Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That?

As we go through life, we’re constantly trying to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. Psychologist Liane Young says this ability to assess other people’s thoughts ​is an extraordinary feat of cognition. This week, in a favorite episode from our archives, we explore this mental superpower — and how it can lead us astray. Then, we welcome back researcher Fred Luskin, who responds to listeners' questions about grudges.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. All parents have moments when their kids test their patience. Liang is no exception.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  I often yell at my kids for things that they did by accident, like spilling a smoothie or leaving a cap off of a permanent marker and, you know, making black permanent stains all over the sofa.

• 0:26Shankar Vedantam?

  When this happens and the couch is covered in black splotches or there's smoothie on the floor, the perpetrators inevitably offer this defense.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  It was an accident.

• 0:38Speaker 03

  It's not my fault. I didn't mean to do it.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I shouldn't say this, but I tell them, it doesn't matter that you didn't mean to do it. What matters is that you won't do it again.

• 0:50Shankar Vedantam?

  Liang's reaction, while understandable, is deeply ironic. She's a psychologist who studies how we read other people's intentions.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  We need to think about other people's minds in order to figure out who our friends are, who to avoid, whom to punish, whether to punish. And we need to read people's intentions in any ordinary interaction, like having a conversation and figuring out what to say and how to respond.

• 1:19Shankar Vedantam?

  As we go through life, we are constantly making sense of people's actions by interpreting their intentions. Our ability to read what is happening in other people's minds is like an invisible compass guiding us through life. But sometimes, it leads us astray. We misread other people's intentions, especially when we're angry or hurt. In the last few weeks, in our Relationships 2.0 series, we've looked at the importance of human connection and how we can become better negotiators. If you missed those episodes, do check them out. This week on Hidden Brain, how our powers of observation

• 2:02Shankar Vedantam?

  allow us to navigate our social worlds until they don't.

• 2:14Shankar Vedantam?

  Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries. Professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold hosts Planet Visionaries, a podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real, hopeful solutions. Throughout season six, Alex brings together extraordinary change makers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Pacific Life Insurance. You make promises throughout your life. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has been helping you keep them by protecting those who matter most.

• 2:59Shankar Vedantam?

  Pacific Life, the power of a promise. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  Gifts mean more when they have the power to unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 Laptop is the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet, with a long battery life, beautiful design, and powerful performance with Intel Core processors. The XPS Laptop unlocks more of what you love. Plus, at dell.com, you'll find perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, and flexible financing, and big savings on monitors and accessories. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 3:51Shankar Vedantam?

  We are constantly trying to read other people's minds. When we interact with friends, relatives, and coworkers, we ask ourselves, what is going on in this other person's head? What does she want? What are his intentions? Our ability to read other minds involves an extraordinary feat of cognition, yet it mostly unfolds in our heads without us being aware of it. Minus the skill, the simplest of interactions would be mired in confusion and misunderstanding.

• 4:22Shankar Vedantam?

  Liang Yang is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Boston College. She has spent years studying this mental ability and the profound effects it has on our lives. Liang Yang, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:35Speaker 01

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

• 4:38Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Mrs. Doubtfire, may I ask you a question?

• 5:17Speaker 05

  Oh, sir.

• 5:20Speaker 02

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

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Never.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Never?

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Never again.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Never again?

• 5:30Speaker 05

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

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Celibacy?

• 5:39Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:40Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think we wouldn't be able to appreciate the humor and the irony in that scene where Daniel is, essentially, he knows what is going on with his wife, and he is trying to get his wife to not date this other man. And of course, we know that the wife doesn't know Daniel's true identity as Daniel. She thinks that he is this housekeeper, and we know that she doesn't know. And so, there's this very... Sort of layered understanding that we need to have as the audience to find the scene funny.

• 6:28Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  We can't find it funny without realizing that she doesn't know what he knows and who he is.

• 6:34Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 7:00Speaker 01

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

• 7:26Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 7:39Speaker 01

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

• 8:15Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 8:30Speaker 01

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

• 9:03Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 9:21Speaker 01

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

• 10:04Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 10:18Speaker 01

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

• 10:59Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 11:24Speaker 01

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

• 11:50Speaker 06

  Did Sally see Ann move the block?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Uh-uh.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  No.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Because she was outside.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Swinging.

• 11:57Speaker 06

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

• 12:05Speaker 03

  In there, but it's not. It's in there.

• 12:09Speaker 06

  So she'll think it's in the block.

• 12:10Speaker 01

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

• 12:28Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 12:53Speaker 06

  Why do you think she'll think that?

• 12:55Speaker 03

  I look at she put it there.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yes, that's exactly right. So younger children, three-year-old children, don't have a concept that people could have beliefs in their heads that depart from the reality of the world, the facts of the situation.

• 13:11Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 13:32Speaker 01

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

• 14:16Speaker 01

  and how they deploy theory-of-mind capacities for moral judgments in particular.

