How Does Our Cultural Identity Influence Us? with Dr. Daphna Oyserman

Summary

Science of Perception Box: How Does Our Cultural Identity Influence Us? with Dr. Daphna Oyserman

In the February 6, 2025 episode of Science of Perception Box, hosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch engage in an enlightening conversation with Dr. Daphna Oyserman, a renowned psychologist specializing in cultural identity and its impact on behavior and decision-making. This episode delves deep into understanding how our cultural identities shape our perceptions, actions, and long-term outcomes.

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Introduction to Cultural Identity and Perception

The episode kicks off with Dr. Oyserman addressing the fundamental role of culture in human survival and social interaction. She explains, “[00:00] Humans are evolved to live in groups. They don't survive well alone. So we need to figure out who's in our group because they will help us. But then we're mutually obligated. We need to help them, too.” This sets the stage for exploring how cultural identities are not just personal labels but essential components that dictate our interactions and societal roles.

Dr. Christoph Koch adds a personal touch by discussing how he expresses his cultural identity through his choices in clothing, food, books, and music. Dr. Oyserman builds on this, emphasizing that “[05:59] all human societies need some collective way of doing things and some space for innovation.” This balance ensures both cohesion and adaptability within cultures.

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The Relationship Between Culture and Identity

Dr. Oyserman delves into the intricate relationship between culture and identity, stating, “[03:21] We go forth into the world assuming that we know who we are, and that who we are actually predicts what we're gonna do, what we're gonna like.” She highlights the importance of a stable sense of self for making informed choices and engaging effectively with the world.

A poignant moment arises when Dr. Oyserman shares a personal anecdote: “[06:36] When I moved to the University of Southern California, I realized I was consistently late because I mistakenly followed the cultural norms from my previous environment.” This example vividly illustrates how deeply ingrained cultural norms influence daily behaviors and perceptions of reality.

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Cultural Influence on Perception and Behavior

The discussion progresses to how cultural differences shape our cognitive processes. Dr. Oyserman explains that cultural norms provide a framework for interpreting experiences, making certain behaviors seem natural and others anomalous. For instance, her experience with different cultural attitudes toward time underscores how cultural expectations can lead to misunderstandings and identity shifts.

Elizabeth Koch interjects with a relatable scenario: “[11:27] When I moved to England, my Jewish identity became more salient, something that wasn’t a focal point in New York.” Dr. Oyserman responds by distinguishing between knowing oneself and understanding how others perceive us based on cultural categories, especially regarding minority and stigmatized identities.

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Cultural Impact on Consumer Decisions

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to exploring how cultural mindsets influence consumer behavior. Dr. Oyserman discusses studies where individuals with collectivistic mindsets prefer cohesive sets of products, willing to pay a premium for complete ensembles, whereas those with individualistic mindsets focus on standalone items. She states, “[14:04] Depending on the mindset you bring into the consumption situation, you're either thinking about creating a set or just focusing on individual elements.” This insight highlights the profound effect cultural identities have on everyday decisions, from shopping to broader life choices.

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Cultural Narratives and Mindset Shifts

The conversation shifts to how cultural narratives shape our interpretations of challenges and difficulties. Dr. Oyserman presents research contrasting American and Indian perceptions of difficulty. She notes, “[15:36] In American culture, difficulty is often associated with impossibility, whereas in Indian culture, it is linked to importance.” This dichotomy reflects how cultural backgrounds can dictate whether individuals perceive challenges as insurmountable obstacles or valuable opportunities for growth.

Further, she shares, “[23:28] Cultures provide explanations for why difficulty feels the way it does, influencing whether we engage or disengage from challenges.” This underscores the role of cultural storytelling in molding resilience and adaptability.

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Application: Teaching Persistence and Overcoming Procrastination

Dr. Oyserman offers practical applications of her research, particularly in educational settings. She discusses strategies to encourage persistence among students by aligning current actions with future selves. For instance, she emphasizes the importance of making future goals feel immediate and relevant: “[34:49] One of the small changes in context can be to help kids see that their future is actually relevant to right now.”

Addressing procrastination, Dr. Oyserman explains how cultural narratives can either exacerbate or alleviate it. She articulates, “[35:30] Maintaining a positive sense of self can sometimes lead to procrastination if individuals overly rely on their future self to handle current tasks.” Her solution involves fostering a mindset where effort and difficulty are seen as integral to personal growth and achievement.

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Conclusions and Final Insights

In wrapping up, Dr. Oyserman reflects on the universality and diversity of cultural influences: “[43:35] Whether you define it as a box that contains a variety of cultures or only one, humans engage with the world through their senses and cultural frameworks.” She advocates for broadening one’s perception box by exposing oneself to diverse cultures, thereby enhancing flexibility in thought and behavior.

Elizabeth Koch sums up the episode by highlighting the transformative potential of understanding cultural identities: “[44:57] Thinking of the brain as an algorithm, exposure to other cultures can help shift the decision-making processes and expand our perception boxes.” This encapsulates the episode’s core message: recognizing and embracing cultural influences can lead to more informed, adaptable, and fulfilling lives.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Daphna Oyserman [00:00]: “Humans are evolved to live in groups. They don't survive well alone. So we need to figure out who's in our group because they will help us. But then we're mutually obligated. We need to help them, too.”

