Lian Young (4:38)

Thanks so much. It's good to be here. Shankar.

Shankar Vedantam (4:40)

I want to start with a very simple example that shows how important it is for us to read what's happening in the minds of other people. In the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams, the characters Daniel and Miranda have split up, and Daniel comes up with this unconventional way to win Miranda back. He returns to the house in disguise as Mrs. Doubtfire, an elderly widow who seeks the role of nanny and housekeeper. Now he quickly wins the trust of the family. Very soon, Miranda is asking Mrs. Doubtfire for life advice, including whether to go on a date with a man she's just met.

Lian Young (5:17)

Mrs. Doubtfire, may I ask you a question?

Unknown (5:20)

Oh, sir.

Lian Young (5:22)

How long after Mr. Doubtfire passed away, Winston, did you feel any desire?

Shankar Vedantam (5:29)

Never.

Lian Young (5:30)

Never.

Shankar Vedantam (5:31)

Never again.

Lian Young (5:32)

Never again.

Unknown (5:33)

Once the father of your children is out of the picture, the only solution is total and lifelong celibacy.

Shankar Vedantam (5:41)

Yes. So, Leanne, if we lack the capacity to read what was happening inside the minds of Daniel and Miranda, how would that change how we understood this scene?

Lian Young (5:52)

Well, I think we wouldn't be able to appreciate the humor and the irony in that scene where Daniel is essentially, he knows what is going on with his wife and he is trying to get his wife to not date this other man. And of course, we know that the wife doesn't know Daniel's true identity as Daniel. She thinks that he is this housekeeper, and we know that she doesn't know. And so there's this very sort of layered understanding that we need to have as the audience to find the scene funny. We can't find it funny without realizing that she doesn't know what he knows and who he is.

Shankar Vedantam (6:36)

Right. So we're able to read in some ways that he has an agenda here because he wants to keep his wife from dating other men. And we also understand that she doesn't know what's going on. But what's interesting to me, Lian, is that we intuit all of this effortlessly. No one sits down as they're watching the movie and actually says to themselves, all right, this is who. What's going through his head? This is what's going through her head. It's the fact we're able to take it in so effortlessly that allows us to understand the scene.

Lian Young (7:02)

Yeah. So we're able to. And I remember watching this movie as a child, who, of course, hadn't had the benefit of studying how theory of mind works in the brains of children and adults, and I still found it very funny. I knew exactly what was happening, who was misunderstanding, who knew what other people didn't know, and so on in order to be able to enjoy the scene and really the entire movie.

Shankar Vedantam (7:28)

So you used a term just now, theory of mind. It's a term that you and other researchers have to describe our capacity to understand what is happening in the minds of other people. Can you explain what that term means to me?

Lian Young (7:41)

Yes. So I should say that many psychologists and neuroscientists use a number of different terms. Theory of mind is one of those terms, and that describes the theory that we all have ordinary people have about other people's minds. And what I mean by that is how we understand that other people have thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions, mental states in general. And so other terms that have been used for this general cognitive capacity include mental state, reasoning, mentalizing, reasoning about intentions, and so on.

Shankar Vedantam (8:17)

And again, the fact that we do it so effortlessly, you know, many of us don't even realize that we're doing it. Many of us don't realize that if we're having a conversation and we were not able to intuit what was happening in someone else's mind. Really difficult to have a conversation.

Lian Young (8:32)

Exactly. Even as you and I are having this conversation, Shankar, I'm trying to figure out what it is that you want to know and how to explain the term theory of mine in a way that will be accessible, and so on. And sometimes we take different cues from people as we're having that conversation, whether they're nodding their heads, whether they're pausing, whether they look confused, and so on. And so we take in all of that information to figure out what people are thinking and how they're responding to the information that we're giving them.

Shankar Vedantam (9:05)

Nearly all the world's greatest stories ask you to exercise theory of mind to inhabit the minds of other people. Think of books such as Kazuo Ishiguro's the Remains of the Day, or TV shows such as Breaking Bad or musicals like Hamilton.

Lian Young (9:23)

I think it's really important that we're able to take the perspective of different characters. When we're watching movies, watching TV shows, reading books, and often as the reader, as the viewer, we have a sort of different, in some cases, omniscient perspective. We can see the scene unfolding in a way that characters within the scene cannot. And so, on one level, we understand what's going on in a way that characters within the story do not. And we also are able to not just get into the minds of characters, but get into the hearts of characters as well. So we know how they're feeling and how they're reacting and responding in ways that maybe other characters in the story don't.

Shankar Vedantam (10:07)

So psychologists have found different ways to measure this ability and to test how it develops in small children. What do they find? Leanne, is this a skill we are born with at birth, or is it something that develops over time?

Lian Young (10:20)

This is a little bit controversial in the field, but I think what is generally recognized in the field is that at least children's capacity for explicit theory of mind, being able to reason and verbalize answers to theory of mind tasks. That ability emerges between the ages of 3 and 5 years. Psychologists are able to administer batteries of theory of mind tasks to young children to figure out when exactly it is that individual children are able to think about other agents in the world as having minds that are maybe separate from the reality of a situation.

Shankar Vedantam (11:01)

Some of these tests create artificial situations where one character knows more than another. Daniel, in Mrs. Doubtfire, understands the subterfuge he is perpetrating. Miranda does not. The tests evaluate whether children can keep track of all the different perspectives in the minds of different characters. That one person has a belief that's true, for example, and. And another has a belief that's false.

Lian Young (11:27)

So one example of a false belief task would be the Sally Ann task, in which you have two puppets, Sally and Ann. Sally is playing with a ball, and then she takes the ball and puts it away in a basket. She leaves the room. Ann, another puppet comes in and moves the ball to a different location. And then children are asked, when Sally comes back into the room, where does she think her ball is?

Unknown (11:52)

Did Sally see Ann move the block.

Lian Young (11:56)

Because she was outside swinging?

Unknown (11:59)

That's right.

Lian Young (12:00)

She didn't see. So when Sally comes back in, where will she think the block is? In there.

Unknown (12:09)

But it's not.

Lian Young (12:10)

It's in there. So she'll think it's in the ball. And three year old children will tend to say that she thinks the ball is where it really is, even though she's not supposed to know that Ann came in and moved her ball. Whereas older children, by the time children five, they know that Sally has a false belief about where that ball is.

Shankar Vedantam (12:31)

Right. So once Ann moves the ball, small children deduce or believe that Sally must somehow intuitively also know that the ball has been moved to the new location. Whereas older children realize no, Sally in fact does not have the same mind as Ann. And what Ann knows is not what Sally knows. Sally knows only what she knows. And as far as she knows, the ball is in the old location. So when she returns to the room, she's going to guess that that's where it still is.

Lian Young (12:56)

Why do you think she'll think that she put it there? Yes, that's exactly right. So younger children, three year old children, don't have a concept that people could have beliefs in their heads that depart from the reality of the world, the facts of the situation.

