love that paper. It's

12:47

a great paper. And it shows

12:49

that what's important

12:52

is the giving. If

12:55

you do a favor for someone and

12:57

you don't particularly like that person

12:59

or dislike that person, to

13:02

begin with, in effect you're asking

13:04

yourself, well, how come I did

13:06

this great favor for that person?

13:09

He must be a terrific guy. I

13:12

see some really nice things about him.

13:14

He really deserves the favor I gave

13:16

him. Really

13:18

deserves all the things I did

13:20

for him. And therefore, it

13:23

increases the probability that you'll do

13:26

nice things for him in the future. And that

13:28

is one of

13:30

the underlying dynamics of

13:32

the Jigsaw classroom, which

13:35

is a series of experiments I once

13:38

did several years ago. Which

13:40

I hope we're going to get to. The idea that

13:43

you don't have to like someone to do them

13:45

a favor, but after you've done a favor for

13:47

them, you're likely to convince yourself that they're worth

13:49

liking. It's such

13:52

a fun example of how sometimes

13:54

dissonance can actually lead to good

13:56

things, not just bad things. I

13:59

want to ask you more about that. were

16:00

giving to a person who was

16:02

complaining that he had a bad heart.

16:05

Quite a powerful demonstration. If

16:08

you had started the experiment at 400 volts, people

16:11

say, no way. Absolutely not.

16:13

Exactly. Exactly. Imagine

16:15

going up to someone and saying, I'd

16:18

like you to give that innocent person 400 volts

16:21

of electricity. You'd look at them as if

16:23

you were crazy, but two out of three

16:25

people, one step at

16:27

a time justifying each improvement,

16:30

each improvement, strange

16:34

use of the word improvement,

16:36

each increase in voltage

16:39

because it's not that different from the

16:42

previous one. And you

16:44

look at that and you can see that

16:46

that is a model for what

16:49

seems to us as bizarre behavior

16:53

and how it can come about. It's

16:57

a replication of the out group

16:59

can always be vilified and

17:02

we can always justify harming

17:04

them in really important ways, whether

17:07

the out group happens to be

17:09

Israelis or happens to be

17:11

Palestinians. It happens and

17:14

it's still happening. It

17:16

is part of human nature, but it's

17:19

human nature that can be

17:21

overcome by tuning into the

17:23

possibilities of the virtuous

17:26

circle, which could reverse some

17:28

of the thinking, some of the

17:31

rationalizing and justification that

17:34

goes into the vicious circle, which

17:36

produces all this negative

17:38

stereotyping and negative behavior.

17:41

And we're doing it in this country. Thinking

17:44

about the virtuous cycles, what

17:46

does the psychology of cognitive dissonance teach

17:49

us about how to

17:51

fight this kind of victim blaming and

17:53

dehumanization and are there insights

17:55

about how we can solve it? I

17:58

go back to... some of the

18:00

research I did when we developed the

18:03

notion of the jigsaw classroom. I

18:05

was living in Austin,

18:07

Texas at the time. I was teaching

18:09

at the University of Texas. When

18:12

the Texas schools were desegregated finally

18:14

in 1971, most of us thought,

18:16

gee, that

18:20

will lead to great outcomes, a reduction

18:22

in presence, because if

18:25

people are segregated in schools

18:27

and residentially black kids, white

18:29

kids, Mexican-American kids, don't get

18:31

to see much of each

18:33

other, and therefore they can

18:36

build up the stereotypes. But

18:39

if you bring them together, it should

18:41

result in good things. But we

18:44

should have known better, because

18:47

it depends on how you bring them

18:49

together. And when

18:51

the Austin schools were desegregated, the

18:53

kids from minority

18:56

residential areas were simply bused

18:58

into the schools

19:02

of the white middle class, and

19:05

their prior preparation was

19:09

not very good. And

19:11

the classroom is a highly competitive situation,

19:15

where the minority kids

19:17

were guaranteed to lose. They

19:20

didn't know the answer when the teacher would stand

19:22

in front of the room and ask a question.

19:25

They tended not to participate after

19:28

a while, which

19:30

tended to exacerbate whatever existing

19:33

stereotypes were there. And

19:36

we were called in by the school

19:38

superintendent. I was asked if

19:41

I had any ideas as to how we

19:44

could change things, because there were fistfights breaking

19:47

out. There was a lot of aggression. Far

19:50

from being a good thing, it looked

19:53

like desegregating the schools only

19:55

brought people together who were going to fight with

19:57

each other. And what we did...

