How to Change the World

Does power truly flow from the barrel of a gun? Pop culture and conventional history often teach us that violence is the most effective way to produce change. But is that common assumption actually true? Political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who has studied more than 100 years of revolutions and insurrections, says the answer is counterintuitive. Then, Ranjay Gulati answers listener questions on how to cultivate courage.

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

• 0:00Shankar Vedantam?

  Before we get going today, I have an exciting update for you. Hidden Brain is now on YouTube. Not the audio podcast, which will continue to be available on Apple, Spotify, and your favorite audio podcast player, but as a brand-new standalone video channel. Please check us out. Our first videos include an exploration of the science of bravery, the secret behind artistic masterpieces, and a set of ideas to deal with high-pressure situations. Our handle on YouTube is @hiddenbrain, or just click the link in the show notes for today's episode. Again, that's youtube.com slash @hiddenbrain.

• 0:42Shankar Vedantam?

  Okay, here's today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." Those are the words of the first US president, George Washington, in his inaugural State of the Union address. George Washington knew a thing or two about war. Over four decades of military service, he took part in a number of bloody battles. Among them was the Battle of Trenton, in which American colonists battled German soldiers paid to fight for the British. The battle was depicted in the 2000 film, The Crossing.

• 1:27Shankar Vedantam?

  In scene after scene, the Americans thrust their bayonets into the Germans. They kill others with cannon and musket fire. Their enemies repeatedly try to regroup, but are forced to flee. Finally, the Germans, realizing they cannot win, kneel in surrender. These scenes, like many depictions of war, can be hard to watch, but they also force us to face uncomfortable questions. Doesn't Washington's war, and countless others like it, prove that the realists are right? That violence is the most effective means to change? That power does flow from the barrel of a gun?

• 2:17Shankar Vedantam?

  This week on Hidden Brain, the surprising truth about what actually produces radical change and the profound implications for individuals and nations.

• 2:34Speaker 01

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• 3:05Shankar Vedantam?

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• 3:36Shankar Vedantam?

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• 4:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Many of us watch movies depicting war or TV shows where detectives save the day by bursting in on the bad guys, guns blazing. These sorts of stories are based on an assumption. Using force might be unpleasant. It might even be immoral. But it's highly effective, the surest way to get what you want. At Harvard University, political scientist Erica Chenoweth studies whether this common assumption is true when it comes to mass movements for change. Erica Chenoweth, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Shankar.

• 4:46Shankar Vedantam?

  Erica, I want to look at your own journey into this area of research. When you were a kid, your mom bought you a book called Zlata's Diary. You were enthralled by this book. What was it about?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Basically, this is the story written by Zlata Filipowicz about what it was like living as a child under siege, during the siege of Sarajevo. As a 13-year-old kid, I couldn't help but be moved by the experiences of being a kid that were not going to be available to her, her friends, and others because of the war.

• 5:21Shankar Vedantam?

  I mean, in many ways, it's like the fascination that many people have had over the years with the Diary of Anne Frank. It gives you a window into what it's like to go through the experience of war. Later on, I understand, you became really interested in the history of World War I. You'd go to the public library with your family, and you loved a book about World War I Medal of Honor winners. What was the appeal of the book?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Well, I think I was always really fascinated with World War I. I can't actually remember the origins of the fascination, to be honest. But from the time I can remember, I was looking at military history books. And one that really caught my eye was the one about Medal of Honor winners, in part because it described these situations of heroism and courage, but also these situations of just horrific wartime conditions, trench warfare, and the types of experiences that people had just serving in the war, on and off the battlefield.

• 6:20Shankar Vedantam?

  As an undergrad, I understand you took a military science class. So it sounds like you were developing a real interest here in military history.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Yes, I was interested in potentially serving in the Army after graduating from college. And they had an ROTC program, which I didn't eventually enroll in, but I did take the military science course to find out whether it was a path for me.

• 6:50Shankar Vedantam?

  The September 11 terrorist attacks took place during Erica's senior year in college. They prompted Erica to go to graduate school to better understand the nature of terrorism.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  And there was a really influential article and later book published by a scholar named Robert Pape, who's at the University of Chicago. And he basically argued that suicide terrorism was on the increase because it was a remarkably effective technique. And, you know, there was a debate about this. And another really important article and set of arguments was emerging from a fellow named Max Abrams. And he was arguing that actually, looking beyond just suicide terrorism, if you look at terrorist events and you look at sort of campaigns of terrorism or terrorist groups, and you look at how many of those groups have actually achieved what they said they wanted, it's a remarkably low number. And so he was saying that terrorism was not effective.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And then there was this other political scientist saying that suicide terrorism in particular is very effective. So there was sort of a vibrant debate happening in the field. And my research was really on the question of why it is that people use terrorism in democracies, specifically where there are so many other methods of political expression that are available. So that's sort of where I was in the mid 2000s as well.

• 8:12Shankar Vedantam?

  Would it be fair to say that your broad belief at this point was that power indeed does flow from the barrel of a gun, from your interest in military history and your knowledge of wars, past and present?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. And I think I would qualify it somewhat just by saying that it flows from the barrel of many guns. So, you know, and I think there are a lot of people that would make a similar assumption, that when violence failed, it was more a question of capacity, that rebel groups or terrorist groups were using violence but didn't have really the capacity to back up their political might.

• 8:47Shankar Vedantam?

  I just want to stop for a second to note that the intuition that you had is, I feel like, an intuition that many people have in the culture, right? When we, when we think about, you know, how, what succeeds in terms of bringing about change, whether that's change on an individual level, or a group level, or a political level, we see lots of examples, we see movies and books, which are all about the use of violence and war that, that basically achieve people's ends. And in some ways, it feels like that's, that intuition sort of flows through our lives in a way that's often not questioned.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  I think that's true. I mean, I think from a very early time in life, at least in the United States, many children are encountering, you know, war stories. And whether that's about the founding of the country, whether it's about the Civil War, the Vietnam War, we encounter these fairly early on. And they're sort of memorialized and mythologized in ways. And to me, I guess I grew up with a sense that war was awful, but necessary sometimes, or inevitable because of the nature of humanity. And yeah, I think you're right that as a political culture, there's little questioning of the utility of violence.

• 10:01Shankar Vedantam?

  So in June 2006, you were, I believe, working on your dissertation, and you were attending an academic workshop. But, but some of what you heard at this workshop made you skeptical. What was the workshop, and what were people saying?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  It was a workshop that was put on by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which is an educational foundation based in DC. The thing that was really surprising about it was that the content was all totally new to me. And, you know, the basic claim, I would say, running through all of the content was that nonviolent resistance, when unarmed civilians use protests, boycotts, strikes, stayaways, other forms of noncooperation, that they can actually engage in collective action in a way that's as effective or even more effective than when they use armed insurgency.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  And the first thing that occurred to me is that when people would refer to particular cases, like the People Power Movement in the Philippines, or the Solidarity Movement in Poland, or the anti-Pinochet Movement in Chile, you know, my immediate response was, those are very interesting cases. I hadn't really thought about them in terms of, you know, nonviolent collective action winning compared to armed insurrection. But for any example that someone brought up, I could think of a counter example of where an armed revolution had succeeded.

• 11:31Shankar Vedantam?

  Erica immediately also thought about nonviolent protest movements that had failed, like the peaceful pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in China in 1989.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  As the world watches and listens in hall, the peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in China comes to a violent and bloody end, crushed by waves of Chinese military forces. Hundreds of unarmed civilians, hungry for freedom, mowed down in Beijing by gunfire soldiers.

• 12:01Shankar Vedantam?

