Dr. Laurie Santos on Group Psychology, the Teen Brain, and Happiness

Summary

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis: Dr. Laurie Santos on Group Psychology, the Teen Brain, and Happiness

In this compelling episode of Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, host Michael Lewis engages in an enlightening discussion with Dr. Laurie Santos, a renowned psychology professor at Yale and the host of The Happiness Lab. Together, they delve into the intricate relationship between group psychology, the teenage brain, and the pursuit of happiness, particularly in the context of America’s burgeoning sports gambling industry. Released on February 4, 2025, this episode offers valuable insights into how sports betting influences fan behavior, especially among teenagers, and explores effective strategies to mitigate its psychological impacts.

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1. Fandom and Group Psychology

Timestamp: [03:26]

Michael Lewis begins the conversation by drawing parallels between general fandom and sports fandom, questioning whether sports fans form parasocial relationships similar to those fans have with celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch.

Michael Lewis: "I felt kind of mild compared to sports fandom... do you group sports fans in this category? Is it a parasocial relationship, being a sports fan?" [03:26]

Dr. Santos explains that while both types of fandom involve admiration, sports fandom inherently activates group psychology more intensely. She highlights that sports teams often embody group identities that include both a sense of belonging and an "us versus them" mentality.

Dr. Laurie Santos: "With sports teams... it activates our sort of group psychology... we kind of feel like we're part of something bigger... but it also activates the kind of 'I don't like you' part." [04:39]

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2. Sports Betting and Fan Happiness

Timestamp: [06:18]

The discussion transitions to how sports betting intertwines with fan emotions. Dr. Santos elaborates on the dual nature of emotions in fandom—experiencing joy in victories and schadenfreude in rivals’ losses.

Michael Lewis: "Is it happiness inducing?" [06:20]

Dr. Santos: "We might want to reject schadenfreude as part of a happy life, but it kind of sometimes feels good." [07:09]

She further explains that shared emotions in a stadium amplify both the triumphs and the defeats, enhancing the overall emotional experience for fans.

Dr. Santos: "Shared emotions are amplified, whether that's the glory of the win or the agony of defeat." [09:04]

However, the introduction of sports betting, especially via mobile phones, can fragment this shared experience, potentially diminishing the collective joy and increasing individual stress.

Michael Lewis: "What’s going to happen to happiness there?" [10:05]

Dr. Santos: "It's making us less mindfully aware of what's going on... it might be amplifying other effects of the game." [11:00]

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3. Gender Differences in Sports Betting

Timestamp: [16:18]

Michael shares a personal anecdote about his 17-year-old son’s sports betting experiment, revealing a stark gender disparity in participation—boys overwhelmingly engaged while girls abstained.

Michael Lewis: "All but one of the boys raises their hands. None of the girls." [16:18]

Dr. Santos: "The marketing of these sites is really aimed at boys more than girls... sports has been like a male pursuit." [17:40]

She attributes this disparity to targeted marketing strategies that appeal to male identities and interests, coupled with the adolescent male propensity for risk-taking and seeking status through such activities.

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4. Marketing and Its Impact on Teen Gambling

Timestamp: [19:02]

The conversation shifts to how marketing plays a pivotal role in attracting teenage boys to sports betting platforms. Dr. Santos criticizes the gendered approach of these marketing campaigns, which often exclude or fail to engage young women.

Dr. Santos: "These sites are kind of playing on people's sense of belonging in ways that are causing people... to lose a lot of money." [12:25]

She emphasizes that advertisements frequently feature male-centric imagery and messaging, making sports betting appear as a socially endorsed activity among boys, thereby reinforcing participation through social proof.

Dr. Santos: "Social proof... makes it more likely that all the teen boys will jump on sports betting sites." [19:07]

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5. Strategies to Prevent Teen Gambling

Timestamp: [20:43]

Addressing the urgent need to dissuade teenagers from engaging in sports gambling, Dr. Santos advocates for respectful and empowering approaches rather than authoritarian tactics.

Dr. Santos: "Better way to motivate teenagers is to appeal to that sense of respect and agency." [20:51]

She suggests leveraging evolutionary motivations of teenagers, such as their desire for status and belonging, by framing sports betting as manipulative and exploitative rather than appealing. Drawing parallels to effective anti-smoking campaigns, she recommends messaging that highlights the deceptive practices of betting companies, thereby empowering teens to resist.

