Hidden Brain: "You 2.0: Trusting Your Doubt"

Podcast: Hidden Brain
Host: Shankar Vedantam
Guest: Bidan "Bobby" Parmar, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
Date: January 26, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores the "hidden power of doubt" in our lives—how uncertainty is often perceived as a weakness but can actually be harnessed as a tool for better decision-making, stronger relationships, and personal growth. Host Shankar Vedantam and guest Bobby Parmar discuss neuroscience, personal anecdotes, and research, spotlighting why learning to lean into doubt and uncertainty can make us more resilient and creative.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Leadership and Hidden Doubt

• Eisenhower’s D-Day Story:
  • Public confidence vs. private doubt.
  • The “failure note” Eisenhower penned in case the D-Day landing failed reveals how even decisive leaders grapple with uncertainty.
  • [00:00-02:00]
• Insight:
  • True leadership acknowledges risk and personal accountability, not just outward confidence.

2. Personal Experience with Doubt: The Backpacking Story

• Bobby Parmar’s 14-Day Wyoming Hike:
  • Despite allergy issues and lack of experience, Bobby joined a diverse group for a demanding hike.
  • On a challenging day, he made a quick, confident decision to descend a mountain to find a lake, only to face a costly mistake after two hours hiking the wrong way.
  • “It was easier to keep moving than it was to admit I was wrong.” —Bobby Parmar [10:12]
  • Reflection: The discomfort with uncertainty led to action rather than consideration.
• Insight:
  • The urge to resolve uncertainty pushes us to premature and sometimes erroneous choices.
  • Accepting and sitting with doubt can lead to better judgments.

3. Why Is Uncertainty So Painful?

• Cognitive and Neural Pathways:
  • The brain is wired to seek certainty; uncertainty triggers the same circuits as aversive emotions.
  • [15:25-16:25]
• Three Neural Systems Regulating Doubt:
  • Pursue System: Driven by dopamine; motivates us towards anticipated rewards.
  • Protect System: Triggered by threat; activates fight/flight/freeze responses.
  • Pause and Piece Together System: Orchestrates attention and working memory to process ambiguity—a neural basis for doubt.
  • Under stress, the “pause” system is overridden, increasing impulsivity and reducing learning.
    • “When they…inhibit the functioning of the pause and piece together system, people become much more impulsive.” —Bobby Parmar [20:43]
• Insight:
  • Stress, fatigue, and the desire for closure downregulate our capacity to process competing information, making us more likely to jump to conclusions.

4. Intuition, Confirmation Bias, and Doubt

• How Intuition Works:
  • Intuition is efficient in familiar situations but may mislead in novel, ambiguous scenarios.
  • “Our intuition becomes informed intuition...you’re actually basing it on a base of knowledge.” —Shankar Vedantam discussing Kahneman’s research [25:30]
• Confirmation Bias:
  • Once we commit to a course, our brain seeks confirming evidence and disregards inconsistency.
  • “After having made a decision, we tend to stop learning and focus on things that make us feel like we made the right choice.” —Bobby Parmar [27:02]
• Insight:
  • Awareness of our intuitive and confirmatory tendencies can help us create space for doubt and learning.

5. Blame, Social Dynamics, and Leadership Culture

• Fear of Blame Hinders Learning:
  • Anticipation of blame (social punishment) triggers protect mode, discourages raising issues, and limits group learning (e.g., Boeing 737 Max crisis).
  • “When we anticipate blame, it shuts learning down.” —Bobby Parmar [28:50]
• Valorization of Decisiveness:
  • Society rewards confidence; we are drawn to decisive leaders, even if their confidence masks doubt or error.
  • “...we all internalize this message that being smart means getting the right answer.” —Bobby Parmar [30:20]
• Social Conformity Experiments:
  • Classic studies show how we mimic group behavior, even when it’s arbitrary or illogical (elevator and street corner experiments).
  • “When we walk into any environment, we don't know what to do. We default to what others around us are doing.” —Bobby Parmar [33:03]

6. Redemption through Doubt: The Patagonia Story

• Applying Lessons Learned:
  • On a subsequent hiking trip, Bobby revisits his prior error, this time guiding his group to pause, return, and explore alternatives instead of rushing toward a mistaken goal.
  • “Instead of feeling like hiking back up the mountain is a waste of time…it was like an investment in learning.” —Bobby Parmar [37:17]
• Active Engagement with Doubt:
  • Don’t passively “sit” with doubt; actively investigate and reframe uncertainty as a chance for growth.

