Success Secret: Finding People Who Disagree With You

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0:30We have a natural instinct to surround ourselves with people who are just like us, who think like us, who live like us, who see the world the way that we do. But in this flat world, we're being bombarded by more and more examples of people who are not like us. One of the great joys of my life is that I study people. When I'm in a weird, like a really awkward conversation, I become a researcher. So if you start talking to me and you've got really, really strong political views and they really disagree with mine, you're going to notice that I'm going to do something. And I'm like, tell me more.

1:00It actually makes us happier in the long run. When we do the thing, it's harder. It's much easier whenever you go to the gym, but it's better for you. And the case that I'm going to make is that bridging social capital where you're looking for commonality of humanity across big differences in our characteristics is actually better for your prosperity. It's better for your intellect. It's better for your happiness, even though it's not natural and it's harder as a result of that.

Welcome to Office Hours

1:34Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a professor at Vanderbilt University and a columnist for the Free Press. Most importantly, I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. And that's what this show is all about. If you're a regular watcher or listener, thank you. Thank you for staying with us. Thank you for sharing these ideas with other people, maybe sharing the link. That's how we spread our movement of happiness science and how all of us can be happiness teachers. That's what I've dedicated myself to.

2:05And I want to invite you to joining me in doing that to lift other people up as well. So please do like and subscribe this episode, this show. Make sure that it's sent to you directly as soon as new, fresh episodes are out every Monday. And encourage other people to subscribe as well. Also, make sure that you rate the show. That gives us a lot better idea on how we're doing. And feedback to us as well. Please send me comments or questions or criticisms or anything you want by writing it in the comments below, wherever you're watching or listening to this show. Or send us an email.

2:37The email address is officehours.arthurbrooks.com If you want to go a little bit deeper in anything that we talk about in behavioral science and human happiness, you can actually get my newsletter. That comes out every Friday morning and it's completely free. It's 300 to 500 words on a new provocative topic every week that you can spread around to people that you love. If you find it especially interesting, you can get that by going to my website, arthurbrooks.com slash newsletter. And if you're interested in retreats, in-person experiences where we look at this material, you make friends that are also interested in it.

3:08Make new friends for life based on your shared love of the science of happiness. You can do that by going to retreats.arthurbrooks.com. All right. You'll find all sorts of other cool stuff on the website as well. Surveys and tests that you can take and all kinds of things that you can read as well. All right. What do we want to talk about today? I want to talk about a bit of an irony in modern life and how you can understand that irony and use it to live a better life yourself. That irony is as follows. We have a natural instinct to surround ourselves with people who are just like us, who think like us, who live like us, who see the world the way that we do.

3:45But in this flat world, we're being bombarded by more and more examples of people who are not like us. We're being more and more exposed because of the way that we use technology, because of the way that the media and methods of communication have become so much more democratic that we're getting more information about people who are not like us. It's almost as if we're living in these very diverse communities. So we have a natural biological tendency toward uniformity, but we have a natural technological tendency toward diversity.

4:18Hmm. That has actually led a lot of people to be really uncomfortable. And I want to talk about that discomfort with the whole idea of diversity, focusing on one kind of diversity in specific, which is diversity of ideas. And if I do my job in this episode, I want you to be a lot more comfortable with it by understanding it and knowing actually how to make it something that is enriching in your life, as opposed to something that bothers you a lot. So what I'm going to talk about today is basically three things.

4:48How diversity naturally affects us as Homo sapiens. I'm going to talk about how to make it work for us. But between those two things, I want to talk about why idea diversity, differences of opinion about social issues, politics, you name it, why those are especially hard for us to cope with. If you struggle with that in your family or your friends or at your university or in the workplace, you're not alone. And I'm going to show you why. So, again, what do we want to do today? I want to make life easier and better for you so you can be a better leader, but also a happier person.

The Irony of Diversity

5:22So let's start off with the significance of May 21st. Now, what is the significance of May 21st? Each year, that is, according to the United Nations, World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, a.k.a. Diversity Day. Yes, my friends, there is a diversity day that has been declared as such by the United Nations on May 21st. Now, I want you to know that I always celebrate May 21st. It's a big celebration day for me. I have a cake and sometimes even a party.

5:53But the reason for that is that May 21st is also my birthday. I don't celebrate Diversity Day from the United Nations. As a matter of fact, I didn't know that until recently. I'm skeptical of any celebration day that's declared by the United Nations or, for that matter, any other government body. But, you know, that doesn't mean that you should be, too. It just means that I'm kind of an iconoclastic grump. Um, I'm even a little resentful that the last Thursday in November we're asked to all celebrate by the government and be thankful.

6:23As my son jokingly says, I refer to it as the state mandated thankfulness holiday. That's me. Uh, you do you. Don't think less of me for that. Write into the comments if you think I'm being too grouchy about it. But the whole point is this. That sounds sort of like diversity is spinach or the United Nations wouldn't be declaring it as such. I want to think about it in a different way. If you're a regular viewer of this show, you know that anytime something's hard, that's an opportunity. Anytime something is irritating, that's a, that's a, that's a really big opportunity.

