Finding Balance: The Role of Optimism and Pessimism in Personal Growth

What are the true natures of intelligence and wisdom, and how do they play off each other in sometimes surprising ways? What are the best ways to mitigate our many biases, and what factors create the placebo and nocebo effects?

David Robson is a prolific journalist, a former editor at New Scientist, and the author of the books The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World, and The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes.

Greg and David discuss how intelligence isn't always correlated with wise decision-making, the potential flaws in educational systems, and the crucial role of critical thinking. They also explore how mindset impacts health and learning, touching on topics like cognitive biases and rationality, and dissect the placebo and nocebo effects. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Flynn effect
• Fin de siècle
• Lewis Terman
• Keith Stanovich
• Confirmation bias
• Nobel disease
• Dunning–Kruger effect
• Montessori education
• Henry K. Beecher
• Placebo
• Nocebo
• Anita Williams Woolley’s Research

Guest Profile:

• DavidRobson.me
• Bio at NewScientist.com
• Social Profile on Instagram

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network
• The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World
• The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes
• BBC.com Articles

Episode Quotes:

Are we reflexively pessimistic?

41:06: I think a lot of us are reflexively pessimistic in our lives because we think: you expect the worst, and then anything that's better than that will bring you joy. But actually, by expecting the worst through these expectation effects, you might actually be bringing about the worst. It could actually be changing the outcome so that a positive outcome is less likely. So being pessimistic is not rational; it's not as smart as we think it's going to be. But I'm not saying we should be like Pollyanna and just try to pretend that all of these difficulties in our lives don't exist. I think we need to be in that sweet middle ground, where we're remaining open-minded to all of the possibilities.

Embracing discomfort

43:06: We don't always have to catastrophise things that feel uncomfortable, because sometimes the discomfort is part of what makes them so powerful.

On motivated reasoning

13:38: When we measure something like IQ, it does seem to be related to the efficiency of the brain's networks in some ways. So it is helping the brain to process information more quickly, which can be a big advantage when you're learning something new and complex or when you have to make very rapid decisions. But what it doesn't protect you from is the things that we spoke about. So all of those biases doesn't necessarily mean that you're any more likely to consider a piece of evidence fairly rather than just allowing your preconceptions to cloud your judgment. The big problem is that once you have made those mistakes, you then have your intelligence to rationalize and justify the conclusion that you've come to. That's a process called motivated reasoning, and I think that's really behind this idea of the intelligence trap.

Can we use other people to counter our biases?

52:55: It's great to have someone who is a real optimist, is always looking on the bright side, and is always thinking big. But you do want someone—not someone who is pessimistic and is always going to drag everyone down. But you want someone who's realistic and is asking those difficult questions. And they're going to say, "Well, you have these big dreams, but here are the ten challenges that we're going to have to overcome before we get there." So you absolutely want to have those different perspectives. And teams full of one or the other would not work. If you have someone who's only looking at the challenges, they will be less ambitious and maybe produce more mediocre projects. If you have people who are blindly optimistic, well, they're going to overlook some really important challenge that is ultimately going to lead to failure unless you preempt it and plan for it. So that's why I think we can use other people to counter some of our own biases.