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The Science of Motivating Young People
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The Science of Motivating Young People
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- [00:00]
David Yeager
I' ma put you on, nephew. All right, unk.
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Caller/Listener
Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss?
- [00:04]
David Yeager
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
- [00:15]
Caller/Listener
Our state has changed a lot in.
- [00:17]
David Yeager
The last 140 years. We know because Multicare has been here guided by a single making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@ multicare.org listener supported WNYC studios.
- [01:03]
Koosha Navadar
This is all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of this windy and wet Friday with us. I am grateful that you're here. Here's what's on today's show. We'll speak with veteran courtroom sketch artist Jane Rosenberg about her new memoir titled Drawn Testimony. Comedian and writer Josh Gondelman is here to give us a little encouragement with some bespoke pep talk. And cartoonist Dash Shaw joins us to discuss his new graphic memoir titled Blurry. That's the plan. So let's get this started with some science behind how young brains develop. Anyone with young people in their lives will be familiar with the eye roll. It's often the response when an older, ostensibly wiser person takes it upon them to benevolently impart their hard earned wisdom. And what that eye roll is really saying is please stop patronizing me. Whether it's entitled intended or not, young people's brains react differently to rationality and logic. It's not that they operate irrationally. It's that there are things that are much more important to a young mind status and respect, namely that that change the way they understand the world and their place in it. There's a new book we're going to talk about now that div the Science of the Developing Minds of Young People and explores the do's and don'ts of helping them grow into the best versions of themselves. How to impart the wisdom of an adult's lived experience in a way that young people will actually hear, internalize, and maybe learn from without eye rolling. Dr. David Yeager is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co founder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. He's now also the author of 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People, a groundbreaking approach to leading the next generation and Making your own life easier. David, welcome to the show.
- [03:09]
David Yeager
Thanks for having me.
- [03:10]
Koosha Navadar
It's a pleasure to have you here, listeners. We want to have you here, too. Listeners of all ages, we want you in on this conversation. Adults, call in and tell us about a time you were able to motivate a young person, whether that's in school or at work or even in social settings. Why did they need a push from an older person and what made it click for them? And if you're a young person, we can take your calls as well. What motivates you? Is there anyone in your life you'd consider a really effective mentor? What makes you listen to them or tell us? What do you feel you need from the adults in your life? Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also hit us up on social. We're on Instagram and X. We're all of it, wnyc. David, let's talk about this book. Really enjoyed reading it. You've been doing research in this field for a long time. When you thought about condensing what you've learned into a book, why did you choose the idea of motivation, of motivating young people instead of something else like happiness or success or the behavior of young people?
- [04:20]
David Yeager
Yeah, well, a lot of it comes from the reason why I became a scientist. I was a middle school teacher previously and I just felt like the advice I got and the expertise I had wasn't enough. And I left the classroom ultimately to do research on what helps young people get engaged. And I remember distinctly having lesson plans that I thought were great, like they're going to learn so much and they just fell flat. And I know other people have the same problem. So that that one problem has driven me for 15 years to conduct experiments, you know, data testing, hypothesis. And I wanted to put it all in one place in so that people can learn what we've learned and put it to use.
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Koosha Navadar
It was interesting to learn that you were a middle school teacher because I was a high school math teacher myself. And while I was reading the book, a lot of what I experienced, I read through there, whether or not it had to do with education, because these are real general psychological questions that you're attacking here. And these questions you've been studying about youth, they intersect with the neurological and biological questions, or are you also looking not just at neurology and biology, but also at culture, cultural questions that play in this arena? How is that balance struck in your book.
- [05:34]
David Yeager
Well, I think that the reason why we, we call the book 10 to 25 is because there is this social awakening that happens when puberty strikes and the young person's brain starts paying attention to how they're doing socially. And one thing we like to say is that the feeling of pride never feels as good as it does during puberty. And also the feeling of humiliation never feels as bad. And so what we want to do is to say, all right, well, society has mainly been terrified of teenage brains and their crazy hormones throughout all of human history. I mean, you can see like Socrates and Aristotle complaining about it. If you read Aristotle's rhetoric, he trashes young people in a way that could be an op ed in the Wall Street Journal next week. I mean, it really sounds the same. And we need to get out of a world of fearing the adolescent brain and into a world in which we understand how it's working and how to harness it. Like, no one looks at a baby and says, man, that thing complains so much. What an annoying, you know, little human. It's like, no, the baby's hungry. The bank of baby needs to cry. And then we, we find out what it needs and then we give it to that. And we can do the same thing with adolescents specifically by understanding their social lives and their social desires and also how they want to contribute to the world.