6:53As a matter of fact, for making your life better, for actually becoming happier. And this is an absolute case in point. I want to think about a better way to think about diversity, what it is, and even in the hardest cases, how it can make us happier every day as people. Now, this discussion starts off with a, a kind of an academic concept that you've probably heard before, but have never really thought about it that much, unless you're a social scientist nerd like me.

Social Capital and Human Connection

7:18And that concept is social capital. Social capital is the glue between people, the, the, the invisible glue of civil society. It's not something that we're required to have to be together. On the contrary, it's not a law that puts us together all in one place. It's the linkages between people that naturally occur, especially people who are not in the same family. There are people in communities. Why are they linked up together? This was made very popular, this whole concept, by my colleague at the Harvard Kennedy School named Robert Putnam.

7:51If you haven't heard of him, you'll, he's a political science professor, now retired. He wrote a very famous book in the year 2000 called Bowling Alone. It wasn't about bowling. It was about the fact that if you go back to the 1950s, bowling leagues were unbelievably common and popular. And what he found in his research is that people tend not to bowl in bowling leagues anymore. They tend to bowl very often actually by themselves or just with one friend or something. And he said that that was, that was a kind of a, a symptom of the breakdown of civil society, of this social capital, of these unspoken linkages between people where people would bond together.

8:29Now that's an ancient idea of how important that is to, especially American life. Not all of you watching are Americans, but you'll recognize this if you spend any time in the United States is kind of common. If you go back to 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French noble comes to the United States and he travels around and he's just amazed by this weird country that has a vast frontier and a relatively small population and is doing really well. And he concludes that the secret to American success in 1835 is these civic bonds where people band together as individuals, but voluntarily.

9:03And he found that everybody in this early nation belonged to a whole bunch of associations, large and small, dedicated to charitable works and works of mutual interest, et cetera, that didn't exist in the countries that he knew the best, which were France and Great Britain. He said in, in France, you have a nobleman and in Great Britain, you have a bureaucrat and those are the ones who organize everything, but it's American citizens who voluntarily organize everything. And, and that was the secret to American greatness. That was his belief in 1835.

9:34That's the book that he wrote. You're probably aware of what I'm talking about is called Democracy in America. And he felt that democracy as exemplified in the United States was, was largely due to the fact that we have these weird voluntary associations that other countries just don't have. He thought that was the glue of our society. And that's the same thing that many years later, 165 years later, Robert Putnam believed in his book, Bowling Alone. And he sent up the alarm that that was fraying, that that was, that was eroding in American life. Okay. Now I'm not going to deal with whether or not there's more or less social capital.

10:06You decide for yourself. You can look at the, the, the book Bowling Alone. You can look at the literature that's gone on since then. And it's a big raging debate. What I want to point out is that this social capital per se can either give us less diversity in our lives or more for the following reason. There's two kinds of social capital, civic bonds, glue. There's bonding social capital and there's bridging social capital. Now bonding social capital is more or less what Putnam was talking about. And for that matter, a lot of what de Tocqueville was talking about, people were similarly placed.

10:41They're from the same town. They're kind of from the same tribe, if you will. And they're doing things together because of their commonality. They, they, they see each other in kinship because of the commonality between them. That's bonding social capital. And you see this a lot. You have a lot of it in your life. You went to the same college as somebody. You like the same football team as somebody, for example. But that's not the only kind. The other kind of social capital is called bridging social capital. And that social capital where we make civic bonds, where we glue ourselves to other people across differences.

11:12And that's a very different kind of experience. In a way, you'd see that actually also at a football game because you'll see all different kinds of people who all like the Seattle Seahawks. And if you follow my show, you know that all thinking, sensible people know that the Seattle Seahawks are the greatest football team. And, and, and everybody loves each other because they have that in common as the Seattle Seahawks. But they're very different kinds of people bonding across their differences for some particular reason. Now, maybe it might be, we love our city.

11:43We love our church. We love America. We love the human race. And we're all super different, but we have that common love across these differences. And that's what actually bridges us. So bonding social capital is demographic similarity. Bridging social capital is a kind of a values commonality across demographic difference. You see what I'm talking about there? Now, quiz, which is harder? It's a question that answers itself, right?

12:15Especially if you look at modern American life where there's tons of bonding. You know, people are like, if you're like me, you're like me. And we're finding ways that we have the same identity, identity, identity. Everybody's talking about identity. They're talking about demographic identity. And we bond to each other with these identities. Bridging social capital is getting harder and harder because people are not, are not actually gluing themselves to each other across differences, especially doing it on purpose across differences. And, and that's a major difference in the way that we see the world.