Shankar Vedantam (13:13)

So we've looked at a couple of humorous examples of how theory of mind operates, but I want to stress again this capacity we have to intuit what's happening in the minds of other. This is a skill that we use all the time. Can you talk a moment, Leanne, about what would happen if we lack this skill? Are there people, in fact, who do not have the skill as they move through life?

Lian Young (13:34)

Yeah, this is in a uniform capacity that we see the same in all people across all situations. It can be dependent on the individual, it can be dependent on the context, even in healthy, typical populations. We've also looked at specific patient populations as well, including patients with specific brain damage. We've looked at prison inmates with a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, and we've looked at high functioning adults with autism. And so we've seen sort of a range of behavioral patterns across different populations of people in terms of how they use and how they deploy theory of mind capacities for moral judgments.

Shankar Vedantam (14:23)

In particular, Lian and others have found that people who have a difficult time intuiting what is going on in the minds of other people find themselves hamstrung as they go through life. They can be awkward in interpersonal settings. They can fail to read the room in a meeting. They may even demonstrate reduced empathy for others moving through the world without an understanding that other minds are different than your own, that they have different intentions, desires, and hopes. This is like playing music without a sense of rhythm. You find yourself constantly out of sync with your fellow musicians.

Lian Young (14:59)

I mean, we've all been in a situation where a joke falls flat because the person who's telling the joke isn't able to appropriately assess the mood in the space or what other people know or don't know, and so on. And so certainly there are many cases, and then there are sort of the opposite cases where we really admire individuals for having a keen sense of what other people are thinking and feeling and able to shape a conversation or discussion in that way.

Shankar Vedantam (15:27)

You know, I'm reminded of the work of the psychologist E. Tory Higgins, who's done some work looking at politicians who are very skilled at reading a room. He describes this phenomenon called audience tuning, where in some ways the politicians are changing what they say in order to be best received by the people in the room. Room. They're in some ways manipulating the people in the room, but they're also being manipulated by the people in the room so that what they say aligns with the audience in the room. And it's interesting. So theory of mind is not just, I suppose, on an interpersonal level, it can also happen at a group setting where we intuit how a group of people is feeling or feeling toward us.

Lian Young (16:07)

Yeah, you're right. And so it can be very complicated trying to figure out how theory of mind plays out in any given situation. You know, in my lab, when I'm particularly on Zoom, it can be a lot harder to read the room, if you will, figure out, you know, as a group how people are doing and how to shape that space.

Shankar Vedantam (16:31)

Leanne and other researchers have tried to understand how the physical brain produces the superpower. Surprisingly, they found a specific region of the brain plays a crucial role. They've even found you can temporarily disrupt this brain region and profoundly change the ways people think and act. That's when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantan. Support for hidden brain comes from LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs. They make it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new feature helps you write job descriptions and quickly reach the right candidates with detailed insights. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com HB that's LinkedIn.com HB to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Abbott. Let's talk about a small thing that can make a big difference if you have diabetes. The Freestyle Libre 3 sensor. The sensor gives you real time glucose readings so you can see the impact of every meal and activity to make better choices. This is progress. You can try the sensor at FreestyleLibre US. Terms and conditions apply for prescription only. Safety info found @freestylelibre us. This is hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. To navigate our social worlds, we rely on something psychologists call theory of mind. It's our ability to guess the intentions, desires and motivations of other people. When your co worker tells you she's thrilled it's Monday, you know that sarcasm because you unconsciously pick up the intention behind her words. But as amazing as our social antennae can be, they can also sometimes make mistakes. We can misread other people's intentions. Maybe your co worker really does. Like Mondays. Psychologist and neuroscientist Leanne Young studies how our brains read intention, both the intentions of others and of ourselves, especially when it comes to our moral judgments. Leanne, you run experiments where you test how volunteers react to a story about a woman who accidentally poisoned her friend. Can you tell me the setup of the experiment and describe the scenario in more detail?

Lian Young (19:38)

Yes, absolutely. So we usually have our subjects read stories that we write about other people who are performing actions that have effects on other people in the scenario. So in one story, we have a person named Grace who puts some powder into a coworker's coffee. And in one scenario, she thinks the powder is sugar, but the powder turns out to be poison and she ends up poisoning her friend. So that's a version of the scenario in which someone causes harm to someone else by accident because of a false belief. In another version of the story, Grace puts powder into her coworker's coffee. She thinks the powder is poison, but it turns out to be sugar. So that's a situation in which she has a harmful intention, but no harm is done. So in these two cases, there is a conflict between the intention of the agent and the outcome of the agent's action. And so we can ask our volunteer participants for their moral judgments of both the person, the agent performing the action, and also the action itself, whether this action is morally permissible or morally forbidden. And using these kinds of scenarios and these kinds of moral judgment scales, we can get a sense for the extent to which different people rely on information about intentions to make their moral judgments. So you and I, for instance, could have very different views about how bad it is to accidentally poison a co worker. And sort of, depending on the circumstances, there could be a situation in which there's just no way she could have known. Maybe somebody swapped the sugar and the poison and she had the best of intentions. And so those are cases where there's a lot of flexibility for individual variation in moral judgments. We can apply that same reasoning to the case of a failed attempt to cause harm, too. Some people might focus more on the neutral outcome, the fact that nothing bad happened at all, whereas other folks might focus a lot more on the fact that this person just tried to poison their co worker. And that's very, very bad.

Shankar Vedantam (22:05)

Yeah, as I was listening to those scenarios, I would have said that the person who didn't mean to harm her friend but accidentally caused harm is, in fact, innocent, but the person who didn't cause harm when she intended to cause harm was in fact culpable, that this was an act of attempted murder. You had the insight to study not just how people reach different conclusions, but how their brains were operating as they reached these different moral judgments. Can you tell me about those studies and what you found, Leanne?

Lian Young (22:35)

So we've run a number of studies now using brain imaging techniques to look at how people's brains are responding as they're making moral judgments of these kinds of cases. What we found in one study was that a brain region called the right temporoparietal junction, which is right above and behind your right ear, processes information about people's intentions. What we found was that the more an individual's right temporoparietal junction responds as they are making these moral judgments, the more they are using information about innocent intentions to let the person who caused harm by accident off the hook. And so we see this correlation between brain activity in this region that tracks intention information and the moral judgments that people are making of accidental harms.

Shankar Vedantam (23:30)

So you could, of course, say that merely because a brain region appears active, you don't necessarily know that it's actually connected to the outcome and behavior that you're seeing, but you've gone A step further, to actually test whether this brain region is, in fact implicated in understanding the intentions of others. Tell me how you've done this, Leanne.

Lian Young (23:50)

In addition to using brain imaging, which helps us to track what brains are doing as people are making moral judgments, we've also used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS for short, to temporarily disrupt activity in this particular brain region, the right temporoparidal junction, to see what effect that has on the moral judgments that people make. And so when we temporarily disrupt activity in this brain region, we see that people's moral judgments rely less on information about intentions in these kinds of cases that we've been talking about. So to give you an example, if you are reading a story about somebody who tries to poison their friend, but fails to do so because they mistook the substance for poison, but it was, in fact, sugar, if I am disrupting activity in your right temporal parietal junction, you will be more likely to say that that is more okay than if I didn't disrupt activity in your right temporal parietal junction.