• 14:22Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 14:57Speaker 01

  I mean, we've all been in a situation where a joke falls flat because the person who's telling the joke isn't able to Appropriately assess the mood in this space, or what other people know or don't know, and so on.

• 15:10Shankar Vedantam?

  Right.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  And so certainly, there are many cases of that. And then there are sort of the opposite cases, where we really admire individuals for having a keen sense of what other people are thinking and feeling, and able to shape a conversation or discussion in that way.

• 15:25Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 16:05Speaker 01

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

• 16:29Shankar Vedantam?

  Lea and other researchers have tried to understand how the physical brain produces the superpower. Surprisingly, they've found a specific region of the brain plays a crucial role. They've even found you can temporarily disrupt this brain region, and profoundly change the ways people think and act. That's when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 17:04Shankar Vedantam?

  Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quince. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

• 17:48Shankar Vedantam?

  Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Hidden Brain.

• 17:56Speaker 07

  With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 18:26Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. To navigate our social worlds, we rely on something psychologists call "theory of mind." It's our ability to guess the intentions, desires, and motivations of other people. When your coworker tells you she's thrilled it's Monday, you know that's sarcasm because you unconsciously pick up the intention behind her words. But as amazing as our social antennae can be, they can also sometimes make mistakes. We can misread other people's intentions. Maybe your coworker really does like Mondays.

• 19:03Shankar Vedantam?

  Psychologist and neuroscientist Leanne Young studies how our brains read intention, both the intentions of others and of ourselves, especially when it comes to our moral judgments. Leanne, you run experiments where you test how volunteers react to a story about a woman who accidentally poisoned her friend. Can you tell me the setup of the experiment and describe the scenario in more detail?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. So we usually have our subjects read stories that we write about other people who are performing actions that have effects on other people in the scenario. So in one story, we have a person named Grace who puts some powder into a coworker's coffee. And in one scenario, she thinks the powder is sugar, but the powder turns out to be poison, and she ends up poisoning her friend. So that's a version of the scenario in which someone causes harm to someone else by accident because of a false belief. In another version of the story,

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Grace puts powder into her coworker's coffee. She thinks the powder is poison, but it turns out to be sugar. So that's a situation in which she has a harmful intention, but no harm is done. So in these two cases, there is a conflict between the intention of the agent and the outcome of the agent's action. And so we can ask our volunteer participants for their moral judgments of both the person, the agent performing the action, and also the action itself, whether this action is morally permissible or morally forbidden.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  And using these kinds of scenarios and these kinds of moral judgment scales, we can get a sense for the extent to which different people rely on information about intentions to make their moral judgments.

• 21:08Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm hmm.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  So you and I, for instance, could have very different views about how bad it is to accidentally poison a coworker. And sort of depending on the circumstances, there could be a situation in which there's just no way she could have known, maybe somebody swapped the sugar and the poison, and she had the best of intentions. And so those are cases where there's a lot of flexibility for individual variation in moral judgments.

• 21:35Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm hmm.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And we can apply that same reasoning to the case of a failed attempt to cause harm, too. Some people might focus more on the neutral outcome, the fact that nothing bad happened at all, whereas other folks might focus a lot more on the fact that this person just tried to poison their coworker, and that's very, very bad.

• 21:54Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 22:24Speaker 01

  So we've run a number of studies now using brain imaging techniques to look at how people's brains are responding as they're making moral judgments of these kinds of cases. And so what we found in one study was that a brain region called the right temporal parietal junction, which is right above and behind your right ear,

• 22:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm hmm.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  processes information about people's intentions. And what we found was that the more an individual's right temporal parietal junction responds as they are making these moral judgments, the more they are using information about innocent intentions to let the person who caused harm by accident off the hook.

• 23:08Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  And so we see this correlation between brain activity in this region that tracks intention information and the moral judgments that people are making of accidental harms.

• 23:19Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 23:39Speaker 01

  In addition to using brain imaging, which helps us to track what brains are doing as people are making moral judgments, we've also used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS for short, to temporarily disrupt activity in this particular brain region, the right temporal junction, to see what effect that has on the moral judgments that people make. And so when we temporarily disrupt activity in this brain region, we see that people's moral judgments rely less on information about intentions in these kinds of cases that we've been talking about. So to give you an example, if you

• 24:20Speaker 01

  are reading a story about somebody who tries to poison their friend but fails to do so because they mistook the substance for poison, but it was, in fact, sugar, if I am disrupting activity in your right temporal junction, you'll be more likely to say that that is more okay than if I didn't disrupt activity in your right temporal junction.