12:46And it's actually quite deleterious given, given the fact that bridging social capital has gotten so hard for us to have an understanding of what it means to be together as different kinds of people. And I'll give you a perfect case study of this. I've been a college professor for a long time. When I started teaching at the university in the late 1990s, I know I'm old, it was, it was largely a bridging social capital experience. People would come from all different walks of life. They came, you know, different races, different religions, certainly different socioeconomic backgrounds in different parts of the country.

13:18And they would all come together. And what they had in common is that they were all taking these classes in common and they had been randomly assigned to live together in dorms. And what they found was that they, they found it an incredibly interesting and enriching experience. And people really loved the fact that they were in this diverse milieu. It was actually really good for them. As a matter of fact, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll even talk about that a little bit today about why it was so good for them to do that. But now college is a lot more than it has been in the past about bonding social capital, where the college experience is often characterized sociologically as one of finding particular identities and finding groups where you have common identities, whether they're racial identities or religious identities, and certainly ideological identities and, and, and, and being with those people.

14:09And furthermore, seeing people who don't share those things as kind of out groups. I've seen that a lot more in the college experience. And that's one of the reasons, in my view, as an educator, that college has become less happy than it was in the past. That in point of fact, when we went from bridging to bonding, it created more antipathy between groups. It created more activism between groups and it created a lot less happiness between groups. Now, again, back to the question, which is easier, bonding or bridging?

Evolutionary Biology and Homophily Bias

14:36That's a question that answers itself largely because of evolutionary biology. I go on and on and on about, you know, the psychology and, and biology that, that stems from our human evolution. And I often refer to the fact that our brains were largely in their present state starting about 250,000 years ago in the middle place to scene. At that point, we, many of the patterns that we still see today that are often paradoxical in modern life were established because they were appropriate to life 250,000 years ago. Now, how were we living at that point?

15:08All the human race basically lived in bands of 30 to 50 kin related individuals. Now, it was a dangerous time. There was wild animals. There was other bands. They wanted your animal skins and buffalo jerky. They would raid you at any moment. And you were bands because you were banding together. What were you banding together over? Well, common interest in, in your security and the ability to pass on your genes and survive the winter. And how did you do that by relying on each other and trusting each other?

15:38And the way that you trusted each other was through commonality. The way that you saw somebody as trustworthy was how they were just like you. They were just, they looked like you. You grew up with them. You spoke the same language. You, yeah, you, you were obviously the same race, the same set of beliefs, such as it was 250,000 years ago. And that's wired itself into our instincts on how we're most comfortable. That's called a homophily bias in evolution. We love people who are like us naturally.

16:10We prefer to hang out with people who are like ourselves because there's a shorthand. Because it's just easier and all that stems back to, you know, caveman days, as a matter of fact. That's broadly true. And we see this again and again and again for race, for age, for education, for job, for gender, for attitudes, for values, for personality. We have a homophily bias. So now we get into the paradox that gets even a little bit deeper, which is to say that it's kind of good for us.

16:41And, and it broadens our perspectives. It actually makes us happier in the long run. When we do the thing, it's harder. Now that actually shouldn't be so strange to you. There are lots and lots of things where life is harder, but your life gets better when you do the harder thing. It's easier to sit on the couch than to go to the gym. But sitting on the couch is not as good for you as going to the gym. I mean, look, the couch is good too. You can't be in the gym 23 hours a day, but you get my point. It's much easier whenever you go to the gym, but it's better for you. And the case that I'm going to make is that bridging social capital, where you're looking for commonality of, of humanity across big differences in our characteristics is actually better for your prosperity.

17:22It's better for your intellect. It's better for your happiness, even though it's not natural necessarily with respect to evolutionary biology. And it's harder as a result of that. So that's what I really want to dig into and how we can think about it. And I want to talk about the hardest kind of diversity of all, but we're not quite there yet. Okay. Now it's even interesting, by the way, this homophily bias, it leads to all sorts of sort of paradoxes that we see in human life and behavior.

17:53For example, you'll often notice that people who are very sheltered in their, in their groups, they even have a hard time distinguishing people from outside groups. So for example, you might say, ah, my grandfather, I mean, he can't tell people of a certain race apart. It's just so it's mortifying. It's so embarrassing. Well, there's actually neuroscience research that shows that if you haven't seen too many people from your out group, you haven't seen them very much, that it takes a little while for your brain to start distinguishing between the people that don't have your racial characteristics.

18:23That's true for everybody, by the way, you know, and it's interesting because I've experienced this firsthand. Esther and I, we have two of our children are biological. And so they kind of look like us. And one of our children is, is adopted from China. And, um, and, and she grew up with us and it's been our whole lives together, the best. And, and, and the weirdest thing about that is since we have, uh, of, uh, a direct family of origin member in common, who's technically a different race. It's very hard for us to sort of distinguish when we're around people of Han Chinese descent, it doesn't occur to us since then that there's a racial difference because there's not a, there's not a difference that we see between our daughter and our sons.