  And Tiananmen Square was not the only example of a failed, nonviolent uprising that occurred to Erica.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Well, you know, there's certainly plenty of examples more recently. The one that springs to mind immediately is the Syrian Revolution. But, you know, that's another example of where, you know, you have a sustained mobilization that is up against a regime that effectively...

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Decided that it could roll the dice and use extreme brutality and suppress the movement effectively.

• 12:36Shankar Vedantam?

  And of course, even a cursory glance at history suggests numerous examples where violent insurrection succeeded. I mean, and starting with the American Revolution or the French Revolution.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, start with the Haitian Revolution and the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. So we have many different examples that leap immediately to mind. You know, most people, I think, wouldn't necessarily imagine that there's really anything about nonviolent resistance that could make it even compete with that.

• 13:16Shankar Vedantam?

  As Erika marshaled example after example of violent revolutions that were effective on nonviolent movements that had failed, another political scientist at the conference, Maria Steffen, threw down a challenge. Examples showing violent and nonviolent movements succeeding or failing were just that. Examples. They were anecdotes. They weren't data.

• 13:40Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, it's never possible to rerun historical events. You couldn't ask the question, would the French Revolution have succeeded if it had been nonviolent? You couldn't rewind the clock of history, run the revolution differently, and see if the outcome might have turned out another way. But Maria asked Erika if there was still a way to scientifically test which approach was more effective.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Basically, my answer to Maria was how I would do it is I would collect data for a very long time period. I would use every country in the world as the universe of potential cases. And then I would look for comparable cases featuring primarily nonviolent resistance and violent resistance. And by comparable cases, I mean cases that were seeking similar goals. And I would apply a hard standard to that and look only at cases that were seeking radical revolutionary goals, not looking at, say, civil rights campaigns or different types of reform campaigns, but look at campaigns that were trying to overthrow

• 14:47Speaker 02

  the incumbent national government or campaigns that were trying to push for independence, either by expelling a foreign military occupation or colonial power or through secession.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Because those are the types of goals that most people associate in their minds with armed revolution. And then let's apply a very strict definition of success, which is that the campaign had to have achieved its outcome within a year of the peak of its mobilization. And it had to have had a decisive impact on the outcome and achieved what it said it wanted. So in the case of independence campaigns, they can't just achieve autonomy. It has to be de jure and de facto independence. And the reason to set it up that way is because if you were a skeptic like me, you would want to compare the hard cases and you'd want to be able to come up with some kind of measure of the relative effectiveness, given those very strict criteria.

• 15:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Erica was proposing an incredibly high bar to test the effectiveness of nonviolent movements. Maria Steffen's response? Let's do it. Let's find all the cases of insurrections and revolutions over more than a century where groups of people sought to overthrow a regime. Let's classify them as violent or nonviolent based on how the campaigns were predominantly carried out and see which ones succeeded. By comparing lots and lots of cases, the researchers could finally say something objective about the relative effectiveness of the two strategies.

• 16:23Shankar Vedantam?

  Erica said, OK, but was quite sure what they would find. All the childhood books, all the military history Erica had absorbed pointed in the same direction. Nonviolent movements might be high minded, but violent movements would be more effective.

• 16:41Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, what the political scientists found. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 16:55Shankar Vedantam?

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• 17:34Shankar Vedantam?

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• 18:17Shankar Vedantam?

  Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services.

• 18:23Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Erica Chenoweth grew up fascinated by stories of war and military heroism. Like many people, Erica recoiled at the horrors of war but came to believe that violence was an effective way to accomplish one's goals. Popular culture endorsed this idea. Movies, books, and TV regularly tell us that if you really want to get your way on something, force is probably the most effective strategy.

• 18:55Shankar Vedantam?

  In 2006, Erika met another political scientist, Maria Steffen, who threw down a challenge. If violence was really more effective than nonviolence in enacting change, the historical data should prove it. If you compare the history of violent insurrections with nonviolent campaigns for change, you should find that the people who used guns were far more successful than the people who didn't use weapons. Erika and Maria began to analyze hundreds of cases of conflict and rebellion, starting in the year 1900. Erika, I want to start by looking at some of the cases you and Maria examined. And let's start with this one.

• 19:37Shankar Vedantam?

  In October 2000, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in the city of Belgrade. There were massive demonstrations calling for government reform. One evening in October, a large crowd gathered in front of the city's parliament building. They chanted, "He's finished, he's finished." Who were they talking about?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Well, they were talking about Slobodan Milosevic. One of his nicknames is the Butcher of the Balkans, who had stolen an election that had taken place in the previous weeks. And the movement that organized in advance of the election had expected Milosevic to lie about the results of the election and had set up these parallel vote tabulation and very well organized verification processes to demonstrate the fraud.

• 20:28Shankar Vedantam?

  So the Serbian organization was called OTPOR. And OTPOR really became famous for using humor and theatrics in their anti-Milosevic protests. One such campaign was called "A Dinar for Change." Activists painted Milosevic's face on a barrel and placed it in front of the Belgrade National Theater. People who passed by could pay a small amount of money to then hit the painting with a bat. It was like a game you play at a county fair. I want to play you a clip of one of the leaders, Sergeja Popovic, explaining the strategy in a TED Talk.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  We put the big petrol barrel with a portrait picture of Mr. President on it. In the middle of the mainstream, there was a hole on the top. So you could literally come, put the coin in, get a baseball bat, and hit his face. Sounds loud. We were sitting in a nearby cafe having coffee and there was a queue of people waiting to do this lovely thing. Well, that's just the beginning of the show. The real show starts when the police appears. What they will do? Arrest the shoppers with kids? Doesn't make sense. Of course, you could bet, they've done the most stupid thing. They arrested a barrel. And now the picture of the smashed face on the barrel with the policeman dragging them

• 21:46Speaker 04

  to the police car, that was the best day for the photographers from newspapers that they ever will have.

• 21:52Shankar Vedantam?

  What was the effect of this campaign, Erika?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  There's no doubt that Otpor had a really important impact on opening people's minds to imagining a new future. One of the long-term legacies of that campaign was the different types of tactical innovations that were experimented with there. In particular, the type of method that Sergio was just describing is called a dilemma action. And a dilemma action is something that Otpor really perfected. The dilemma is, what do you do? Right? So, do you just leave it and ignore it? Then you have all of these people smashing Milosevic's face? Or do you arrest somebody, anybody who's there, create a scene? It would look illegitimate.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Or do you put the barrel in the police car and then, you know, it's sort of this humiliating and absurd political theater? But it's a technique that is now used in a much more widespread way, I would think, because the logic of it is clearer to people. And the other thing, of course, is the humor. And humor is really important as a way to really poke at the invincibility kind of myth or narrative that exists among many different autocrats or autocratic movements. And so, if there's one thing that we know that autocrats don't like, it's people laughing at them.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  One of my favorite vignettes comes from Morocco, where there is an independence movement in Western Sahara. And it's illegal to fly the colors of the flag of the independence movement. And there was a group of protesters who wanted to mobilize a flag, an illegal flag-flying protest. And they announced in advance that this would be taking place so that the authorities would show up. But instead of themselves showing up to fly the flag, they basically rounded up a bunch of stray cats and tied the flags onto their tails and then released them into a crowded area, where then the riot police were chasing them up and down narrow alleys and stuff.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  And this is a real dilemma action because it creates this ludicrous scene of absurd political theater. But they also couldn't arrest anybody.

• 24:20Shankar Vedantam?

  Literally herding cats, huh?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. Literally herding cats, but not able to really figure out who the real protest organizers were.

• 24:33Shankar Vedantam?

