Transcripts For CSPAN3 Geoffrey Cohen Belonging 20230219

settings and strategies create more inclusive spaces for people from all walks of life. he believes that the development of psychologic theory is facilitated not by descriptive and observational research, but by theory driven interventions. professor cohen is professor of psychology and the james g. mar professor of organizational studies in education and business at stanford, joining him will be beverly daniel tatum, the interim president at mount holyoke college. she's a clinical psychologist, widely known for both her expertise on race relations and as a thought leader in higher education for 13 years as the president of spelman college from 2002 to 2015 or marked by innovation, growth and her visionary leadership was recognized in 2013 with the carnegie academic leadership award. dr. tatum is the author, the bestselling books. why are all black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? other conversations about race now in the 2017 20th anniversary edition? and can we talk about race and other conversations in an era of school resegregation? published in 2007, she is a sought after speaker on the topics of racial identity development, race and education strategies for creating inclusive campus environments and higher education. leadership let's now welcome professor and dr. tatum. here in conversation with our guest author dr. geoffrey cohen, someone whose work i really admire and, whose book is just fabulous. so it's just that you can buy one and get one free. so welcome to you, jack. thank you so much, beverly i am thrilled and delighted be here with the audience and in this venue and, especially with you. i have a long your work and and we go way back way. so i'm delighted to be here and conversation with you and am very excited to. first of all, as i said, it's a fabulous and i have lots of questions, but every book has a back and i would love to ask you, what is the backstory, your book, why this book right now? what brought you to it? well, my colleagues and i have been doing research for a long time. i would say two or three decades that is grounded in social psychology. and we've been away at this work, which now turns out to have so much relevance to where we are now, what people book judge calls a crisis of belonging our society and perhaps across the world where we are fragmented like almost before. and i think our work has a lot to say about how to bridge divides and make things a little bit better, at least in our own corners of of social life. and so that was the impetus. well, does seem like it's a very book, given the polarization in our society. know we're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a little while. but i of course, been familiar with your work through my lens as an educator, higher and in particular very interested in belonging as it connects to the experience is of students who often feel what you call belonging, uncertainty whether that's because their gen students or maybe students of color for whatever reason, feeling marginalized and uncertain about whether they belong. and we know through your research and others important belonging is for persistence and success in education in particular, and in the rest of our lives, perhaps as well. one of the things that i recall that you talk about in the book and i read about in some of your articles is what you call the three ts interventions which are tailored target and timely and what i have really appreciated about these intervention is how they seem so practical for institutions like the colleges that i've been associated with to put into practice. if we understood them if we knew them. so could you talk a little bit about those three ts? i know there a lot of educators listening. yeah, well, the three ts refers to targeted, tailored, timed and just this idea that i think we're all familiar with in our daily lives that when you get the when the right gets the right support at the right time, it can be transformative. so my colleagues, especially greg walton, david jager claude steele, many others have developed a suite interventions, what we call the interventions. i don't quite like that term, a suite of practices that helps students especially from marginalized backgrounds, to feel more like they belong, especially during these treacherous transitions into college or into graduate for into high school. i mean, we all have what greg and i have called belonging, uncertainty at certain points in our life but the volume on that uncertainty can be turned way up if one is coming in from a member of a historically underrepresented haunted or excluded group. so we've done is to develop over the years as a series of practices one being for instance just presenting incoming students with stories of more senior students who explain how feeling like you belong in college is normal and likely to be short lived. we give people like testimonials from people who are three or four years ahead of them, which serves to just convey that, you know, if you're not sure if you belong. give it a little time. hang in there a little bit longer. it's not likely to be unique to or to people in your racial group. i'm simplifying a lot, but what we have found is that that simple message can have ripple years and years later, having the achievement gap. and in one college setting that we've worked with increasing the gpa and reducing rates, disciplinary problems in high school. so what we've been trying figure out is what how can such a brief experience just this was a one hour experience have, such large effects. and i, i really think it boils down to when people are having a question on their mind, do i belong it's very helpful to have it answered in the affirmative. so that's the right message the right person. these are freshmen wonder if they belong. they're not sure you're stepping into that door of a party and you're like, am i, a stranger in a strange world or not that moment of stepping into the door. that is an embryonic moment where. a little support can go a long way. so that's that's