Dr. Santos: "These sites... know they're causing you harm, and they're trying to hook you in." [24:08]

For parents, she proposes "collaborative troubleshooting," a strategy that involves respectful dialogue and mutual problem-solving, allowing teens to feel understood and autonomous in addressing their gambling behaviors.

Dr. Santos: "Ask them to think about what they're getting out of it... collaborate on solutions." [25:30]

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6. Michael Lewis' Personal Experiment

Timestamp: [27:38]

Michael recounts two strategies he employed to teach his son about the pitfalls of sports gambling. The first involved giving his son $5,000 and connecting him with professional gamblers, expecting him to lose the money and gain insights. Contrary to his expectations, his son only lost $4,000 and emerged more skeptical of the practice.

Michael Lewis: "He lost all the money, and that was humiliating... he said I'm done. They're going to take my money if I keep doing it." [30:39]

Dr. Santos: "You're allowing him to learn through his own experience... he's learned something that he had not learned when he was making these bets all over the place." [31:02]

He also shares a second, more humorous strategy he considered—offering to be the bookie and betting against his son in a mocking tone to ridicule the behavior.

Dr. Santos: "Making people aware of the consequences... feel a little foolish doing this." [33:27]

While acknowledging that the first strategy was more effective, Dr. Santos appreciates the innovative approach Michael took, aligning with psychological principles that favor respect and agency over punitive measures.

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7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Timestamp: [34:03]

As the episode wraps up, Michael reflects on the success of his first strategy and the potential of his second approach. Dr. Santos commends his methods, reinforcing the importance of respecting teens' agency and leveraging their desire for autonomy to guide them away from harmful behaviors like sports gambling.

Dr. Santos: "I think strategy number one probably worked better than you thought... it's consistent with social science research on teenage motivation." [33:53]

Michael Lewis: "This is an interesting question." [33:53]

The episode concludes with a reaffirmation of the need for respectful, empowering strategies in guiding teenagers, emphasizing that understanding the psychological underpinnings of their behavior is crucial in fostering genuine well-being and happiness.

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Key Takeaways:

• Group Psychology: Sports fandom intensifies group identity, blending a sense of belonging with competitive antagonism.
• Emotional Amplification: Shared experiences in sports amplify both positive and negative emotions, influencing overall happiness.
• Gender Disparities: Sports betting is predominantly marketed towards boys, leveraging gendered interests and social proof to drive participation.
• Preventive Strategies: Empowering teens through respectful dialogue and highlighting manipulative marketing practices is more effective than authoritarian approaches.
• Parental Approaches: Collaborative troubleshooting allows teens to feel respected and autonomous, fostering better decision-making regarding gambling.

This episode of Against the Rules offers a nuanced exploration of how sports betting intersects with psychological factors in teenage behavior, providing actionable insights for parents, educators, and policymakers aiming to enhance youth well-being in an era of increasing legalized gambling.

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Gordon Carrera]

Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist and the co host of the Rest Is Classified.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst. And together we tell the best spy stories from history right up to today.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right, everything from the JFK assassination through to the hunt for bin Laden, from Edward Snowden to the North Korean spies who were robbing banks.

[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

Something I share with Adolf Tokachev. And it is a story. I think what makes it so interesting is it's got real significance as well as excitement. It's thought that the information he provided to the Americans helped them stay ahead of Russian technology for 10 years.

[David McCloskey]

To hear more, Search Rest is classified Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Laurie Santos]

Foreign.

[Michael Lewis]

I'm.

[Unknown Speaker]

Michael Lewis and this is against the rules. If you've been listening to this season on sports gambling, then you already know that at the heart of everything is one thing. Human psychology. How to understand the passion of fans, how to play mind games with them. It just so happens that there's another show in my neighborhood here at Pushkin. It's all about human psychology and what research tells us about our own minds. That's the Happiness lab, hosted by Dr. Laurie Santos. Laurie's a psychology professor at Yale, and a while back, she did an episode that grabbed my attention. It's called Nerd the Happiness of Being a Fan. It starts with the story of a woman who became obsessed with the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, and it's delightful. Here's Laurie asking the big questions about fan psychology.

Could embracing a deep love of a seemingly trivial thing and doing so openly and without guilt be the key to feeling more connected and more present? Would each of us become a lot happier if we, too, could at least metaphorically get cumberbatched?