19:07So it's weird that that actually obscures the differences for us, as opposed to exacerbating the differences, which would make it harder to tell people apart. What, by the way, when we went to adopt our, our, our daughter from, from China, I actually went by myself. I was in a large group of American families. There was about 20, uh, people there. I think there was nine families with 20 people. Most of them are couples. I was the only single parent there. I wasn't a single parent. My wife was back taking care of our kids, our biological kids, and we were in this group and the, our guide, the guy who was helping us from the adoption agency in China, great guy, spoke pretty good English as a matter of fact, but he'd never been outside China in his life.

19:47And, and he made us all wear this one weird thing in common on our shirts. And, and, and I said, why do we have to, I mean, it's like, it's obvious who we are. He says, sorry, I can't tell you apart because he hadn't seen that many Westerners as a matter of fact. So you get the idea that even our brains have this homophily bias where once again, you can get past that super, super fast. You can train your brain. We did. You probably have as well, but it's not necessarily evidence of, you know, evil that we see.

20:18If you want references on this, I'm going to put them in there on interesting article on this. Um, similarity in relationships as niche construction, choice, stability, and influence within dyads in a free choice environment. Boy, does that sound interesting, right? Anyway, there's all go in the, there's all go in the, um, the show notes, um, like anything else. So we will necessarily like people who are more like us with respect to kin or clan, and that probably kept your ancestors safer than they would have been. But today that's really, really maladapted the idea.

20:51It's like my people, blood and soil. That's really adapted to modern life. Not just because it's hard for us to get along as, as a society politically, that's obvious, but because it actually makes us less happy. It makes us less successful than we would be otherwise, meaning that we need to get into the gym of diversity more than we ordinarily do. Now, I've got the data to show that it is good for you. I'm not just making some sort of, um, politically correct point on this. It's absolutely the case that studies that look at cross group friendship, cross group, that is racial group, religious group, social group, and ideological groups.

21:27Among college students, scholars have found a much greater diversity of friendships. When they find that greater diversity of friendships, they also see increases in academic and social skills and improve satisfaction with college. Okay, that's why the old days in college were better than the new days in college, precisely because we were cultivating and celebrating these differences that people were experiencing, often for the very first time in their life. And that's how the American university system was set up, was to actually mix people up in this cool, beautiful way with common humanity, but different demographics, which was really great.

22:01Interesting study on this. Racial diversity matters, the impact of diversity-related student engagement in institutional context. That's from the American Educational Research Journal from 2009. Okay, read it because it's actually really interesting. Okay, now, let's talk about different types of diversity, the types we typically talk about, and then the types that we often don't talk about that we should, that are actually the hardest and most important.

Racial Diversity Versus Attitude Diversity

22:25Okay, so let's start with racial and ethnic differences. That's what people are always talking about, right? This is definitely beneficial. Absolutely, absolutely. That article that I just referred to was mostly about ethnic and racial differences. But that definition actually tends to be, believe it or not, easier for most people. I know there's a lot in the news about people who are, you know, racially unbelievably undiverse and intolerant, etc. But that tends for most people across the political spectrum to be the easiest type. And interestingly, there's one study, and this is going to probably amuse you, as people who like amusing paradoxes, which is why you are interested in behavioral science, is that people who say that they value diversity, personally value diversity, they're more likely than others to have friendships with a high variety of race, religion, and sexual orientation differences.

23:17They absolutely do. People who say they value personal diversity. Good. However, this is the ironic part. These people were also most likely to have non-diverse friendships when it came to political attitudes and social values. Okay? So in other words, lower diversity than average, more homogeneity with respect to how people think. And so what this basically tells us is that the celebrate diversity bumper sticker generally refers to looking different while thinking the same. And that leads to the second kind of diversity, which is less popular and harder for almost everybody, but has the most benefit.

23:56Okay? And that is diversity of attitudes. Really, really super beneficial. Really super hard. And people who talk about diversity often really, really don't want it. And so the kind of diversity that they're talking about is the easier of the two, and they're overlooking what diversity can and I believe really should mean, especially in modern life. And this gets back to the college experience that I was talking about. This is the kind of thing that we actually see most as the balkanization of political views. That's also true in almost any other community. A lot of that has to do with the accelerant of social media, which is putting people into silos, into echo chambers politically, where your algorithms will deliver to you what you already thought.

24:39It will connect you to people who agree with you already. And platforms are specializing in people who are all the same views. Oh, I love diversity. Unless you think differently than me. And that's what the world is serving up to you. It can make you feel really good about yourself. But the truth is that you're probably not that diverse at all. If you're like me, you've got to be drinking when you're in the gym and you have to be drinking something clean without any calories that will actually give you your electrolytes and all the good stuff.

Sponsors and Supplements

25:05For me, that's Element. L-M-N-T. You probably knew that already. It's a great product that helps you stay hydrated without sugar and a bunch of dodgy ingredients that are found in a lot of popular electrolyte drinks and sports drinks. No sugar, no junk, just electrolytes that actually work. Give it a try. I like it. It's science-backed and made for athletes, fasting, keto, or happiness scientists like me. Anyone who sweats. So, how do I use it? I use it in the morning, 4.45 in the morning.