7. Strategies for Harnessing Doubt

• Expert vs. Novice Decision-Making:
  • Experts treat intuition as a hypothesis; they probe uncertainties, develop mitigation strategies, and collect more data.
  • “Experts saw that data as much more complicated and nuanced...They built strategies that were flexible.” —Bobby Parmar [41:10]
• Anomalizing and the Pre-mortem:
  • Look for weak signals that things aren’t as expected and conduct pre-mortems to anticipate failure.
  • “Let's imagine we launch…and three weeks later it failed. What is the most likely cause of death?” —Bobby Parmar [44:07]
• Learning from Failure: Airbnb and the Scientific Method:
  • Airbnb’s pivot after noticing why users weren’t renting properties exemplifies the value of focused inquiry on “how,” not just “what.”
  • Scientific progress relies on testing, doubt, and iteration.
  • “Learning is just as much a social and emotional endeavor [as a cognitive one]...when we take doubt seriously, we…preserve learning.” —Bobby Parmar [47:59]

8. Societal and Political Dangers of Over-Confidence

• Certainty as an Addictive Substance:
  • Public craves certainty, making overconfident leaders appealing but potentially misleading.
  • “It just feels like you're offering an addictive substance to your audience, that in that moment your audience is like, ah, there's some certainty…” —Bobby Parmar [50:35]
• The Addiction to Feeling Right:
  • Social media amplifies echo chambers, furthering our addiction to certainty.
  • “We have to really be careful…is this risk of the addiction to feeling right.” —Bobby Parmar [51:24]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It was easier to keep moving than it was to admit I was wrong.”
  —Bobby Parmar [10:12]

• “When we anticipate blame, it shuts learning down.”
  —Bobby Parmar [28:50]

• “Experts… treat their intuition not as a decision, but as a hypothesis.”
  —Bobby Parmar [41:10]

• “We have to really be careful…is this risk of the addiction to feeling right.”
  —Bobby Parmar [51:24]

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment | |-----------|--------------| | 00:00-02:00 | Eisenhower’s D-Day “failure note”; confidence and hidden doubt in leadership | | 06:34-12:38 | Bobby Parmar’s backpacking error and reflection on discomfort with uncertainty | | 15:25-19:27 | Brain systems: pursue, protect, and pause/piece together; neuroscience of doubt | | 22:30-27:40 | The pitfalls of intuition and confirmation bias | | 28:40-33:03 | Blame avoidance, leadership culture, social conformity | | 35:50-38:18 | Redemption: Patagonia hiking story—actively engaging doubt as learning | | 39:46-45:19 | Expert vs. novice decision strategies, anomalizing, pre-mortem technique | | 47:38-47:59 | Airbnb’s story and the value of “how” questions; scientific method | | 50:16-51:24 | Addiction to certainty, dangers in politics and social media echo chambers |

Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is engaging, warm, and often self-reflective—marked by humor and a willingness to acknowledge personal and collective fallibility. Rather than shaming doubt, the hosts and guest frame it as a sign of maturity, wisdom, and a precursor to true growth and innovation.

Key Takeaways:

• Doubt is uncomfortable but essential; it signals opportunities for learning and creativity.
• Experienced decision-makers use doubt constructively, as a prompt to probe, gather information, and consider alternatives.
• Culturally, we need to redefine strength—not as unyielding confidence, but as thoughtful engagement with uncertainty.
• To grow, both individually and collectively, we must cultivate environments where doubt is valued, blame is minimized, and the pursuit of certainty is tempered by the humility to recognize complexity.