• Dr. Daphna Oyserman [03:21]: “We go forth into the world assuming that we know who we are, and that who we are actually predicts what we're gonna do, what we're gonna like.”

• Dr. Daphna Oyserman [14:04]: “Depending on the mindset you bring into the consumption situation, you're either thinking about creating a set or just focusing on individual elements.”

• Dr. Daphna Oyserman [15:36]: “In American culture, difficulty is often associated with impossibility, whereas in Indian culture, it is linked to importance.”

• Dr. Daphna Oyserman [34:49]: “One of the small changes in context can be to help kids see that their future is actually relevant to right now.”

• Elizabeth Koch [44:57]: “Thinking of the brain as an algorithm, exposure to other cultures can help shift the decision-making processes and expand our perception boxes.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Science of Perception Box offers a compelling exploration of how cultural identities shape our perceptions, behaviors, and life trajectories. Dr. Daphna Oyserman’s insights emphasize the profound impact of cultural frameworks on both individual and collective levels, advocating for increased cultural awareness and flexibility to foster personal growth and societal harmony. Whether you’re an educator, student, or simply curious about the interplay between culture and identity, this episode provides valuable perspectives on navigating and redefining your perception box.

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To delve deeper into your own perception box and explore more insights, visit unlikelycollaborators.com and subscribe to the Science of Perception Box on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

So what are cultures for? Well, humans don't live alone. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, humans are evolved to live in groups. They don't survive well alone. So we need to figure out who's in our group because they will help us. But then we're mutually obligated. We need to help them, too.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. We all live inside our own personal, private perception box built by our genes and the physical, social and cultural environment in which we were born, born and raised. In this podcast, we explore how although the walls of this mental box are always present, they can expand in states like awe, wonder and curiosity, or contract in response to anxiety, fear and anger. I'd like to introduce our esteemed hosts, two incredible and distinguished minds, Dr. Heather Berlin, professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of medicine at Madison Mount Sinai in New York City, and Dr. Christoph Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot foundation and the current meritorious investigator and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Science of Perception Box. I'm your co host, Dr. Heather Berlin.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

And I'm your co host, Dr. Christoph Koch.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Every week we feature an aspect of Science of Perception Box, highlighting the latest research together with our expert guests. And this week on Science of Perception Box, we explore how cultural differences influence the way we think, feel and act about ourselves and the world around us, and how our cultural identity influences our mindset. We're thrilled to have with us today Dr. Daphna Oyserman. She studies how small changes in context can shift mindsets with significant effects on important outcomes like health and academic performance. Dr. Ozerman is a Dean's professor in the Department of Psychology and of Education and Communication at the University of Southern California. She received her PhD in psychology and Social Work from the University of Michigan. Dr. Oiserman also studies cultural identity expression, which shows up in things like how people make consumer choices as ways of expressing their identity. So, Christophe, do you express your identity in any way in terms of how you consume things? For example, the clothes you choose?

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

Yes, now that you mention it. The clothes I choose sort of rugged, colorful, outdoor. The food I eat, sort of organic, vegetarian, the books I read, the way I talk, the music I listen to, all of that are expression of my cultural identity. What about you?

[Elizabeth Koch]

Well, I tend to dress all in black, so clearly I'm from New York and I think that's my cultural identity. It's, you know, cool, calm. We don't want to say too much. We don't need to be so out there, you know. But, Dr. Oyserman, thanks so much for being here. So I wanted to start with a question of, you know, what is the relationship between culture and identity?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

That's a super question. And the important way to think about these things is that on the one hand, we go forth into the world assuming that we know who we are, and that who we are actually predicts what we're gonna do, what we're gonna like. And that's a really important thing because if I don't have a sense of who I am, then I have no idea what are the choices I should be making in the world. So I have to have some sense that I know who I am and that who I am will predict what I'll do.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

By who I am, you mean. I'm a man. I'm a scientist.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Last night before I went to sleep, I set my coffee maker because I made a prediction that in the morning I would want coffee. I didn't say, who knows if I want coffee? I used to want coffee before. But will I want coffee in the morning? I have no idea. That's an identity based prediction.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So it's part of your cultural identity.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Predictable. I'm not yet at the culture part. I'm starting just with the very basic thing that we experience ourselves as being people in the world that have some sense of constancy. And that that's really useful because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to make any plans for the future. And when you think about when people say, you know, I just don't know who I am, I just need to find myself. There are moments in our lives where we really don't have that sense of constancy. And that sense of constancy is useful because a lot of what we do entails acting now for some future me, for the desires and wants of the future me. And at the same time, it can't be that our identities are completely fixed. I have to actually be able to engage with the world around me. So there's that tension between both things that I think are useful. Both are affordances, not constraints, which is, I need to have a belief that I know who I am and that what I will want in the future is noble to be now, so I can engage. And I also have to be willing, actually open to new possibilities of who's the person I am now and what I can become. So if that's what we mean by an identity in a very basic way, then the next question is, well, what is that list of possible preferences of the things that I might value or want or desire? Where does that come from? And then that's really where we think about culture. That part comes in. So what are cultures for? Well, humans don't live alone. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, humans are evolved to live in groups. They don't survive well alone. So we need to figure out who's in our group because they will help us. But then we're mutually obligated. We need to help them too. So part of our identities have to entail some usness. Who's in my group? What are the things that we do? Oh, why would I care about the things that we do? Well, it's a way of signaling my group identity.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