25:35I don't like to drink anything with caffeine or anything that peps me up because I like to be real clear and I drink my caffeine later. Element is just the ticket that I need. Give it a try yourself. Right now, you can get a free sample pack with any purchase at Drink Element. That's drink, just like it sounds, L-M-N-T.com slash Arthur. Try it risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll refund your order. No questions asked, but you're going to like it. As you know from listening to this show, I've never been a supernaturally happy person.

26:06That's exactly why I've spent much of my life and my career trying to understand human happiness. Not just academically, but in a way that I could use very practically. And you can, too. I don't do research. I do me-search. Well, and you-search. My time in academia has reinforced the lesson I continue to rely on today. Happiness, well, and energy are best managed through deliberate habits and discipline. I take my personal habits seriously. I need to. I have a morning routine.

26:37I've talked about it on this show. It involves prayer and exercise and healthy eating and a lot of coffee. Well, taking it at the right time. But in my creative work, I've long looked for a gold star supplement to that routine that helps me take charge of my day. I came across Magic Mind. Now, I was skeptical at first, honestly, because there's a lot of noise in the supplement space. And most of it really doesn't hold up to the science or human experience. But Magic Mind has ingredients that I like.

27:09Adaptogens, nootropics, such as lion's mane, ashwagandha, cognizine, L-theanine. These are clinically backed compounds with real research behind them. Magic Mind is a two-ounce shot that you take in the morning. You don't get jitters. There's no crash. It's just your brain working the way it's supposed to. Calm, sustained, and focused. If the same cup of coffee every morning has started to feel more like a crutch than a ritual, or if you're just tired of it, it might be worth trying something that actually works with your neurobiology rather than against it.

27:42Right now, you can go to www.magicmind.com, that's all one word, and get 50% off your first order plus a 100-day money-back guarantee. So you really have nothing to lose by trying it. You can also find Magic Mind in stores near you using the store locator at magicmind.com. Now, that's really important. It's been really, really important in my life, indeed. And part of the reason is because I've been an academic, lifelong academic, and I think very differently than a lot of academics on a lot of different issues,

28:15especially on economic and sort of economic freedom types of issues. It's not to say that I'm right. And one of the reasons that I'm very humble about the fact that I'm not right in all the things that I think is that I love and respect my colleagues who, not uniformly, but in the great majority, differ from me on these particular attitudes. I've always been kind of the odd man out. I've never suffered meaningful discrimination, as far as I'm concerned. But it's been pretty obvious that I've thought differently than other people. So I had to get comfortable with it or bail out, I guess.

28:46And by the way, this is not just where I work. Often, very often through the years, especially as my kids have grown into adulthood, I'm the only one who votes the way that I do in elections in my whole family. This has happened a bunch of times, you know? These are the people that I literally love the most in the world. And we don't see things politically, or at least at election time, in the same way. And it's no problem. I've learned to live with that. On the contrary, I've actually learned to love that. And it's helped me to question my own views and to have greater humility,

29:18which in greater humility is one of the great secrets to happiness, of course. Now, am I humble enough? No. But has that helped? Yeah. I mean, when I'm around the dinner table and everybody's calling me a, you know, a freaked out hippie because of the way that I vote, with some justification, it actually helps me to interrogate my views a little bit more. And it helps me to steel man their views a little bit more in the world. So I'm not going through the world thinking, oh, those people, there's something morally defective about those people, which is the essence of how you stay in your filter bubble, stay in your silo about this.

29:51Now, what is the benefit of being around people who think differently than you? And there's a bunch of interesting management science on exactly this. There's one very interesting study that I'll put in the references. This is from Nature Human Behavior that talks about politically polarized teams. There's actually one really interesting study that was undertaken at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago, where they looked at, where the researchers looked at, believe it or not, Wikipedia entries,

30:23and they analyzed the Wikipedia entries with respect to the ideological diversity of the people who actually made the entries. So you know that in Wikipedia, to make an entry in Wikipedia, you can do it yourself if it's obscure, but pretty much it's going to be teams of people who actually do that. And what they found was that those that were collaborative, but ideologically diverse, had the highest quality entries as opposed to the teams that were most uniformed politically. A politically uniformed team had a biased entry in Wikipedia that wasn't very accurate.

30:57Compared to if it was a team of rivals, sort of like they talked about Lincoln's cabinet, where he got a bunch of people who disagreed with him and disagreed with each other, and they would just argue. And his cabinet, it's not entirely clear that that's completely accurate. But the idea is exactly that, that they were testing in this UC Chapel Hill study. You want the highest quality work, the bottom line is you got to have people, one, who collaborate, and two, who disagree. And that's the essence of bridging social capital.