• 24:41Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 24:56Speaker 01

  I think a lot of us share the intuition that is confirmed by recent empirical work in psychology that how we think about moral situations or moral beliefs are really central to what we consider to be our identity. We take our moral identity as central to our self-concept. And so to think that, you know, interventions, scientific interventions, can alter our moral judgments is, in some ways, upsetting. That said, as neuroscientists, we've assumed all along that our moral judgments have some place in the brain. And so it stands to reason that when you disrupt activity in people's brains, that you will be disrupting

• 25:40Speaker 01

  the kinds of judgments that we'll be making too, and including moral judgments.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  And there is so much work on the unconscious influences on behavior. And so whether someone is in a rush to get somewhere can change or impact, you know, the likelihood of their stopping to give money to a homeless person. And so I think that there are, you know, environmental influences. There are cultural differences in the degree to which people rely on intention information. And so in many ways, I'm not sure that I would be more upset by the fact that smelling fresh cookies is going to impact my behavior, or, you know, somebody applying transcranial magnetic stimulation to my brain is going to impact my behavior or my decision making.

• 26:36Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 27:19Speaker 06

  At 6 o'clock, an off-duty Chicago police officer now cited with hitting and killing a nine-year-old boy riding his bike in West Rogers Park. Herschel Weinberger died Wednesday night after a pickup truck hit him in the crosswalk at Sacramento and Chase, right by his house. The driver who stayed at the scene was that off-duty police officer. He's been cited with-

• 27:39Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 28:16Speaker 01

  There is this terrible tension between the fact that nobody meant any harm, nobody meant to kill anyone, and the fact that this nine-year-old boy died. And to take it a step further, you could think of a case in which he hadn't run a stop sign. Maybe he was just driving and the child came out of nowhere.

• 28:37Shankar Vedantam?

  Right.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I think we would still have the intuition that if you caused that event to happen, if you caused that bad outcome,

• 28:44Shankar Vedantam?

  Right.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  then there is a way in which you are causally responsible for something very bad that you didn't know that you would be doing and maybe could not have prevented. And so it's really tricky to figure out how to handle that kind of case, as you point out. I think different people have different responses to what happened and what should be done and how to prevent that from happening again.

• 29:07Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 29:26Speaker 01

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

• 30:06Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 30:35Speaker 01

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

• 31:20Speaker 01

  misfortune or we are trying to figure out who did it and why and, you know, and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

• 31:29Shankar Vedantam?

  So do you think this is why, in some ways, we have this capacity in our heads in the first place? You know, I remember on 9/11, I was working in the newsroom of the Washington Post. And once we knew that that two planes had hit the World Trade Center and a third plane had hit the Pentagon, it was clear that we were under attack, at which point, you know, it prompted us to say, OK, what should we do? Could we be under attack? Is there some danger that's facing us? And of course, if our reading of the events had been different, if we had said, all right, this was an isolated accident. It was just, you know, a plane that basically lost control and happened to fly into the World Trade Center building, our response to the incident would be entirely different. We would say, OK, we need to have, you know, better flight security measures, better pilot training. So our responses to the events

• 32:13Shankar Vedantam?

  are very different as we read the intentions behind, you know, those events. And I'm wondering, is, do you think this might be partly why our brains come with this capacity to read intentions? Because as we read intentions, it tells us how to respond to the world.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think our ability to read intentions tells us how to evaluate the events around us, how to understand them, how to predict what's going to happen in the future, and how to interact with people in the present. And so all of that depends on our ability to figure out intentions and distinguish intentional events from accidental events.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  This happens in a lot of news events that we read. When we read about a building collapsing, we think, you know, what happened and how can we prevent that from happening in the future? And again, our answers to those questions depend on whether that happened on purpose, whether someone caused it, or whether it was an earthquake, for instance. And so I think your question about why it is that we have this capacity is a really important one. And I think we don't have an answer to that question yet as psychologists, in part because there are so many reasons why that capacity for theory of mind could be important.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  We need to think about other people's minds in order to figure out whom to learn from, who's the right expert in a particular domain. We need to know about people's intentions to figure out who our friends are, who to avoid, whom to punish, whether to punish. And we need to read people's intentions in any ordinary interaction, like having a conversation and figuring out what to say and how to respond.

• 34:05Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 34:28Speaker 07

  With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 34:54Speaker 06

  Now smaller than ever, more powerful, more accurate, meet Pod 6, the sixth generation of 8Sleep's award-winning sleep system. The Pod is an intelligent mattress cover that transforms your existing bed. It cools and heats on each side of the bed from 55 degrees to 110 degrees. As you sleep, it also measures your sleep stages, heart rate, and breathing, then acts on that in real time, adjusting temperature. All you have to do is sleep. Shop now at 8sleep.com.

• 35:27Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 35:31Shankar Vedantam?

  Our ability to read the minds of other people is something of a mental superpower. It allows us to effortlessly navigate a complex social world and intuit what other people want and how they feel. This superpower helps us understand when bad things happen by accident, when they happen by design, and it allows us to tell friend from foe.

• 35:55Shankar Vedantam?

  Of course, the fact that our minds read so much into the intentions of others also makes the superpower ripe for exploitation by con artists, marketing gurus, and politicians. At Boston College, neuroscientist Lee Ann Young studies the psychology of theory of mind, our ability to think about the mental states of others, including their intentions. In her lab, she and her colleagues explore the role of intention when it comes to making moral judgments. Leanne, I want to talk about some ways in which our ability to read other people's intentions can sometimes go wrong. And I want to start again with television and the arts. There's a very funny scene in the TV show Seinfeld.