- [06:52]
Koosha Navadar
It's interesting to hear you talk about it as like repeated element that comes through generation to generation. What do you think gets in the way of older folks being able to have that change in mindset?
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David Yeager
Well, there's a great paper that came out in Nature last year with Dan Gilbert and Mastroianni, two social psychologists at Harvard wrote this paper on how there's this perception of moral decline that every generation thinks the next generation is, has lost their moral compass. And because every generation thinks that, then older generations tend to think that society is going to hell in a handbasket because all they see is a bunch of like selfish, short sighted, wimpy, entitled idiots coming down the line. And there's, there's, I think, a tendency to forget that adults were like them. I mean, if you get, if you get a bunch of 50 year olds in a room that went to high school together, they're going to mainly tell stories about dumb things they did in high school. But then if you ask them about their kids, they're going to be like, oh, kids these days. And it's like the same stuff. And so we need to get out of a world of thinking that each generation is totally unique. Obviously, each generation is responding to different cultural advances and different technological advances, but the basic neural architecture of the human brain hasn't changed for hundreds of thousands of years. And so we need to then just stop having this problem where we can't reach them and start figuring out how to connect with them and make our own lives easier in the process.
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Koosha Navadar
Does your experience as a middle school teacher inform the way that you approach research today? I'm sure it does. What are some ways. What are some things that you learned in the classroom that's, well, like a.
- [08:30]
David Yeager
Disproportionate amount of, let's say, parenting advice is created by someone in a library surrounded by books, you know, in a quiet environment. It's not when the mailman's at the door and the macaroni is. Is over cooking and the kids are fighting over something ridiculous, and you're late for work or whatever it is you're doing. And what I wanted to do was to say, well, look, when I was a middle school teacher, about half of what happens is just completely ridiculous and has no place in a professional setting. And you just can't have this perfect version of the world. It's never going to be like that. And, you know, as a parent of four kids, that's what it's like, too. So I wanted to write a book that, frankly, I would have wanted to read when I was a teacher and had no time. And I wanted to write a book that I need to read right now as a maybe mediocre parent of four kids, where, like, there's just the challenges that come with you are so complex. And so I think that the. My experience makes it so that, you know, I'm not writing a book that's the equivalent of a diet book that says, just cut out all chocolate and carbs. Like, that's ridiculous advice. Like, that's not the kind of thing I'm saying. It's more like, what do the great parents, leaders, mentors, coaches, et cetera, what do they do? And I found them, and I followed them for years, and I have summarized their secrets, and I did it because I want to know the answers as well.
- [10:00]
Koosha Navadar
We're talking to David Yeager, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and The author of 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People. We're taking your calls. If you have an experience as an adult where you were successful in motivating somebody who is younger than you, give us a call. If you are Younger. And you want to talk about what motivates you or what doesn't, give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. Let's go to a caller, Ari in Brooklyn. Hey, Ari, welcome to the show.
- [10:31]
Caller/Listener
Hi. Thank you for having me. So I'll start with this. I'd like to say allowing kids to make decisions on their own versus telling them what to do each step of the way allows them to have agency, and I think it encourages them to make wiser choices. My parents allowed us to make our own decisions for the most part. Growing up in a divorced household, you know, we had a lot of free time on our hands, and, you know, we learned that we had to deal with the consequences or the benefits that came with whatever decision we made. So for me, my motivation has always been. I've always been intrinsically motivated to seek advice from, you know, more wise people. So when it comes to my parents, I have, you know, four of them total now, including my step parents. And, you know, for the most part, I make my own decisions. And if I get stuck or need some advice, you know, I feel I can go for them for help, which is a lot of advice, and it's helpful for me. So I've never had too much trouble looking up to the older generations for help.
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Koosha Navadar
Ari, thank you so much for that call. Never had too much trouble looking up to older generations for advice. Making own decisions seems to be something important to Ari. Makes me think about something that you talk about in the book, David, which is kind of understanding what kids, what adolescents really need. And you equate, like you said before, the needs of a young person to kind of infants needing the food or sleep. For you, the needs of young people is about respect. Can you unpack what you mean when you refer to respect or status as a, quote, need for teens?