20:01

On the spot, my graduate students

20:03

and I invented a situation

20:05

which forced kids to

20:08

cooperate with each other. And

20:10

we called it the Jigsaw classroom because

20:13

the way it was set up, we would have

20:15

small groups

20:17

of five or six people, different

20:21

races and genders, as

20:24

diverse as we could possibly make each

20:26

group. And they

20:28

each had one piece of a

20:30

puzzle, like if it

20:33

was the biography of Eleanor

20:35

Roosevelt, they each had a

20:38

separate section of her life from childhood

20:40

all the way to old age. And

20:43

the only access you would

20:45

have to the entire thing

20:48

would be to listen to

20:51

each kid report on

20:53

his section. To

20:55

make a long story very short, it forced

20:58

kids to listen to each other.

21:00

It forced kids to pay attention

21:03

to each other. And

21:05

within six weeks, that group was

21:07

functioning like a really good

21:09

basketball team, where it didn't matter who

21:11

put the ball in the hoop, you

21:13

pass the ball around until you find

21:16

the open man. The

21:18

results were spectacular on

21:20

the initial experiments. And every time we've

21:22

tried to replicate it, it's come out

21:24

in a very much the same way.

21:27

Presidents went down, liking for

21:30

school went up, absenteeism

21:32

decreased and general

21:34

empathy increased because

21:37

the individual kids, their

21:40

individual differences became important.

21:42

I've always thought that part of what's clever about

21:44

your Jigsaw classroom design is that there's

21:47

not just a common goal, you actually have to

21:49

rely on each other and help each other to

21:51

achieve it. I like that too.

21:53

In a Jigsaw group, each kid had

21:56

one assignment like Eleanor

21:58

Roosevelt's early years. We

22:00

took time and everybody

22:03

with Eleanor Roosevelt's early

22:05

years met together

22:08

outside of their Jigsaw group but

22:10

in what was called an expert

22:12

group, and they went over the

22:14

material together. They shared it with

22:17

each other. They talked about ways

22:19

they would have of presenting it

22:21

so that kids who might have been, had

22:24

a little more difficulty with the

22:27

presentation, were learning from

22:30

the other people who had the

22:32

same paragraph to report, and

22:34

therefore when they went back into their

22:36

Jigsaw group, they were

22:38

armed that would make it less likely

22:40

that they would drop that fly ball.

22:43

I was thinking about the Jigsaw classroom recently

22:46

when I was reading a paper by Shannon

22:48

White, Juliana Schroeder, and Jane Risen where

22:51

they studied Israeli and Palestinian

22:53

teenagers at Seeds of Peace

22:55

camp, which I'm

22:57

sure you've been familiar with for a long time, and

22:59

I was stunned to read that

23:02

just sharing a dialogue group, having

23:05

that common activity, made participants 15

23:08

times more likely to develop a

23:10

close friendship. And it seems

23:12

like you anticipated that finding. It

23:14

was always the hope. I

23:16

wouldn't even call it the anticipation.

23:18

It was the hope, and it

23:20

does work that way, especially

23:23

with kids. The younger the kids, the

23:25

easier it is to

23:27

achieve that before the prejudices

23:30

have hardened. Right. I was

23:33

riveted by your finding that the people we

23:35

like most are not necessarily the people we

23:37

liked all along, but the people

23:39

we started out disliking and then grew to

23:41

like. Is that part of what's

23:43

going on in the Jigsaw case? The

23:46

mind is an interesting thing, and

23:48

there are various theoretical ways to

23:50

get at what's happening, but

23:53

there's a consistency to all

23:57

of that stuff that these things

23:59

are all. than

30:00

the average person, and that we

30:02

have more integrity than the average

30:05

person. Now you're confronting some people

30:08

with the fact that behaving hypocritically

30:11

and they want to get

30:13

back to behaving

30:15

with integrity. And

30:18

how do you get back to behaving

30:20

with integrity? You start using condoms. And

30:22

that's what we found. That we

30:25

found a sharp increase in the use of

30:27

condoms. And six months later,

30:30

when a pool was conducted

30:33

by us, but it seemed to

30:35

be coming from someone else, six

30:37

months later, the people in

30:40

the hypocrisy condition were

30:42

still using condoms. That

30:45

was self-persuasion rather than

30:47

the persuasion that was being used

30:50

by the public health center at

30:52

my university, for example, giving

30:55

lectures, showing videos about using

30:57

condoms, giving out pamphlets, all

31:00

of that stuff, increased

31:02

the use of condoms by about 2%, from 17%

31:04

to 19%,

31:08

whereas we were getting more than 60%

31:12

using condoms six months later.