31:28Exactly what we were talking about. It's like, that's why it's so good. And by the way, when you get that and you get a culture of that, that's really fun and people actually like it, even though it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard to achieve. Too many forums don't have that because it's hard, and they don't actually look for that. And, you know, you also have a lot of people who are in the world today, in the activist world today in particular, right and left, who are dark triads. These are people who want to manipulate you. And one of the ways that it's easiest to manipulate you is saying the people who disagree with you are immoral.

32:00The people who disagree with you are evil, that they're corrupt. But when you hate somebody for political or ideological reasons, you've been productized. I'm here to tell you that you have. You become the product. Somebody's profiting. It's not you is what I'm here to tell you on all that. In many communities, such as academia, there's so much ideological homogeneity today that there are no benefits of that kind of diversity at all. And the problem with that is not just that it's not fair.

32:33I think that a lot of times people who complain about the universities, they get it wrong. They say it's not fair. That's beside the point. The problem is it's mediocre when, over the years, all diversity is driven out. All ideological diversity is driven out. Look, the kind of diversity that matters the most in academia is idea diversity, because this is the essence of idea generation, is intellectual communities. And when that very diversity is gone, you're going to get the mediocrity that actually comes from homogeneity and uniformity. Okay.

Three Steps to Embrace Diversity

33:03Now, what I really want to talk about, of course, for you is how you can get more of it in your life and be less uncomfortable with it. Because again, I hope I've made the case that the more you're around that, the more comfortable you are with that, the better your life's going to be. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to make the case that there's something morally corrupt about you. If it's hard, you're just a human being with a Pleistocene brain. Me too. You got to get used to it in the same way that you get used to getting up. Remember my five, my morning protocol, where you get up at 430 and you work out.

33:35That's super hard. So you get used to it, right? This is like that. This is like my morning protocol, but for diversity. So I want to tell you about three things to do that actually work to make you more comfortable with this that have actually been tested in the, in the behavioral science literature. Here's step one. If you want to become more comfortable with different kinds of people and, and all different kinds of people, I mean, all kinds of diversity, including the easier types like, you know, race and gender and religion, but, but the harder types as well, like ideology, talk more

34:09to strangers, just that this is like step one, talk to strangers. Now that that's actually hard for a lot of people. And if you're an introvert, that's like excruciating. If you're an extrovert, you're probably already doing that. Um, that's another problem, but, but here's the interesting thing from the research. There's two very distinguished social psychologists, Nick Epley and Juliana Schroeder. Juliana Schroeder's at Berkeley and Nick Epley is at the University of Chicago. Um, they've demonstrated that we tend to overestimate how awkward or unpleasant it will be to talk

34:40to strangers and meet new people. And they've done all these experiments in which they have a treatment and control environment where people, half the people are, are not induced to talk to strangers. They do whatever they want. And, and half of them are assigned to a group where they have to talk to strangers, no matter how hard it is for them. And then they figure out who's happier afterward. And they look at how bad you thought it was going to be compared to how bad it really was talking to strangers. And what you find, what they find is that almost everyone thought beforehand that not talking to strangers would be more pleasant than talking to strangers.

35:11The results are the opposite. The opposite was true. The people who talk to strangers, talk to them about ideas, whatever, that they actually were happier afterward than the people who didn't do so. So that's an important finding, isn't it? What that means is once again, our evolutionary biology to stay yourself, to stay away from strangers, they might steal your animal skins. It's not right. It's maladapted to the current environment. Now use this with appropriate prudential judgment. Obviously there are some strangers you probably don't want to walk up to and start talking to,

35:43but it might be a lot less than you think. That person next to you on the bus might actually kind of enjoy the conversation. Now, how do I know that they're going to enjoy it as much as you? Because that's another part of the experiment that these scholars did by bringing in another psychologist in another paper from the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2022, where they actually followed up with the people who had been spoken to by the people in their original experiment. How much did they like it? And the answer is that the people spoken to had a positive experience as well.

36:16They found it refreshing. Again, not everybody, but the truth is that people liked it more than being ignored. People actually liked being interacted with. You're going to like it talking to strangers, people you don't know, embracing a little bit of diversity or at least breaking the ice. And you will like it if somebody does that to you as well. And that's the beginning of doing what we're talking about here. Second, now let's go to the next level and say that you're around people, strangers or friends or family members with whom you actually disagree.

36:48And you're struggling with that. You're struggling with how to deal with that, how to enjoy that. The way to do that, according to the literature and common sense, of course, is to become a social scientist. Now, one of the great joys of my life is that I study people. And what that means is that when something is weird or hard or uncomfortable, I have a natural stance that I snap into, which is I start studying the situation. When I'm in a weird conversation, like a really awkward conversation, I become a researcher because that's my background. I'm basically writing in my next article when I'm talking to somebody and it's really awkward

37:23or it's really stiff or when it's very tense, as a matter of fact. So if you start talking to me and you've got really, really strong political views and they really disagree with mine, you're going to notice that I'm going to do something. I'm like, tell me more. And why do you think that? And I'm going to go into listening mode and I'm going to start interviewing you. Now, of course, since you've watched this, you're going to notice if you're sitting next to me on a plane and we start having this conversation. But of course, when you do this with somebody else who doesn't happen to be one of our viewers, they won't notice that.