Now, Laurie's episode is about cultural fandom, obviously, but I suspected you'd have some interesting things to say about sports fandom and gambling on sports. So I went to my studio and she went to hers, and we had the conversation you're about to hear.

[Michael Lewis]

There's Laurie Santos.

[Laurie Santos]

Hey, folks, how's it going?

[Michael Lewis]

I feel cumberbatched, and I want to get to sports gambling. But I do want to talk briefly about fandom, because you did that episode on Benedict Cumberbatch. Because for a start, when I was listening to you all talk about fangirling on shows and all that kind of thing, it felt kind of mild compared to sports fandom, that it felt, you know, although consuming the behavior wasn't anything like, as insane as you see with sports fans getting close with Benedict Cumberbatch. But that was an extreme. And I'm wondering, do you group sports fans in this category? Is it a parasocial relationship, being a sports fan?

[Laurie Santos]

I think sometimes. I mean, I think sports fandom has a couple other different features, Right? So sports teams, at least a lot of the kind of canonical sports teams, when you think about the NBA or baseball teams or whatever, they also have a feature that activates our sort of group psychology. Right. So with Benedict Cumberbatch, you're a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, but you don't see yourself as, like, a Red Sox fan or, like, a Patriots fan or something. Sorry. I'm a Boston sports person, so those are going to be all my examples. Right. That kind of group psychology is really different because it's not like the Benedict Cumberbatch fans, like, hate some other actor and, like, really want to take him down. Right. But as a Red Sox fan, like, I grew up, like, hating the Yankees, right? Like, somebody has a Yankees hat. I'm like, that person is not my group. They are the enemy. Right. And that's a special part of our group psychology. It doesn't just activate the kind of positive Belonging part. It also activates the kind of not so good, I don't like you, you are not like me sort of part. And I feel like that psychologically makes fandom a lot more powerful. Right. Because it kind of gives us both the kind of belonging side. Like, oh, I'm like these people who like the same things that I do, but it also comes with the, like, I don't like those people. Like, my group doesn't like this other set of people. And I think that this plays in sports betting a lot. My guess is sometimes, you know, if I'm a Red Sox fan and I make a sports bet on the Red Sox, sometimes that's like, I love the Red Sox and they're going to do great. And sometimes it's like, screw the Yankees or f, the Yankee. Words we're not gonna say on your podcast towards the Yankees. It's about kind of who you don't like, who you're sort of kind of fighting against.

[Michael Lewis]

That second range of emotion.

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah.

[Michael Lewis]

We're not just for, we're against.

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah. And sometimes the against can be powerful.

[Michael Lewis]

But is it happiness inducing?

[Laurie Santos]

I think when the team beats the Yankees, maybe, you know, Boston, their buffer stickers, like, I'm for whatever team's playing the Yankees.

[Michael Lewis]

Ye. Is it going to make me happy to go looking for tribes to join to attack other tribes? If my goal is happiness, is that behavior a tool to achieve the goal?

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah. Well, it might be how we're defining happiness. Right. It definitely gives us a certain kind of positive emotion. Right. You know, schadenfreude, we can talk morally about whether or not it's a good emotion to have. Definitely feels pretty good when something bad is happening to somebody group that you don't like.

[Michael Lewis]

I have to think about whether it feels really good when something bad happens to someone. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I thought of an example. Okay. That works.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Michael Lewis]

It actually made me a little. I can remember feeling happy again.

[Laurie Santos]

Not all positive emotions, I think, are ones that we morally want to push for. Right. And I think that's why I said we want to think about our definition of happiness. I think of happiness really as being about living a good, rich life that includes a moral life. Right. I don't want to have seemingly short positive emotions that feel good, but are kind of yucky when I think about how they play out in the world. Right. So we might want to reject schadenfreude as part of a happy life, but kind of sometimes feels good. And we'd be lying if we didn't admit that. At least in some contexts.

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah. So this fan identity, it plays a role in happiness?

[Laurie Santos]

Well, let's talk about the positive side, because we've been on the schadenfreude side for a while, and I kind of.

[Michael Lewis]

What's the positive side?