• 36:39Shankar Vedantam?

  The character George has just gone on a date with a new love interest. They drive back to her apartment. They're sitting in the car outside. It's midnight. The air is crackling with sexual tension. And here's what happens next.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  So thanks for dinner. It was great.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  We should do this again.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Would you like to come upstairs for some coffee?

• 37:03Speaker 05

  Oh, no, I can't drink coffee late at night. It keeps me up.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  So, um, okay.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Good night.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, take it easy.

• 37:20Shankar Vedantam?

  Leanne, I'm not sure if you're a fan of Seinfeld, but what makes this clip funny is that George is actually not picking up on her intentions.

• 37:28Speaker 01

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

• 38:15Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 38:41Speaker 01

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

• 39:19Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 39:35Speaker 01

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

• 39:59Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 40:19Speaker 01

  The pandemic is a really interesting case of intention reading and misunderstanding. So there have definitely been instances in which I've gone into a public indoor space wearing a mask. And, you know, I wonder what people

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Think about what I'm doing. Do people think that I'm unvaccinated because I'm wearing a mask? And then I have to sort of stop and think about, well, what do I think when I see somebody wearing a mask indoors? Do I think that they're unvaccinated? Or do I think that they're being extra careful? Do I, you know, think that they're immunocompromised? Or they have young children who are unvaccinated and so on? And so it becomes a really interesting exercise to think about how people are reading my intentions and then how to read other people's intentions and sort of backtrack from that exercise to the other.

• 41:18Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 41:46Speaker 06

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

• 42:14Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 42:26Speaker 01

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

• 43:05Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 43:24Speaker 01

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

• 44:09Speaker 01

  then you might automatically take that story, description at face value, that they're guilty.

• 44:14Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 44:30Speaker 01

  We ran a series of studies in which we tested American Democrats and Republicans, and also Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East. And we gave them examples of acts of aggression in both of those cases, and asked our participants to attribute motives. And what we found, which is maybe not so surprising, but was very consistent across those different groups of people, was that people were more likely to attribute acts of aggression performed by their own group to in-group love. People are just trying to defend their own values and their own people. Whereas people would attribute those same acts of aggression performed by an outgroup to outgroup hatred. They're doing this to retaliate.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  They're doing this to attack us. And so it's very interesting that we see this asymmetry in how people are attributing motives underlying the very same actions, depending on whether those acts are being performed by people on our side or people on the other side.

• 45:34Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 45:49Speaker 01

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

• 46:33Speaker 01

  in how people are attributing motives underlying the very same actions in very different ways, depending on whether those acts are being presented as performed by people on our side or people on the other side.

• 46:50Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 47:04Speaker 01

  I think it's really useful for both relationships and also for ourselves to give others around us the benefit of the doubt. I think it makes for smoother social interactions and also for happier selves. What I've told my students is that if you have a bad interaction with someone, chances are they're not trying to offend you or insult you. Maybe they're having a bad day. Maybe they didn't get enough sleep. And I tell them to sort of think about our one-on-one interactions in the same context, that if we have a bad conversation, it's probably because, you know, I am feeling bad that I yelled at a kid that morning and it has nothing to do with their paper

• 47:48Speaker 01

  or their project. And so, again, we come back to this idea of giving people the benefit of the doubt and taking intentions into consideration.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  I also think about times when I'm on the road and I get upset when other drivers cut me off. And there's really nothing that I can do about it, aside from give them the benefit of the doubt, because I know that when I'm the one who's speeding or cutting other people off, usually it's because, you know, my three-year-old in the backseat says she needs to go to the potty, or because we're rushing to an event and we're late. And so to be able to extend that to other people, both strangers and the people that we interact with on a regular basis, I think just makes for happier interactions all around.

• 48:36Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 48:49Speaker 01

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

• 49:29Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Shankar.

• 49:41Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 49:57Speaker 06

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

• 50:14Shankar Vedantam?

  That's when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 50:27Speaker 07

  With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  Now smaller than ever, more powerful, more accurate, meet Pod 6, the sixth generation of 8Sleep's award-winning sleep system. The Pod is an intelligent mattress cover that transforms your existing bed. It cools and heats on each side of the bed from 55 degrees to 110 degrees. As you sleep, it also measures your sleep stages, heart rate, and breathing, then acts on that in real time, adjusting temperature. All you have to do is sleep. Shop now at 8sleep.com.

• 51:29Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Think about the last time someone really hurt you. Maybe it was a friend who betrayed your confidence, a colleague who took credit for your work, a business partner who cheated you. How long did that hurt stay with you? How often did you turn it over in your mind, feeling a fresh wave of pain and anger as though it happened just yesterday?

• 51:56Shankar Vedantam?