But isn't that universal among all people?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Yes, exactly. So the first level of analysis when we think about culture is that all of us live in societies. All of us need to signal to the other members of our group that we're members of the group. But groups don't survive just by all doing the same thing together. Actually, there needs to be some space for innovation. So all human societies not only have some triggers for that collective part. Who are we? What are our group ways of doing things? But also there has to be some spaces, at least sometimes for people to do their own thing and innovate, and then other people can copy them if it's useful.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

But is that just a little bit? Sort of.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

That's at the highest level of analysis. So all societies would have some means of what we might call collective engagement or collectivism, and some means of doing your own thing, being an individualist. So all human societies need that. Then there's a level below that, which is really to say, well, but societies differ. Why might they differ? Well, they differ in part because environments differ historically, ecologically, in terms of their harshness. The harsher the environment, the more people needed to band together and engage together. So the more we ness there would be, the more collective things of doing things together. The more plush the environment, the less you really needed to do that, the more you could actually just do your own thing and engage in your own way.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

But how does this affect the way today? I perceive what I perceive and I hear what I hear and I see what I see.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Once we've come up with solutions, they become sticky. They're our way of doing things. And then it's easier for me to engage the world knowing what are the likely rules in air quotes? Rules. What are the likely norms? So, for example, if I'm Supposed to be meeting with you guys at 8. Does that mean 8? Exactly. Does that mean 10 past 8? Does that mean I should be here five minutes before? Societies differ in a whole bunch of things, including. Including how they manage time. What does on time look like?

[Elizabeth Koch]

Can I quote you something here from your.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

Which struck me. So this is a paper, you wrote, this wonderful review paper on culture a couple of years ago. Noticing culture requires some way of stepping out of it in order to gain perspective on it. The promise of culture psychology is that making this effort matters. And then you make this very striking sentence. However, because all of life takes place within a culture, it is easy to fail to see that a cultural lens exists and instead to think that there is no lens of all, just reality, which is what we call the perception box. So maybe you can expound on that.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Sure. So the frame that I was taking to begin with is to say, well, culture may exist, and for these reasons that people don't survive alone, there needs to be a solution to these core problems of survival. Sticking together, innovating and regulating relationships, which psychologists have labeled individualism, collectivism and honor. But in any particular society, the way in which we do those things will be our way. It's better than no way. So you have a way, then what you end up with is, as you said, people actually just living in their everyday environment. So it doesn't feel like what we're doing is our cultural way. It feels like the way to do things. And that was kind of why I mentioned this thing of time. It's when you shift to a different place that you actually notice that your way isn't the only way, that there are alternatives. So the time example. For many years I was at the University of Michigan on faculty, and there was a thing called Michigan time, which meant 10 past the hour is on time and no one expected you to be there before that. And if you're there before that, it was called early. So if you had a meeting at 8, what you really meant was 10 past 8. I had only been at the University of Michigan, so I didn't know that this was a unique thing to the University of Michigan. I thought it was university time. I then moved to the University of Southern California, where I assumed that when we have a meeting at 8, we really mean 10 past 8. One day I was walking up the stairs, not running, just walking up the stairs for a meeting. And I was passed at running pace by another person who is going to be at the meeting, who said to me in a sort of huffy, Voice Do I know what time it is? And I grandly said, yep, it's about three past. We have plenty of time. And he curtly said, three past means we're late. Oh, light bulb emerges on top of my head. Turns out that was a cultural thing at the University of Michigan. I had no idea. I thought it was university time. So I had been showing up late for over a year because that's the other thing, which is that culture entails sort of an implicit but very detailed scheme of how things evolve. And it's rare that people will actually tell you that you've gotten it wrong. They make inferences about you as a person. So I had established an identity as late person at the University of Southern California because I thought I was on time all the time, but I wasn't. And so that's really. When we say that when you're in the culture, it seems just like reality. And it's only when you step out that you notice. And researchers need to figure out some way of stepping out so that they won't only be blundering humans who show up late when they think they're on time.

[Elizabeth Koch]

So I want to talk about these kind of. When we have a change in perspective and does that really change our identity? So for instance, you're living in like, I grew up in New York. Right. Part of my identity is being Jewish. And like, everybody's Jewish in New York. It wasn't a big deal. It was like, not a thing. Right. 50% of the people I went to school with were. Then I moved to England. And then suddenly I remember someone was like, oh, you're Jewish. Like it was a thing. And then I realized there was this whole.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

And it had italics and air quotes on it.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Yeah, yeah. And there was all this stuff that came along with that. But it was only once I left my culture that I gained this other perspective. And so. But it didn't change my identity. You know, being in these different cultures can say, oh, there are these different perspectives. But it didn't change necessarily how I thought about myself or how I identified.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