37:54They'll just notice that you're an incredibly good listener and you're really smart too because you say, why do you think these things? And you'll be authentically motivated to understand their particular point of view. Because by the way, when somebody says something that seems strange to you, that's incredibly interesting on why that would be the case. So don't freak out. Don't become defensive. On the contrary, go on the offense by being genuinely curious about that other person. This means that you're going to go without fear because no matter what, you're going to

38:24have a pretty good experience. I mean, it can go wrong, but I don't see really how it can and it never has. Because for me, if you think of yourself as a human researcher like I do, and by the way, why is that not so weird? You're watching the show. You're listening to the show. You're an office hours consumer. You're interested in behavioral science. We're in this together. I dub you a researcher alongside me. Please, when you do this, write into the show notes about the experience that you had. I would love to hear more about it. And I'll probably get an idea for a new show on the basis of what you write in.

38:55But this will set people at ease and give you a more interesting set of friends. And occasionally, it might even change your mind. But one way or the other, it will expand your understanding and it'll help you embrace diverse points of view without becoming defensive. Now, here's the third part. Here's the hardest part, but the best part of all. I recommend that we all start celebrating heresy. Now, I don't mean that literally. I don't mean that you should go out and start a religion that's contrary to your own religious beliefs. That's not what I'm talking about, unless you want to.

39:26But when I'm talking about heresy, I'm talking about ideological heresy, not, you know, as we would think about it in the Middle Ages. I have had friend groups that explicitly encourage heterodox thinking. Some of the most rewarding social circles I've ever belonged to are those in which everybody's thrilled to hear weird ideas outside of their comfort zone. And this is not a new idea. If you go back to the American transcendentalists, if you go back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, they used to hang out together and throw out crazy ideas, right?

39:57And so one of the things that I recommend is getting together with a bunch of friends or a bunch of strangers for that matter and say, I want you to, what's the topic of conversation at this dinner? Your most unpopular opinion that you're afraid to tell most people. And when you do that, I'm telling you, nobody's going to be mad. Everybody's going to be laughing and you're going to be bridging social capital divides like nobody's business. And you're going to really start digging in on the heretical nature of the things that you're actually hearing. You don't have to agree, but you celebrate it.

40:28There was a great American tradition of free thinking in the 19th century, including those wonderful transcendentalists, but others that have largely been forgotten, but that it's worth remembering one writer, a very great writer at the time who was very famous. Now, not so much Robert G Ingersoll. He was called the great agnostic for his willingness to question everything. And his greatest book was in 1877, 1877, by the way, between the civil war and the first world war, there was so much good stuff going on philosophically in the United States.

41:00I mean, there was these religious revivals. The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was pouring across the, across the country as were the Methodists and the Baptists, and there was more and more Catholics coming in, but also the, the religion, the semi-religion called theosophy and occult ideas and self-improvement and like it or hate it, heretical or not, it was super interesting. And it really formed American culture as a culture of free thinking individualists, not coincidentally, that was the entire period of the cowboys in American history.

41:31It was between the civil war and largely the turn of the century. That, that's it. That's when the cowboys existed. And why do we celebrate that? Because at the same time that we thought of ourselves as these incredibly free thinkers, I want that back. That's diversity. That leads to bridging social capital. Anyway, Robert Ingersoll's 1877 book was called Heretics and Heresies. Huh. Let me give you a quote. I'll put it in the show notes, by the way. Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day.

42:01Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual new world, the unknown sea toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. My friends, people don't write like that anymore, and I wish they would. And as important as anything else, try it. You want to throw? You want to throw? Well, go into a conversation without your defenses up and, and, and celebrate the weirdest ideas that you can possibly find without freaking out.

42:33Your life will change and you'll be happier. Now, there's a lot of ways that you can use these ideas in ordinary life. One of the things that I often talk about, as you know, I talk constantly about romantic love. I recommend that people try dating people with whom they disagree. Actually, the first thing I recommend is when you go on a date with somebody that you have a moratorium on no political discussions in the first four dates. And four dates is way beyond most dating relationships. In other words, you're probably broken up for better reasons than that or simply not continued. But, but what it does is, is it means that you're kind of love each other a little bit

43:07by the fourth date. And at that point, it's safer for you to talk about your differences. And you're more likely to see the charm and the differences as opposed to be, as opposed to being defensive about them. Try starting a romance with somebody really different than you, or at least somebody whose ideas you don't know, and then talk about it later. And you can benefit from some of the ideas that I talk about here. Okay. Lots of ways that you can use this. And I would love to hear your comments. I know for a lot of you, this is a tricky thing, but I promise you, you're going to like it when you try these ideas.

