489. Is “Toxic Positivity” a Thing?

In this special episode of No Stupid Questions, Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth discuss the consequences of seeing every glass as at least half-full.

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

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. There's no hiding how convenient Southern New Hampshire University makes college. They offer over 80 career-focused graduate programs online. Classes have no set meeting times, so you can balance life and learning, and online tuition rates are some of the lowest in the country, making it all a little more manageable. A school this willing to work with you is worth the investment. Visit SNHU.edu/freakonomics to learn more. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by PNC Bank. Boring, great word, bad rep. Yet, time and time again, here at Freakonomics, we find that when something culture-changing happens, boring things like calculations and careful planning are usually behind it.

• 0:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Which begs the question, why not apply it to other aspects of life? Like banking, for example. Well, PNC Bank did, since its inception, proving time and again that the best banking strategy isn't the exciting type, but the steady, reliable, definitely not YOLO type. PNC Bank: brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association Member FDIC. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Amica. You know what they say, if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.

• 1:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, go with Amica and get coverage from a mutual insurer that's built for their customers, one that looks after what's important to you together. Auto, home, life, and more, coverage that fits your unique needs. Amica helps you protect what matters most. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work is a new way to work in ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work can pull info from across your apps and connect to your tools to help you create finished work. You can even automate work in ChatGPT with the Scheduled Tasks feature, and the whole time, you stay in control.

• 2:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 2:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. A couple of years ago, I got to be good friends with Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book Grit. We decided to make a podcast together. We called it No Stupid Questions, and it became the first spinoff in the Freakonomics Radio network. So, you may ask, how's it going? Yeah, not bad. Today, No Stupid Questions gets more than a million listens every month. If you are one of those million, thank you. And if you're not, well, we plainly haven't made our case yet. Perhaps today's episode will change your mind. You are about to hear

• 3:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  a new episode of No Stupid Questions, made especially for our Freakonomics Radio listeners. Every week on No Stupid Questions, we try to answer a question like, if everybody hates meetings, why do we have so many of them? Or, when is it okay to tell a lie? Or, how can you stop comparing yourself to other people? Some of these questions come from listeners. Some are just rattling around in Angela's head or my head. In any case, Angela and I love having these conversations. And if you enjoy hearing them, I have good news. You can get No Stupid Questions on any podcast app for free, just like Freakonomics

• 3:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Radio. I hope you'll do that. Thanks for listening and Happy New Year.

• 4:04Angela Duckworth?

  They really want to complain, and all you want to do is dance around them in a jig of joy.

• 4:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's exactly what I did last night. So you're saying that was a bad thing?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  You're listening to No Stupid Questions, the podcast that explores the weird and occasionally wonderful ways in which humans behave. Here are your hosts, Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth.

• 4:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Angela, question here from a listener named Christina.

• 4:32Angela Duckworth?

  Okay.

• 4:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  She writes to say, as we all know, there are those who see the glass as half empty and those who see the glass as half full. Then there are those like me who see it not only as half full, but as reason to celebrate. I wake up most mornings happy and honestly feel kind of excited about my day. I have to say, I'm starting to wonder here if Christina is really Angela Duckworth.

• 4:53Angela Duckworth?

  I was gonna say girlfriend. Let's go out. I absolutely identify with her completely.

• 5:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Christina continues, I am familiar with the idea that most people have a set range for their resting state of happiness to which they eventually return, almost regardless of what life events befall them. And I've come to believe that I am just blessed with a very high level. It's not like nothing bad has ever happened to me. I am a middle aged woman. I've gone through the deaths of those I love, divorces, tough financial times, et cetera. But especially now in my more mature years, I always seem to return to a place of joy. Until recently, I figured I had just won the lottery in this respect. I mean, isn't feeling good a natural goal of being human? It motivates and sustains and allows us to direct goodwill toward others too.

• 5:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  However, she writes, you knew there was a however.

• 5:50Angela Duckworth?

  There's gonna be a but, there's gotta be.

• 5:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Everybody's got a big but, as they like to say. However, the other day, Christina writes, I came across the idea of toxic positivity and was quite taken aback. Is it possible to have too much optimism and joy in my life? You can just feel the air going out of Christina's bouncy joyful balloon.