No.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

When you're now much more self conscious of these things.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Well, I knew what it meant. Other people, I knew what it meant, oh, this means something to other people. They think about me in this certain way, but it didn't change my identity.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Well, if you think about the self, we don't just have selves, we have them for a reason. And there's really three of them. One reason that we have a self is that we can know who we are right, and it's useful to know who you are. Then you can improve if you don't like it. So it's like an accuracy thing. Another reason that we have a self is to make predictions about how others will engage with us. And if we just think we're people, but others see us as, oh, you're German, you're Jewish, you're from New York, and you fail to know that, then you'll make mispredictions. So one of the domains in which people have studied that a lot is in terms of minority identities and stigmatized identities. And they've said, you know, if you just think that you're a person, you'll mispredict because others will see you in a negative way, and you'll fail to understand that they're looking at you as a category of being that they see negatively. And you'll think it's about. Potentially about you, or you just won't understand what went wrong. So on the one hand, you're saying, well, I still knew who I was, but at the same time, your comment was basically saying, well, wait a minute, you had to notice that others were responding to you differently. And over time, that does change. One of the goals of having a self is to be able to understand how others will respond. So you have to accommodate in some ways those negative responses.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So now you show up on time.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Now I show up on actual real time at this place and not on time that would have been at that place. Exactly.

[Elizabeth Koch]

But how you identify, you talk a lot about, in your research, how that affects our consumer decisions. So can you talk a little bit about that?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Sure. So there are two different lines of those research. One version of that was really back to those issues about individualism and collectivism. And I was wondering, well, is it the case that if my collective identity is cued, do I then pursue things in that way of connecting and relating? So in those series of studies, for example, we thought, well, you go into a store and often they will have a mannequin with an outfit. So say you try on the pants and they look great, but then the belt looks awful, the shirt looks weird, the jacket looks funny. Do you just go, okay, well, the pants are good, I'm buying them? Or do you go, the whole thing doesn't work, so I'm going to leave it? And our intuition was that if a collectivistic mindset was on your mind, you'd want either the whole thing or you wouldn't want it. Whereas if an individualistic mindset was on your Mind you would go, the pants are good, and the rest of it just wouldn't even occur to you. So in a series of experiments, we tested out that prediction, and the answer seems to be yes. So depending on the mindset you bring into the consumption situation, you're either thinking about creating a set and then you're willing to pay a premium for the set, but also you're willing to discard discrete elements if you can't have the set.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

This is culture bound, or this is at the level of the individual chopper.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Well, we were looking at this in terms of. Remember that first idea of what is culture is that it's a human universal. So everyone should be able to trigger an individualistic or a collectivistic or an honor mindset, depending on the situation.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

Either in an individualistic mindset or one.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Or the other could be triggered in the moment. So even though people vary in how much chronically, they're used to sort of functioning in one or another at any moment in time, any of them can be triggered.

[Elizabeth Koch]

But couldn't we think of culture as just another stimuli in our environment that affects our decisions as well as, you know, whatever happened in your childhood or, you know, if you're hungry or not?

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

No, I would say it's the way we construct our perception box, our sense of reality, of what is real. I mean, as Daphne said, was the. You know, she was perceived as a person who was consistently late. That was just the way it was. That's part of my cultural mindset. Right.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

What does culture do for you? It provides you a list of things. What's important, what's valued, how do we do things. And if somebody actually doesn't follow that, you just assume that there's something wrong with them. You don't immediately go for, oh, they must come from a different right. When you do that, then you can try and make accommodations. But typically what happens is we're all in the same cultural space. We assume, as you nicely read from the quote, it's like air. We just assume that everyone is following the same implicit set of this implicit script.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

We're all born as naive realists. Whatever I perceive, of course, is what everyone else perceives. How could it be otherwise?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

What I see is all there is.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Yep, but what about the non conformists whose actual identity is related to not conforming with the cultural norms? And, you know, there was a lovely.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

I don't want to make advertisements, but Gap had a lovely sort of individualistic commercial a while ago, and it had all sorts of people wearing the same Gap Khakis. So there's a way in which even individualism is performed in a way that we all have to have our unique twist. And as you said, you know, my identity as a New Yorker is black, but I don't look exactly like every other New Yorker. I look uniquely in black compared to you in your black.

[Elizabeth Koch]

In terms of our identity, though, how does it affect our motivation? How does it affect our pursuit of long term goals? You know, how we see ourselves because it's just another construct. It's a narrative we tell ourselves that can change over time. But how does the me now who I think of myself now affect this imagined person in the future?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

That's a super question because I think one of the interesting things about identity is that it's temporal. We all had selves. We were before selves, we are now selves. We might be in the future, but a lot of actual modern human engagement is about the future self. So if you're a kid in school, school is not designed to be the most fun thing you could possibly be doing. It's not like you wake up in the morning and you think to yourself, how can I have the most fun? I know algebra. And it's foolish.

[Elizabeth Koch]

I don't know, I kind of like, speak for yourself.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

It's foolish for educators to try and win that game. It makes more sense to say, well, what am I actually doing? Am I engaging now to invest in some future me? And to the extent that future me feels connected to current me, then things that will help me get there feel like me. Things to do. How do we do that? Well, one is to make that future feel close and connected, sort of. It's the same me, after all. Another way that you could do that is to say, well, if I want in the future to be that and I'm not like that now, how am I going to attain that standard? Well, I better get going. So one version of actually getting going is to say, it's this, say me. It's continuous. I'm investing in future me because it's me. It's like I'm giving to myself. Another version of that is to say, well, you know, current me isn't as good as what I want future me to do, so I better start climbing that path. And that's kind of thinking of it as a contrasting standard. Both of those can be ways actually to engage. Why? Well, they both trigger a thing that we don't like to think about a lot, which is that engaging doing things that are important can feel difficult. And if I don't think about that. Then when it feels hard to work on, invest in the things I actually care about and want to do, I immediately feel a decline in confidence. Oh, maybe I don't really care about that. Maybe this is not the real me. Maybe I should invest my time in something else. Maybe it's a waste of my time. Maybe I'm bored right now. So one of the things that cultures do for us is they give us an explanation, a go to for when it's hard. What does that imply?