Shankar Vedantam (24:52)

That is actually somewhat disturbing, isn't it? The idea that you disrupt a small portion of my brain and something that I think of as core to myself, you know, how I think of myself as being a moral person can be altered by small changes in neurochemistry.

Lian Young (25:08)

I think a lot of us share the intuition that is confirmed by recent empirical work in psychology that how we think about moral situations or moral beliefs are really central to what we consider to be our identity. We take our moral identity as central to our self concept. And so to think that interventions, scientific interventions, can alter our moral judgments is in some ways upsetting. That said, as neuroscientists, we've assumed all along that our moral judgments have some place in the brain. And so it stands to reason that when you disrupt activity in people's brains, that you will be disrupting the kinds of judgments that we'll be making, too, including moral judgments. And there is so much work on the unconscious influences on behavior. And so whether someone is in a rush to get somewhere can change or impact the likelihood of their stopping to give money to a homeless person. And so I think that there are environmental influences, there are cultural differences in the degree to which people rely on intention information. And so in many ways, I'm not sure that I would be more upset by the fact that smelling fresh cookies is going to impact my behavior, or somebody applying transcranial magnetic stimulation to my brain is going to impact my behavior or my decision making.

Shankar Vedantam (26:46)

So much of our moral reasoning depends on our ability to consider the intentions of other people. When someone makes a mistake but we see they didn't mean to do it, we usually are less harsh with them. This is why kids say it was an accident. But as Leanne points out, a number of factors can change how and whether we are willing to consider the intentions of a wrongdoer. When someone steps on your toe in the hallway, you automatically assume they didn't mean to do it. Your mind gravitates to an innocent explanation. But other situations work the opposite way. They make it nearly impossible for us to think about the intentions behind an outcome. Consider this disturbing news story out of Chicago at 6:00. An off duty Chicago police officer now.

Lian Young (27:33)

Sided with hitting and killing a nine.

Shankar Vedantam (27:35)

Year old boy riding his bike in West Rogers Park. Hershel Weinberger died Wednesday night after a.

Lian Young (27:40)

Pickup truck hit him in the crosswalk.

Shankar Vedantam (27:42)

At Sacramento and chase right by his house.

Lian Young (27:45)

The driver who stayed at the scene was the that off duty police officer. He's been cited.

Shankar Vedantam (27:49)

Now when I hear this I find it really difficult to think about whether the police officer meant to do any harm. A nine year old child is dead. The intentions of the driver seem irrelevant. And when I hear as actually happened in this case, that the police officer was given a traffic citation rather than a criminal charge, I feel outraged. But here's the thing. If the cop had run a stop sign and that was the end of it, do I think he should be criminally charged? That would be absurd. So the same actions with the same intentions caused my mind to reach for very different conclusions.

Lian Young (28:26)

There is this terrible tension between the fact that nobody meant any harm, nobody meant to kill anyone, and the fact that this nine year old boy died. And to take it a step further, you could think of a case in which he hadn't run a stop sign. Maybe he was just driving and the child came out of nowhere. I think we would still have the intuition that if you caused that event to happen, if you caused that bad outcome, then there is a way in which you are causally responsible for something very bad that you didn't know that you would be doing and maybe could not have prevented. And so it's really tricky to figure out how to handle that kind of case. As you point out, I think different people have different responses to what happened and what should be done and how to prevent that from happening again.

Shankar Vedantam (29:18)

There are other situations where our ability to think about intentions gets disabled. If we hear that someone has knowingly committed incest with A sibling, you might not stop to think about whether both siblings consented or that no one else was affected. The violation of the taboo. The outcome is all that matters.

Lian Young (29:37)

And often in these cases, we downplay intent, information. It doesn't matter that you didn't know. The fact that you did it is bad enough. And so that happens for, again, as I mentioned, violations related to food and sex. And those are cases in which once you are sort of defiled, there's very little that you can do to get clean again. And there's very little that you could say to sort of justify or mitigate the behavior, including that you didn't know or that it wasn't done on purpose.

Shankar Vedantam (30:16)

I want to talk a moment, Leanne, about how our understanding of events changes as our understanding of the intentions behind those events changes. On September 11, 2001, when the first plane hit the World Trade center tower, no one knew what was happening. Many news reports, in fact, speculated it might have been some kind of accident. But when the second plane hit, it changed the way people understood what was happening. The second plane made it clear the attacks were intentional.

Lian Young (30:45)

Yeah, exactly. So whether we interpret an event as just a natural disaster or technical malfunction or as a coordinated planned attack can really affect the way that we respond to those events. And so when we hear about something like that, I think first we ask ourselves or read the news to find out what happened, and then we want to know why and who, if relevant. And so we ask those kinds of questions in that order. And as you say, our answers to those questions really help shape our understanding of an event as either misfortune or we are trying to figure out who did it and why and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

Shankar Vedantam (31:40)

So do you think this is why, in some ways we have this capacity in our heads in the first place? I remember on 9 11, I was working in the newsroom of the Washington Post, and once we knew that that two planes had hit the World Trade center and a third plane had hit the Pentagon, it was clear that we were under attack. At which point it prompted us to say, okay, what should we do? Could we be under attack? Is there some danger that's facing us? And of course, if our reading of the events had been different, if we had said, all right, this was an isolated accident, it was just a plane that basically lost control and happened to fly into the World Trade center building, our response to the incident would be entirely different. We would say, okay, we need to have better flight security measures, better pilot training. So our responses to the events are very different as we read the intentions behind those events. And I'm wondering, do you think this might be partly why our brains come with this capacity to read intentions, because as we read intentions, it tells us how to respond to the world?

Lian Young (32:39)

Absolutely. I think our ability to read intentions tells us how to evaluate the events around us, how to understand them, how to predict what's going to happen in the future, and how to interact with people in the present. And so all of that depends on our ability to figure out intentions and distinguish intentional events from accidental events. This happens in a lot of news events that we read. When we read about a building collapsing, we think, you know, what happened and how can we prevent that from happening in. In the future? And again, our answers to those questions depend on whether that happened on purpose, whether someone caused it, or whether it was an earthquake, for instance. And so I think your question about why it is that we have this capacity is a really important one. And I think we don't have an answer to that question yet as psychologists, in part because there are so many reasons why that capacity for theory of mind could be important. We need to think about other people's minds in order to figure out whom to learn from, who's the right expert in a particular domain. We need to know about people's intentions, to figure out who our friends are, who to avoid, whom to punish, whether to punish. And we need to read people's intentions in any ordinary interaction, like having a conversation and figuring out what to say and how to respond.

Shankar Vedantam (34:15)

When we come back. The ability we have to read other people's minds can be a superpower. But this superpower can fail us sometimes with terrible consequences. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Unknown (34:38)

Hey, have you met Allmodern?

Lian Young (34:40)

Allmodern brings you the best of modern.