43:37It's really, really changed my life. And by the way, at very least, if you do these things, you're not going to be subjugated and productized by the politicians and media that want to divide us because we disagree, because that's not just, that's just not right. Maybe that's how we should reframe diversity day based on all of this is romance and adventure day. So next May 21st, um, we could be, we could reframe it as international date your opposite day or international heresy day or international have a friend who disagrees with you day or something

44:09more fun than diversity day. And, um, you could also celebrate by, by the way, by sending me a cake next May 21st.

Audience Q and A

44:16Let's talk about some audience questions here. Uh, we've got a bunch of good ones today. Uh, here's one from Kia Washington who wrote into the website. How do video games affect adult happiness? I'm guessing this falls under the addiction, uh, spectrum, but you, but do you have a perspective on the trade-off with relationships and dark triads, activities, et cetera? So how do video games affect adult happiness? And that depends of course, on, on, on the use. Um, you know, I've got data that shows that gambling, uh, at very moderate affordable levels,

44:47especially when done with other people can make you happier. You know, I've got family members who really like to go to casinos. It's not my thing. I can't imagine anything more boring than gambling, but you know, one of my sons occasionally likes to go and he likes to play blackjack and he never gambles more than he can afford. And he always does it with other people and he has a great time, but when you're doing it alone and you're doing it too much and you can't afford it, then it becomes a really big problem. That's just like alcohol. That's just like anything that you use as a matter of fact. And so you can have a life affirming relationship with video gaming, or you can have a life ruining

45:18relationship with, with video gaming. Um, and that's an important consideration and it requires a lot of honesty with yourself. Here's an anonymous question. Once again, to the website, I've lately heard. The buzz about toxic positivity. I have someone in my life who denies that negativity exists. Hmm. It's quite a denial there. She doesn't take the negative and acknowledge it to gain something from it. It's all just ignored. Any research on positivity when it goes too far. The problem that we have is not toxic negativity or toxic positivity is denying reality is contradicting

45:53reality. And that's a fundamental lack of honesty with ourselves. Being toxically positive is not honest, of course. But being toxically negative is not being honest as well. People who constantly complain, who feel entitled and who are bitter are being dishonest. And, and one of the things that I have to recommend to people who have toxic negativity is to write gratitude lists, to actually be paying attention to the reality of their life is good. Fundamentally, there are things to complain about, but if we were being realistic, our negativity bias would not be overtaking our entire perception of the world.

46:25Well, by the same token, toxic positivity is contradicting reality because you just don't like certain parts of reality. Honesty and accuracy are incredibly important. So there's nothing you can do about your friend who does that. Too bad for them. But what each one of us can do is to commit ourselves to honestly facing what we're going to see this day. And when we do that, we're actually going to wind up having a richer, fully alive experience of life on earth. And that is the happier life. Anonymous. Once this is not the same anonymous, two anonymous is in the same day.

46:57Funny that you're both named that writing at officehours.arthurworks.com. I feel as if my primary idol is pleasure. I wonder if you have some practical advice on how not to fall prey to this idol. Uh, yeah, for sure. If you go back and, and one of the episodes and I'll make sure that we put this in the show notes, pleasure is not the path to happiness. Pleasure is the path as a life goal. Pleasure is the path to rehab is not to say that pleasure is bad. It just means that you need to turn it into enjoyment. Enjoyment and pleasure are not the same thing.

47:29Enjoyment is pleasure plus people plus memory. That's why just a minute ago, I said, don't be playing, you know, gambling in the casino by yourself, because what you're doing is you're anesthetizing yourself and it's, it's not a social experience. And what that means is you're not going to remember it. It's not something that you can manage. It becomes automatic. When pleasures are automatic, they're dangerous. When pleasures are done on purpose and they're managed by the prefrontal cortex, the executive centers of the brain, they can be very important. And so that's the key thing. Go back and look at that.

48:00And we'll put something in the show notes that I've written about how to turn your pleasures into enjoyment. And then you can have full confidence that this is not a dangerous or addictive or deleterious part of your life. Enjoyment, not pleasure is the key. Well, my friends, we're done. Please let me know your thoughts. You can write into the same email address that our friends just did. Our two friends anonymous just did officehours.arthurbrooks.com. Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple to the show. Please leave a comment. Please share this with a million of your closest friends.

48:31Even if your comment is negative, I want to hear it because we want to make this show better because we're doing it for our audience. Please follow me on socials, on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the other platforms where we have a very original content and stuff that you might be interested in. Order the Meaning of Your Life to Learn More. That's been out for three months now. Gratified to say that it did really well in the market. It got to a whole lot of people and I hope it gets to you too. So my friends, I'm looking forward to seeing you next week. I hope you've had a nice and very diverse experience today. Go forth and use these ideas, share them with other people, get happier, and I'll see you

49:05next week.

49:14Thank you.