  So the Serbian police began to crack down on Otpor. They were arresting the protesters, many of whom were teenagers. And they were also calling the protesters terrorists. But increasingly, it wasn't just young people who were involved. Older people were getting increasingly drawn into the struggle. Why was that?

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Well, I think that the movement likely did a very good job of appealing to a wider and wider base of supporters. There was a period in which they were experiencing a pretty high degree of police repression. And I was told by one activist there that they began organizing something called grandparents protests, which is when they would ask their retired grandparents to come and march or demonstrate with them. And at those marches, they noticed the police were much less likely to start swinging their batons at the crowd. There was just a taboo against beating the elderly in public. And they exploited that taboo. And, by the way, also increased their numbers

• 25:36Speaker 02

  and the diversity of their campaign.

• 25:38Shankar Vedantam?

  What was the final outcome of the protest? Did it work?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  It did. Milosevic announced that he was retiring to spend more time with his grandson. He fled. He fled the square. And the movement effectively walked through the line of policemen who obviously were not going to fire on them anymore and occupied the parliament building. And inside, apparently, they found lots of ballots that were premarked for Milosevic, so further demonstrating the fraud.

• 26:13Shankar Vedantam?

  Let's fast forward 20 years and turn from Eastern Europe to Africa. The country of Sudan was ruled for nearly 30 years by President Omar al-Bashir, who was a brutal dictator. He presided over the genocide in the Darfur region of southern Sudan in the early 2000s. Now, there were periodic uprisings over the years, but the security forces quickly suppressed them. But then in December 2018, protests erupted across the country after the government raised fuel and food prices.

• 26:45Shankar Vedantam?

  The demonstrations were organized by a group called the Sudanese Professionals Association. What were the techniques they used?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  One of the most important techniques that the SPA was able to organize en masse was a general strike and various other limited strikes and stayaways. And stayaways can be really important for movements that are facing brutal regimes because, unlike mass demonstrations, they don't necessarily place people in positions of directly confronting the agents of repression. But in this case, there were also mass demonstrations, sit-ins, marches, protests. They used a really wide range of nonviolent methods in the course of that campaign.

• 27:35Shankar Vedantam?

  So soon after these protests really became widespread, al-Bashir was actually removed in a coup and the Sudanese military established a military council. But the SPA kept protesting. They wanted the coup leaders to hand over power to the people and establish a democracy. And this led to something that's now known as the Khartoum massacre. What happened, Erica?

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what was happening there is that there was a massive sit-in outside of the military headquarters demanding that the civilians be represented in the new government and that a transition to democracy take place as soon as possible. And various security forces committed a mass atrocity. They killed and sexually assaulted and tortured over 100 people, some of whose bodies they dumped in the Nile River. And in the aftermath of that event, the SPA wisely, I think, called for a general strike and mass non-cooperation.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  And the reason I say it was incredibly wise and strategic is, again, it didn't necessarily put people in direct contact with those militias and security forces by calling for a massive 4 million-strong demonstration, but instead say, "Nobody's going to work until we have the opportunity to be at the table negotiating a peaceful transition to democracy." And it was a remarkably effective maneuver because not only did it help to keep people

• 29:13Speaker 02

  involved and engaged, but it also disrupted the day-to-day order of things so that the transitional junta didn't feel like it had a way out other than to work with some of the civilian representatives to negotiate an outcome.

• 29:38Shankar Vedantam?

  One of the other lessons that I'm getting from this is that even highly repressive regimes, at some level, depend on the cooperation of the people being repressed in order to hold on to power. And when that cooperation is withheld or withdrawn, it becomes actually quite difficult for even very authoritarian regimes to hold on to power.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  That's right. I think that's the basic theory. The ruler does depend on so many people to stay in power. Like, they're not doing it themselves. And when very large numbers of people refuse to continue supporting them, things collapse rather quickly. Movements have to do it, Maria Stephan has argued, which is extend the nonviolent battlefield into constituencies upon whose cooperation the regime does depend. So that's one kind of tricky factor that explains some variation, I think, in the outcomes of nonviolent movements.

• 30:41Shankar Vedantam?

  So we've talked about a couple of movements that successfully utilized nonviolent techniques to enact change. I want to look at an example of a largely nonviolent movement that sometimes dabbled in violence. And it's instructive to see what happened. In May 2011, there was a wave of protests in Spain calling for socioeconomic reform. These were largely peaceful. The movement called itself 15M. It was named up to May 15th, which is when these demonstrations began. People began occupying central squares in the main cities of Spain. And a large percentage of the public, about 65%, supported 15M. Can you tell me what happened in the course of these protests that caused some

• 31:23Shankar Vedantam?

  of them to turn violent, and the effects of this turn on public opinion?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Basically, there was an episode in which some of the protesters were provoked into using violence in one way or the other. And there were a couple of social scientists who had been conducting surveys on opinions toward the movement before that event took place, and then they were able to do surveys after that event took place as well. And what they found is that the average support for the movement dropped by about 12% in the aftermath of that event. And the findings were qualified somewhat in the sense that among people who already

• 32:09Speaker 02

  were very supportive of the movement, there wasn't a very large drop in support. But among people who were kind of adjacent to the movement politically, who were sympathetic to the movement before, or who were kind of not affiliated with the movement in any way, there was a much bigger decline in support. So in other words, the episode of violence tended to have very little effect on base solidarity, but it had a pretty big effect on alienating potential third-party supporters of the movement that would have allowed it to expand its base. And so I think the key takeaway of that study is that these types of incidents can be really

• 32:53Speaker 02

  risky for movements that are trying to expand their base of supporters. And expanding the base of supporters is one of the key things that nonviolent resistance campaigns need to do to win. They need to grow in number and in the diversity of their supporters and in the links that their supporters have to different pillars of support.

• 33:12Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah, so this was work by the political scientists Jordi Munoz and Eva Anduiza. They happened to be in the area at the time studying 15M, so they were able to survey the public both before and after, you know, the turn to violence. But I want to stay with this idea for a moment because, you know, I suppose if your base is large enough, if the number of people whom you have on your side is a significant majority, then possibly turning to violence perhaps It does not affect the outcome very much because you already have a significant majority on your side. But if you're in a position where you are 20% of the population, you really need to recruit a significant number of people to come over to your side in order to make up a majority.

• 33:54Shankar Vedantam?

  And it seems to be in those cases where turning to violence runs the risk of alienating people who might otherwise support you.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Yes, that's exactly how I would read the state of the literature on this one, which is that it's a much more risky political move to do when a movement is very small and trying to expand its base than it is if a movement is already very large, enjoys a lot of popular support, and critically, the opponent is hated by lots and lots of people. So if it's just a regime that's made so many missteps and has shattered its own legitimacy to such a large extent that basically 90% of the population, one where the other wants change, it may be less politically risky. But there still are a lot of risks.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  One of them is just the expansion of repression. It's much more likely to be really intense and to expand indiscriminately when movements begin to mix nonviolent and violent methods. And that's in part why so many regimes seem to try to deliberately provoke nonviolent movements into breaking down their discipline because they know that it helps bolster their own legitimacy, their own calls for the need for law and order and the restoration of stability. And they know that significant portions of the population will largely agree with that.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  And so this is part of the reason why agents provocateurs or incidents of repression meant to provoke people out of their discipline are such a ubiquitous part of the autocratic toolkit.

• 35:41Shankar Vedantam?