  The hurt we experience when someone breaks our trust is a natural emotional response. But these emotions can start to eat at us if we hold on to them for too long.

• 52:06Shankar Vedantam?

  We recently discussed this with psychologist Fred Luskin, who studies forgiveness and grudges as the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project.

• 52:16Shankar Vedantam?

  If you missed our initial conversation with Fred, you can find it in this podcast feed. It's the episode titled "No Hard Feelings."

• 52:24Shankar Vedantam?

  Today, Fred returns to answer your questions about grudges and how we can come to terms with the wrongs done to us. Fred Luskin, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

• 52:34Shankar Vedantam?

  Thank you.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Nice to see you again.

• 52:37Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 53:00Speaker 05

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

• 53:42Speaker 05

  or cognitively or emotionally with the best strategies.

• 53:47Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 54:26Speaker 05

  If you're happy, then your brain and nervous system make available to you all the other lovely things in your life so that you get to think, now, wow. The last time I was happy, I went and hugged my partner. So should I do that again? From the painful side, look at how brilliant it is to give you access to other times that you suffered and maybe to look through, well, were there strategies that are used that helped us?

• 55:01Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm.

• 55:02Speaker 05

  The problem is when it crowds out other memories, then you actually lose access to thinking rather than gain access and thinking. But the original kind of substrata is really smart.

• 55:23Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm. I mean, you can think about it almost from an evolutionary standpoint, which is that if someone does something bad to me, if another animal does something bad to me, it's very useful to remember that this animal has harmed me. And it might actually be useful to remember the other times this other person or this other animal has harmed me, because it tells me now steer clear of this person, you know, give them a wide berth. But what was very useful perhaps in our evolutionary history when it came to dealing with with other animals and with predators, might be less effective in the modern workplace, for example, where we're constantly interacting with colleagues. And now we remember a small slight, maybe it was an accidental slight, but that now compounds itself with all the other slights that we start to remember.

• 56:08Shankar Vedantam?

  And now we form this meta-narrative about how a colleague of ours doesn't like us or we don't get along with them.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  I'm gonna add two things. It's not helpful, it's essential that if there is pain, difficulty, hostility, mistreatment, you have to remember it. You have to try to process it and deal with it. That's not just optional, it's like essential. The second piece, what I think you left out of the workplace, is the staggering amount of distraction that people have now. So not only are they in a workplace with maybe more interactions and more possible

• 56:57Speaker 05

  difficulties, their minds are frazzled even before they deal with anybody by emails, by texts, by relentless checking, by social media, by all of the just demands on their attention. So they come into work already with a higher level of arousal because they're so used to getting stimulated by this relentless attention and, you know, like, I'm at you all day long. So that has to be factored in there as well.

• 57:38Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 57:50Speaker 06

  I have been living with what I imagine can be called a grudge towards my sister for the past almost eight years. How can I tell whether what I'm doing, which is just I no longer interact with her, I don't speak to her anymore, whether that's truly a grudge? Or is it just me keeping myself safe and my peace of mind? I can't imagine that all transgressions need to result in forgiveness and the ability to continue the relationship as though nothing happened.

• 58:34Speaker 06

  Or am I wrong about that?

• 58:36Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 58:52Speaker 05

  I'm gonna add a third piece. Often, we move away from somebody because we can't handle the disturbance, suffering, stress that come up in us. And we use distancing as a self-regulation strategy. So if my sister causes me, every time I'm near her, to feel anxious, angry, unsettled. Sometimes if I don't have sufficient skill at going inward and rebalancing or whatever,

• 59:34Speaker 05

  I'll just keep them away to try to manage my own reactivity. That's incredibly common. On the polarities that the listener sent you, it's not so simple. One of the mistakes that she presented was, you can forgive someone and choose not to have contact with them. It's not either or. She could look at her sister and say, "Whatever you did, I'm not holding anything towards you, my... We're clean. But enough is enough. You go your way, I go mine.

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  But there's no bitterness in me. There's just, you know, we tried this for 40 years. It didn't work for me. And have a lovely life for a while, and thank you." So they're not mutually exclusive.

• 1:00:38Speaker 05

  What I would suggest is, when you're dealing with your sister, and like, you wanna see if you can rehearse even connecting with her. Like, are you able to create a, you know, a bond or an outreach, even just in practice?

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  If not that significant information that this may go really deep. Second, on the other side of it, if you get into a really quiet, clean, gentle space, like, you know, you're lying on the beach in Hawaii and it's 92 degrees and you just got out of the water. If your insides still tell you that no, this person is not safe for you, it's probably deeply in you that that's what you feel.

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  But if it's just that every time you think of joining or connecting, you get anxious or upset, that may not be enough inner guidance to follow long term.

• 1:01:54Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 1:02:07Speaker 06

  I'm just wondering how you actually forgive someone if it's a person who has pretty strong narcissistic tendencies, would never admit to have done anything wrong. This is my mom, she's since passed. And, you know, I am doing therapy and I've done the radical acceptance and all that. But I imagine, you know, if she were alive and if I were to say, I forgive you, she would probably burst out laughing and say, you know, I haven't done anything wrong.