that's timing and tailoring, it's about belonging. it's not about whether you can do it or whether you can succeed. it's about do you potentially have the ability to belong here, be part of a community. and when the things we do with one another resonate with those three. t's a we would otherwise be a nonevent. can actually become a turning point. and so that's where origin of the three ts comes from. well it's a great, a great way to describe and make it clear to, you know, a non psychologist, the layperson, how they might begin to think about creating that atmosphere or that notion of belonging for students or i'm even thinking in the work place, one of the things about your book is that talk about a variety of different settings where these practices could be put into place or to good effect. you use a term that love and i have repeated it a lot and that's situation crafting, you know crafting the situation and focusing on the situation of course brings us to a core concept in social psychology and maybe a core and that is what we know as fundamental attribution error that seems to be core concept in this book. and i wonder if you could explain it to those might not remember their interest. it is a great question. the answer has has two parts. the first part is the demonstration in, social psychology and in the social sciences of the power of the social situation. and so of course, course we're shaped by our personality of course ability matters. these internal to us. and of course systems and structures and history and culture matter immensely. of course. in addition, though, the situation we're in here right now matters a lot too. and the big discovery i would say over the past 60 years in social psychology is that the situation right here, right now, the social situation, who were with what's going on the physical setting that has so much over our behavior. and the really good news is, unlike the past, the present situation can be changed and it's in our power to change it. and that's where this term crafting comes from or i was trying to capture is this idea that we each have a kind of superpower power. i mean, i use that term sparingly. i'm a fan of superhero comics. i'm using it's framing, but i do believe it is a superpower the ability because we are each part of a social situation wherever we go there we are, we share of that power in the situation to transform it. and that could in our roles as managers, as educators, one of the most brilliant studies that i just long is by rosenthal. jacobson, where he simply shows that leading teachers to expect more of their students increase is the iq and achievement of students over the course of of the year, the teachers, by changing their mindset change to situation for their students in a way that unlocks their potential. so that's the first part of the answer is the power of the situation to shape us and it's it's availability as a lever that we can all pull matter where we are we can all make every situation at least a little bit better. now, the fundamental attribution error refers to the fact that we underestimate the power of the. we get it a little bit wrong and it's a coined by my colleague recently deceased brilliant colleague lee ross. the fundamental error that he used this term to capture just the way we go our lives thinking that what really in driving especially other people's is who they are their personality, their character grit, their wit, their intelligence we are continually searching for these interior essences and it affects our educational practice in some pretty ways or consciously trying to measure students. we get it wrong is the big discovery here with the fundamental attribution error because we systematically under how powerful the situation is in many, many laboratory studies. this is one of the most replicated studies. effects in social psychology demonstrate. how when we're trying to explain people's behavior, when we're trying to influence people's behavior, we overestimate personality and we underestimate situation right here, right now as it's being experienced by the people trying to support and as it's experienced as a result sometimes of the things doing to create that situation. well, you know, when you talk about that fundamental attribution error, as you said, it's something we all do you know if if somebody is. driving crazily, we say what's wrong with that person. we don't gosh, they must really be in a need to get to the hospital with their pregnant wife or whatever these, you know. but there are times when it's hard to remember that it might the situation and that is particularly true when we are thinking we're talking about people whose attitudes and behaviors are diametrically different. maybe to our own. yeah. one of the moments that we're in right now is a time of extreme polarization politically in, our nation and. i'm wondering if you could talk about how what you about the fundamental attribution error might help someone is struggling with maintain a sense of empathy with someone who is attitudes are so different from their own. it's so hard. i mean, i know have family. i have friends that have very wide ranging opinions and and i've things that have been dogmatic think regrettably even though as i go into i know as a research suggest, even even when we're on the side of virtue, we do little good. i think in reaching other people's hearts minds with an authoritarian style. an authoritarian style. so the authoritarian style refers to just how in day to day lives, we can act like little. we think that what we think is objective, right? this is what's known as the objectivity illusion. i, i believe i see world as it is and therefore anyone who disagrees with me must by defined mission either be uninformed, mentally incapacitated or biased. and so this objectivity illusion, this this faith we have that we see the world it is is a huge threat to belonging far and wide and. one of the antidotes i think is humility it's humility is understanding that one's own point of view is just one point of view. and of course sometimes we need to