  It's interesting that I think in these conflicts, you actually have, in some ways, a test of discipline on both sides. Because the protesters, nonviolent protesters, are often also trying, in some ways, to incite the government authorities into overreacting, into cracking down, into repression. Because I think they also recognize that repression reduces government support. It reduces the legitimacy of government authority. Just as the governments might realize that when protest movements resort to violence, it tends to undermine their legitimacy and also undermine their mass appeal.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yes, I think that's a fair comparison. I also think that they're playing a similar game in the sense that they're both trying to divide and rule the other. So the logic of nonviolent resistance is to grow the base in order to create these defections from the opponent's support base. So basically, the movement is effectively trying to divide the opponent and dislocate it from its pillars of support. And the regime is trying to do the same to the movement.

• 36:47Shankar Vedantam?

  So we've looked at a few examples of cases where people used violence or nonviolence or a combination of these tactics to try and enact change. And obviously, the specifics of each conflict are unique. And cataloging conflicts as violent or nonviolent probably involves some judgment. Things may not be entirely black and white. But when you step back and look at the big picture of examples of both violent and nonviolent protest movements over the span of the 20th century, what did you and Maria find?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Well, the basic descriptive statistic that really jumped out is that the nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to have succeeded as their violent counterparts. And that the rates of success for nonviolent campaigns had actually increased over the latter half of the 20th century and into the beginning of the 21st. So, in other words, nonviolent resistance was working much more than skeptics like myself would have expected. At the same time, that doesn't mean that it worked all the time. We found, basically, that around half of the cases that we studied had succeeded.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  And about 25% of the cases of armed resistance had succeeded. And so, you know, we also would never argue that violent resistance never works, because clearly one out of four cases had succeeded as well. So nevertheless, I at least was very surprised by the fact of this, and it definitely motivated us to continue trying to figure out why.

• 38:28Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, the subtle psychological mechanisms that explain why nonviolent movements might seem less likely to succeed than violent campaigns, but end up being more effective in the long term. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 38:54Shankar Vedantam?

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• 39:38Shankar Vedantam?

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• 40:29Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Harvard University, political scientist Erica Chenoweth studies the effectiveness of political protest. Along with Maria Steffen, Erika has studied more than 100 years of struggles for radical change around the world. These included both violent and nonviolent revolutions and insurrections. They found that nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns. Violent forms of protest might get a lot of press and attention, but they tend to invite harsh repression from authorities and also to turn off potential allies. Erika and Maria have discovered four key factors that explain why nonviolent movements

• 41:12Shankar Vedantam?

  appear to be increasingly more effective than violent insurrections.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  The first factor is mass participation. So movements that win tend to be much larger and more diverse than movements that don't. And nonviolent campaigns tend to be able to elicit much larger and more diverse participation than armed campaigns. The second factor is the ability of the campaigns to divide and rule the opponent by shifting the loyalties of people within various pillars of support. So the larger the base becomes for a movement, the more likely it is that participants in the movement will have direct ties to people in the opponent's pillars of support, like

• 41:55Speaker 02

  economic and business elites, important politicians, civil servants, state media, different types of police or security forces or other authorities, local government and local authorities. And you know, the more those connections begin to be embedded within the movement, the more likely it is that the movement can maneuver in ways that begin to really shred the loyalties, you know, of people in those pillars of support. The third factor is the ability of movements to tactically innovate, especially moving away from mass demonstrations, rallies, and protests, and more into forms of noncooperation like strikes, stay-at-homes, and kind of undermining power for the opponent.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  And that's really the the main thing is that these movements aren't out there to like melt the heart of the dictator, you know, they're out there to remove the bases of the dictator's support. So that's a really key distinction and I think is probably what leads a lot of people to think that nonviolent resistance campaigns are naive, is that they think they're trying to like change the mind of a brutal dictator when they're not. They're trying to win a political fight among people who are neutral, who are kind of sympathetic to the regime but not actively supporting it, and certainly among people that are sympathetic to the movement but not actively supporting it. And then the fourth factor that seems

• 43:28Speaker 02

  to be really important is for the movement to be able to develop some kind of organizational resilience and discipline, so that when or if repression escalates, that the movement is able to continue to recruit, to continue to maneuver as it needs to, without falling into disarray. And often what disarray means is, you know, some people start to say we need to use violence now and they just go do that, you know, without any kind of organizational cohesion. And so we know that organizational cohesion leads to lots of things that help movements, including discipline.

• 44:11Shankar Vedantam?

  So I just want to go back to one of the points you you made, the the idea that in some ways the central goal of these movements is to expand their base of support, to bring more people in, to to sort of feel like the movement is a mass movement. Talk a little bit about the work that you've done that examines how large a movement needs to be in order to be effective, because when I saw this, I was actually struck by in some ways how small that number actually needs to be.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Right. Maria, Stefan and I analyzed about 323 cases of maximalist campaigns, revolutionary campaigns, and I found that none of the campaigns seemed to have failed after mobilizing three and a half percent of the population.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  And 3.5% is a small number in relative terms, but very large in absolute terms. So in the United States, that's like 11.5 million people. In China, it's many tens of millions of people. And so then we start to get a sense of the scale.

• 45:18Shankar Vedantam?

  It's worth pausing for a moment and sitting with that finding. Erica found that movements that mobilized about 3.5% of the population succeeded pretty much everywhere. But before you think it's easy to organize and execute a mass movement for change, Erica has a few caveats about that data point.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  That it only counts participation. It doesn't necessarily look at supporters of the movement or sympathizers with the movement. And so it can be easy to sort of conclude, I think wrongly, that all you need is 3.5% of the population on your side. I don't think that's what the data say. It says that, you know, countries in which there have been 3.5% of the population actively mobilized in a sort of peak period are extremely unlikely to lose. But that could be because they have already elicited like 90% of the population's support or, you know, something along those lines.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  So the way that I think about the 3.5% rule is really more of a rule of thumb rather than an iron law. So those are the unknowns that make me cautious about kind of overinterpreting the rule.

• 46:36Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to look at one other idea, which is in some ways violence sort of produces its own opposition. So the harsher you behave, yes, on the one hand, you do get compliance and people do fall in line, people are afraid of you. But it's also the case that violence generates enemies. You have more enemies tomorrow than you did yesterday. And over time, you can see how it's effective in the short term, but it can end up having great costs for your campaign in the long term.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think one helpful way to think about this is to think about tactical effects versus strategic outcomes. So if you think about that event that took place in Spain with the 15M movement, the short-term effects of those types of events are often really obvious. It's things like greater media coverage, like maybe they wound up on the front page rather than on the 20th page or something of the newspaper. Maybe, you know, there was a self-defense justification and so somebody was able to get away from that event who otherwise would have been beaten up by someone.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  You know, there are, you know, short-term tactical reasons why people often say, "See, that violence helped." But then, if you look at the long-term strategic outcomes, it also has really important after effects. For example, the expansion of repression against people who were involved in the movement or their family members, whether they participated in the violence or not. It often has the effect of then expanding government powers of surveillance and infiltration and other types of things that actually are really challenging for movements to manage. And then, you know, sometimes it alienates would-be supporters and often creates a sense

• 48:28Speaker 02

  of unity and camaraderie among security forces, for example, rather than encouraging them to take a moment and think about what they think is going on in the country. So, yeah, I mean, I think most of what we know about incidents of violence is that it does harden the opposition rather than kind of softening the opposition and allowing it to fracture. This is part of why a lot of the research, for example, on the impacts of terrorism on a political system are that it's very polarizing, but it generally leads the population to embrace more right-wing political beliefs about what the government ought to be able to do to restore public order.

• 49:10Shankar Vedantam?