[Laurie Santos]

You feel like you are experiencing a sense of belonging. Right. We're Red Sox fans. We believe in the same things. We cheer when the home team scores. All that stuff feels good in part because of the sense of belonging. We kind of feel like we're part of something bigger. But there's also just mechanisms that good things are better when they're shared, literally. There's some studies where you bring people into the lab and have them eat a chocolate bar, either at the same time as some other people in the lab are eating the chocolate bar who they can't talk to. It's just like they know they're eating at the same time or as when that second person is doing something else. And what you find is that the chocolate bar literally tastes better when you're experiencing it at the same time as somebody else. Right. You know, and so think about a stadium full of fans watching a goal scored at the same time as everybody else. Right. If that psychological mechanism is place, those kind of moments of triumph feel even better because you're experiencing them with other folks.

[Michael Lewis]

But does it also amplify the feelings of loss when things go wrong?

[Laurie Santos]

Oh, for sure. Yeah. They also have experiments having you eating a terrible chocolate bar. And, yeah, terrible things feel more terrible when you go through them with other folks.

[Michael Lewis]

So you're just getting a more extreme experience of life, of those emotions.

[Laurie Santos]

Yes. So shared emotions are amplified, whether that's the glory of the win or the agony of defeat. And you didn't need a psychology study to tell you that, right?

[Michael Lewis]

No, you didn't. No, you didn't. But it's an interesting question why people want the amplification and are willing to take the risk of the amplification in both directions.

[Laurie Santos]

I think there is a little bit of misery. Loves company, or we can kind of kvetch together. As a Red Sox fan, before the Red Sox were winning in the early 2000s, for most of my teams, being a Red Sox fan was about kvetching together with other Bostonian friends of mine. And there's a certain kind of camaraderie, the underdog identity, too, that I think folks get something out of.

[Michael Lewis]

If we imagine a stadium full of little happiness meters, these people who are experiencing something and happiness is going up and happiness is Going down. When you introduce phones and individual bets to every meter and everybody is making their own bet rather than actually just rooting for the team. And the bet isn't as simple as I'm betting on the team. You might be betting on the team to win by eight points instead of four points. So you might be betting on some player. So everybody actually the agenda is all of a sudden fragment, and the whole place is a bunch of individuals on their phones with their bets. What's going to happen to happiness there?

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah, well, I think it becomes a little bit of less of a shared experience. Right. I've seen it more in the context of, say, concerts and things like that, where you go to a concert and you see everybody pulling out their phone and sort of watching things, but then they take their phone down, they like clip it and they send it to their friend and so on. No one's actually watching or present or engaging with the event. And I think there must be some of that going on in the sports betting case, right, where you're actually not paying attention to the game because you are hopping on these sites to kind of make these bets in real time and sort of not paying attention to things. So I think, like many aspects of our technology, the ability to do these bets is sort of pulling us out of the experience and taking us away from the presence. That would be kind of the most fun part of the game in a lot of ways. So I think it's making us less mindfully aware of what's going on. And study after study shows that not being present is kind of a hit on our enjoyment and our happiness. Right. But it's happening at the same time as you're with these kind of little tiny side bets, you know, kind of upping the stakes a little bit for the win of your team. Right. There's a sort of anticipatory benefit of, like, now I'm going to win some money if my team wins by 8, 8, or within 8 seconds or whatever the bet is. Now there's something else at stake. It kind of matters more to me. And that kind of risky decision making, as you know, can have some benefits, especially in the anticipation phase when you're sort of thinking, what if I win? It sort of makes it a little bit more exciting. And I think these things are just bumping up the arousal in the happiness meters of all the folks who are watching these games. I think it obviously has some major drawbacks, but in the moment, some of these things might be amplifying other effects of the Game, too.

[Michael Lewis]

What do you think of as major drawbacks?

[Laurie Santos]

Well, I think that these sites are kind of playing on people's sense of belonging in ways that are causing people who don't really understand this stuff to lose a lot of money.

[Michael Lewis]

What do you mean by that they're playing on their sense of belonging?

[Laurie Santos]

Well, I mean, my sense is that, like, you see these commercials of your sports heroes or these celebrities that you see online or influencers who are doing this stuff who are like, look at me, I'm on this sports betting site and making all this money and making these things, and you feel like, well, I want to be like that person. Like, I'm going to jump on there too. Right. You know, it feels like the kind of cool thing to do. This is kind of playing into our sense of status, our sense of belonging, of being the kind of person who's smart enough to get in on this fun thing where you can make some money. And I think in the context of sports betting, you're often betting on a team that you care about. Right. So it's kind of activating belonging from all these different. Different pathways in. Right. But it's often doing that in a way that, like, people are, like, literally losing their life savings or especially for some of the young people that are getting involved in this. And I think more and more sports betting is about young people who maybe shouldn't be on these sites in the first place and maybe making choices and decisions in the short term that they're going to really regret in the long term. And that kind of regret is not great for happiness.