stand up and die for our point of view. but it is still a point of view, i think, and it's it's important that we understand when we're interacting these fault lines that people are who are coming from different points of view, will not be receptive to us if they feel condemned or vilified. so one example of situation crafting deal with this kind of dilemma that was investigated by a graduate student brewing student in my lab, michael schwab, he to make a long story short show that the way we with each other can have a big effect simply expressing our political opinions with phrases such, i think, or from my point of view, then it's the same point of view, same position makes the other side much more open to what we're saying, much more curious, much more likely to. try to understand. and and not only that person who does the communicating like that becomes a little less susceptible to confirmation bias in their own lives. so this is an example of how by crafting the situation, the words we use, we can make our everyday encounters go a little bit better. and then i really that if we all do these kinds of things, a little thing can add up to a big benefit. well, you know, i'm as i'm listening to you, i, i'm imagining that there are folks in audience who are saying, you know, sure. that with reasonable people. but what about you know, what about folks who are really you know, klan members, white nationalist folks who are taking an extreme, maybe even a dangerous opposition thinking and that us them way about, you know, insiders and outsiders. what does what i actually i understand is i'm talking to you and realizing i'm about to ask you two questions at once. so is so one of those questions is, you know does that listening carefully work people who are really extreme their views. but i'm also about the whole concept of belonging and how does belonging help understand why people so extreme in the first place. that's yeah so in terms of belonging people to become extreme in the first place a lot. it's easy to oversimplify problems extremism hate terrorism are there are multifactorial meaning there's just so many causes. so many causal processes leading to that is i do believe that from my review of of that that research that it's also me a perfect storm of factors that leads a person down that path of hate and evil and one and one key part of that storm is a sense of being disconnected from the rest of humanity. and there's research by ari krueger lansky and then one person who i who i just love is christian pitch illini, who is a former member of a hate group, is stories. well known. he's founded an organization to help convert and bring back returned people who have drifted into these hate groups. one of the things he says actually is twofold. first, the reason people these hate groups isn't they subscribe to the ideology, but because they have a deserved, defeated sense that belong. he came from a pretty fractured family he didn't have people to connect with. he felt alone. and then this this extremist group that hoped serendipitously, he ended up affiliating with provided that sense of belonging learning and acceptance and importance. being a person that mattered that just made him feel good, made him feel good. and that's as human beings were responsive to that. and a lot of these extremist hate groups, they explore that need to belong. they lure people in who are defeated psychologically not always i'm just sort of speaking generally defeated psychologically and provide that sense of belonging, but it's condescending. on subscribing to a pretty poisonous ideology. so i do think as piccioli and craig lansky have have shown really eloquently that people, you know, it's a perfect of variables, some insights outside. but one of the key parts of the storm is feeling drenched with exclusion and, drenched with negative messages about who one is or one's group more generally. and then the way to turn people as shalini and kuklinski more empirically with research go into isn't by by isn't by vilifying them, but by listening and connecting and providing a kind of relationship where the person's dignity feels affirmed and then it's affirmed. they're much more open to change, not always. i'm not being i'm not being a sentimental host, but that is what the research suggests is, that it is the connection brings people back. the connection, a person who accepts you connection with a with one's family or with one's community that brings people back. and and so i do believe it is part of this crisis of belonging is that we're all doing things. and the policies and so many things are kind of aggravating people's need to belong and and making them susceptible to, ridiculous and sometimes dangerous beliefs. yeah. you know, a lot of your work is with younger kids. i'm thinking about the example you just gave of christians growing up and being, you know, this fragmented, not having the sense of belonging, going back really to his childhood. and i'm thinking about some of the interventions you describe in your book that address the need for belonging in school settings particularly as kids are transitioning maybe into middle school or into high school. and one of the things that i find so wonderful about your book is how hopeful is helpful and because there are so many examples of ways to make difficult situations better. i'm wondering if you could give an example of one of those schools situations with know younger kids middle school to yeah and here i'm just being a curator for all wonderful research done by the pioneers tim wilson steele, greg walton, david yeager, kurt lewin going back many, many years later and then there's a lot of evidence to suggest that small things at the right time and place tailor targeted in time can have a big impact. but it's not as any small thing it has be that kind of key message, a formative moment. and so of the just to give one example, one of the kinds of practices that seems to be very, very helpful is to give people an opportunity to express their their core values. so what is it because we are kind of in society