31:15

That was powerful data. I took two

31:18

things away from that research. The first

31:20

lesson was that if you

31:22

want to convince somebody, you should get them

31:24

involved in making the argument that you want

31:26

them to believe, not just telling

31:28

them the argument you want them to believe. And

31:32

then the second was that we should be

31:35

careful about the arguments we make,

31:37

because when you're persuading someone else, the

31:39

person you're most likely to convince is

31:41

yourself. That's absolutely right. Are

31:48

you up for a lightning round with some short questions?

31:51

I'm up for it. What is the worst

31:53

piece of advice you've ever gotten? The

31:56

worst piece of advice I've ever gotten was

31:58

going go to college,

32:01

go to work. Wow, I'm glad you

32:03

ignored that one. Support your mother. Yeah,

32:05

it was right after my father died. I was

32:08

a junior in high school. My brother

32:10

was already in college, so my aunts

32:13

and uncles were saying, well,

32:15

Elliot, when he graduates from

32:18

high school, can go

32:20

work for the Ford Motor Company

32:22

on the assembly line. And

32:24

the pay is really good. You can

32:27

support his mother that way, etc. And

32:29

I looked at it and I thought, hey, that was a pretty

32:32

good idea. I'd be making a

32:34

couple of hundred dollars a week. And

32:36

my brother said, screw that.

32:39

Elliot's going to college and we

32:42

can handle it. And that was

32:44

the end of it. My brother, he really

32:46

did save me from a life working for

32:48

the Ford Motor Company. Is

32:50

there a favorite psychology book that you'd

32:52

like to recommend? Either of

32:54

the Nisbet Ross books. I like them a

32:56

lot. What is something you've

32:59

rethought lately? I

33:02

have to admit, I haven't rethought

33:04

very much lately. I guess

33:07

when you get to be an old guy, you're

33:09

busy collecting the thoughts you do

33:11

have rather than changing much.

33:14

I don't think I've thought very much.

33:17

Elliot, is there a question you have for

33:19

me? How does it feel to

33:21

be a psychologist

33:24

in a business school rather than

33:26

in a liberal arts department? What

33:29

are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?

33:32

Oh, I don't think anyone's asked

33:34

me that before. When I got to

33:36

Michigan for my doctorate

33:38

in psychology, I wanted to be an

33:40

organizational psychologist. And I felt like the

33:42

more basic scholars were sort

33:44

of looking down their nose at me. Like,

33:46

why aren't you doing neuroscience or physiology work?

33:49

Why do you care about people's jobs and

33:51

doing applied research? And

33:54

coming to a business school has obviously changed that. I

33:56

think there's an expectation that we're going to do practical

33:59

work. That was one of the

34:01

big points of inspiration that I took from your work was

34:04

seeing how you went into the real world and said,

34:06

I want to see if I can improve people's lives

34:08

using the tools of psychology. Interesting.

34:11

Yeah. If you were to make

34:13

your Mount Rushmore of psychology, who would be on

34:15

it? There'd be Kurt Lewin

34:18

and Leon Festinger,

34:20

for sure. I

34:22

would put in B.F. Skinner and

34:27

just for diversity, maybe

34:29

Carl Rogers. Paul

34:33

Mill. What's

34:35

the idea from psychology that has most been

34:38

useful in your life outside of dissonance?

34:42

What Gordon Alport wrote in

34:45

Nature of Prejudice about what

34:47

needs to happen in

34:50

order for prejudice to be reduced?

34:53

He actually listed all of the

34:55

things that went

34:57

into the Jigsaw classroom. It

35:00

wasn't just bringing kids together

35:02

in the same school. It

35:05

was sanctioned by

35:07

authority, working together

35:09

to achieve a common goal. All

35:14

of that stuff, I think,

35:16

was really an important

35:18

position that he took way back in 1954.

35:23

People ignored it because desegregation

35:26

really didn't work the way it

35:28

was supposed to. I

35:30

guess one thing I'm curious about is how do

35:32

you deal with cognitive dissonance personally?