• 1:02:48Speaker 06

  And so I'm wondering technically, how you actually forgive someone who would never have admitted they did anything wrong?

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  You know, if what I heard from her, if the word narcissist tendencies is real and not just a becoming a cultural way of describing people that we don't like what they did, but if somebody has real narcissistic tendencies, you can't expect a full reciprocal relationship from them. You simply can't. So within that context, any forgiveness is just for your own peace of mind.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  So that you will calm your brain down, you will open your heart back up, never with the thought that that's going to improve them or have them see you as you are, because a real narcissist can't see you as they are, they see themselves. Again, though, there's this confusion between reconciliation and forgiveness. You can forgive someone who's unrepentant, simply because you don't want to carry that in you. You make no assumption that that will change them.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  Now, somebody who has weaker narcissistic tendencies, and you forgive them, and you show up, sometimes that does influence them to reduce their side of it, but there is no guarantee.

• 1:04:39Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

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

• 1:05:23Shankar Vedantam?

  We've talked on many episodes of Hidden Brain about political divisions and how to engage with people in our lives who hold political beliefs that are different from our own. Here's a message we received from a listener named Ezra.

• 1:05:35Speaker 06

  For years now, I've been holding a grudge with my family regarding their political stance, especially around queer and transgender rights.

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Um, my parents have voted for Trump and I cannot tolerate the emotional cognitive dissonance of having parents who on one hand love me very much and on the other hand are literally voting to take my rights away as a US citizen. I am stuck between wanting to forgive, wanting to protect myself, fearing, feeling fear and rage and love altogether. I would love some advice and help for how to move forward

• 1:06:33Speaker 06

  in a way that feels grounded, loving, protective, respectful.

• 1:06:42Shankar Vedantam?

  What do you think Fred? What advice would you give to Ezra?

• 1:06:47Speaker 05

  What a lovely description of the poles of a mind, you know, that is trying to integrate the heart but knows this is tough sledding. The, the real question is not should we forgive, but what's our most skillful action? And what's the best mindset for moving ahead? Like forgiveness is a pathway to the best mindset. It's not, it's not the mindset in and of itself.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  So when you're in a situation where you're vulnerable, like, you know, that, you know, listener just called in and legitimately afraid, that's not trivial and that can't be, you know, swept under the rug by saying, well, I forgive them. It's not that simple. But at the same time, we recognize that simply hating or demonizing whatever it is we think caused our vulnerability, after a while will diminish our own ability to take skillful action

• 1:08:11Speaker 05

  because we're tired from our anger and our resentment and clouds our judgment.

• 1:08:19Speaker 05

  So part of it is grieving and admitting our vulnerability and loss. Secondly, joining together with other people who have similar experiences. So there's some strength in numbers. And then really focusing on within the legitimate experience of our life, what's the most skillful action? How do we behave in a way that will get us closer to what our real goals are?

• 1:09:00Speaker 05

  And not just have us dominated by fear or resentment? That's the piece that forgiveness clears out.

• 1:09:10Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 1:09:20Speaker 05

  Well, it can be a couple of things. One, that the goal or motivation you align with even when you're not upset or even when you're not meeting with other people in like shared outrage. But yeah, that's really what I believe in. Two, is it experimentally kind of verifiable? Like, I try this, does it help? If it doesn't help, do I admit that I was not doing the best thing?

• 1:10:02Speaker 05

  And go back and try something else? Do I maybe ask for advice as to other people's experience? Do I read up about past skillful action? Is my mind open to problem solving? Or is it motivated by resentment and revenge? Those are very different motivations and they give us different minds to evaluate the outcome.

• 1:10:35Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 1:11:06Speaker 05

  You'd have to be incredibly emotionally competent to say that. And you would have to have really emotionally competent parents to hear that. But it is a phenomenal strategy. And you could extrapolate that strategy to so many interpersonal difficulties, just so many. You could imagine how many intimate partners could bring that to each other. You know, you said this, it hurt me. Part of me wants to strike back at you. Part of me wants to understand you.

• 1:11:50Speaker 05

  But underneath what you said are some incredibly skillful means of, I'm responsible for my emotional state. I need to put what I'm feeling into words. And I trust people enough to share my vulnerability with them. None of those are easy for people to access.

• 1:12:26Shankar Vedantam?

  Our guest is psychologist Fred Luskin, joining us to answer listener questions about his work on grudges and forgiveness. More of those questions in a moment. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 1:12:45Speaker 07

  With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 1:13:11Speaker 06

  Smaller than ever, more powerful, more accurate. Meet Pod 6, an intelligent mattress cover that transforms your existing bed. It cools and heats each side from 55 degrees to 110 degrees. Shop now at 8sleep.com.