  So what's fascinating to me, Erica, is that our model, our mental model, I think, is still stuck in what we see on television or in the movies, where we see that violent, people who have been unjustly treated resort to violence in order to get justice, or we see that groups that basically want their way sort of use violence to win. I'm not sure it's sort of a concerted effort to look the other way, but there really does seem to be a reluctance to grapple with these histories in a way that's at least commensurate with the way we think about conventional military histories.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think part of it is just basic misconceptions and myths about what nonviolent resistance is. For example, when people use the term nonviolence, I think that they often just associate that with a moral position, and they think of it as something that's potentially noble but extremely naive. They don't think about it in terms of a strategy that's literally helped to shape the world we live in right now, and that's available to anybody, anywhere, to a certain degree.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  There's an interesting book called Recovering Nonviolent History that's edited by Maciej Barkowski, and there's an opening chapter in there about the myth of violence and how sort of appealing it is and how we memorialize it and mythologize it and make it part of our national histories. But that book is full of examples of nonviolent campaigns that were formative in developing nations around the world, including in the United States. So one of the chapters is actually A Look at the American Revolution by Walter Konser. And in it, he argues that actually the most important part of the American Revolution

• 51:04Speaker 02

  came in the 10 years before armed hostilities broke out, where colonists were effectively...

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Using all kinds of different forms of economic non-cooperation and the development of alternative institutions like alternative judicial institutions, political conventions, and other things that otherwise would not be really allowed in a monarchy. And they effectively freed themselves, so to speak, before the hostilities broke out. And in fact, if you tell the story that way, the war that took place between the colonists and the British was actually the counter-revolution. It was the attempt by the British to seize back what they thought was rightfully theirs after the Declaration of Independence took place. So in a way, there's a real need to, I think,

• 51:56Speaker 02

  recover some of the histories of nonviolent resistance that have defined our countries, our nations, our world, and that we're sort of the inheritors of, but don't know it.

• 52:22Shankar Vedantam?

  Before we recorded this conversation, I had never heard the argument that the most important part of the American Revolution occurred in the 10 years before armed hostilities broke out. When we think of revolutions, we tend to remember the drama of soldiers heading off to war, the outcomes of battles fought on land and sea, guns and guillotines. Bloodshed has a way of imprinting itself on our minds.

• 52:48Shankar Vedantam?

  As the years pass, it's easy to forget about all the work that occurs in the years before a revolution begins. The slow building of alliances, the quiet refusal to abide by unfair laws, the arguments and counter-arguments debated in newspapers and on social media.

• 53:08Shankar Vedantam?

  That earlier phase of resistance may be quiet, but it requires a trait that, much like nonviolent resistance itself, is frequently misunderstood: courage.

• 53:21Shankar Vedantam?

  We often think of courage as a personality trait. You either have it, or you don't. But researchers are finding that courage can be cultivated in moments of reflection where we think through who we are and what matters most to us. The laying of our inner groundwork is what allows us to act bravely when a crisis is upon us. After the break, stories of times where our courage is tested and what they teach us about the true nature of bravery. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 54:37Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We all have to deal with scary situations. There may be moments of high drama, like a car crash or a natural disaster. Or perhaps we will have moments of personal crisis, like navigating a serious illness or sharing a painful truth with a loved one. We'd like to think that we will face these moments bravely, but will we actually rise to the occasion? At Harvard Business School, Ranjay Gulati studies courage and how we can strengthen our own capacity to be brave. Ranjay joined us recently for two episodes on this topic.

• 55:18Shankar Vedantam?

  The first was titled "U2.0: Cultivating Courage," and the second, on Hidden Brain Plus, was called "U2.0: How to Help Others Be Brave." You can find both those episodes in this podcast feed.

• 55:36Shankar Vedantam?

  Today, Ranjay returns to the show to answer listener questions about this topic. Ranjay Gulati, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  Thank you, Shankar. It's a pleasure to be back.

• 55:47Shankar Vedantam?

  One story that you cite, Ranjay, is of the Russian dissident politician Alexei Navalny. Tell me his story.

• 55:55Speaker 05

  You know, Navalny is a kind of a very interesting story, and it follows a very interesting arc as well. You know, he starts as an anti-corruption lawyer, critical of power, but still within the system. And he then decides that he's really gonna pivot from there into exposing corruption at the highest levels. You know, and he then becomes part of the opposition story here. And then, things really ramp up for him: arrest, harassment, assassination attempt. And, you know, with a very deadly poison, they evacuate him, evacuate him to Germany, and miraculously, they're able to save him. This was considered very unlikely, but he does.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  But really, what is most interesting, and actually, in the end tragic, is he returns back to Russia, knowing fully well that when he lands, they are likely to arrest him, and he may not make it out alive after this. But he chooses to do that.

• 56:56Shankar Vedantam?

  What happens when he goes back?

• 56:58Speaker 05

  Well, he's arrested right at the airport, then transported to Siberia, put into one of the worst prisons over there, is in solitary for long periods of time, and ultimately, he passes away over there. He's periodically allowed to meet people, and so there are recordings of him while he's there. Even shortly before his death, he writes, he talks, and he's still making his point. He still wants to get the point out there that, listen, giving up is not an option. And it somehow fits into what we call the hero's journey. The hero leaves safety to serve a higher truth.

• 57:40Speaker 05

  And in this case, the hero's journey doesn't have to lead to a happy ending. But it does promise a meaningful ending, you know. And in this case, you know, you see, it's not like a victory for him, he succeeds. But it's kind of a moral ending, you know. Um, he has made a choice that he is going to live his life in alignment with his beliefs and principles. And and it is something that he will do even if it costs him his life. Um, what I like about hero's journey and the whole idea there is that because it kind of normalizes fear and struggle.

• 58:20Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm.

• 58:21Speaker 05

  It tells us that doubt doesn't disqualify us. And and and and transformation is possible, you know, you don't have to be perfect. And you don't even have to get it always right. But a moral overtone just makes it much more kind of compelling because you are now on a quest. You could be on a quest for physical endurance, you know. Uh, running, uh, doing a cross country marathon of some sorts or some kind of. That is also a hero's journey where the the challenges are physical one. But others are like a Navalny story is one of a moral pursuit as well.

• 59:00Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, when I hear the word hero's journey, I think I was mistakenly focused on the word journey, you know. So Navalny, of course, travels a lot. He goes from one place to the other. Many stories of these epic journeys involve, you know, a warrior traveling from one place to the other. But really, the journey that is being described is an internal journey. It's the internal journey from someone who might have been hesitant or diffident to the discovery of one's own courage. That is the journey that is the hero's journey.

• 59:30Speaker 05

  In many instances, uh, it's something about your own commitment to a set of values or principles that go beyond self-interest and a willingness to incur cost. And no matter what that might be for that set of principles. People have also called this felt responsibility. You know, you you somehow believe that this is such an important piece for you. And that violating violation of those values and principles feels more threatening than personal risk. And and so instead of asking the question than in the situation, instead of asking like, oh, my God, what's the smartest or safest thing I can do here?

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

  You ask the question, what kind of person am I willing to be? Is it in alignment? You know, you saw that story about Australia where this storekeeper sees two people shooting into a crowd during a Hanukkah celebration. He said, I didn't have a choice. I had to do something. That's the person I am. And he got shot, you know, he may never fully recover. But for him, his personal belief about himself was more important to him than physical safety even.

• 1:00:48Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to play you a question from a listener that perhaps complicates one dimension of our account of a hero's journey. This message comes from listener Suzanne.

• 1:00:58Speaker 06

  Courage in my life has often not felt like a decision at all. It has felt like a kind of inner knowing that simply moved my body forward before my mind could argue. One moment stands out vividly. My son was only six months old. My husband and I were walking into a restaurant and I was holding my baby. I saw a very large man assaulting a very petite woman outside. I don't remember thinking at all. I simply handed my baby to my husband and said, please take him. Then I walked straight up to this man and told him very clearly to stop. I told someone else to call nine one one.