35:35

Me, if I'm making an

35:37

important decision, especially one that

35:40

involves other people and

35:42

could cause pain to other people, I

35:45

really have to ask myself, is

35:47

this something I really believe in

35:49

or am I simply acting in

35:51

a way that justifies a previous

35:54

decision and helps me

35:56

feel better about myself? I

35:59

think knowing about dissonance and knowing

36:01

how susceptible I am to

36:04

reducing dissonance and

36:06

then finding out later that I was

36:09

doing that. In

36:11

some cases, it's harmless, but

36:13

in some cases, it could be

36:16

very hurtful to

36:19

others. In the cases where

36:21

other people's happiness is involved,

36:23

like when I was actively

36:26

teaching, I

36:28

would make a decision, do I want to work

36:31

with this person or not? And

36:33

if somebody who started to work with me, and

36:35

they really weren't panning out, and I had

36:39

to be sure that my

36:41

decisions were based

36:43

on specific instances that I

36:46

could document if I had

36:48

to, rather than I just

36:50

didn't like the guy very much or something

36:52

like that. I would do

36:54

a lot of questioning in

36:57

advance of a decision, sort of

36:59

trying out the decision one way and the

37:01

other way and seeing how that made me

37:03

feel, what are

37:06

all the possible dissonance

37:08

reductions, self-justification aspects that

37:11

I really need to

37:13

take into account. I would do

37:15

a lot of that. When we

37:17

first moved to Minneapolis, and

37:19

we bought a house, the first house we

37:22

ever bought, we

37:24

didn't have any money. And so

37:26

there were only two houses that we

37:29

liked and that we could afford,

37:31

and they couldn't have been

37:33

more different. One was close to

37:35

the university. It was

37:37

my dream to live walking distance from

37:39

campus so that my graduate students could

37:41

come over at four o'clock in the

37:44

afternoon. We could drink some

37:46

scotch or coffee and

37:48

talk research. But it

37:51

didn't have much of a yard. The other one

37:53

was out in the suburbs, but

37:55

it had a big backyard and it was

37:57

pleasant and okay, and it was near a

37:59

lake. we

38:02

ended up buying the house

38:04

in the suburbs and I had a

38:06

lot of dissonance about that because if

38:08

I was living alone I would have bought the

38:11

one close to school but given

38:13

the fact that we had four kids it

38:15

was the best decision to

38:18

make but I still

38:20

had a lot of dissonance about it. This

38:22

was in early December I

38:25

was in my office and I

38:27

saw an ad in the newspaper about

38:30

an old town canoe used for sale

38:34

that somebody was selling and

38:37

I bought the canoe I put it on

38:39

top of my car on the luggage rack,

38:42

drove home in December and Vera

38:45

my wife was looking out the window

38:47

of the kitchen

38:50

as I drove into the driveway with the

38:52

canoe on top of the car and she

38:54

burst out laughing. One

38:56

might say that the canoe sat in

38:58

our garage doing nothing but taking up

39:00

space for six

39:02

months until I could use it but

39:05

I would say it did a lot more than take

39:07

up space. It helped me feel

39:10

better and therefore sleep better

39:12

at night about having chosen

39:15

the house in the suburbs because

39:17

we had this canoe. That's a

39:19

great story. It's a simple thing

39:23

and yet it's really important and

39:25

we do that all the time and we can ignore it.

39:29

It doesn't matter but

39:31

there's so many dissonance reduction things

39:34

that do matter and those are the

39:36

things we really have to scrutinize and

39:39

the more you know about dissonance

39:41

the less confident I am that

39:44

my decisions are made for exactly

39:46

the right reasons. That

39:48

seems like the kind of intellectual humility we can

39:50

all use more of. Okay finally

39:53

on the personal front I love this note

39:55

from your son Joshua. I'm just going to

39:57

read it to you and let you react.

40:00

He said that you and your

40:03

wife Vera have been really happy together for over

40:05

70 years. He says,

40:08

really, they are still completely in love. When

40:10

COVID hit and they had to be quarantined together, just

40:12

the two of them, it was as if they were

40:14

given the second honeymoon at the age of 90. So

40:17

what advice do you have in this day and age

40:20

about choosing a life partner, building a

40:22

life together and making love last? I

40:25

don't give advice. If I

40:27

were giving advice, I would say, you want

40:30

to have a happy marriage but last? Marry

40:33

Vera. Vera

40:36

is magnificent. And it was the

40:38

happiest day of my life when

40:40

I met her and we became

40:42

friends. And Maslow hired

40:45

the two of us. We were

40:47

his two favorite students, mostly Vera,

40:49

a little bit me. And

40:52

we worked together and we

40:54

fell in love. And it was just beautiful.

40:57

She's smart. She has

41:00

serenity. I've

41:02

never met anyone like her. The

41:05

interesting thing to me is that when

41:07

I was 20 years old, I was convinced that

41:09

I would never get married. And

41:12

whenever I was dating

41:14

a woman and we started to get a

41:16

little bit serious with each other, I would

41:19

make that announcement. I hope you realize that

41:21

I'm never going to get married. Because

41:25

my parents were very unhappily married.