[Unknown Speaker]

I could not agree more. When we return, I asked Lori Santos about the psychology of the teenage brain.

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[Gordon Carrera]

Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, a national security journalist and the co host of the Rest is Classified.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst. And together we tell the best spy stories from history right up to today.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right, everything from the JFK assassination through to the hunt for Bin Laden, from Edward Snowden to the North Korean spies who were robbing banks.

[David McCloskey]

This week we've got the story of Adolf Tolkachev, better known as the Billion dooll Spy. It's an extraordinary Cold war story of a Russian asset working for the CIA in the heart of Moscow. And this is a story that has everything real CIA tradecraft on the streets of Moscow. Spy tech and gadgets, suicide pills, and most of all, a love for Led Zeppelin.

[Gordon Carrera]

Something I share with Adolf Tokachev. And it is a story. I think what makes it so interesting is it's got real significance as well as excitement. It's thought that the information he provided to the Americans helped them stay ahead of Russian technology for 10 years.

[David McCloskey]

To hear more, search Rest is Classified. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Michael Lewis]

I'm back.

[Unknown Speaker]

With Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab. We started Talking about my 17 year old son Walker, who was the subject of this show a few weeks back. That episode was still in the works when I spoke to Laurie, so she hadn't heard it. But not surprisingly, she had some incredible insights on teen psychology and sports gambling.

[Michael Lewis]

So I was asked to teach my high school senior son's narrative nonfiction class. It's an English elective. The teacher said, we read your stuff, come on over. To my son's mortification, I went in and it was an interactive thing. And my son, very interestingly knowing the subject of the podcast, said, I got a question for the class. Could anybody raise their hand who engages in sports betting? And the boys were all on one side of the room and the girls were on the other. I don't know what's going on there, but it was like they just segregated by gender naturally. And there were like, I don't know, 20 girls and 13 boys. All but one of the boys raises their hands. None of the girls 0. What's going on there? Like why is this so gendered? Why is it that boys brains are activated in this way? Why aren't girls cumberbatching over this thing too?

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah, well I think they're cumberbatching about their own kind of stuff. Right. I mean, I think partly the marketing of these sites is really aimed at boys more than girls. I mean, like, I mean, I just watched some of these commercials and it feels gendered to me. Even the voices that are used, like drugging, like that's not, it's not aimed, it's not aimed at 13 year old Laurie. It's aimed at like somebody aiming at.

[Michael Lewis]

13 year old Lori. How would it sound?

[Laurie Santos]

I don't know. I mean, I think there'd be different influencers, maybe be like, you know, I don't know, somebody putting on makeup and talking about sports betting or something. Right. Like, like there's a whole, there are whole sets of marketing that work incredibly well for young women. Right. And that's not what these sites are using. Right. I think historically sports has been like a male pursuit, particularly like watching sports has been a male pursuit. I think that's changing with people like Caitlin Clark and others. I think we're about to see a real heyday of women in sports, but we're not kind of there yet. And so it makes sen sense that sort of sports betting is sort of playing into male identity. And I think even if you look at the history of gambling addictions in general, again, all of these things are overlapping distributions, but they tend to a little bit skew male. And so I think the sites are kind of playing on that. It's in a domain that's sort of exciting to boys generally. It's using media that are really exciting to boys generally. Right. Kind of. I think it's more adjacent to sort of video game use is jumping into sports betting on your phones versus, I don't know, watching Instagram reels of makeup, tutorials and so on. But I think adolescent brains in general are like prone to risk taking and prone to really seeking out belonging in whatever form it's sort of presented. And so I feel like these cues to belonging are especially salient to young boys too.

[Michael Lewis]

So that's what's going on, the belonging side of things, if other boys are doing it.