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  The police came and the man was arrested. There was no planning, no courage narrative in my head. Something deeper moved me. I've learned that when we listen to that inner knowing, whether we call it intuition, conscience, or soul, we often discover we are capable of far more than we imagined.

• 1:02:06Shankar Vedantam?

  So Ranjai, Suzanne tells us over and over that she didn't think through her actions. She just acted. Do you think it's possible that when we label someone's story as a hero's journey, we are doing that after the fact that in the moment bravery may in fact be impulsive?

• 1:02:25Speaker 05

  Absolutely. You know, there is what you might call, you know, even in psychology, we talk about system one, the fast emotional response. And system two, that is a more slow and reflective response. And, and yes, it is true that some of our responses, the fight, flight, freeze response are automatic. And fight is one of the three. And somehow, sometimes some things trigger us to fight because most of the time it is freeze or flee. And, but I would submit to you that, you know, clearly she felt a sense of outrage. And that, you know, while she may not have fully cognitively processed it and she may have experienced it as instinctive,

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  there was definitely a sense of outrage and a sense of empathy. So empathy for the recipient, we know, makes us more likely to take action. There are also conditions where nobody else is doing anything. So you realize that you are the only recourse over here. And so you choose to take action because of that. But to me, what is also interesting is her recounting of this story. When we have experiences like this, it's what we have also called mastery experiences. It's what we learn that sometimes you learn by acting and then reflecting. So some, some would argue, you can't teach courage by telling people to be brave.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  You teach it by helping them act and then reflect. And when they act and reflect, they realize, oh, I did it. I can do this. And by the way, this is in alignment with who I am. But I, I love the fact that she remembers this story because I think that story probably, I would hypothesize, really changed her forever. It was a transformative experience for her.

• 1:04:17Shankar Vedantam?

  It's also the case, as I'm reflecting on what you're saying, Ranj, that there are probably different kinds of situations that call for different kinds of courage. So in this situation, in fact, the courage that was called for was immediate and instinctive. But that's not always the case. There are many, many situations that we have where, in fact, deliberate thinking is important. It's actually important for us to ask, what is the courageous thing for me to do, to be deliberate about it? And in some ways, that is just as much an act of bravery as the instinctive, sudden, impulsive act of courage.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  It's a great question. You know, so I would distinguish between acute bravery, which is the moment, in that moment, short term, right? Or an enduring bravery, or long-term bravery, which is quieter and often harder.

• 1:05:06Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  Because it shows up as persistence, endurance, recommitment, you know, kind of having the, holding on to unpopular positions, living with uncertainty and still remaining aligned with your values. You know, Navalny's life journey unfolded not in an instinctive moment, but over a period of many years. And at any moment, I'm sure there was temptation to give up. So short-term bravery often relies upon adrenaline, moral clarity, or kind of a surge of emotion.

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  Long-term bravery, I think, relies more on meaning, identity, self-regulation, the ability to kind of, I would say, tolerate discomfort without burning out or even becoming cynical. So I think we have to kind of think of these two working in consonance with each other.

• 1:06:11Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, a man cheats death in rural China. Plus, how the nature versus nurture debate plays out in the context of courage. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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• 1:07:09Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 1:07:14Shankar Vedantam?

  Ranjay Gulati is a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. He studies the science of courage and what makes some people act bravely in a scary or dangerous situation.

• 1:07:28Shankar Vedantam?

  Ranjay, we talked in our earlier conversation about the importance of self-efficacy in shaping our capacity to be brave. What do you mean by this term?

• 1:07:38Speaker 05

  So self-efficacy was a term that famous Stanford psychologist Albert Bendoer really put forward. And the idea was around that you have confidence in your own ability to take action. I think self-efficacy then transcends into a larger can-do mindset. I would call this the spillover effect. And there's really good research on this. Self-perception theory, for instance, suggests that we figure out who we are by watching what we do. And so when we act courageously in one domain, say, taking up a new sport, you know, you prove to yourself that I am somebody who can try hard things.

• 1:08:22Speaker 05

  And that travels with us into other aspects of what we do. So you don't just do a brave thing, you actually are becoming a braver person because you start to believe that self-belief you update in your own mind. The internal narrative that we have shifts from "I avoid hard things" to "I'm someone who can face them." And so I firmly believe that people don't just do brave things. When they do, they become braver people.

• 1:08:52Shankar Vedantam?

  We got an interesting question from a listener about how much bravery is learned and how much it's innate. Here's listener Talgat.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  Is being brave something that people acquire over time? Or is it natural ability? Or is it a mix of both? I'm asking this because I have three children and I try to nurture them at the same time, at the same way. However, one of my children is extremely brave. It looks like he doesn't have his part of the brain that's responsible for being cautious. And this is not something that I taught him. So I'm curious about what do you think?

• 1:09:43Shankar Vedantam?

  What do you think, Ranjai? Does courage come from nature or from nurture?

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  So Talgat asks a great question. And this gets to the heart of my project. I mean, if there was only nature, then I didn't have much to write about. My entire book is premised on the idea that maybe there are a set of practices that we can learn. But it's not some kind of classroom skill. You can't teach people courage by saying, "Come on, from tomorrow, you're going to be brave." We teach it by helping them act and then reflect. So we don't teach them by telling them, "Oh, from tomorrow, be fearless or deal with fear." We sort of make them prove to themselves that they can function while afraid. How do you build a relationship with fear?

• 1:10:30Speaker 05

  And so, understanding how to take on fear head-on, I think, is a conditioning and understanding that comes with taking action, then showing yourself, "I know, I think I can do this. I was scared of snakes. I'm not scared of snakes." Now, it's important to distinguish on the one extreme, when Aristotle wrote about courage, talked about cowardice at the one extreme and reckless at the other extreme. And courage was in the middle. So courage is about understanding the risks involved. What are the pros and cons of this action? You know, for the longest time, I was ashamed when I wasn't courageous.

• 1:11:10Speaker 05

  And I never understood this, and I've come to realize, people aren't paralyzed by fear as much as they're paralyzed by the shame of having fear. And so I think it's important to understand for children to understand both one extreme recklessness, which I think for many of them is a factor to think about, and the other one is not also to have shame. And how do we, I think this is an excellent question, that how do we get children to learn the act of courage? And it's about acting more than a lecture.

• 1:11:47Shankar Vedantam?

  In our earlier conversation, Ranjai, you shared various methods of cultivating bravery as a skill. You talk about the idea of acting your way into knowing. We received a voicemail about acting your way into bravery from a listener named Aubrey.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  When I heard the phrase, acting your way into knowing, I immediately thought about the experience of transitioning. And how, for me, I wasn't born knowing that I was a boy inside, you know, trapped in a girl's body. Instead, it was really a process, a very, very scary process of taking one step at a time, of, you know, taking hormones week after week, of getting surgery, of changing my name.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  And it was only by really acting that I was able to know that this was right for me. It took A level of faith and courage in the face of fear of what people would think, of what the consequences for my life would be. And it's also been the best thing that I've ever done.

• 1:13:17Shankar Vedantam?

  So Ranjai, Aubrey's message really underscores the idea that sometimes being brave can come before feeling brave.