• 6:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Angie, I may be bringing this question to the wrong person because you are a proponent of what is literally called positive psychology, but I'll ask anyway, is it possible to have too much positivity?

• 6:32Angela Duckworth?

  Christina, she's going to bounce right back, no matter what we say, by the way.

• 6:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  But you want to smack her down for a minute?

• 6:37Angela Duckworth?

  Stephen, you'd be the one to rain on this parade. I would just be like, let's get more streamers. This is amazing. And we can rain a little bit on this, but I do believe it's great to be a happy and optimistic person.

• 6:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, there is a condition called hypomania, correct? Which I assume is too much darn happiness?

• 6:55Angela Duckworth?

  Well, coincidentally, I've been talking about hypomania a lot with Marty Seligman, and this precedes getting a letter from Christina about her own levels of joy and optimism. Marty Seligman, my PhD advisor and a world renowned psychologist, has come to the tentative hypothesis that history is changed for the better by the hypomanic. So what is hypomania? Stephen, you've heard of mania, right? As in manic depression?

• 7:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Even I have heard of mania.

• 7:26Angela Duckworth?

  Even you? Okay. Well, this extreme form of happiness, when it reaches what clinical psychologists would say is like a pathological level of happiness, is not only feeling like you're on top of the world, but unfortunately, and this is why therapists think it's dysfunctional, is that you are, you know, talking without stop in a way that people can't follow you. You have no need to sleep, and therefore you don't sleep. You are also, and this is maybe the worst part of being in a manic episode, you are also taking ridiculous risks. Basically, it's a complete lack of impulse control. You might decide that it would be a really good idea to take all your clothes off and run around the block and see what that's

• 8:08Angela Duckworth?

  like, and you would just do it. And that's what an extreme manic episode is. By the way, mania tends to cycle in and out with the opposite, depression.

• 8:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 8:19Angela Duckworth?

  That's the origin of the term bipolar manic depression. Hypo, meaning less than or low levels, hypomania is a low Lower, milder form of this state of joy. And what Marty is especially interested in is stable hypomania. So not just a one month state or a two month state, but just dispositionally being high energy. So you are sleeping, but maybe not as much as most people. And cheerful and optimistic and all the rest.

• 8:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  So before we go forward with Christina's concerns about toxic positivity, I want to go back to a couple of things that Christina wrote that I found interesting. She wrote, I'm familiar with the idea that most people have a set range for their resting state of happiness to which they eventually return, almost regardless of what life events befall them. Is that true?

• 9:11Angela Duckworth?

  That is true. There is this kind of center of gravity to our mood states. However, it's a center of gravity that can shift. So if you think about your childhood and you're like, you know what? I always was a little bit of a melancholy kid. It doesn't mean that you're going to have the same center of gravity in terms of your mood states as you move on and as things happen to you. So yes, there is some equilibrium that we return to, but that equilibrium itself can change.

• 9:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so Christina is correct largely in that statement.

• 9:41Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Here's another one, though, I just want to run past you. She wrote, isn't feeling good a natural goal of being human? I think it's a nice idea, but would you agree that that's a natural goal from a psychological perspective at least?

• 9:56Angela Duckworth?

  I think she actually is more right than wrong there. Every language in the world and every history and every philosophy and every religion has talked about happiness and its opposite, despair. So the universality of this is, I think, indicative of the fact that we all know what it's like to feel good and we all know what it's like to feel bad. And all of us would like to feel good more than we feel bad. I remember having a conversation with Danny Kahneman, the Nobel laureate, about optimism and happiness. And he said that if there were a fairy godmother that only granted you one Wish for your newborn child, absolutely you would ask for optimism slash joy,

• 10:39Angela Duckworth?

  right? And those aren't exactly the same thing, but they're highly correlated and they're very causally interrelated. And I think this idea of being somebody who, you know, the glass is half full and it is full of something I like and what's in your glass? I'm sure it's great. I think overall, the reason why we want that for our children and for ourselves is that it is the end in itself. Many philosophers have said that the pursuit of human action is happiness.