Shankar Vedantam (34:43)

Furniture and decor all in one place. And April 26th through 28th, you'll save up to 70% during their big sale of the year. Don't miss deals on sofas, outdoor furniture and more. All on sale at All Modern. Then get them delivered fast and free. Zero shipping fees and zero stress. That's modern made simple. Get an early look online before the sale starts April 26th.

Unknown (35:06)

Then shop@allmodern.com.

Shankar Vedantam (35:11)

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Peloton. Everyone has a reason to change. Growing old, heartbreak. A fresh start. The road through life's biggest moments can feel uncertain and even endless. But along the way, something unexpected happens. You grow, you get stronger, faster, and More grounded. Stepping into the best version of you. Peloton is just there to help you along the way with workouts that challenge and motivation that keeps you coming back. With peloton's tread and all access membership, you can set your targets, track your progress, and get stronger, making your fitness goals a reality. Thousands of members have had their lives changed by peloton. What will you accomplish? Find your push, Find your power. Peloton. Visit1peloton.com this is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Our ability to read the minds of other people is something of a mental superpower. It allows us to effortlessly navigate a complex social world and intuit what other people want and how they feel. This superpower helps us understand when bad things happen by accident, when they happen by design. And it allows us to tell friend from foe. Of course, the fact that our minds read so much into the intentions of others also makes the superpower ripe for exploitation by con artists, marketing gurus, and politicians. At Boston College, neuroscientist Leanne Young studies the psychology of theory of mind, our ability to think about the mental states of others, including their intentions. In her lab, she and her colleagues explore the role of intention when it comes to making moral judgments. Leanne, I want to talk about some ways in which our ability to read other people's intentions can sometimes go wrong. And I want to start again with. With television and the arts. There's a very funny scene in the TV show Seinfeld. The character George has just gone on a date with a new love interest. They drive back to her apartment. They're sitting in the car outside. It's midnight. The air is crackling with sexual tension. And here's what happens next. So thanks for dinner.

Unknown (37:34)

It was great. We should do this again.

Shankar Vedantam (37:41)

Would you like to come upstairs for some coffee?

Lian Young (37:43)

Oh, no.

Shankar Vedantam (37:44)

I guess I can't drink coffee late at night.

Lian Young (37:45)

It keeps me up. So. Okay.

Unknown (37:54)

Okay.

Shankar Vedantam (37:56)

Good night. Yeah, take it easy, Leon. I'm not sure if you're a fan of Seinfeld, but what makes this clip funny is that George is actually not picking up on her intentions.

Lian Young (38:08)

I am a fan. And it's a very funny clip because it captures this phenomenon that we study in psychology called indirect speech, which allows for misinterpretation of intentions. You know, because she's inviting George up for, quote, coffee as opposed to asking him up more directly, it gives her plausible deniability. So if she declines the invitation, he declines the invitation. She doesn't have to feel bad or offended or lose her Pride. But on the other hand, it also leaves room for just misinterpretation and miscommunication, which is what happens a lot in real life.

Shankar Vedantam (38:54)

Such miscommunications can be trivial, but they can also sometimes have life and death consequences. A police officer might have to make a split second decision about whether a suspect is reaching into a pocket to grab a cell phone or to grab a gun. The officer has to read the other person's intentions in order to decide how to respond. And how he reads those intentions could be shaped by all manner of factors, including bias.

Lian Young (39:21)

Again, there is this question of what cues we are using to read people's intentions from their actions. And what is really tricky about this problem is that we can't see into people's heads. We can't observe their thoughts or their feelings. We can only observe what people do. And, you know, in this case, people's body movements, reaching into a pocket, reaching into a glove compartment. And so that leaves room for misinterpretation and really awful consequences.

Shankar Vedantam (39:58)

So the fact that our ability to read intentions happens, you know, unconsciously, that most of us are not even aware that we are doing it. I'm wondering how much of a role that plays in our misreading of other people's intentions, because presumably that also is happening unconsciously.

Lian Young (40:15)

Absolutely. And there are many cases in which we don't realize that we are misreading people's intentions. In the Seinfeld clip, George realized shortly after the fact that he missed the boat on that opportunity because he didn't catch what the woman was doing. But there are many cases in which we don't catch our mistakes and we're not able to fix them after the fact.

Shankar Vedantam (40:39)

I'm wondering, in your own life, Leanne, have you noticed this happening of people failing to pick up on things, reading each other wrong? You've, I think, described, you know, during the pandemic, wearing a mask as you go into some stores or other social settings and wondering what people must think of you and what your intentions are.

Lian Young (40:59)

The pandemic is a really interesting case of intention reading and misunderstanding. So there have definitely been instances in which I've gone into a public indoor space wearing a mask. And, you know, I wonder what people think about what I'm doing. Do people think that I'm unvaccinated because I'm wearing a mask? And then I have to sort of stop and think about, well, what do I think when I see somebody wearing a mask indoors? Do I think that they're unvaccinated? Or do I think that they're being extra careful? Do I, you know, think that they're immunocompromised or if they have young children who are unvaccinated and so on. And so it becomes a really interesting exercise to think about how people are reading my intentions and then how to read other people's intentions and sort of backtrack from that exercise to the other.

Shankar Vedantam (41:58)

Not only do we assume we can read the minds of other people, we often feel we can even read their character and intuit whether they are good people or bad people. It turns out we do this a lot in politics. We regularly misread the intentions behind the choices of our political opponents. We see them as malevolent. Here's a political attack ad from the US presidential race in 1988.

Unknown (42:26)

As Governor Michael Dukakis vetoed mandatory sentences for drug dealers.

Shankar Vedantam (42:30)

He vetoed the death penalty.

Unknown (42:33)

His revolving door prison policy gave weekend furloughs to first degree murderers not eligible for parole. While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape. And many are still at large. Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts. America can't afford that risk.

Shankar Vedantam (42:54)

So what I hear in the Atlian is that Michael Dukakis was intentionally allowing criminals to go scot free and commit more crimes. And you know, the ad doesn't explicitly say that, but I think it leads me to that conclusion.

Lian Young (43:06)

That's right. There are many cases where because intentions are not black and white, because we can't see them, there's no clear evidence for intentions. This is a case where politicians are able to frame or reframe their opponents intentions however they see fit to be able to shape other people's thoughts and feelings about others. There's this sort of ambiguity in this space. Politicians have the opportunity to be able to create different narratives, particularly about people's intentions.

Shankar Vedantam (43:45)

I'm wondering how much of the daily partisan rancor that we hear, not just in the United States but in other countries, is shaped by misreading the intentions of our opponents. That we're not just taking what they say and do at face value, but we're reading into it what we assume to be their intentions.

Lian Young (44:04)

A lot of times people do engage in this willful misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the minds of people on the other side. But then in a lot of cases, I think this happens sort of automatically and unconsciously. We give people that we know and like the benefit of the doubt. And often those are the folks who are on our team or in our party, and we can interpret or understand those events very, very differently. So if you imagine that somebody in your party is being accused of some transgression, you might start to seek alternative explanations for why they did what they were accused of doing. Whereas if you heard the same story of somebody committing a crime on the other side, then you might automatically take that story description at face value that they're guilty.