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know about the one kid of the 13 who didn't raise his hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if after that, getting called out in the classroom, he pulled out his phone and looked into one of these things too. I think there's a sense, there's a lot of work in psychology showing phenomenon of what's called social proof. The fact that everybody's doing it feels Like I should be doing it. I'm missing out if I'm not doing it. I think this is one of the things that unfortunately podcasts like this might contribute to. When we start talking about, oh my God, all these teen boys are on sports betting sites, that actually makes it more likely that all the teen boys will jump on sports betting sites. Right. Because there's a sense in which this is something that teens do. And I think this is a problem for all these things that we don't want teens to be doing or that we want teens to be doing. When we talk about how so many teens are vaping or so many teens aren't voting, so many young people aren't voting. When young people hear that an aspect of their psychology says, well, if everybody's not doing it, then I shouldn't do it. That's just not for me to do. Right. In the field of social science, this is talked about as so called descriptive norms becoming prescriptive norms. What does that mean? Well, when you describe some statistic like many teen boys are sports betting, that becomes in some sense proscriptive. It's like, well, then many teen boys should be sports betting. That's just kind of what you do. That's the norm out there. So I'm going to follow that norm too. And so I think we have to be careful as we talk about these statistics because as people hear more of these statistics, it becomes the kind of thing that people tend to do over time.

[Michael Lewis]

So what do we do to dissuade young men from jumping into sports gambling? If we're doing a podcast on sports gambling?

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah. Well, I think the one, one way to figure out how best to motivate teens is to really think carefully about like what teen brains are built for. And I think in some ways what they're really built for is sort of seeking out status, becoming part of the group. That's the young adult problem. If you think evolutionarily when you're a kid, you're just kind of figuring out the world and so on, but as a teenager, you're kind of making the transition to adulthood. And one of the things you have to pay attention to is kind of, where's my place? Where's my sense of agency? How do I fit in? How do I gain respect and status? How do I find my tribe? These are the problems that the teen brain is trying to solve. And it's doing that in a context where, you know, your frontal lobe is still developing. You're a little bit more risk seeking. When it comes to solving those problems, right? So one way not to motivate a brain that's seeking out agency and status and respect and belonging is to tell that brain what to do. It's to be like, sports betting is really bad for you. You shouldn't do it. I'm going to prevent you from doing it. Right? It's like the worst way to motivate teenagers. And it's kind of a bad way to motivate just like humans in general. Just like, telling them what to, you know, think about the last time, you know, your spouse or a good friend, like, told you what to do. I mean, if you're like me, you might just have, like, a moment of, like, well, I don't want to, like, just almost like, reactance against that. Like, I don't want to do it. And that kind of reactance is way huger in teenagers, right? So telling people, hey, don't do this. It's, you know, just gets people to want to do it even more sometimes, especially teenagers. Better way to motivate teenagers is to appeal to that sense of respect and agency. Be like, look, you're 16 right now. You're smart, right? You're, like, really technologically savvy. What are these companies trying to do? Do you think they are giving you the agency that you deserve, or do you think they're trying to hook you in? Look at what they're doing with these celebrities who are advertising to you. Look at the way they set up the way these games work to kind of hook you in. They're not giving you agency. They're trying to sucker you. And you're not a sucker. I think that kind of messaging would work even better. And there's some hints that that is the case, because if you look at the few kinds of successful marketing campaigns to teens for other kind of public health hazards. So I'm thinking of things like cigarettes and so on. The kinds of things that have worked well have sort of used that move. You know, cigarette ads that worked terribly were like, smoking kills. Like, don't smoke. Like, and students are like, kills. Like, that's cool. It's really, you know, it's like, that's like a way to gain my own agency. That doesn't work. But the smoking ads that have worked historically are the ones that have said, look, these cigarette companies know that they're killing you. Like, they. They, like, know they're causing you harm, and they're trying to hook you to this thing that's, like, really addictive. Like, you're smart. Do you want to, like, give in to these folks that, like, you know, think that they can have control over you and hook you to this thing and get you when you're young so that you stick with them? You don't want to do that. What do you want to do? Push back. Right? Those kinds of ads of showing these kind of evil, you know, CEOs of the man, like hooking kids to cigarettes, those ones actually had an impact and got kids to quit or not start up more often. Right. I think we could use the same kind of campaign against sports betting where it's like, these sites, they know what they're doing. They're not stupid. They're hooking you in. They're targeting you, right? Like you're an agent. You know, you are the kind of person that's afforded respect. You should. You're too smart to fall for that. Right. That kind of marketing works way better.

[Michael Lewis]

They're trying and trying to make you look stupid by losing.