pretty forgetful creatures, easy to kind of lose track of what. i really, really care about down my core what is my lodestar what would i die for and research over the past few decades pioneered by claude has shown that that's a small, very small activity. taking some time to write about even just jot down your core values is affirming of the self it firms up sense of self integrity firms our sense of who we are who and broadens our cycle lens so that a little adversity, a little stress, even a big a big stress suddenly feels a bit more manageable. my colleagues and i, this is with our pretty bonds. a dear colleague, julio garcia, who also passed away just over the past couple of years, tested the values affirmation technique in many different settings. but just to give one example in that in that fraught transition to middle school to seventh grade, your pre-adolescent yeah i have kids and i know firsthand mean i've experienced firsthand how how that moment is the sixties of development very very very turbulent it's very easy to go in in the wrong direction and take a negative term. we did what we did make a long story short is in a random randomized controlled trial to have some of the kids periodically over the year. right. five or 10 minutes about their most important values. what was your most important value and why is it important to you? and i've read a zillion of these, and one of the things that always stands out is even, though, it's a very brief activity. it's cycle, logically big. a lot of kids, especially actually low performing kids who have had a history of poverty and are often writing about things that are just very precious and deeply, deeply felt for them. and you can tell that the activity kind of opening a channel in the classroom situation for something in their heart to manifest in a way otherwise it wouldn't have had the opportunity to and. we found that this activity is very helpful for members of marginalized groups. for instance african-american students in the middle school study that i just mentioned went on to earn a higher gpa through their two years in middle school. but not only that, years and years later, we tracked down these students, found their official college enrollment, official college enrollment records, and we found that those black students who had completed that values affirmation activity in the seventh grade were, roughly 20 percentage points, more likely than their peers in the control group to be attending a four year college, not that college going as is a measure of success. we're not really telling people to go to college what it does is it is it unlocks and makes it possible for people to better do what they're capable of, show what they know, make it through some some hardship. this is one example of many of these little things that we can do to create openings and situations for to feel their authentic selves and to feel they belong. yes. when you were talking, opening yourself at i thought of things that keep you from opening yourself school. and one of those things stereotype threat and you, of course write a lot in the book about stereotype threat and i know you've done lot of your research around mitigation of stereotype threat and so for the listeners who might not know what stereotype threat is, could you just quickly describe it then? i'm going to ask another question, of course, stereotype, threat is an idea that with claude steele and his colleagues, joshua aaronson and steve spencer, who were exploring a kind of that people are in when they are aware that they could be negatively. and this is what's called stereotype threat because at its heart, stereotype threat is saying when we're in a situation where we feel we could be stereotyped negatively and we really care about that situation, it's psychologically threatening. we feel stressed now. we've all been there like i as an academic, feel all the time when i'm stepping into, you know, a sports contacts and i feel, you know, i could be seen through lens of a stereotype of a klutz academic. so there we've all felt that kind of what's called social evaluative, where we could be seen negatively as a social species that's really, really aversive to us, at least in these social in a domain or an area where we we care about doing well. what claude steele and his did was to show that stereotype threat helps to explain some portion of the achievement gap between underrepresented minorities and white students in school between women and men in stem and other areas. the idea being that for these groups, the threat, a more chronic threat. and so could you imagine, i mean, one could imagine the situation where every day you're going to some place that you know, you know, socially sacred school. this is about your intelligence is about your your to to to contribute to society and you you're aware that there is this stereotype out there potentially biasing hearts and minds, including your teacher. and that could just kind of make that situation in of the classroom a lot more stressful, a lot more dire. and that's the phenomena of stereotype threat. and i think does raise this other really important theme about situations, which is that every situation, no matter you're in, is experienced differently by the different people in is very hard. i, i find it hard to get one's mind around that idea that this situation i'm in may be the same situation you're in. and what feels comfortable to me may not feel comfort to somebody else and so what stereotype threat shows is. yeah, that's really true for a lot of these things that seem pretty neutral even innocuous. the standardized test ritual, it's not an even playing field. it's subjectively, psychologically a very different experience for people have been historically excluded or feel judged through. the lens of these stereotypes. well, thank you for your elaborate description of that. and i'm sure it's helpful the audience. but i wanted to ask you about that because one of the things that i was about as i was reading your book was the cover, right? so i'm going to hold up the books that can