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  You know, I want to thank Aubrey for trusting us and sharing the story with us. And you're right, you know, sometimes how do we think about acting before feeling? This story touches me because it highlights a quieter sustained form of courage that you had talked about earlier. It's a profound example of choosing authenticity over safety. In some ways, you're waking up every day and you know, you're trying to face the world that may be hostile. You may be willing to risk relationships, your social network, to be true to oneself. And so it really is, I think it's a powerful, powerful example of that courage doesn't always look like a warrior charging into battle

• 1:14:09Speaker 05

  or leading some kind of a movement. It sometimes requires patience, it's vulnerable. So it really expands our thinking about courage. And you're also, your point about, you know, you're acting your way into knowing. So you're taking steps in that it's a journey you're on. You're not doing it overnight. And so you're working your way into the fog, not knowing what the consequences of this are going to be. You know they're going to be negative or maybe not, but you still are moving into the darkness because it's who you believe you are and what you are meant to be.

• 1:14:49Shankar Vedantam?

  We heard from a listener named Brad, who shared a remarkable story that made me wonder whether people can go not only from being fearful to brave, but also in the other direction. In 1988, Brad's father passed away. To work through his emotions, he decided to go on a bicycle trip through rural China. One evening, on a switchback through a mountain pass, he encountered a rough-looking crew of five men. They didn't let him pass. Their leader harassed him, pushed him, and even tried to punch him. So Brad took off running. The men chased him, but he was able to find a small cave to hide in.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  It quickly got dark. It started to rain. It started to pour. I sat in a bowl in my tiny cave hole. And I sat as still as I could. I'd never been so cold. It was terrifying. And I was done adventuring. There had to be healthier ways to work through the death of a loved one. All I wanted now was a boring life for the rest of my days. I decided if I lived to tell about this, I would return home and take over the family business.

• 1:16:01Shankar Vedantam?

  So the next morning, Ranjai, Brad was able to escape. He lived to tell the tale. But I'm wondering what you make of his story. Can we do scary things, decide that we've had enough, and then want to go back to a life that is much more cautious and safe?

• 1:16:16Speaker 05

  So, um, look, yeah, what we have experienced, there's two parts to this story. I think it's a great story, and I'm really grateful that Brad decided to share this with us. You know, what he has described here is what has been called conditioned fear. Fear learned through experience rather than logic. Conditioned fear is a learned nervous system response. It's automatic, right? So the classic example of that is being bitten by a dog and then getting terrified of dogs. Or, you know, I watched the movie Jaws. Nothing happened to me, but I am so fearful of getting into the, into the ocean after that. Right? And what starts to happen when it's activated in the nervous system, right?

• 1:17:00Speaker 05

  The amygdala is firing up before conscious thought. So the body reacts first. You know, we are, and avoidance then reinforces the fear. And the way out of this is, you know, either you can let this fear amplify and paralyze your life, and maybe you're happy doing that. Or the other way is to retrain the nervous system. Right? Gradual controlled exposure. An adventure trip doesn't have to mean going through rural China on a bicycle by yourself. Right? Maybe there are smaller steps along the way where, you know, you can actually allow yourself the possibility of going on a guided tour, going to places that are safer.

• 1:17:43Speaker 05

  And what I've come to realize is that most of us are living our fears, not our dreams.

• 1:17:51Speaker 05

  And it's because we have sometimes these, you know, conditioned responses that then become kind of a guiding principle that, oh, I'm conditioned, I'm not gonna do it. I would urge Brad to, you know, explore if there's ways to voluntarily and gradually engage with it. I'm not, I totally respect where he's coming from. By the way, what he's describing is normal. It's an absolutely normal human response. But I also think that learning, not the absence of fear, is really the seed of courage. So why allow this to paralyze one's life? Say, you know what, I get it, it happened. I have, my nervous system is conditioned now

• 1:18:36Speaker 05

  to never do this again.

• 1:18:38Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:38Speaker 05

  Um, but maybe I can try something simple and small. And, and, and as I do it, I convince myself that I can do it. Uh, it builds up my own confidence. And honestly, it helps me overcome the trauma that I may, I, I probably went through. It must have been a, I can only imagine, but it sounds like a really traumatic experience.

• 1:19:01Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm, hmm. Brad's story also makes me reflect, Ranjy, that one thing that scary experiences do is they help us reflect on our lives, to see the value in more mundane and boring things in our lives. So as Brad sat shivering in the cave, he was fantasizing about how wonderful it would be to be bored. Is that one of the potential benefits that we get when we engage in dangerous activities? Which is, you know, they remind us about all the times when our lives are not filled with danger and how wonderful that is?

• 1:19:33Speaker 05

  Well, no question about it. The contrast effect always helps, right? What courage does, or these risky or crucible moments do is they shift our sense of time. Instead of just being trapped by the present threat and what's happening here, we start to also imagine ourself in longer arcs, like what do I want my life to add up to? So I think courageous moments and courageous actions can be powerful kind of moments of self-reflection. So that's up to us of how we then translate these moments and allow them to be part of our future lives.

• 1:20:26Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, is courage always a good thing? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 1:20:48Shankar Vedantam?

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• 1:21:24Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Throughout human history, storytellers have extolled the virtues of courage. From the biblical tale of David and Goliath to the latest superhero movies, we love characters who are brave.

• 1:21:42Shankar Vedantam?

  But bravery isn't always easy. It can be messy, dangerous. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. went to prison and eventually lost their lives to their causes. An employee who confronts an unethical boss may lose her job. A student who turns in a cheating classmate could get called a snitch.

• 1:22:10Shankar Vedantam?

  Ranjay Guladi is the author of How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage. Ranjay, let's look at some of the challenges involved with courage. Some listeners pointed out that their ability to be brave depends not only on what the situation is, but on who is involved. Here's Kay.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  I've realized I've had no problem or hesitation inserting myself into any arena if I'm seeing someone getting bullied, if I'm seeing someone throw a piece of trash, or if there's a natural disaster. I don't seem to hesitate to react or respond in what I feel like is courage and standing up for what I morally believe is right. What I found interesting is though, if it involves me, I have a much more difficult time standing up for myself. I struggle, but if it's in the moment or for someone else, I don't seem to hesitate. I'm curious about that psychology around that.

• 1:23:14Shankar Vedantam?

  So Ranjay, I feel like many people can relate to this. Our likelihood to show courage can vary based on who is the aggressor and who is the victim. What do you make of this?

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  First of all, that's absolutely true. Courage is deeply, deeply contextual, you know? And social psychology has shown us that, like, we're more likely to take action if we identify with a victim, you know? Like in the story of Suzanne, we feel empathy. Or if we feel safe in our group, safety in numbers. Conversely, if the aggressor is some kind of a powerful authority figure, the perceived costs skyrocket. So we have to stop looking at courage as some kind of individual trait and recognize it is also a response to the power dynamics we are within. We also know that people are more likely to act when they feel personally responsible.

• 1:24:10Speaker 05

  The bystander effect, where there are many people, diffuses responsibility. So our willingness to act is highly context-dependent.

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  Now, I think it's also in her case, for whatever reason, she's created in her mind a block where she's willing to stand up for others and causes that go beyond herself. But somehow she has decided that she herself is not somebody that she wants to take bold steps for. Whether she feels them as heightened risk, not worth taking, or she experiences that something that doesn't align with her self-belief, hard for me to say. But I think she'd be so well-served if she did allow herself to experience courage in her own life.

• 1:24:57Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm. You know, I'm thinking in some ways of an analogy here, Ranjai. Many parents, I think, experience this. They might be meek and cautious people most of the time, but if their kids were in danger, lion dad and lioness mom come out. And so there are some situations that really bring out the protector in us, that bring out the defender in us. And we don't do this for everyone, and sometimes we don't do this for ourselves.