Shankar Vedantam (44:54)

Mm. You've conducted studies involving Democrats and Republicans or Israelis and Palestinians, and obviously, each of those groups is prone to misreading the intentions of their opponents. What kind of a study was this, and what did you find, Leanne?

Lian Young (45:09)

We ran a series of studies in which we tested American Democrats and Republicans and also Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle east, and we gave them examples of acts of aggression in both of those cases and asked our participants to attribute motives. And what we found, which is maybe not so surprising, but was very consistent across those different groups of people, was that people were more likely to attribute acts of aggression perform by their own group to in group love. People are just trying to defend their own values and their own people, whereas people would attribute those same acts of aggression performed by an out group to outgroup hatred. They're doing this to retaliate. They're doing this to attack us. And so it's very interesting that we see this asymmetry in how people are attributing motives underlying the very same actions, depending on who, whether those acts are being performed by people on our side or people on the other side.

Shankar Vedantam (46:14)

This tendency to be selective in how we read intentions extends well beyond the realms of war and politics. Lian says we often interpret intentions in a way that confirms the stories we wish to tell about ourselves and others.

Lian Young (46:29)

I think we do that all the time, and we do that in the ways that we interpret the intentions and actions of our friends, as opposed to people we don't know or people that we know but don't like. We give our friends the benefit of the doubt. We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We don't want to see ourselves as bad people. We don't want to see our friends as bad people. And so, again, if you encounter a friend doing something morally ambiguous, you might make up an excuse for why they did that in order to read their behaviors as fitting with your narrative of being friends. And so it's very interesting that we see this asymmetry in how people are attributing motives underlying the very same actions in very different ways, depending on whether those acts are being presented as performed by people on our side or people on the other side.

Shankar Vedantam (47:29)

You know, I'm reminded of a conversation we had some time ago with the linguist Deborah Tannen. She says it can be hard to recognize someone's intentions, and so it's worth assuming that their intentions are good because it makes for smoother conversations.

Lian Young (47:44)

I think it's really useful for both relationships and also for ourselves to give others around us the benefit of the doubt. I think it makes for smoother social interactions and also for happier selves. What I've told my students is that if you have a bad interaction with someone, chances are they're not trying to offend you or insult you. Maybe they're having a bad day, maybe they didn't get enough sleep. And I tell them to sort of think about our one on one interactions in the same context, that if we have a bad conversation, it's probably because I am feeling bad that I yelled at a kid that morning and has nothing to do with their paper or their project. And so again, we come back to this idea of giving people the benefit of the doubt and taking intentions into consideration. I also think about times when I'm on the road and I get upset when other drivers cut me off and there's really nothing that I can do about it, aside from give them the benefit of the doubt. Because I know that when I'm the one who's speeding or cutting other people off, usually it's because my 3 year old in the backseat says she needs to go to the potty or because we're rushing to an event and we're late. And so to be able to extend that to other people, both strangers and the people that we interact with on a regular basis, I think just makes for happier interactions all around.

Shankar Vedantam (49:15)

Isn't it really hard to do, though, Lian? I feel like, you know, even as I seek, you know, compassion and empathy from other people, it's hard for me to sort of give them the compassion and empathy that they seek. So there's a real paradox here.

Lian Young (49:28)

It's really hard. It's really hard to take that step back and think about what are the situational stresses and influences that could be leading to other people's actions. Whereas it's sometimes easier to see those external pressures on our own selves and lives and interactions. And so if we're able to pause in the midst of a tricky interaction and think about what that other person is trying to do or not trying to do, again, that will lead to much smoother, much more positive interactions. And ultimately relationships.

Shankar Vedantam (50:09)

Leanne Yang is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Boston College. Lee Ann, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Lian Young (50:16)

Thank you so much, Shankar.

Shankar Vedantam (50:21)

After the break, your questions answered our segment where we bring back recent guests of the show to answer listeners follow up questions about their work. In this edition of youf Questions Answered, Fred Luskin responds to listener stories of grudges and forgiveness.

Unknown (50:36)

How can I tell whether what I'm doing, which is just I no longer interact with her, I don't speak to her anymore. Whether that's truly a grudge or is it just me keeping myself safe?

Shankar Vedantam (50:53)

That's when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Them support for Hidden Brain comes from Discover. It's smart to always have a few financial goals and a really smart one you can set earning cash back on what you buy every day. And with Discover, you can Discover automatically matches all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year. Seriously, all of it. See terms@discover.com credit card support for Hidden Brain comes from Stripe. Stripe helps many of the world's most influential businesses grow their revenue and build a more profitable business. Whether it's Hertz making checkout a smooth ride for their customers, OpenAI answering unprecedented demand, or PGA chipping away at back office inefficiency, Stripe's financial infrastructure platform helps companies achieve ambitious goals. No matter what success looks like for your business, Stripe helps ensure the complexity of financial systems doesn't get in your way. Learn more@swepe.com this is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Think about the last time someone really hurt you. Maybe it was a friend who betrayed your confidence, a colleague who took credit for your work, a business partner who cheated you. How long did that hurt stay with you? How often did you turn it over in your mind, feeling a fresh wave of pain and anger as though it happened just yesterday? The hurt we experience when someone breaks our trust is a natural emotional response. But these emotions can start to eat at us if we hold on to them for too long. We recently discussed this with psychologist Fred Luskin, who studies forgiveness and grudges as the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. If you missed our initial conversation with Fred, you can find it in this podcast feed. It's the episode titled no Hard Feelings. Today, Fred returns to answer your questions about grudges and how we can come to terms with the wrongs done to us. Fred Luskin, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Unknown (53:21)

Thank you Nice to see you again.

Shankar Vedantam (53:23)

One of the things that makes grudges psychologically interesting is that they involve a certain amount of mental storytelling. We weave our own personal narrative of a person and a wrong that they have done to us. You've said that grudges can be difficult to shake because we often start to combine different threads of various grievance stories, and these stories start to weave together and create a sort of meta narrative. How does this happen, Fred?

Unknown (53:47)

We're constantly trying to make meaning out of the world, and we have different levels of meaning making. We have, like, small things, you know, that this person said something unkind to me. And then we have these meta narratives that say, you know, this isn't safe. And remember when your dad did what he did to you 20 years ago, which set you up upon a life which will not be safe. It makes it hard to just be with the experience and deal with the actual insult or not as it's happening, or cognitively or emotionally with the best strategy.

Shankar Vedantam (54:33)

You know, I was talking recently with a memory researcher, and she said something really interesting, which is that our memories tend to produce whatever our current emotional states are. In other words, if we are happy, it tends to be easier to pull happy memories from our brain. And when we are sad, it's easier to pull sad memories from our brain. And I'm wondering if the same thing in some ways happens with. So in other words, someone does something wrong to me, and then all of a sudden it becomes so much easier for me to remember all the other times this person has also done something bad to me or said something unkind to me.