[Laurie Santos]

Exactly. That's at the sort of societal level. But you could ask a different question, which is like, you know, if you're a parent listening to this right now, and you have a teen who's kind of caught up in this, right? You want to help, but you can't be like, no, I'm going to take your phone away, or just don't do that. Like, that's not going to work. What's a sort of strategy that you can do to sort of mirror that respectful, kind of get them to be agentive about the situation? And researchers have come up with this kind of path forward that they call collaborative troubleshooting, right? Where you, again, kind of treat your kid or whoever you're trying to negotiate with as an agent. And you start from this place of respect. You could even start from like, look, you know, I know you're a smart kid, right? And I just kind of want to understand, like, what are you getting out of this, right? Like, I know you're doing this for a good reason, right? Like, I know, like, there's probably a good reason. They're fun or what? Talk through me what you're getting out of it, right? Starting point number one, you're treating with respect. I know you've thought about this. You probably have come up with your own good reasons why to do this, because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. What's going on? Let's talk through it. Step number one, your kid, when they come back to you with what their reasons, they might say some things. And then I think what you first want to do is sort of validate some of them. There might be good ones. Like, you enjoy the game, you think it's fun, your friends are doing it, you wanted to see what it's like. There's all this hype. Those, those are in some ways reasonable reasons to go check something out and do it right. But you're also hearing some of the downsides, like maybe they've lost some money or maybe they don't like it, or maybe they feel stuck. That's when the kind of collaborative troubleshooting comes out, as you said. Okay, well, you know, given that part about you feeling stuck, like, how can we do this a little bit better? Like, I'm sure you can come up with some strategies to like, you know, fix this a little. Like maybe like, what would you do with your phone different if you didn't want to be on these sites as much, you know, or how can we. You probably thought about some boundaries that you can come up with. What are some. Right. So it's kind of like you're assuming their agenda and they have their own ideas, but you're kind of helping them pull it out in a way that's really respectful and so on. And so if you're a parent who's kind of dealing with a teen who's negotiating some of this stuff, I think that's a really a much more effective strategy than just telling them what to do because you get them to realize like, oh, I had the solution myself to figuring this out, I can identify the problem myself. And then you kind of feel like it's your solution rather than one that was forced upon you.

[Unknown Speaker]

We're going to take a quick break. When we return, I asked Laurie to grade my sports gambling experiment with Walker.

[Gordon Carrera]

Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, a national security journalist and the co host of the Rest Is Classified.

[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

To hear more, Search rest as classified Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm back with Dr. Laurie Santos.

[Michael Lewis]

Can I tell you my two solutions? You can tell me why they were stupid, please.

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah, I'm sure they weren't that stupid.

[Michael Lewis]

The first was to give my son $5,000 and assume he was going to vaporize it and give him smart people, not me, to talk to, like real pro sports gamblers who beat the house constantly, that kind of thing, and have him talk to them about the bets he was making and why he was making them and be able to ask them anything he wanted to ask them. And I assumed that he'd be sitting there having heard from smart people, not me, why he shouldn't make these bets. And he lost all the money, and that was humiliating. And it's a bit like my father, which happened when I was like, 15, sticking a glass of whiskey in my hands in New Orleans and saying, drink this, because people are gonna make you drink this stuff. I want to be here while you're gonna supervise this. It's sort of this inoculation approach, too, to the problem. I think this worked in a roundabout way, but he made $4,000. So the problem was the signal that came back was not the signal I was expecting.

[Laurie Santos]

Well, a couple of things there, right? One is, first, I think you're embodying a lot of this sort of collaborative troubleshooting approach, right? One, you gave him some money, right? You were like, I see you as agentive. I respect you. I'm going to give you this money to do it. Right? That's maybe the most kind of agentive thing you could, like, give him money to kind of do this, right? So I think that that's already in the motive. You're not telling him what to do. You're kind of letting him try it himself. Second, you hook him up with these other sports betting folks. Like, not only were you not, like, I'm going to tell you how to do this, you're like, hey, you are a collaborator who is as respected and kind of as high status as these other interesting sports bet guys. Go have a conversation and talk to them. And I bet in the context of that conversation, he probably learned some stuff, you know, at the very least, he probably learned that the bets he was making before weren't the greatest bets. Right. I mean, if only because he started either he had like a three sigma like kind of lucky streak that got him this 4,000 bucks or he learned something about appropriate kinds of sports betting or ways to kind of hedge things or think differently. Right. Or some combination of both. But the point is that my guess is that you agentively allowing him with respect to talk to these high status people made him listen to those high status people's advice. Right? He kind of had a choice of who to talk to. It wasn't like forced upon him. He probably got some reasonable advice. And my guess is that those folks, even though they're kind of good at it, probably shared with him some of the downsides, some of their own downsides from dealing with this stuff. And I think that can be kind of powerful. So I think maybe two sigma lucky breaks notwithstanding, across his money. My guess is he learned something. And I bet if you surveyed him he'd be more skeptical about the whole practice of sports betting and at least a little bit more mature about going into it.