• 11:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  So if indeed it is human to seek out happiness, we get to Christina's dilemma. And what I find interesting about her question is this underlying assumption that sounds close to guilt, as if her, quote, "toxic positivity" is necessarily numbing or blinding her to the real concerns of the day. So I guess the first question would be, can't you have both? I've learned from my friend Angela Duckworth that instead of either or, both and is a really good option.

• 11:41Angela Duckworth?

  Both and is always the right option. You know, Christina talks about going through the deaths of those she loves. Divorce is plural, I noted. Tough financial times. It's not that she's living a Pollyanna life and nothing terrible happens to her. I'm guessing she knows what it's like to feel sadness, grief, loss, insecurity, jealousy, anxiety, worry.

• 12:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're bumming me out just saying those words. I have to say, no, I'm serious.

• 12:07Angela Duckworth?

  Really?

• 12:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  I feel my shoulders slumping.

• 12:09Angela Duckworth?

  Or, you know, hunching.

• 12:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm doing both. I'm so brought down by that list. I'm hunching and slumping.

• 12:15Angela Duckworth?

  Both and. I think that it is not only universal to seek good days and not bad days. It's not only universal to want to be happy and want to be unhappy less. It is also universal to experience positive and negative emotion. And here's actually a fun fact from the scientific literature that was really kind of shocking when it debuted a few decades ago, which is that for a long time- Psychologists thought that unhappiness and happiness were almost just the photo negatives of each other. Like, if you're unhappy, you're not happy. But it turns out that the correlation between positive emotions and negative emotions is only negative point three. In other words,

• 12:59Angela Duckworth?

  if it were truly the case that being happy was simply the opposite of being unhappy, you would actually be seeing a correlation of negative one. And what this suggests is that human beings are fully capable of feeling, maybe even in the same moment, some happy emotions, some negative emotions, mixed emotions. But one thing that Christina noted is that not only does she seem to experience more positive than negative, so she has a center of gravity more in these positive mood states than these negative ones, but she also said something about having a lot of stability around that, right? And when we study this scientifically, we not only want to know the center of gravity of somebody's mood state, but also how much variation is there? And what we find with people who are what

• 13:42Angela Duckworth?

  we would call neurotic is that you have roller coaster emotions. You have a lot of variability around that mean. And so what I'm hearing from Christina in her letter is that she's got a high mood center of gravity and she hovers around there pretty stably.

• 13:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  I will say Christina's email did make me examine my own state of positivity.

• 14:05Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah. What about you, Stephen?

• 14:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  So here's the thing about Christina's question. I do love encountering ideas that literally make you stop and think. And this one did. It made me reflect on some of the work we've been doing on Freakonomics Radio the last couple of years about negativity, about the power of bad, for instance, this psychological notion that bad things have more salience than good things. We did another piece recently on the power of negative media, which contributes to all sorts of problems on the personal and institutional levels. So I guess I have been paying attention to negativity and pessimism and judging it to be potentially harmful. And I do feel I've got a positive disposition personally, maybe not quite as positive as Christina or you, but overall quite positive.

• 14:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  I have a few friends who I stereotype as Eeyores, basically. And if I'm given the choice between seeing them one evening and staying in and reading a book, I'm gonna stay in and read the book because I don't want to swim in that negativity for a whole night. You know, life's too short and too hard. Why make it harder than it already is? But Christina's email did make me think about the potential downsides to this pursuit of happiness and perhaps a state of what she calls toxic positivity. I know there's some literature, including by a colleague of yours, Maurice Schweitzer.

• 15:30Angela Duckworth?

  Same department even.

• 15:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Who has written about the notion of happiness being associated with naivete, right?

• 15:37Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 15:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  I know there's also research that shows that in a competitive setting, positivity or a willingness to collaborate can be seen as a sign of weakness. So you can see in the business sphere, being positive might come across as something that could be exploited. I think another fear is that if you seem too happy, toxically happy, it may be an indication to others that you are low on empathy. And I believe there's psychological research about that as well.

• 16:06Angela Duckworth?

  June Gruber.