Unknown (55:13)

If you're happy, then your brain and nervous system make available to you all the other lovely things in your life so that you get to think, wow, the last time I was happy, I went and hugged my partner. So should I do that again from the painful side? Look at how brilliant it is to give you access to other times that you suffered and maybe to look through what were the strategies that I use that help this. The problem is when it crowds out other memories, then you actually lose access to thinking, rather than gain access than thinking. But the original kind of substrata is really smart.

Shankar Vedantam (56:10)

Hmm. I mean, you can think about it almost from an evolutionary standpoint, which is that if someone does something bad to me, if another animal does something bad to me, it's very useful to remember that this animal has harmed me. And it might actually be useful to remember the other times this other person or this other animal has harmed me, because that tells Me now steer clear of this person, you know, give them a wide berth. But what was very useful, perhaps in our evolutionary history when it came to dealing with other animals and with predators, might be less effective in the modern workplace, for example, where we're constantly interacting with colleagues and now we remember a small slight, maybe it was an accidental slight, but that now compounds itself with all the other slights that we start to remember. And now we form this meta narrative about how a colleague of ours doesn't like us or we don't get along with them.

Unknown (57:01)

I'm going to add two things. It's not helpful. It's essential that if there is pain, difficulty, hostility, mistreatment, you have to remember it. You have to try to process it and deal with it. That's not just optional, it's like essential. The second piece, what I think you left out of the workplace is the staggering amount of distraction that people have now. So not only are they in a workplace with maybe more interactions and more possible difficulties, their minds are frazzled even before they deal with anybody, by emails, by texts, by relentless checking, by social media, by all of the just demands on their attention. So they come into work already with a higher level of awareness, arousal, because they're so used to getting stimulated by this relentless attention. And, you know, like, I'm at you all day long. So that has to be factored in there as well.

Shankar Vedantam (58:27)

So we received a number of listener comments and questions from people who decided to sever a relationship with someone else. Here's a question we received from a listener named Lydia.

Unknown (58:38)

I have been living with what I imagine can be called a grudge towards my sister for the past almost eight years. How can I tell whether what I'm doing, which is just I no longer interact with her, I don't speak to her anymore.

Lian Young (58:58)

Whether that's truly a grudge or is.

Unknown (59:01)

It just me keeping myself safe and my peace of mind? I can't imagine that all transgressions need to result in forgiveness and the ability to continue the relationship as though nothing happened. Or am I wrong about that?

Shankar Vedantam (59:24)

So what do you think, Fred? I can see in some ways both sides of this equation. I might distance myself from someone because I'm holding a grudge, but I'm also could distance myself from someone because I've thought about this relationship and I don't want to continue it any longer.

Unknown (59:39)

I'm going to add a third piece. Often we move away from somebody because we can't handle the disturbance, suffering, stress that come up in us. And we Use distancing as a self regulation strategy. So if my sister causes me every time I'm near her to feel anxious, angry, unsettled, sometimes if I don't have sufficient skill at going inward and rebalancing or whatever, I'll just keep them away to try to manage my own reactivity. That's incredibly common on the polarities that their listener sent you. It's not so simple. One of the mistakes that she presented was you can forgive someone and choose not to have contact with them. It's not either. Or she could look at her sister and say, whatever you did, I'm not holding anything towards you. My we're clean, but enough is enough. You go your way, I go mine. But there's no bitterness in me. There's just, you know, we tried this for 40 years. It didn't work for me. And have a lovely life for a while, and thank you. So they're not mutually exclusive. What I would suggest is when you're dealing with your sister and like, you want to see if you can rehearse even connecting with her, like, are you able to create a, you know, a bond or an outreach, even just in practice, if not that significant information, that this may go really deep. Second, on the other side of it, if you get into a really quiet, clean, gentle space, like, you know, you're lying on the beach in Hawaii and it's 92 degrees and you just got out of the water, if your insides still tell you that no, this person is not safe for you, it's probably deeply in you that that's what you feel. But if it's just that every time you think of joining or connecting, you get angry or upset, that may not be enough inner guidance to follow long term.

Shankar Vedantam (62:42)

You know, we like to think that when we forgive someone, our relationship with them is going to come out stronger on the other end. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Here's a question we received from listener Sue.

Unknown (62:55)

I'm just wondering how you actually forgive someone. If it's a person who has pretty strong narcissistic tendencies, would never admit to have done anything wrong.

Shankar Vedantam (63:12)

This is my mom. She's since passed.

Unknown (63:17)

And, you know, I am doing therapy and I've done the radical acceptance and all that, but I imagine, you know, if she were alive and. And if I were to say I forgive you, she would probably burst out laughing and say, you know, I haven't done anything wrong. And so I'm wondering technically how you actually forgive someone who would never have admitted they did anything.

Lian Young (63:43)

Wrong.

Unknown (63:45)

You know, if what I heard from her, if the word narcissist tendencies is real and not just becoming a cultural way of describing people that we don't like what they did, but if somebody has real narcissistic tendencies, you can't expect a full reciprocal relationship from them. You simply can't. So within that context, any forgiveness is just for your own peace of mind, so that you will calm your brain down, you will open your heart back up, never with the thought that that's going to improve them or have them see you as you are, because a real narcissist can't see you as they are. They see themselves again, though, there's this confusion between reconciliation and forgiveness. You can forgive someone who's unrepentant simply because you don't want to carry that in you, you make no assumption that that will change them. Now, somebody who has weaker narcissistic tendencies, and you forgive them and you show up sometimes that does influence them to reduce their side of it, but there is no guarantee.

Shankar Vedantam (65:26)

So in Sue's case, Fred, her mother is now dead. She may or may not have been a narcissist, but there's no way that she's going to be able to accept that she did something wrong because she's not with us anymore. But I think even there, the point that you're making still stands, which is for, from Sue's point of view, her forgiving her mother might be good for sue, regardless of what her mother may have said or done.

Unknown (65:51)

We can't know what will be good for someone else, and we can't know their perception of what happened. We can only be as clear as possible about what our choices are and how our responses were.

Shankar Vedantam (66:11)

We've talked on many episodes of Hidden Brain about political divisions and how to engage with people in our lives who hold political beliefs that are different from our own. Here's a message we received from a listener named Ezra. For years now, I've been holding a grudge with my family regarding their political stance, especially around queer and transgender rights. My parents have voted for Trump, and I cannot tolerate the emotional cognitive dissonance of having parents who, on one hand, love me very much and on the other hand, are literally voting to take my rights away. As a US Citizen, I am stuck between wanting to forgive, wanting to protect myself, fearing, feeling fear and rage, and love altogether. I would love some advice and help for how to move forward in a way that feels grounded, loving, protective, respectful. What do you think, Fred? What advice would you give to Ezra.