- [12:15]
David Yeager
Yeah, I mean, it's really the experience of being treated like a full human who has something to contribute to society or culture or the group. You think about in our evolutionary history, children, you know, were taken care of by the grownups. And at some point, there's a period where the group isn't taking care of you. You need to start adding to the group, whether it's bringing food or safety or fighting or whatever it is. And adolescence is that period of taking on an adult, like, role. And what a lot of people have argued is that the reason why there's a drive for status and respect is because we want. We want young people to want to take on that responsibility. And learn what it means to be a good contributor to the group in our society. Now it's easy to trivialize status and think of it as the number of likes you get or the shares you get on your social media. It's bigger than that, though. It's really the idea that you are a person of worth who can contribute. And then that goes to this idea of like, can you make your own decisions? And so young people are exquisitely attuned to when they think they should be able to make a certain decision. But adults don't think they're ready yet. There's a great study from the 1990s that looked at the disparity between when young people thought they were ready for a given. Right. And when adults thought they were. So for example, in the study, one of the examples is writing an editorial that's critical of your principal. So when do adults think kids should have that kind of voice? The answer is around 10th grade. When do kids think they should have it? Around seventh grade. So imagine that kind of dilemmas multiplied across, you know, hundreds. What you see in general is there are years where there's a gap between the status young people want to have and the status that adults are affording them.
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Koosha Navadar
Yeah, about a four year predicament. Four year gap that you're talking about there, right?
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David Yeager
Yeah, for a lot of things it's like four year difference. And fundamentally the reason why a lot of adults don't grant that status is because they just don't think young people are very competent. And that goes down to a big point I make in the book, that there's a societal neurobiological incompetence belief we call it, which is the idea that young people's brains are just not mature enough. They can't think logically and they're overtaken by irrational emotional parts of the brain. And in fact, young people are very good at goal directed behavior and planning. They do it all the time. For instance, when they try to sneak out of the house to go to a party, they plan like they're a general in the European theater. Right. Of World War II. But the problem is they're not deploying their logical reasoning for the kinds of things that adults want them to spend to use it on. And so the trick is to not think of them as incompetent, but just motivated by different stuff. And therefore we need to figure out how to align or frame behaviors that are in their long term best interest so they match that need with status and respect.
- [15:10]
Koosha Navadar
Let's go to Lisa in Manhattan. Hey, Lisa. Welcome to the show.
- [15:15]
Caller/Listener
Oh, hi. Thank you so much. Can you hear me okay?
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Koosha Navadar
Yeah. Hi.
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Caller/Listener
Oh, hi. So, yes, I'm the mother of three young adult children who were once teenagers. And I'm also an educator. And one of my epiphanies raising teenagers was in realizing that sometimes they just want to vent to parents and they aren't asking for advice. So I adopted this manner where if one of them were venting, I would say, that's rough. That sounds rough. Are you interested in my opinion on this? And you kind of could have bowled them over with a feather because they were just so shocked to be asked rather than avalanched with unsolicited advice, which I used to do unsuccessfully. And so I think so sometimes they would say, wow, I am interested in your opinion. And other times they'd say, no, thanks. But either way, I felt that they were grateful for the respect shown to them for having been asked.
- [16:21]
Koosha Navadar
Lisa, thank you so much for that call. That idea of seeing the person that is young as a person first is kind of what I hear from you, Lisa. We're talking to David Yeager about his new book, 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People. We have to take a quick break. When we get back, diving into some more of the strategies, maybe like we heard from Lisa, and definitely taking some more calls. Stay with us. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Koosha Navadar in for Allison Today, and we're talking to David Yeager, a professor of psychology who is also the author of 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People, a groundbreaking approach to leading the next generation and making your own life easier. And, folks, we're taking your calls, no matter what age you are, about the motivation and the ways that young people can be motivated. Give us a call. Send us a text. We're at 212-433-969. That's 212433, WNYC. We have a text here I'd love to read. It says, hi, young person here. Everything is new and scary, and it's just fine that we're in a time where there's no precedent anymore politically, socially. It would be super helpful to hear from older people that everything is new and that's okay. Change does not equate to harm. Thank you so much for that text. A reason why I thought that text was super important was a main part of your book, David, which is this idea of being a mentor. And there are types of adult youth relationships that you identify from previous work in the field. There's the enforcer, the protector and the mentor. And it's about holding young people to higher or lower standards between those three classifications. Can you talk a little bit about those classifications? Break down what it looks like in practice to be a mentor?