[Michael Lewis]

The initial survey was interesting that I asked him after whatever six weeks, what's the next bet? Because he'd been betting frantically and he said I'm done. He said I'm up $4,000 and this is stupid. They're going to take my money if I keep doing it. That my bets, I just. He basically said we just got lucky, got really lucky. And they've made me aware of just how dumb these bets are.

[Laurie Santos]

That's huge, right? Because if you had told him, if you had told him these bets are dumb, don't do it. He would've just, just ignored you, right? Or thought you were. But like that experience kind of got him to do it. I mean, I think this is, you know, not just for a conversation about sports betting, for a broader conversation about parenting. Is that why parenting is hard? Is that we want our kids to learn, but the way we learn as humans is through our own mistakes and reaping the consequences of those mistakes. And that sucks as a parent because you don't want your kid to reap negative consequences. You don't want them to get physically hurt, financially hurt, emotionally hurt, experience just like the sting of failure. That sucks for us as parents. We don't like letting our kids experience that. But ultimately like that is the way that they're gonna learn. They don't learn. We just as humans don't learn as well by being told stuff or forced to do stuff or strong armed into stuff. We learn by experiencing our Own consequences, kind of troubleshooting things for ourselves, sometimes messing up and then learning better strategies. And what you did in this situation with your son is you, like, let him do that, you know, and, you know, to the tune of 5,000 bucks and maybe like, some.

[Michael Lewis]

But he didn't. But he did. He didn't make the naked eye. He didn't make mistakes.

[Laurie Santos]

But if he's walking away saying, I am done, he's learned something that he had not learned when he was making these bets all over the place. Right. And that might be a thing, a conversation to have. Like, you know, you're saying you're done. I'm just curious, like, you know, what was the biggest thing you learned? Like, I'm sure you. You did this so successfully, right? Like, I thought you were going to crash in purpose. Somehow you got this money whether you're lucky or not. What did you learn? Tell me. Right? Like, give him this sort of idea of, like, agent of respect when you have that conversation, to assume that you're going to learn something from him. And that is when we allow our teens to have the most insight.

[Michael Lewis]

My second strategy, which I was going to resort to if he didn't learn from the first strategy, was to offer to be the bookie and say, all right, you see this bet on Fanduela DraftKings, you and all your friends, I'll take the side of every bet you want to make. And I think that is such a good bet to have that I will be on the other side of all your bets going forward. And I don't know how it was a form of ridicule, not directly to my son, but to the audience. This kind of mocking, a little bit of mocking tone may not be the worst way to go about it. Create an environment in which people feel a little foolish doing this.

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah. I think making people aware of the consequences of it. Right. You know, getting in on their like. But. But again, you know, how much do you learn when other people experience schadenfreude on your behalf? Right. Or at your expense, rather.

[Michael Lewis]

I learn a lot. I learn who I want to hang with and who I don't. But it's funny. Yeah, no, it's. That's. This is. This is an interesting question.

[Laurie Santos]

Yeah. I think strategy number one probably worked better than you thought, and it was much more consistent with the social science research on teenage motivation than you might have expected.

[Michael Lewis]

Strategy number two was gonna be a Hail Mary. All right. This was great.

[Laurie Santos]

Awesome. Thanks so much.

[Unknown Speaker]

Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and host of the Happiness Lab here at Pushkin. Check it out. It's a really great listen and full of useful science that you can use to make your life actually better.

[Michael Lewis]

Against the Rules is written and hosted by me, Michael Lewis and produced by Lydia Jean Cott, Kathryn Girardeau and Ariella Markowitz. Our editor is Julia Barton, our engineer is Sarah Bruguer. Against the Rules is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin Podcasts, listen on the iHeartrade radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to listen to ad free and learn about other exclusive offerings, don't forget to sign up for a Pushkin plus subscription at Pushkin FM plus or on our Apple show.

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