Unknown (67:33)

What a lovely description of the poles of a mind, you know, that is trying to integrate the heart, but knows this is tough sledding. The real question is not, should we forgive? But what's our most skillful action and what's the best mindset for moving ahead? Like, forgiveness is a pathway to the best mindset. It's not the mindset in and of itself. So when you're in a situation where you're vulnerable, like, you know, that, you know, listener just called in and legitimately afraid, that's not trivial, and that can't be, you know, swept under the rug by saying, well, I forgive them. It's not that simple. But at the same time, we recognize that simply hating or demonizing whatever it is we think causes our vulnerability after a while will diminish our own ability to take skillful action because we're tired from our anger and our resentment and clouds our judgment. So part of it is grieving and admitting our vulnerability and loss. Secondly, joining together with other people who have similar experiences so there's some strength in numbers, and then really focusing on within the legitimate experience of our life, what's the most skillful action? How do we behave in a way that will get us closer to what our real goals are and not just have us dominated by fear or resentment? That's the piece that forgiveness clears out.

Shankar Vedantam (69:57)

Say more about this idea. When you say that the goal is to come up with skillful action, how do we know what skillful action is for Ezra in this case?

Unknown (70:07)

Well, it can be a couple of things. One, that the goal or motivation you align with even when you're not upset or even when you're not meeting with other people in, like, shared outrage. But, yeah, that's really what I believe in. Two, is it experimentally kind of verifiable? Like, I try this? Does it help if it doesn't help? Do I admit that I was not doing the best thing and go back and try something else? Do I maybe ask for advice as to other people's experience? Do I read up about past skillful action? Is my mind open to problem solving, or is it motivated by resentment and revenge? Those are very different motivations, and they give us different minds to evaluate the outcome.

Shankar Vedantam (71:22)

I'm wondering whether any research has been done about the utility of actually asking the person who we feel has harmed us their advice on what we should do. So in Ezra's case, for example, I'm wondering, what if he went to his parents and said, here's what I'm feeling. I know that you love me very much. I also feel like you have betrayed me. I'm struggling between my feelings of my love for you and my admiration for you and my resentment for you. Help me figure out what I should do with these feelings.

Unknown (71:53)

You'd have to be incredibly emotionally competent to say that, and you would have to have really emotionally competent parents to hear that. But it is a phenomenal strategy. And you could extrapolate that strategy to so many interpersonal difficulties, just so many. You could imagine how many intimate partners could bring that to each other. You know, you said this. It hurt me. Part of me wants to strike back at you. Part of me wants to understand you. But underneath what you said are some incredibly skillful means of I'm responsible for my emotional state. I need to put what I'm feeling into words. And I trust people enough to share my vulnerability with them. None of those are easy for people to access.

Shankar Vedantam (73:13)

Our guest is psychologist Fred Luskin, joining us to answer listener questions about his work on grudges and forgiveness. More of those questions in a moment. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain comes from the United States Postal Service business owners and shipping managers. Let me ask you something. How confident are you in your shipping process? If you're not using USPS Ground Advantage Service, you might not be as in the know as you could be. Here's the deal. With USPS Ground Advantage Service, staying informed isn't just an option. It's the standard. Imagine this. When your shipment leaves the dock, you know about it. It's in transit. Boom. You know. And when it reaches your customer, you guessed it, you're in the know again. But this is more than and notifications. With USPS Ground Advantage Service, it's one seamless journey, one trusted partner that means fewer headaches, more peace of mind, and greater confidence in your shipping process. So whether you're shipping locally or across the country, USPS Ground Advantage Service gives you the reliability, visibility, and simplicity your business needs. Take control of your shipping@usps.com inthenotoday because when you know, you know. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Stripe. Stripe helps many of the world's most influential businesses grow their revenue and build a more profitable business. Whether it's Hertz making checkout a smooth ride for their customers, OpenAI answering unprecedented demand, or PGA chipping away at back office inefficiency, Stripe's financial infrastructure platform helps companies achieve ambitious goals. No matter what success looks like for your business, Stripe helps ensure the complexity of financial systems doesn't get in your way. Learn more@swepe.com this is hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is yous Questions Answered. Our segment in which we bring back past guests of the show to respond to listeners follow up thoughts and questions about their work. Today we're talking with Fred Luskin. He's a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. Fred is also the author of the books Forgive for A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness and Forgive for Love, the Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship. Let's turn again to listener questions. Our next one is from a listener named Laura and it's a version of a question that we have received from a number of listeners.

Lian Young (75:50)

What if the person that you need to forgive is actually yourself?

Unknown (75:55)

Could you apply the same concepts?

Shankar Vedantam (76:00)

What do you think, Fred? Is it possible to essentially hold a grudge against yourself?

Unknown (76:05)

The answer to that is yes. There's a couple of steps that, you know, people need to look at. One of them is to legitimately acknowledge what you have done, that there, there really is no self forgiveness without some acknowledgement, some remorse. You know, if you look at truth and reconciliation in South Africa is just a general model. You know, there was a pretty strong public forum for boy did we do bad. And this can't be hidden. So the first step is to whatever degree possible, admit it to yourself. If safe, admitted to anybody you've harmed and allow oneself to feel remorse. There is literature research on the value of a sincere apology, which is I did it, my bad hurts you. I make that link. I'm sorry and if I can, I won't do it again. It is hard for many of us to have the humility of a sincere apology. The last step is taken from the wisdom of the 12 step programs, which is whenever you can make it right, make amends. Now if the person that you've harmed is just you, like you didn't harm anybody else, but you got drunk or you had a ridiculous sexual escapade that harmed your life, it's helpful to share with one or two trusted people as an offering. You do make a kind of inner mea culpa. But the amends is you make sure it doesn't happen again. You go to therapy, you go to 12 step programs, you, you take classes in anger management, whatever it is, but you need to do something positive. When those preconditions are met, you have absolutely no need for negative self talk or bad feelings. You have done the basic requirements of self forgiveness. If you have to, you Go see a therapist for a couple sessions. But you do not need at all that negative emotion once you've done those steps.

Shankar Vedantam (79:07)

In our initial conversation, Fred, we mostly focused on how we can let go of grudges against people who have wronged us. But we've all probably been in situations where we are the wrongdoer, where we have betrayed someone in our life. Here's a question we received about that from listener Boomer.

Unknown (79:23)

I want to know how you help a loved one get over or let.

Lian Young (79:28)

Go of their grudge or hard feelings.

Unknown (79:31)

Or bitter feelings against you. Let's say you betrayed them, a terrible incident happened in their lives, and you were not there for them. You realized it was a mistake, you regret it, you offered them an apology, and later you have tried to be as best as you can for them and been supportive in their life. But it looks like, you know, we both are still reeling from the aftermath of the betrayal.

Lian Young (80:04)

I want to help this loved one.

Unknown (80:06)

And I want to help myself get better.

Shankar Vedantam (80:09)

Do you have any advice?