- [18:16]
David Yeager
Yeah, I think that when I looked around at experts who did a great job motivating and inspiring young people, I noticed they all did something in common. They all had very high standards. So they were demanding in many ways, but they were very supportive so that the young person could meet those high standards. I call that a mentor mindset, which is very simply the idea that you're going to align your resources, whether it's time or material or expertise, with the long term well being of the young person. Now, the opposite of that is first something I call an enforcer mindset. And that's the idea of having very high standards but very low support. So the advantage of the reason why people are enforcers is because they think, look, young people aren't great at making decisions. They need someone to do it for them and they need to be controlled. Really, they're problems that need to be managed and maintained. The issue with the enforcer is it comes across really disrespectfully that you're just demanding this impossible list of things and the young person can't possibly live up to expectations. The other opposite is what I call a protector mindset. This is the idea of having very low standards because usually you want to protect the young person from distress or losing confidence. But you're very nice and friendly and supportive and the protector you see a lot. That's kind of a helicopter parenting situation as well. And it comes from a good place. You care about the young person, you want them to do well. But again, it comes fundamentally from a belief the young person is incompetent. If you don't think they can do anything, then you lower standards. The mentor fundamentally comes from the idea that young people can accomplish important things. They can make contributions if they have the right support. And we find that that comes across as very respectful to young people because they're being taken seriously. But also it makes them more hopeful and optimistic for the future because it feels like they're getting skills that they can use to solve the problems they're going to face in the future.
- [20:15]
Koosha Navadar
So it really is about seeing the person as one, a whole person, and kind of a benefit of the doubt situation, it sounds like, of believing, having faith in the person's ability to make decisions. Is that fair?
- [20:27]
David Yeager
Yeah. So make a concrete example. I followed America's greatest high school physics teacher. His name is Sergio Estrada. He's in El Paso. And a student would be confused, and they would say, is this right? He wouldn't answer the question. He wouldn't be like, yes, that's right, or no, that's wrong. He'd be like, well, what do you think? And the student oftentimes doesn't like that. They're like, well, I asked you if it was right, so I want to know the answer to this question. And he makes them puzzle with it. And he's like, all right, well, here's what you have so far. And tell me, why did you have this? Why did you have this? And he goes down, down, down until he figures out the part that they do have, right? And then he builds back up with questions. Now, that kind of takes a while and. And students don't like interrogating their thinking at first, but by the end, it's amazing. I mean, 2% of his kids are college ready when they walk into his class. And 95% pass college physics every single year. He's the single greatest value added teacher that we found.
- [21:27]
Koosha Navadar
So it is that kind of Socratic method of leading them along, letting them discover on their own. And speaking of educators, we've got Charlotte in Jersey City, who I believe has a story about your high school math teacher. Is that right, Charlotte?
- [21:42]
Caller/Listener
Yes.
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Caller Charlotte/Christopher
I'm 70 years old and one of the few teachers I remember from high school because it was a rather turbulent era when I was there, and I wasn't a great learner. But Mr. Yeager, my math teacher, every Friday, I think it was probably sophomore, junior year, would say, okay, put down your books. We're just going to talk about what the hell is going on. And he would just let us go, and he'd answer appropriately, I'm sure, but he just sort of let us ask him questions, ask each other questions. And so we went to math class because we knew we would be rewarded on Friday with a wide open discussion.
- [22:23]
Koosha Navadar
And he kind of met you at eye level there, right, Charlotte? He met you at eye level?
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Caller Charlotte/Christopher
Yeah, totally. Sitting on his desk, you know, not judging us, just. Just giving us free reign, you know, I'm sure he put some restrictions on us just for appropriateness, but all I remember is just loving those Fridays.
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Koosha Navadar
Charlotte, thank you so much for that call. We really appreciate that personal anecdote. Let's go to Christopher in Piscataway, New Jersey. Christopher, welcome to the show.
- [22:51]
Caller Charlotte/Christopher
Hi, thank you. I am a high school advanced placement history teacher, American. And we have a program at my school that gives reward tickets for behavior that I would consider standard helping someone else without being asked. And I would consider these extrinsic reward programs. And my question really is for the professor, do these extrinsically reward based programs, do those motivations ever become intrinsic? And as I was listening to the previous caller, it does sound like that can happen. But I would just like the professor's opinion. And by the way, as I was listening, I was driving myself to Barnes and Noble to get this book if it's going to be there.
- [23:42]
Koosha Navadar
Oh, wonderful. Well, that's probably great news for David to hear. Christopher, thank you so much for that question. And just to link that to another text that we got that I think matches David's question pretty well. It's what does the science tell us about motivating kids with financial incentives like allowance? So kind of putting all of those pieces together there. And I'm sorry, it was Christopher that was that caller. Sorry about that.