see there is the umbrella on the cover under which it says belonging and course the book is all about our need to belong. the science of creating connection and bridging divides. but i wondered, is there an umbrella on the cover of just but? and then i, i came across the section where you talk about stereotypes raining down on people and umbrella clearly as a kind of protection against that. and so say a little bit more about the as it relates to this but we quoted or i quoted robin d'angelo white fragility who said that there are negative messages raining down on these groups, 24 seven and there are no umbrellas and i guess i'm saying that, you know, actually there are some umbrellas. there are some umbrellas. these protective psychological shelters that we can create. now, a physical umbrella, of course, something kind of psychologically analogous to an umbrella that's both protective. right. you're being protected from the weather you're not stopping the weather. it's kind of the storm is continuing that momentarily and the arrows will transfer to you're under it together and that can kind of make this the storm not just tolerable but but catalytic yeah so i think so that's where the idea came from that there are these little things that we can do to help people through. the storm, one example came from a ceo i interviewed out here in silicon valley. she was trying to make it in the out here in silicon valley. it's a predominantly male, especially when she was rising and. it's predominantly male arena. she was right in the ranks as a female. she was. why is is well aware of these negative stereotypes. women being able to make it as entrepreneurs. silicon valley especially. and she was about to give this make or break talk and she nervous a nervous as nervous can be and we've all been there and just she was about to walk on stage her her her boss came to her and said you are transforming this company. they looked her in the eye and said that and they gave her the confidence, that feeling of belonging that really helped her to rise that moment and she did. yeah, it's a great story. that's a great story. one of the things you've already talked a little bit about is value affirmations. but i was struck by some research you cited in the book about how value affirmations actually can help protect against stereotype threat. yeah, a little bit about that. yes. so one of the things when we're feeling negatively stereotyped, judged that can be helpful is to reconnect with our sense of who we are to shore up our sense of self integrity, to kind of realize that, okay, this situation where i feel negatively that is aversive yet there are things that give me sustenance, fortitude that are bigger than this moment. and that's the that by affirming one's core values, what one really stands for, it can be helpful to get through those moments with greater equanimity. and this comes out of a lot of equanimity is the wrong with with greater with with ability to give to the moment? what can give to it. and so a series of studies, these affirmation interventions have been shown to help people with stereotype threat such that when people do that brief, they're more likely to perform better under certain key conditions. when they care about doing well on a standardized test, when they're identified with doing well, and when the test is really, really difficult, there's some threat there about potentially the stereotype under that situation. the affirmation of these affirmation. taking a step back, remind myself my values helps people to perform better. there's some really nice work by david creswell, a neuroscientist at carnegie mellon, where he basically puts people in the scanner. i'm going to oversimplify it puts people in the scanner and has complete a values affirmation activity through some visual stimuli related to their values. and he finds that it actually activates the reward circuitry in the central nervous. now it turns out that reward that reward circuitry actually a good thing because it down regulates our stress response. there's something about the the the two systems that are intertwined so that of one down regulates activation of the other and he finds through these studies that these affirmation activities have a almost like a kind neurobiol of course they have a neuro biological, but what they are is psychological rewarding in a really deep way that helps people get by these these stressful situations. now, of course, of course when they that to be really careful about as a psychologist and a psychologist prize we're we're dealing now at a cultural moment where we are reckoning it's like a great reckoning these powerful structures and systems of exclusion that need to be addressed in some cases dismantle. so i, i completely agree with that. what i am with the, with this book is all about is about dealing with cards were dealt right here right now i am an educator i i'm a parent. i got to just deal with the situation as. it is what can i do or what can i do as a person who feels under threat. and there are these suite of, i would say, cycle logical techniques or practices can be helpful to do for ourselves, but also to do for the people that we care about and that we love. now you know, there are a lot of educators watching that, a lot of schools that sponsor this event tonight. and one of the questions we got ahead of time is an educator. i'm imagining is what are the top three things schools can to create a sense of belonging for students recognizing that there are structural changes that are needed policy changes that are needed. but at the individual level, perhaps where the leader level, the principal, someone that what are the things that you would say know if you if you could do three things to increase for students at a school what would they be. well there's many examples and i wouldn't want to pretend that i could give a recipe right. but i've and there's many ways i answer this question, but i would say there's two that come readily to beyond all the interventions that there are out there, the social belonging intervention