41:27

I always thought of marriage as

41:29

an unnatural state of affairs,

41:31

to be spending your whole life with

41:33

one other person and trying

41:36

to keep out of each other's way and making

41:40

mistakes and getting on each

41:42

other's nerves and embarrassing each

41:44

other. I mean, it

41:46

didn't seem right to me. And then when

41:49

I was 21, I met Vera. And

41:52

when I was 22, we got married. If

41:54

I were giving advice, I would say,

41:57

learn how to communicate, learn

41:59

about information. interpersonal communication. Learn

42:03

not to judge or

42:05

criticize when there

42:07

are disagreements, and there will always

42:09

be disagreements. You know, a

42:12

lot of people will think that a

42:14

good marriage is one where you never

42:16

argue or never disagree. Of course you're

42:18

going to argue and disagree. How can

42:20

two people live together without disagreeing about

42:22

things? But the idea

42:25

is to do it civilly and

42:27

with care. And it's how you

42:29

argue and how you discuss things

42:32

that's really important. How you

42:34

disagree. She's

42:37

my best friend. She's always been my best friend.

42:39

Josh was wrong, by the way. It's only been

42:41

69 years, not 70. I've been very lucky.

42:46

Lucky with the

42:48

choice. Lucky that she

42:50

loved me as much as I

42:53

love her, which astonishes me. And

42:56

lucky that we're both

42:58

relatively healthy

43:02

in our 90s, so

43:04

that it's lasted a long time

43:06

and will continue, I hope. So

43:09

that's beautifully put. And it

43:12

sounds like she forced you to overcome some

43:14

dissonance in order to get married. She

43:17

didn't do anything, you know. When

43:19

I made that pronouncement to her, she

43:21

just saw the smile. She

43:25

knew it wouldn't last, I think. Well,

43:28

Elliot, I can't thank you enough for taking

43:31

the time to share your wisdom today. I've

43:33

long looked up to the way you do

43:35

your work as a psychologist,

43:38

a teacher, a mentor. But

43:41

I think I have even greater admiration for

43:43

how you live your life. Well, thank you.

43:46

It was a pleasure talking to you. I really

43:48

enjoyed it. I assure you the pleasure

43:50

was all mine, and I can't wait to share

43:52

it with our listeners. I

43:55

can't wait to hear what I

43:57

had to say. I

44:05

think the major lesson of Elliot's work

44:07

is that the world needs more rationality

44:09

and less rationalizing. Rationalizing

44:12

is searching for justifications after you've reached

44:14

an opinion or decision. Rationality

44:17

is seeking the best logic and data

44:19

before you commit and staying open to

44:22

changing your mind. Rethinking

44:30

is hosted by me, Adam Grant,

44:32

and produced by Tien with Cosmic

44:34

Standard. Our team includes Colin Helm,

44:36

Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Asia Simpson,

44:38

Samaya Adams, Michelle Quinn, Fan Bantang,

44:40

Hannah Kingsley Ma, Julia Dickerson, and

44:42

Whitney Pennington Rogers. This episode

44:44

was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard.

44:46

Our fact checker is Paul Durbin, original

44:48

music by Hans-Eil Su and Alison Leighton-Brown.

44:56

I remember reading it not by chance alone that

44:58

Sesinger had quite a line about Maslow.

45:00

We were in a bar having a

45:02

drink and he said, by the

45:05

way Elliot, how did you ever get interested

45:07

in psychology? And I said,

45:09

well, you know, I happened to wander

45:11

into this class being taught by this

45:14

guy, Abraham Maslow. Maslow

45:16

was the guy who

45:18

got you interested in

45:21

psychology. That guy's ideas

45:23

are so bad they're not even wrong.

45:25

But of course what he meant was

45:27

you couldn't test them and he

45:29

was absolutely right. Did Maslow have

45:31

an equally devastating comment on Fesinger?

45:34

Well, it was devastating. It

45:36

wasn't quite as clever. He said,

45:38

well, who are you working with

45:40

out there at Stanford? And

45:42

I thought, oh, this guy, Leon Fesinger,

45:45

he said, Fesinger, that

45:47

bastard, how can you stand

45:49

him? Do you ever

45:52

feel like your laptop just keeps

45:54

going but you are completely drained?

45:56

I think a lot of us

45:58

don't realize how much pain. pain

46:00

we live in because of our interactions

46:02

with computing. NPR's Body

46:04

Electric, a special interactive series

46:07

investigating how to fix the

46:09

relationship between our tech and

46:11

our health. Listen in

46:13

the TED Radio Hour feed wherever you get

46:15

your podcasts.