• 1:13:31Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Your Questions Answered, our segment in which we bring back past guests of the show to respond to listeners' follow-up thoughts and questions about their work. Today, we're talking with Fred Luskin. He's a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. Fred is also the author of the books, Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, and Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship.

• 1:14:02Shankar Vedantam?

  Let's turn again to listener questions. Our next one is from a listener named Laura, and it's a version of a question that we have received from a number of listeners.

• 1:14:10Speaker 06

  What if the person that you need to forgive is actually yourself? Could you apply the same concepts?

• 1:14:21Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 1:14:26Speaker 05

  The answer to that is yes. There's a couple of steps that people need to look at. One of them is to legitimately acknowledge what you have done.

• 1:14:42Speaker 05

  That there really is no self forgiveness without some acknowledgement, some remorse. You know, if you look at truth and reconciliation in South Africa, it's just a general model. You know, there was a pretty strong public forum for, boy, did we do bad? And this can't be hidden. So the first step is, to whatever degree possible, admit it to yourself.

• 1:15:21Speaker 05

  If safe, admit it to anybody you've harmed and allow oneself to feel remorse. There is literature, you know, research on the value of a sincere apology, which is, I did it, my bad, hurt you. I make that link, I'm sorry, and if I can, I won't do it again. It is hard for many of us to have the humility of a sincere apology. The last step is taken from the wisdom of the 12-step programs, which is,

• 1:16:05Speaker 05

  whenever you can, make it right, make amends. Now, if the person that you've harmed is just you, like you didn't harm anybody else, but you got drunk, or you had a ridiculous sexual escapade that harmed your life,

• 1:16:26Speaker 05

  it's helpful to share with one or two trusted people as an offering. You do make a kind of inner mea culpa, but the amends is, you make sure it doesn't happen again.

• 1:16:46Speaker 05

  You go to therapy, you go to 12-step programs, you take classes in anger management, whatever it is. But you need to do something positive. When those preconditions are met, you have absolutely no need for negative self-talk or bad feelings. You have done the basic requirements of self-forgiveness. If you have to, you go see a therapist for a couple sessions. But you do not need at all that negative emotion once you've done those steps.

• 1:17:28Shankar Vedantam?

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

• 1:17:44Speaker 06

  I want to know how you help a loved one get over or let go of their grudge or hard feelings or bitter feelings against you. Let's say you betrayed them. A terrible incident happened in their lives, and you were not there for them. You realized it, it's a mistake, you regret it. You offered them an apology. And later, you have tried to be as best as you can for them and been supportive in their life. But it looks like, you know, we both are still reeling from the aftermath of the betrayal. I want to help this loved one, and I want to help myself get better.

• 1:18:29Speaker 06

  Do you have any advice?

• 1:18:32Speaker 05

  I mean, that is a very tough situation. When somebody feels genuine remorse, wants to make it right, and is stymied. I have heard that multiple times.

• 1:18:48Speaker 05

  You know, there's two things that come to my mind immediately. One is some degree of self-examination. What was it that led me to not be there when they needed me? Is there something character or logic in me? Um, was I frightened? Was I preoccupied? What was the flaw or weakness in me? So that I can address it? Or I can show this person deep vulnerability and reflection when I talk to them?

• 1:19:32Speaker 05

  Not just that I'm sorry, but it caused me to recognize how hard something like this is? Or wow, I really struggle when somebody's needs are way bigger than mine? Or I may not always hear at the moment the depth of somebody's pain? That would be one, you know, first of all, it helps her. But secondly, it creates a shared pain. The second thing is sometimes, um, we can't, we can't turn back time.

• 1:20:17Speaker 05

  And there is a forgiveness element there that, you know, it's up to you. And I respect as best I can how you deal with your suffering. The third piece is now that I have learned this about the dangers, or even, even if I didn't do anything deliberate, even if it was just a bad confluence of events where absolutely nobody is at fault.

• 1:20:56Speaker 05

  One of the things that she can do is move ahead with a renewed attention to make sure that this never happens again, so that her radar are more finely attuned to other people's pain. And she can even use this as a teaching to tell other people, never, you know, never underestimate when people are suffering how vulnerable or how reactive they might be. So she can use her loss to help others.

• 1:21:41Speaker 05

  That's sometimes the best we can do.

• 1:21:46Shankar Vedantam?

  We received an interesting question from listener Richard. He wanted to know about the factors that might affect our ability to forgive someone. Here he is. Do you think someone having more positive emotional states, like the joy of their first child,

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  may increase their likelihood of being more able and willing to forgive?

• 1:22:08Speaker 05

  I mean, if you ask me about the factors that influence the ability to forgive,

• 1:22:16Speaker 05

  research has picked up a few. Not that many.

• 1:22:22Speaker 05

  One of them is gratitude. And it may be a surprise to you, but people who see the good in their lives are more capable of letting go of the bad. And that is a reasonably robust finding that, you know, if you wake up in the morning and it's a beautiful day out and you're delighted that you had breakfast and you look at a picture of your kid and you go, "I got a good life", then when somebody calls you in his room, you're going to be more likely to hold it better. Now, let me add one or two other things to that.