that i talked about earlier, where we're sharing stories, the values, affirmation and these these things are tools, a toolbox. so of course, there's a there's a bunch of tools we can take our toolbox to help us. but above and beyond, there are, i think are two things. one is to fight the fundamental attribution error. and there is a number of sort of calisthenics, psychological calisthenics to do this fight, the fundamental attribution error really be wary of. the tendency to judge too quickly. and i think that that is a constant peril, especially in our individualistic society, where it's just so easy to judge and so fighting the fundamental attribution error, being aware of these like confirmation bias, being of negative stereotypes and how they can kind of contaminate perceptions of other people is so important. richard feynman, the famous, has this injunction and he's talking about science, but it actually applies to social life above all else. don't fool yourself and are the easiest person to fool. i love that as you know kind of resonates just think about with this daoist tradition daoist philosophy. don't believe everything you think. and this is just our minds trick us. and so if we learn how fallible we have some more humility our minds are, we start to understand, okay what i'm seeing and especially judgments may not be trustworthy, may not be trustworthy. and there's a whole suite of kind calisthenics, exercises taking care of our head, creating space and heart space so that we're willing to be attribution, charitable attribution, early charitable, and how we understand our students. so that's one fight. the fundamental attribution error. the second is obvious, but, you know, social psychology sometimes we study the power, the non-obvious power of the obvious. this is listening. listen to your students. ask questions, listen to the answers. it is what nick epley, juliana schroeder, two social psychologists refer to as perspective getting so too often are just overconfident in our ability to read people, including our students, including friends. we but we get it. so wrong. and then ultimately what happens is that we start to interact with someone, but that someone is more of a fiction of our minds than the actual flesh and blood person right before us. and because these biases is that we all share the us. so one antidote is schroeder and epley call perspect of getting where you is. take the time to ask people good questions like what are you going through? tell me more. what would you me to know? and that is very helpful because for two reasons. first, we have nothing to do it. these studies say about talk about, you know, they kind of reveal what we're failing to do in the in the control group. we're often failing. ask people what their perspective is. schroeder and epley show in a lot of studies that we are we overestimate our ability. imagine the perspective of others. we fail to get it, ask questions. so one of my favorite examples of perspective getting is from a study jason account of food and greg walton and others beautiful study. i'm going to make a long story short there. they're looking at children who have been in a juvenile detention center and are trying to reintegrate back into high school. and they do a lot things, including values, affirmations for the kids and social belonging, sharing about the difficulty of this transition. but the other thing they do is they have the kids write a little letter to. someone at their school that they want to get to know a bit better an adult and that letter they talk about what their dreams are in school and some of the challenges are. it's a little like that book i wish my teacher that that book and what they do is they then give those letters to the person so identified and they found find these whopping effects that the kids who go through that experience, who form that connection, who give their perspective to this person who now the teacher feels empowered are much less likely. i think there's 30% point reduction in their likelihood of recidivism that is going back into the juvenile detention center. so i think in this era where really interested in novel ideas, we should try some of the old ones i think will be critical in our minds and ask questions and listen to the answer yeah. one of the questions we got on was about that. so how do you learn to be better? listener you know, my to that would be to practice but but someone is asking know if i want to facilitate interactive listening at my school. how would i go about doing that. yeah. so it's a skill set and i know you've worked this room too. i'd love to hear your thoughts on it. i am kind of drew draw a lot on your work in thinking about issue. i it's an art form. it takes practice having different conversations so it it's something that we can practice that. there are a number of things we can do to to practice it. i think that one of my, you know, i think first of all, just having a growth mindset. right. carol, do i think that you know we are all works in progress rather finished products and that goes for social political beliefs that goes for everything. and so having kind of growth mindset about there's i will always the world is wondrous and mysterious and absurd in so many ways it is not as logical, i think it is. and so opening ourselves to that kind of humility and having a growth mindset about our ability to learn is one key thing. and there's a nice little study by phil goff and claude steele where they show that when bring i'm just going simplify it black and white students together talk about this issue issue of racial profiling and policing the whites students are under huge stereotype in that situation because, you know. no, no, because they worry about being saying or something that could be construed as racist, yeah, they're incarcerated. and it turns out that being under that of stress is one of the worst things for learning. so they kind of seize up and they're not open to is as much putting their chairs even further away from the person that they're about to speak to. what they find is that