• 1:25:22Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. And you're absolutely right. So that's where it's a great illustration of context dependence of courage, that in certain conditions, we are willing to. Now, the parent-child, I think, is almost genetically hardwired in us, as we know, helping our own genetic pool survive. But people stand up for causes, which I find is, you know, that go beyond them. One I describe in my book, The Freedom Summer, where these young undergraduate, mostly white kids, went down to Mississippi for a voter registration drive, right? And most of them stayed, even after a few were lynched in the first few days.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  And so what is it that leads people to risk life and limb for something they believe in? I think that, to me, is another piece to think about, where people do extraordinary things in pursuit of something that aligns with their own belief and their own judgment of themselves, and aligns with their own values.

• 1:26:35Shankar Vedantam?

  A listener named Thomas called in from China. He says that years ago, early in his career, he stood up to his boss over what he felt were unethical business practices. Surprisingly, the boss recognized the error and publicly apologized. But looking back now, Thomas realizes his courage might not have all been about courage. Some of it might have been the unthinking rashness of youth.

• 1:27:00Speaker 03

  The courage that I had at that time is really very rare in my life, in fact, because as I grew older, as I became more and more socially experienced, I just find that I have gradually lost that kind of courage. Because at that time, I didn't know what the consequences were. I didn't know what I was doing, in fact. I just wanted to play a hero, if you will. So I want to ask, is ignorance actually a factor that leads to courage? Thank you.

• 1:27:44Shankar Vedantam?

  Ranjii, I'm wondering what you make of Thomas's question. Can ignorance be a source of courage?

• 1:27:50Speaker 05

  So Thomas asks a great question. And the honest answer is yes, sometimes. But with important caveats to think about. Ignorance can be a spark that triggers someone to take, not knowing the full danger can help you take the first step. But to sustain courage, even in that particular story or over a car course of your life, requires building awareness of courage. My gentle suggestion to Thomas is to learn to build a relationship with fear, to learn to lean into that discomfort that comes with being uncomfortable, that comes with fear.

• 1:28:32Speaker 05

  And to say, like, you know, what is it that I really believe in? What is important to me? How can I do things that, whether it's a sport or it's an outdoor hobby or it's travel or something that takes me out of my, quote unquote, you know, cocoon? It's like recognizing that something else is more important than just fear and giving in to our fears.

• 1:28:57Shankar Vedantam?

  We received an interesting message from a listener named Stephen about the line between bravery and recklessness, the same line you were talking about a moment ago. A couple of years ago, Stephen narrowly escaped a shark attack. He actually had to hit the shark on its snout to make it go away. Now, that scary incident didn't deter him sometime later from getting back into the ocean. I'll let him pick up the story.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  So I get in the water, I'm swimming, and there's two sets of breakers, so I'm swimming about 100 yards out, and I'm about a half an hour into the swim, and as my right arm enters the water, I guess it must look just like a fish going into the water, because a shark comes up from underneath me, grabs my right arm, pulls me under, shakes the heck out of me, and then lets me go. I guess he figures I'm not a fish. So I'm coming up, and I'm like, oh, this is gonna be bad. I lift my arm out of the water, look at it, and blood's going everywhere. So I'm trying to swim in on my side with my left arm, like side stroke, and keeping my right arm out of the water so the shark still come back. And it's rough, and it's, oh, gosh.

• 1:30:06Speaker 03

  There's one person on the beach, and I'm yelling for her as I'm swimming in, and luckily she stopped, and she calls 911. They take me off, I pass out, I guess, and I wake up the next day, and surgeons did a great job, and they fixed my arm, pretty much. I didn't lose my arm. And I did a lot of rehab myself, and I'm still rehabbing, but I'm doing great, I'm doing great. I'm in the water, and I'm swimming, I'll swim on rough days. So that's my question, you know, is this cross the line from facing your fears into stupidity? Anyways, thank you for the show, I love the show.

• 1:30:43Shankar Vedantam?

  Wondering what you think, Ranjai. Was Stephen being brave, or was Stephen being reckless?

• 1:30:49Speaker 05

  There's a defined line there, and what I would say, the line, the dividing line between those two is acknowledgement. Bravery acknowledges the risk and chooses to act for a higher purpose, or other beliefs, or other factors that propel you to consciously take action, right? Recklessness, on the other hand, ignores or minimizes the risk, often for the thrill or out of negligence. Now he's going back into the water. If there are big signs saying there are sharks out right now. Today is not a good day to be out there. And he still chooses to go out. I would say that's reckless. Right?

• 1:31:31Speaker 05

  But if he's back out in an ocean where there have been no sightings of sharks. It's a completely clear. That shows brave and he has decided that he will not let that previous experience completely control his life. Now, he happens to have bad luck and there is happens to be a shark that day. That's bad luck. But I think recklessness comes in where you know what? I'm just gonna go out anyway. I don't care.

• 1:32:01Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah. Now, it's also the case, of course, that there are many situations where it's not clear what the risks are. Yeah, right? So in other words, there's no sign that is posted. If you're dealing with, let's say confronting an authoritarian regime. Maybe you don't have signs saying, you know, your risk today is 25%. Your risk today is 65%. Is it always possible to know what the risk is before venturing in, Ranjai?

• 1:32:28Speaker 05

  That's a great question. And you know, in my book, actually, I make a distinction between risk and uncertainty. You know, risk is where you know the probability of outcomes and you can put some numbers to it. And the shark example is one of them. Signs saying shark sightings have happened, there are sharks in the area. Uncertainty is where we don't know. Right? Where maybe you go into a remote place or a a country where they don't track shark movements. And in these unknown, uncertainty comes in. And uncertainty actually is what really paralyzes the brain. That activates the fear impulse like nothing else. And then the question is, how do you choose to act or not act?

• 1:33:13Speaker 05

  There was a book called The Benefits of Fear, which said that fear is a survival impulse. Don't ignore it. Which I do agree with also. But I also think that we can't let it completely paralyze us. Because there's so much uncertainty in the world today. If you're gonna succumb to all forms of uncertainty, you will never do anything. So it's learning how to find that line between bravery and recklessness. If you remember, one extreme was cowardice, other extreme was reckless. In the middle sits bravery.

• 1:33:53Shankar Vedantam?

  Ranjai Gulati is a behavioral scientist at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage. We also heard today from political scientist Erica Chenoweth, also at Harvard. Erica is the author of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know and with Maria Stefan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.

• 1:34:24Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristin 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.

• 1:34:43Shankar Vedantam?

  Thank you to Loom by Atlassian for sponsoring the Hidden Brain Perceptions Tour. While on tour, audience members shared the best piece of advice they've ever received. At our tour stop in Baltimore, a listener named Sanjeev told us about a piece of career advice he received from a friend. Sanjeev says he had always struggled with networking until his friend told him something that changed his whole perspective.

• 1:35:08Speaker 03

  I'd heard how important networking was, but I didn't know how to do it. I didn't think I was a good networker. So I went to one of my friends, who I consider to be the best networker I've ever met. I'm like, how do you do it, Ed? How do you do networking? Because I can't do it, right? I'm intimidated by it. And he said, "Sanjeev, when I meet with people, I don't think about what they can do for me, but what I can do for them." It was such a simple but profound message that day. It reoriented my thinking, and from that point on, I've never been afraid to just go and meet people. Thank you.

• 1:35:46Shankar Vedantam?

  Wonderful. Thank you so much.

• 1:35:54Shankar Vedantam?

  Thanks to Sanjeev for sharing that piece of advice. And thanks again to Loom for sponsoring the Perceptions Tour. Loom is AI-first powered video communication that moves teams forward, whether you're sharing feedback, obtaining approvals, or setting context. Reduce unnecessary meetings and make the ones that matter more effective. Unstuck your teams today at loom.com. That's L-O-O-M dot com. It's a team changer. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

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