• 1:23:06Speaker 05

  A home where you were raised, where forgiveness is modeled, is more likely to imprint it on your brain than not. Did you see your parents forgive each other? Did you see your parents forgive you? That is a huge modeling that even can be pre-verbal, you know? Like, oh, my gosh, I saw this. Second, our nervous systems have something to do with our ability to forgive. There's a quality of human nervous system arousal,

• 1:23:51Speaker 05

  where people are called hot reactors. They, um, they just, you know, you've met them. They get aroused very quickly. Those people struggle like crazy to forgive because the adrenaline just comes so quickly and so strongly and pulsates into anger, um, that that is a real challenge. The last thing that I will say is, it also depends on the amount of practice you put in. You know, if you, if you practice just normally, when you're cut off in traffic,

• 1:24:35Speaker 05

  when somebody cuts in front of you in the supermarket line, when the airplane is late and you're gonna miss your connecting flight, you're practicing what you might need a year down the road when somebody doesn't behave right.

• 1:24:54Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm. I think one interesting theme that's come up in many of these questions and also came up in our initial conversation, Fred, is that I think when people think about grudges. They sometimes imagine themselves to be in the position of judges. They're asking themselves, I'm a judge. Here are the facts before me. Do these facts justify forgiveness? Should I hold on to the grudge? Should I grant forgiveness? Should I not grant forgiveness? And that is one way of thinking about it. But I think the point that you're making is that a judge is making a decision that really is in the public good. They're deciding, should this person be sentenced? Should this person be, you know, let free? And you're trying to make a judgment that's in the public good.

• 1:25:37Shankar Vedantam?

  When it comes to the forgiveness that you're talking about, Fred, you're already talking about what's in people's own good. And you're basically saying, is it in my interest to actually let this go? Regardless of whether it's in the other person's interest or anyone else's interest.

• 1:25:51Speaker 05

  I'm going to add two things to that. One, there's also the statute of limitations, which most people forget about. You know, even if they're bringing an argument before the judge, most cases have five, seven-year statute of limitation. And so that's the, that's the water dampening on that analogy, even though it's true. Secondly, forgiveness is not just for the self, but it's for the current important relationships in one's life

• 1:26:34Speaker 05

  that one wants to maintain and grow. And again, let's just use the judge analogy. So let's say that somebody does something that's wrong. There's nothing wrong with imposing a one-week sentence on them. But then you also want to be merciful. And that's missing often in the judge analogy. Sometimes you let people out for good behavior. Sometimes you commute their sentence. So we're looking at a complex life, and we want to be careful not to lose the complex life

• 1:27:19Speaker 05

  on our over fixation with a negative experience.

• 1:27:31Shankar Vedantam?

  Fred Luskin is a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. He is the author of Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, and Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship. Fred Luskin, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 1:27:48Speaker 05

  I thank you very much.

• 1:27:55Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We had voice acting in today's episode from Clara and Rose Dubois and Scarlett McNally. We end today with a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by Discover. In 2022, David Jefferson's wife Jill was diagnosed with cancer. Jill didn't have many

• 1:28:38Shankar Vedantam?

  close friends, but one of her former coworkers, a woman named Nicole Kyle, started coming by to try and cheer her up. Soon, Nicole became a consistent comfort to the couple. So in 2024, it didn't surprise David when Nicole offered to help him get Jill home after a hospital stay. What did surprise him was the lengths she went to once they got Jill home. David recorded his story in a park where he and Jill hoped to one day hike together, so you'll hear some wind in the background.

• 1:29:10Speaker 05

  Nicole and I got Jill home. It was during a winter snowstorm. The pipes had frozen in the house, but we got them thawed out. Nicole and I...

• 1:29:21Speaker 05

  Gave Jill a shower and put her to bed. Some hours later, Nicole showed up with a bag. Show me which room you want me to sleep in, and I'll stay until the end with Jill. Nicole, in a very unselfish way, took care of the laundry, food, house cleaning. She invited her friends to bring over food, along with some of the food my friends were bringing. Nicole would get up in the middle of the night with me and help roll Jill over and attend to her private needs

• 1:30:06Speaker 05

  as only another woman could. Nicole was a steady presence. She never panicked. She always had a smile and willing to do whatever what was next. Nicole helped me see Jill to the end of her life, which was February 3, 2024.

• 1:30:32Speaker 05

  Nicole was an angel in the time of need. And I'll forever be in her debt. This situation called for a hero, and Nicole Kyle is my hero for life.

• 1:31:05Shankar Vedantam?

  Listener David Jefferson. Jill and David were together for 36 years.

• 1:31:13Shankar Vedantam?

  This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by Discover. Discover believes everyone deserves to feel special and celebrates those who exhibit the spirit in their communities. I'm a long-standing card member myself. Learn more at discover.com/creditcard.

• 1:31:37Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.