if instruct the students, hey, look this as a learning experience, you you aren't coming in here with the right point of view, you're going to learn. and this is an opportunity to learn. and we all, as you have said, make mistakes. and i that in my classes to kind of evoke this growth mindset for all of us and that can be really helpful, especially if it's a norm. it's a kind of cultural norm that we're not only can we improve, but we're going to improve together. yes, one of the things that i often say and, i think this resonates with your you know, at the beginning we were talking about belonging, uncertainty right. you know, that everybody experiences belonging, uncertainty and this. and at some time and certainly when we bring people to talk about difficult subjects like the issues of racism for. many people in the room are feeling belonging uncertainty and that right you know am i or worried that there will belong if they do the wrong thing they say the wrong thing if they get too upset, if they, you know, use words that are not politically correct, whatever might be, there's worry about that. and anxiety. and when people me, you know, how do i get better at it? i say, if you wait for perfection, you'll never started. so, you know, we have to have growth mindset. as you were saying, one of the things i want to say to the audience, this book, you know, you have then yourself fluent as you're talking about these various and i know that if the audience anything like me they're trying to take notes and write down what did he say, what would that was that reference but just want to say if missed it all you have to do is the book because these examples are really elaborated in the book and it's really, you know, i was privileged to read an advance copy and described it as really a masterpiece of social psychology because just seems like the greatest hits social psychology are captured and describe all in one place in a way that for the layperson, it really it very, very accessible. so i just say, hats off to you for having put it together in that way. i really think it's just a real contribution. so i want to say that. thank you. very sweet and generous of you. thank you. but and completely true. thank but what i want to also say is what find so compelling many of the examples as we talked about them is that not that they're they're so strategic right and that goes back to the idea of situation crafting that as you said right right thing at the right time with the right person that crafting of the situation is is so key but i reflect it. what makes so potent is the least scalable. you know, we live in a time when people are looking for looking for solutions to, problems. and then when you find solution, people want to know, can you take it to scale? yeah. and, and, but many of the things that you're describing are quite scalable. they're so brief and you a little bit about scaling them and that way there's many ways to look at the problem with scales. but one question is what are we trying to scale and think a lot of people get a bit wrong. they think we're trying to scale the physical intervention like give them the values, affirmation, writing, prompt, or give them the social belonging intervention or give them the growth mindset intervention or give them. we've done work on ways criticism showing that when teachers i'm giving you this feedback because i have high standards and i believe in your potential, then all of a sudden many students are much motivated to revise their essay and they're more likely to go on a better track, especially if they're members. these kind of groups that have been historically seen as not belonging fully in school. so are kind of concrete, physical interventions. what we're really trying scale here is a psychological reality. it is not i mean, 100 years or now, i don't know if the same why i know if the same values affirmation prompt is going to have the same results. but what i will put my money on is people 100 years from now are still going to care about, protecting their sense of, self integrity and and there's going to be a self affirmation process in which if you help people to affirm themselves in these threatening situations, some means some legitimate, authentic means they'll be more likely to feel okay, more likely to feel they belong and more likely to show what they know. so i what we're scaling here is perception a belief in all of our potential to live together, to be ourselves together and, to grow together and any if it's done this kind of rote way like, i'm giving you feedback because of how you start to believe in your potential and the kid knows the teacher doesn't really believe that's not going to work. and i think that's where people get into trouble here is that it's not the physical intervention that we're scaling it is a mindset is a perception. it is a ultimately cultural movement that we can create and has to be authentic. right. is accurate and that's what we respond to. harry reece relationships, researchers that yeah, that is the one thing that we really respond. that sense that we're being we're being responded to with authenticity. yes. yes. it's a very hopeful book because as you said, you know, there are a lot of things we may not be able to change immediately, but in the moment. we can change our situation in terms of how we are responding to each other or even to ourselves. right. when you talk about challenging that fundamental attribution or, that is an internal dialog you can have with yourself there's a phrase that use in the book. it comes from i think some of jennifer abraham's work but you talk psychological friction. yes you know slowing things down. maybe you could say a word about some of the friction. yeah. jennifer did this amazing work where she worked with the i mean, she's done amazing work, her career. but one of the studies that i highlight is this study where she had officers in oakland before they pulled over anyone for some traffic violation. she had them introduce a little psychological by answering one question, which was is this stop intelligence