Unknown (80:11)

I mean, that is a very tough situation when somebody feels genuine remorse, wants to make it right, and is stymied. I have heard that multiple times. You know, there's two things that come to my mind immediately. One is some degree of self examination. What was it that led me to not be there when they needed me, me? Is there something, character or logic in me? Was I frightened? Was I preoccupied? What was the flaw or weakness in me so that I can address it? Or I can show this person deep vulnerability and reflection when I talk to them. Not just that I'm sorry, but it caused me to recognize how hard something like this is. Or, wow, I really struggle when somebody's needs are way bigger than mine. Or I may not always hear at the moment the depth of somebody's pain. That would be one. You know, first of all, it helps her, but secondly, it creates a shared pain. The second thing is sometimes we can't. We can't turn back time. And there is a forgiveness element there that, you know, it's up to you and I respect as best I can how you deal with your suffering. The third piece is now that I have learned this about the dangers, or even if I didn't do anything deliberate, even if it was just a bad confluence of events where absolutely nobody is at fault, one of the things that she can do is move ahead with a renewed attention to make sure that this never happens again so that her radar are more finely attuned to other people's pain. And she can even use this as a teaching to tell other people, never, you know, never underestimate when people are suffering how vulnerable or how reactive they might be. So she can use her loss to help others. That's sometimes the best we can do.

Shankar Vedantam (83:25)

We received an interesting question from listener Richard. He wanted to know about the factors that might affect our ability to forgive someone. Here he is.

Lian Young (83:34)

Do you think someone having more positive.

Unknown (83:37)

Emotional states, like the joy of their first child, may increase their likelihood of being more able and willing to forgive? I mean, if you ask me about the factors that influence the ability to forgive, research has picked up a few, not that many. One of them is gratitude. And it may be a surprise to you, but people who see the good in their lives are more capable of letting go of the bad. And that is a reasonably robust finding that, you know, if you wake up in the morning and it's a beautiful day out and you're delighted that you had breakfast and you look at a picture of your kid and you go, I got a good life. Then when somebody calls you and is rude, you're going to be more likely to hold it better. Now, let me add one or two other things to that. A home where you were raised, where forgiveness is modeled, is more likely to imprinted on your brain than not. Did you see your parents forgive each other? Did you see your parents forgive you? That is a huge modeling that even can be preverbal, you know, like, oh my gosh, I saw this second. Our nervous systems have something to do with our ability forgive. There's a quality of human nervous system arousal where people are called hot reactors. They, they just, you know, you've met them, they get aroused very quickly. Those people struggle like crazy to forgive because the adrenaline just comes so quickly and so strongly and pulsates into anger that that is a real challenge. The last thing that I will say is it also depends on the amount of practice you put in. You know, if you, if you practice just normally when you're cut off in traffic, when somebody cuts in front of you in the supermarket line, when the airplane is late and you're going to miss your connecting flight, you're practicing what you might need a year down the road when somebody doesn't behave right.

Shankar Vedantam (86:33)

Hmm. I think one interesting theme that's come up in many of these questions and also came up in our initial conversation, Fred, is that I think when people think about grudges, they sometimes imagine themselves to be in the position of judges. They're asking themselves, I'm a judge. Here are the facts before Me, do these facts justify forgiveness? Should I hold onto the grudge? Should I grant forgiveness? Should I not grant forgiveness? And that is one way of thinking about it. But I think the point that you're making is that a judge is making a decision that really is in the public good. They're deciding should this person be sentenced, should this person be let free? And you're trying to make a judgment that's in the public good. When it comes to the forgiveness that you're talking about, Fred, you're really talking about what's in people's own good. And you're basically saying, is it in my interest to actually let this go, regardless of whether it's in the other person's interest or anyone else's interest?

Unknown (87:30)

I'm going to add two things to that. One, there's also the statute of limitations, which most people forget about, you know, even if they're bringing an argument before the judge. Most cases have 5, 7 year statute of limitation. And so that's the water dampening on that analogy, even though it's true. Secondly, forgiveness is not just for the self, but it's for the current important relationships in one's life that one wants to maintain and grow. And again, let's just use the judge analogy. So let's say that somebody does something that's wrong. There's nothing wrong with imposing a one week sentence on them. But then you also want to be merciful. And that's missing often in the judge analogy. Sometimes you let people out for good behavior, sometimes you commute their sentence. So we're looking at a complex life and we want to be careful not to lose the complex life on our over fixation with a negative experience.

Shankar Vedantam (89:10)

Fred Luskin is a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Program Project. He's the author of Forgive for Good, A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness and Forgive for Love, the Missing ingredient for a healthy and lasting relationship. Fred Luskin, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Unknown (89:27)

I thank you very much.

Shankar Vedantam (89:34)

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy, Paul Kristen Wong, Laura Kwerell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We had voice acting in today's episode from Clara and Rose Dubois and Scarlett McNally. We end today with a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by Discover. In 2022, David Jefferson's wife Jill was Diagnosed with cancer, Jill didn't have many close friends. But one of her former co workers, a woman named Nicole Kyle, started coming by to try and cheer her up. Soon, Nicole became a consistent comfort to the couple. So in 2024, it didn't surprise David when Nicole offered to help him and get Jill home after a hospital stay. What did surprise him was the length she went to once they got Jill home. David recorded his story in a park where he and Jill hoped to one day hike together. So you'll hear some wind in the background.

Unknown (90:49)

Nicole and I got Jill home. It was during a winter snowstorm. The pipes had frozen in the house, but we got him thawed out. Nicole and I gave Jill a shower and put her to bed. Some hours later, Nicole showed up with a bag. Show me which room you want me to sleep in and I'll stay until the end with Jill. Nicole, in a very unselfish way, took care of the laundry, food, house cleaning. She invited her friends to bring over food along with some of the food my friends were bringing. Nicole would get up in the middle of the night with me and help roll Joel over and attend to her private needs as only another woman could. Nicole was a steady presence. She never panicked. She always had a smile and willing to do whatever. What was next. Nicole helped me see Jill to the end of her Life, which was February 3, 2024. Nicole was an angel in the time of need, and I will forever be in her debt. This situation called for a hero, and Nicole Kyle is my hero for life.

Shankar Vedantam (92:44)

Listener David Jefferson Jill and David were together for 36 years. This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by Discover. Discover believes everyone deserves to feel special and celebrates those who exhibit the spirit in their communities. I'm a Long Standing card member myself. Learn more@discover.com credit card I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

Unknown (93:27)

As you know from listening in, small changes in our thoughts and actions can.

Lian Young (93:31)

Make a huge difference. Right now, nature is steadily disappearing. In fact, World Wildlife Fund estimates that wildlife populations have plummeted by 73% since 1970. But with one small action, you can help nature recover. Make a monthly donation to WWF to restore and protect wildlife habitats. Donate@mywwf.org to make a world of difference. In honor of Earth Month, support for.

Shankar Vedantam (93:58)

Hidden Brain comes from the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs. Maybe your idea of a trip abroad is an all inclusive cruise. Or exploring museums and local delicacies. Or climbing the planet's tallest peaks. There's a whole world of wonder out there and you need a valid passport to go. So check, apply for or renew yours at least six months before you travel. And visit travel.state.gov for State Department guidance on passports, country specific safety info and more.