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So are you saying that the notion of what is difficult to meet is partially cultural?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Not what is difficult, but what is my experience of difficulty when it feels hard to think about or start doing something, what is that difficulty in thinking? That metacognitive experience of difficulty? What does that imply? Does it imply that the odds are low and I should reduce my certainty and shift to something else? So that's one possibility that's legitimate. Or alternatively, does that imply no pain, no gain?

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

You mean should I take it as a challenge that excites me?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

The important things in life are hard to get to. I can choose to do this. It's a goal I have for myself. It's a possible self. I can choose to engage with it if it's valuable, if other people would desire it. It must be difficult to get to. So difficulty can in some situations imply odds are low. Don't waste your time, shift to something else.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

Is that a character trait? Are some people just born with this attitude?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

I'm wanting to argue that it's a culture based thing that cultures give us narratives for what difficulty would imply, and that all cultures on the one hand probably provide both, but may be more likely more fluently, more practiced in giving you one or the other. So I'll give you an example. In the US there's that children's stories about the Little Engine that could. He was like, I think I can, I think I can. And that was really like a. You know, when it's hard, just persist. Which isn't quite difficult. Yes, importance, but at least it's a persistence. But we also have narratives about finding ourselves being true to ourselves. How do I know if I found myself? How do I know if I'm true to myself? Well, if it's hard, maybe it's not for me, because the things that I'm truly good at, the essence of me, should descend upon me like fairy dust. So in many ways those narratives of finding yourself being true to yourself actually carry an underbelly of signaling that difficulty implies Impossibility, it's not the true you, you should shift to something else.

[Elizabeth Koch]

When people come across difficulties in life, it's how we perceive those. And if we can somehow shift our mindset around that, how we think about difficulties, it'll affect how we feel about them and then how we behave.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

So rather than thinking about it as one coin that has like a good side and a bad side, I want to think about this as two coins. Because sometimes it's actually a good idea, right? Sometimes it's true. You don't want to perseverate and bang yourself against a wall and keep applying to medical school. And by the you're in your 40s, maybe you should be shifting to something else. That's really the question is under what circumstances is it a good idea to pull out the coin that says when it's difficult, I should reduce my certainty, I should shift to something else. And under what circumstances is it a good idea to say, of course it's hard, this is valuable, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and really engage. And I think you're right. What we want to think about, a well functioning person can shift between the two and not perseverate only on one or the other.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

I think in Chinese there's this expression, eat bitter. So can you explain this in this context?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

So when we are engaging in environments that are hard or tough, does that imply it's hard for me and I should shift to something else? Or does that imply that the process of attaining a goal requires that I actually suffer along the way? And eating bitter is a way of describing that narrative of engaging with difficulty. So one of the things that we asked ourselves was, are there differences across cultures in the chronic accessibility of difficulty implying impossibility, difficulty implying importance. And we had been doing this by asking people to remember a time that when they were working on task and it was hard and they thought it was a waste of their time, or that it was really valuable for them. And Americans can do that. When we just ask you to fill out a scale, Americans say, oh no, I completely agree, no pain, no gain. And I reject the idea that when it's difficult, it's impossible. And yet when we looked at what people were doing, it seemed as if they had more accessible. This idea of difficulty is impossibility. So we thought, let's look at this from a different angle. So what we did is we showed people the definitions or synonyms of difficulty, all the English language ones on the front of a computer screen. We just had you sit there and just say, read that. Is that more about importance or is that more about impossibility? And just press a button. And on average, Americans in different age groups, from middle school, high school, college age adults, what was more accessible for them was that any version of difficulty? It seemed more like about impossibility. Then we said, all right, we'll take all of that stuff, we'll bring it to India. Because in India there's a large population of people for whom English is a first language or at least a dominant language.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

It was also in English, so we.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Could use the exact same material. So we could find out, is this about English language or is this about American culture? And guess what? Indian participants were, if anything, more likely to say, no, no, those definitions and synonyms of difficulty, they're more about importance. So it looked more like culture than language. But we didn't want to stick only to English. So you then went to China and of course then you're not going to use English, Mandarin. So we used the definitions and synonyms from Chinese, which is actually more extensive because pictographs. So one of my most favorite one is there's one synonym for difficulty is pulling down your sleeve to hide your frayed cuff, only to expose your elbow because the cloth is so thin. Right. And that's a really nice way of describing difficulty. So again, people are just saying, is it more about importance or more about impossibility? And for Chinese it was about half and half. So American culture, at least from these versions of the studies, seems to be uniquely more likely to infer from difficult circumstances to have accessible the idea, maybe it's just not for me, but how.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