led this stop, stop and think. it's like an antidote to the fireman self to say, what am i doing? do i have some intelligence on this person? and she found that that reduced the percentage of. driver black drivers pulled over 43%. meanwhile, crime just going down throughout the throughout the city during the time of the of the of the of the study. so that's one example. introduce a little friction. we do some studies by eric ohman and i do some studies where we did some studies where we found that a lot of times the problem is our own minds trick us. long story short, we found that when people hiring someone for the job of police chief, what they did was they changed their criteria. the job to fit the qualified patients, the male. so the male had a kid had a lot of administrative skills. people said those are really poor for the job. if were if they were street smart and didn't have a family that was important for the job and so they kind of and then they ended up feeling when they hired the guy like this is a perfect man for the job when in fact they had picked exactly the right criteria for the man. so they kind of got it psychologically backwards. one little bit of friction, an intervention that introduced a bit of friction was just to have people commit advance to their hiring criteria before they made their hiring decisions and found that this eliminated gender discrimination. so it's kind of like being kind of self binded to the master to borrow a humor allusion. so i think all of these all these go back one of the one of the wonderful discoveries i had in writing this book was to learn the origin of the word respect. i'm really curious about this word because everyone uses it right. and my kids use it going around saying a lot of things, a lot of other things. they they say like cap or, you know, all this other trait, but they do still use all through the generation and they use respect and so it has currency. so it's like, well, does that word mean let's take a look at the etymology of it and it means to look again, look a little harder and i love that the word means within it prescription look again i love well i think is a great place for us to pause i know that lani has maybe a closing question for you, jeff. i just want to thank you for this contribution. it's just been a delight to and the topic is. thank you so much, beverly you've been such a colleague and friend all these years. thank you. and i'll try and beverly, thank you so much for your time, your care with this presentation. obviously, you're a huge devotee of both jeff's work and the book i, too, was so struck by it. i was everyone when i was reading at the summer on the beach, i was underlining then, don, during the pages and i'm not a big under liner general. and of course, as i had mentioned to both of you earlier, that names of so many past speakers are just kept jumping out and jumping and jumping off the page. so it was very a lot of chills and so much great, great learning available in the book. so i want to thank both of you so much. i want to remind everybody fan because we so respect respect so we so respect topic and love this book. we are going to do a buy one, get one free so get buy a book from the bookstore, come to hours, come join us. when you show up there, going to throw another link in there and we will double your pleasure. we will allow to have a book to give to someone else and pass learning along and extend the learning. we're really grateful to that. we have a couple of quick questions. jeff, you had mentioned been putting in as you're been naming a lot of folks, there's a lot of links been putting in chat for those when we send out the video to everyone through the zoom platform will include those links. so if you're writing things furiously we did capture a fair number of the names and we have some links for you. one woman did ask you had mentioned i you mentioned michael schwab could say the last name one more time for us. yes, schwab. yeah. c h w a e, b e michael. maybe that's why we couldn't quite get it to work with. yeah. so that work is not yet published in a journal okay. but does have one paper out called the objectivity illusion, which is a really powerful paper that find it themes. and then one question that i liked in debbie posted earlier this in the session, she says, why people drifting toward groups based on community, caring, faith, etc. instead of hate groups. what a great question. yeah, i thought so too. a great question here. you know, i'm i'm just not sure. maybe there's just not enough around these communities of love and caring. i mean, i don't know. i don't quite know. but there are like little in our neighborhood where these moments happen at cafes, bars, right down the street where these moments of connection are possible, you know, to go a church or community, you could just be kind in the in the in the safe way for this. so i think it's not much about a physical place. it's about creating the of connection wherever. you go and i think that's one of the messages of the book i really would like to offer any just add on that at all. do you have any thought on that. yeah i do it well. you know, one of the things that we i mean, unfortunately, a hate groups are very intentionally recruiting, right? they're very intentionally recruiting. we see this on college campuses, we fliers advertising trying to in disaffected youth into these circles. we see it social media and it is perhaps that other are not working as hard to draw people in you know that i think about lots of organizations in the communities where i live doing great work but they are not actively seeking i mean you know they're calling volunteers that are doing things, but not out on social media trying get people to join in the same way. so it may be that just need to think about how. connecting communities building where we are to language creating connection and divides, how we can be a little more sophisticated welcome, everyone. welcome to our friends at american history tv from c-span who are

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