- [24:05]
David Yeager
Great. This is, this is like this class, this question comes up every semester. I teach a class on behavioral science. So I'm glad it was asked here. And I, for a long time psychologists debated and they thought, look, any extrinsic reward is going to crowd out or undermine your intrinsic motivation. So the, the classic recommendation was don't incentivize someone for something they're already going to do and in part because you can make them lose their intrinsic motivation. And that's still mostly true. But what that doesn't tell you how to do is how to motivate someone to do something that they don't already want to do. And a lot of times getting someone started with a better behavior or a better habit, you kind of have to use more, I don't know, extrinsic or like, kind of forceful, like motives. So for instance, I'm a baseball coach and I coached 10, 11, 12 year olds how to hit. And sometimes they just don't want to come to practice. Now after they come to a lesson, a hitting lesson with me, they always feel good. They're like, oh, I got a lot better. But getting them there sometimes is hard. And I don't mind buying pizza or Snickers or can't, you know, I'm happy bribing them to get them there as long as once they get there, they like it for the right reason, which is that they're improving, they're growing, they're feeling confident, they feel good. About themselves. And ultimately what's going to make them come back later is that stuff where they feel good about themselves. So in the case of incentives for behavior they should already be doing, you know, I think there's a place for it. If some kids are out there being kind and friendly and helping others and nobody's noticing it, and it's like a tree fell in the woods and they feel like suckers and for being so kind and friendly. And so sometimes the school has an incentive program. It makes sense to just recognize things, but I don't really think you need a whole token economy to do this. I think just the acclamation or the, the acclaim and the pride that you get from doing something impressive in the eyes of someone who's hard to impress, that kind of stuff is all you need. You don't, I don't think you need to tie incentives to it.
- [26:16]
Koosha Navadar
So there is a place for it. Christopher, we hope that gives you some information as you're driving to Barnes and Noble. And thank you again for your call. There's a text here I'd love to read. It says, hello, I'm a young person and child of immigrants born in the US I go to my parents for certain types of advice, but not for most things. They were brought up in a very different culture with different values and economic circumstances. I don't think that they have enough experience in American life to resolve the problems that I face. And their unsolicited advice can come off as judgmental or misinformed. It's a shame because they're good parents and we generally have a positive relationship. That's such a valuable text because there are so many different elements of, I think, taking on that mentorship model as you're talking about. David, in your experience, how do you think through these kinds of considerations that folks have in their full identity and relationship with people older than them?
- [27:09]
David Yeager
Yeah, first of all, that's just a very wise and profound thing that young person is saying. And I'm just in awe of that kind of self awareness. I think that that a lot of scholars who write about adolescence talk about it being a period where you're deciding which are the things that you keep to yourself, to yourselves, and which are the things you bring to the adult. For a long time, people thought, oh, all of a sudden, when puberty strikes, teenagers never talk to their parents. There have been a lot of studies. Now they do. They come to their parents, especially for the most critical issues. But there is a negotiation of, of where do my parents have expertise or not. And that's the profound part about maturity. When you're a child, you assume your parents have all the expertise, so you ask them for input on everything. As you grow older, you start differentiating based on your assessments of their expertise. So I'm in my 40s. There are certain, maybe like retirement decisions I ask my mom about. Still to this day, I don't ask her for advice about, I don't know, technology or her thoughts on the stock market or whatever. And so you what it means to be an adult is to differentiate where you look for advice. I would say not only does this young person have this issue, but I see this a lot with adult children moving home after college. And there's this idea that parents worry maybe this kid is a failure to launch in some ways and therefore I need to control them and make a bunch of decisions for them. You should do that training. You should get that job. And that kind of stuff doesn't really go over well. But just because the young person doesn't want you to be telling them everything to do, doesn't mean that they don't want your advice. So I would say just this other case of parents of kids coming home after college, doing more of what that great math teacher did, having honest, open discussions, talking to young people as peers. That kind of status and respect will then cause the young person to come for advice more. And then I promise you parents, you will get your say in what they do. If you make it a respectful two way conversation, we'll have to put a.
- [29:17]
Koosha Navadar
Pin in it there. It's such a wonderful discussion. We see all of the calls and texts that are coming in. Wish we had more time. Maybe we can put this discussion again in the future. For now, I want to say thanks. David Yeager, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the co founder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. New book out, it's called 10 to 25 the science of Motivating Young People. David, thank you so much.
- [29:41]
David Yeager
Thanks for having me. I'mma put you on, Nephew. All right. Un.
- [29:46]
Caller/Listener
Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss?
- [29:48]
David Yeager
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.