Big are these effects compared to the inter individual difference? If I pick any two individuals versus, you know, within China, within India, there's.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Always going to be huge differences, huge within population differences. So the culture that you live in, if we again go back to that idea of it's the water you swim in, so it's the culturally accessible constructs. And all we were measuring was is it culturally accessible? That's what that task was in my culture. Is this the way to think? It's separate from what I believe. So we didn't find a correlation between the cultural accessibility and your individual beliefs. It's just in my culture that's the usual way of thinking about it. And I'm a part of my culture.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So I know what I find utterly fascinating, that something as ephemeral as do I believe something is hard work or impossible, that that affects the way I perceive reality. That's really that's cool. Yeah, that's how perception works.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Well, I think it's just really what I mean, the way that I'm seeing this is that culture affects our general mindset, the way we think about things. And when you can move to another culture, you can maybe shift that mindset or you see it from a different perspective or you expand your perception box in a way. So I want to think about or get into this idea of how can small changes in our environment shift our mindset and how does that affect our long term life outcomes?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

We have heard the quote potentially from Einstein. We believe it's from Einstein. Maybe other people said it too, that when you make progress, it's a small portion of that is the inspiration and most of it is the perspiration. But in the US we often think that talent is much more valuable than mere effort, which is actually like a weird reversal of that.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

If you have to work at it, it's no good.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

If you have to work at it, you're just a hard worker, you're not all that talented. So the things that you're. Then what would that set us up to do? That would set us up to be sort of very, very sensitive to the least possibility of difficulty. This feels hard for me. I don't have talent in that I should shift to something else. And you can see how that would be very corrosive because in fact, most things that are worth doing require lots of practice to get there.

[Elizabeth Koch]

But wait, wouldn't you achieve the greatest heights when you actually discover what it is either you're good at or you enjoy doing and then work at that versus, you know, because then there's this.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Logistic effect and there's a question, how would I know? So when I was in school, we were supposed to pick a language as a second language to learn based on who knows what. When my kids were in school, they had perfected this model. This is in the US and so they had you take mini, you know, few weeks of each language at the end of which you were supposed to pick. And again, based on what. So the few weeks is going to tell you what, I like the teacher, the other kids are fun, or I learned something and hence I must have talent for Spanish, which I have no talent for French. So it just seems like once we set up this idea that I should be forefronting my talent, it creates many situations in which in fact I get less far than I could have. That eating bitter perspective assumes that we can get a lot of advance just by working hard. Now Maybe at the very edge, talent matters, but there may be a huge amount of progress that we can make of ways in which we can actually engage and enjoy ourselves and do something useful in the world. That just involves doing it for most.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

People most of the time, I think hard work pays off. Now if you're an Olympic athlete and you're trying to get that 0.1 second advantage in that case, I think natural talent makes a difference to get the highest heights.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

So for most of us, we are not at the highest heights of anything. We are John Bowlby's good enough parents, we're good enough people. We are not awful, but we aren't necessarily the very best. And I think potentially another way of thinking about this in terms of well being and life satisfaction and finding a sense of purpose and meaning in life. It's very draining to think that I can't do anything till I found my one true metier. The one thing that I'm going to be the best at. Most of us may not be the best at anything, but we can still actually have productive, useful, meaningful lives, have a sense of purpose by just engaging. So I think that's really, to me the tension.

[Elizabeth Koch]

But so this question still of how do these small changes in our context affect our mindset and shift the decisions we make and our long term sort of life goals and outcomes, how does that work?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

So there are three different ways that we can think about that. One is in terms of whether the context shifts us to an individualistic or collectivistic mindset. Am I thinking about how things connect and relate or am I thinking about pulling out a main point? Am I supposed to be the one distinct, best one in my unique black outfit or my unique khakis, or am I trying to actually fit in and connect to others? So that's one very small change in context that can really matter. The other very small change in context that can really matter really has to do with these triggering of different ways of thinking about what does difficulty mean? The third way that we can think about those small changes in context is really this idea that as I'm engaging with the world, what is the brain doing? Well, the brain is this continuous prediction system and it's making small predictions about what will happen next. What will happen next. And to the extent that seems to be that I made a correct prediction, I can keep going back to that example about being late. I had no idea I was late, right? So I didn't experience a prediction error. I experienced everything is moving along just fine potentially because I was A tenured professor and no one said anything. But what does that mean? That means that the context shift can shift how we act without us necessarily even noticing it.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

When you say small modification, what do you have in mind, particular to teach maybe kids, that hard work is part of life and is really useful? Well, what sort of small intervention do you have in mind? Some pixel dust?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. That fairy dust, you just sprinkle it upon your head. I want to get A's and I have the bright powder and you sprinkle you and it gets sparkly. That's what I meant. No, so that's actually one of the questions that I asked. So for many years I've been asking kids about what are the experiences, what are they concerned they might be like in the coming year, in the farther future?

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

This is school, kids, school kids.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

The most common response is to do well in school, which may come as a surprise to educators and so forth, who are looking at basically missing the mark. So I said, well, let's take kids seriously. So if you actually want to do well in school and you're imagining futures in the farther future that require lots of advanced education because want to kids want to be various careers and to have and do things that would require lots of schoolwork. So then the question is, why might it be that I carry around these ideas that I want to do on school, that I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or I want to be a gamer, I want to be Right influencer. One of the things is that unless it feels like future me is relevant to me right now, unless the current situation seems relevant to my goal of being a good student, I'm actually focusing on other things. So one of the small changes in context can be to actually help kids see that that future is actually relevant to right now.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Well, I was going to say, how does this relate to kind of procrastination? Because I think we often think there is this cognitive bias that our future self is going to be better than our current self, right? Like, oh, my future me is going to totally write that paper, but like, not the current me. And I'll just trust that future me is going to do that. And so you end up procrastinating. So how does our, you know, our perception of ourselves, and you talked about this consistency of identity, but really we have this abnormally higher, you know, perception that our future selves are going to be much better than our current selves, when it's probably going to be just about the Same. And this leads to this cycle of procrastination. So can you speak to that?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Sure. So when I started talking about the three reasons that we have a self, we mentioned two of them. One was I need to actually know who I am. The second one is I need to be able to predict how others will respond. But the third one is actually literally what you just said right now, which is that it's actually useful to maintain a somewhat positive sense of self, to feel a sense of self worth. Self efficacy, to believe that I am or can be competent allows me to keep engaging with things. And it can have its underbelly, which is that one way to feel good about myself is to say, not doing it now, but future me is going to just, you know, be the cat's pajamas. Future me is going to really ace that thing, is going to get it done. I'm just 12 right now, but, you know, later I'll be a doctor. And just imagining that future self doesn't necessarily get you going. So there needs to be something that happens between imagining this nice, lovely, positive future, which we don't in any way want to undermine, and actually getting going, which requires that, I think, so now is the time to get going. Sometimes when we think about procrastination, it's kind of a fancy word, and there are two different elements to it. One element of procrastination is, as you said, I don't need to work now because I can really feel taste and just vividly immerse myself in how wonderful it'll be once the book will write itself. I can so clearly envision it. So now I can have a coffee and read the newspaper. And so I think the question then is, no one says right now I'm procrastinating. When they do, they probably feel less efficacious bad about themselves. Often people simply say, okay, I can just really imagine it and it'll really flow wonderfully. Now I'm not really in the mood for it, but later it'll happen. And I think the first thing is when you get started, the reason you think you're maybe not in the mood for it right now is when you get started. You have this disconcerting thing. You're just not sure how to start. Or you write the first paragraph, it's not very good. Or you're editing and nothing is really happening. And you think something is wrong right now. And it reduces your confidence that now is the time to get going. And you think, maybe later I'll work. And that's because it Feels hard. And so I think the small thing that we want to do is actually get practiced up that. Yes, of course, getting going, continuing to work feels difficult. It is hard.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

You want to get kids used to the fact that feeling hard is good.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

It's okay. Yes. So that you won't immediately think, oh, this feels hard. If I have a talent modality, the pixie dust just descending upon me way of thinking about actually engaging, then any signal of difficulty will reduce my confidence and make me say, maybe I should shift to something else. Maybe this isn't for me.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So how do you do this practically? How do you teach kids that it's good to feel hard work? How do you do that just practically? What do you tell them?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

So I think if we're thinking about this from an American culture perspective, because we're so practiced with the alternative, just dumping that on kids plates, they'll counter argue you. And so the more forcefully you say it, the more you scold, the more you say you ought to believe this, the more they'll instantly and immediately counter argue you and come up with examples of why it isn't true. So rather than doing that, what we've been doing is working with teachers, with kids in school to do a bunch of activities that can help kids get those insights themselves. So starting with things that are fun and engaging, so that the cultural frame, which is that, you know, if it's really for me, it should be easy to do, easy as possible, easy as true. Once they're trusting the process to begin to add things that are harder to do, to actually get that. So you sneak in as a gradual process. It's not sneaky, it's that I have to actually be willing to engage. If you throw something at me that doesn't make sense to me, then given that I have those three goals of self concept, one of them is to feel good about myself. And if you try and plunge me into something that's gonna make me feel bad about myself, I should grab onto that piece of self concept that says, no, I need to feel good about myself and counter argue it. So I think sneaky is the wrong way to frame it because there's something useful about being willing to believe that I'm a person of worth, I am, or could become competent. And then the way that I get there, I think what's iatrogenic about American culture is that we overemphasize ease as a signal of talent. Talent would just feel effortless. And I think we know that that's not true, and yet we Sell that to ourselves and to others.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

For most of us, it's a fiction we should get rid of. We should also get rid of the belief that I always need to feel good about myself. Right.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

I think there's two different ways of feeling good. So one way of feeling good, the way that you're probably thinking of, is this way, right? I'm the best. Ooh. Right. There's another way of feeling good, which is this calm satisfaction of knowing that I tried my best and tomorrow's another day. And that way of feeling good about yourself is very useful. You should knock yourself out, you should do your darndest, and then tomorrow's another day.

[Elizabeth Koch]

And also this framing of that, it's not about the outcome per se, but it's about the process and the effort. And. And there is this book, the Coddling of the American Mind, where this concept of we're coddling a lot of the. Preventing them from having any adversity. Everybody gets a trophy, and no one should feel bad. And that's really actually detrimental because some hardship early on actually teaches you how to deal with it and inoculates you to the inevitable later hardships down the.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Road by not letting kids have a chance. What you're telling them is that if I fail along the way, all is lost. And that is very corrosive because it produces a sense that every single step is a make or break situation. And I think when we think about, is it about the outcome or the process? I would want to argue that it's not about a particular outcome. So did I write this paper? Did my paper have this amount of impact? No. I'm trying to actually engage with science, and sometimes I'll be wrong, sometimes I'll work really hard, and there's actually nothing there. I was simply wrong. That's okay, because I'm engaging with the process. And along the way, if you want to call it succeeding, I'm succeeding in making progress. I'm creating.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

But you should always treat it as it's important. Right. I'm always trying to write the best possible paper.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

I'm trying to write the best possible paper, but I have to be willing to shift flexibly to say, but this isn't getting me there.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Thinking again. Going back to the influence of culture in this world right now, it's so, you know, we have access to all these other cultures. We're not as isolated as we once were. And so, you know, I'm a little skeptical about how much we really are inside these perception boxes. Like, I mean, maybe in Certain aspects like the United States that are isolated and don't have a lot of. But like growing up in New York, you have access to all these other cultures and influences, but you're in a perception box.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Whether you define it as a box that contains a variety of cultures or only one culture. Humans don't engage with some objective world. They engage with the world through their senses. No one does. So if we want to increase this to beyond humans, other living creatures as well. So the only way that we can engage with the world is, like I said, the brain is a prediction machine. And it makes minute predictions, but it doesn't tell us the answer. So we're always in that box.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

I mean, this is where science comes in, right? Like the science where you do you have to compare different culture, and then by stepping out of one, you realize, oh, there are all these different cultures.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

And different ways, and those cultures are the actual everyday practices. And then that's the most proximal level. And the level above that is how commonly is the right way of doing things, this collective way, or a do your own way or an honor way. And above all of that is all humans have to be able to do all of those. We don't survive. All of us have some concept of what does it mean to persist. It depends on the frame that we use. So it's not that any one of these things either comes only from one culture or is only good or bad. Some of these are tools that we should be practiced at pulling out. So we should be asking ourselves as we go through life, you know, well, when this feels difficult, the inference they draw matters for what they do next, whether they engage, whether they disengage. And I think that's really when we say the small changes in context, we're not going to change the fact that people notice whether it feels easy or hard. What we can change is potentially to increase the vocabulary. So you're at least aware that doesn't have to mean one thing. It could also mean something else. And the more practiced up I am with it, that idea of that prediction, automatic prediction process, the more practiced up I in, the more it feels natural to say, oh, maybe it could mean.

[Elizabeth Koch]

That if you think of the brain as like an algorithm, and then whatever the inputs as the input change these decision, the algorithms that go into these decisions and how we think about things will change. And that's why I think exposure to other cultures can be really, really helpful.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Because instead of thinking about this as the way you can think about it as a way A way.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

But to Heather's point, isn't it true that given globalization, Internet and all of that, we're sort of all evolving towards some common worldwide culture because many of us watch the same things and do.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Same things, so more of these, more ideas would be accessible Still, I don't think that when you are living in very different places in the world that everything is the same. And I think those underlying, like, why am I doing things? What counts? Those things are a little more sticky.

[Elizabeth Koch]

So at the end of each episode, we like to ask our guests a few perception box questions. So my question is, when have you let go of a very deeply held conviction? Maybe it's something to do with your research. Like you really thought something was going to be one way and it really surprised you.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Or I think a couple of things that to me resonate. One is, apparently, prior to even thinking about this idea of, people can draw inferences from their metacognitive experiences of difficulty. I had been more of a chronic difficulty is importance kind of a person. So I remember having to shift majors when I started college because I was like, oh, I'm not all that interested in history and philosophy, so maybe I should study them because they don't come naturally to me. And this is back to your idea that shouldn't you pick the things you're good at? An alternative is to say you should pick the things you're not good at because you can't possibly get better if you don't work on them more. And so realizing that it sort of depends. There's no right answer. It depends on the situation. Why am I doing this? Am I studying? Am I doing the things I'm less good at to attain competency, which is really what you're supposed to do through, like, high school. But at the point that you're transitioning to where do I want to invest my energies for my job for the rest of my life, maybe I should ask myself, what are the things that I feel like I can make really a contribution to? So that was like an aha moment. I don't know if it was painful, but later when I started thinking about difficulty as importance, I thought, huh, so apparently I was a difficulty as importance kind of a person.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So did you end up studying history and philosophy?

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

No, no, I let that go and I went into sociology and psychology.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

But because you felt you had a.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Talent for it, because it was the kind of field where if I had nothing that I had to do at that moment, I'd happily pick up that kind of stuff. To read, whereas the other stuff is more like, well, have I finished my homework? If so, then done.

[Dr. Christoph Koch]

So that's why some people study fruit flies and nematodes, C. Elegans, because there you can directly manipulate, directly access oral processes.

[Dr. Daphna Oyserman]

Not interesting to me, but I can understand that. Yes.

[Elizabeth Koch]

Well, thank you for this great conversation. I want to thank you for being here, for joining us today. And if you'd like to learn more about your own perception box, spend time this week answering the same perception box questions that we asked our guests, and check out other questions on our website@ unlikelycollaborators.com you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever, wherever you get your podcast.