• 16:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  June Gruber, precisely. So all of these checks on my happiness do lead me to wonder if indeed Christina is barking up just the right tree. On the other hand, if you do have the, quote, "problem" of being very, very happy and you want to bring a little bit more either empathy or concern into your life, certainly there is for everyone, no matter which side of the scale you're starting on, a golden mean. Isn't that the real pursuit? Not to be happy all the time, but to find that golden mean where you can enjoy your life while acknowledging that on any given day, there is unbelievable cruelty and genocide

• 16:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  and other bad things.

• 16:52Angela Duckworth?

  So I'm gonna sidestep for a moment the question of the golden mean of happiness, the ideal number on a scale from zero to 10. Maybe it's not 10, is it eight? How about nine? I'm going to sidestep for a moment and just say, what is going on with dispositionally happy people?

• 17:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  You say that with a tone as if you don't understand it. What's going on with these people? These people who are just like me?

• 17:17Angela Duckworth?

  Well, I have to say that I have some familiarity with June Gruber's research and Maurice's. They're colleagues and friends, and I also have some intrinsic interest in this. What's going on with these dispositionally happy people who may be perceived by others to be naive and who might be sometimes insensitive to people who are not in a very good mood at the time? I think it comes down to attention. What it is to be a dispositionally optimistic and happy person at the core is to have a kind of bias to pay attention to the good sides. Like, look, the glass is half full. It's equally true to say that the glass is half empty. But a dispositionally optimistic and joyful person has this attentional bias.

• 18:02Angela Duckworth?

  That explains the naivety finding from Maurice Schweitzer. It's like, hey, they're looking over here. While they're looking at the glass being half full, we can exploit this blindness that they have to sell them a horse. This is also why it's been shown that people get happier on average as we get older.

• 18:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Until close to the end.

• 18:21Angela Duckworth?

  Until close to the end. But well into your healthy older adulthood, you reliably find that adults are happier than they were when they were younger. Now, why? Laura Carstensen's research at Stanford would suggest that it's because older adults tend to selectively look at the pretty picture and not the ugly picture. So I think that this attentional engine that's always filtering out our reality and then pushing our feelings around and our thoughts, attention is the gatekeeper for everything. I think that's what's really going on. And so then, when you ask me, well, what's the golden mean? I agree, it surely can't be the optimal life to ignore inequality, death, sadness, loss.

• 19:03Angela Duckworth?

  We don't want to be that person, even if we could be 10 out of 10 on happiness because there's something other than happiness, like character. But having a tilt in our attentional focus to sort of look all around, see the glass half full, see it half empty, but then preferring to focus on the fact that it's half full, I think that's pretty defensible.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela wonder whether the US is disproportionately optimistic. And if so, why?

• 19:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  And they admit that what appears to them to be good today may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  That's coming up on this special episode of No Stupid Questions from the Freakonomics Radio Network.

• 19:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Granola. You know that moment when a meeting ends and someone says, "Let's circle back on this next week," and everyone nods, but no one writes it down? Then next week rolls around and it's radio silence? That's why Granola exists. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part? Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the videoconferencing tools you already use. No setup, no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free.

• 20:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just head to granola.ai/freakonomics. That's granola.ai/freakonomics to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.ai/freakonomics.

• 20:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Zip System. Zip System building enclosures are designed as one integrated roof and wall system that makes it faster and easier to create a tight, dry building enclosure. Instead of a mix-and-match approach, all components work together as one system, eliminating the need for house wrap and felt. Because they keep your build protected against weather starting from day one, that means fewer steps and less opportunities for delays. Explore their family of products and learn more at zipsystem.com.

• 21:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by hotels.com. Hotels.com helps you find and book the right stay for work faster. With business preferences, save your travel must haves like gym access or breakfast just once, then get tailored results whenever you search for work travel. Plus, with a free membership, you can save up to 20% on hotels and earn rewards on every stay for future travel. Book now at hotels.com. Visit hotels.com for details.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about toxic positivity, let's hear some of your thoughts on the topic. We told listeners to tweet us their views on the benefits and detriments of a positive mindset. A listener with the Twitter handle @BitterMalone writes, "When someone complains about a problem, toxic positive people say things like, 'Don't worry about it, you gotta stay positive,' or 'You just have to push through, try harder,' which only invalidates a person's concerns and makes them feel worse." @Hendrkevinsen writes, "My wife is an optimist, which is great, except when she's backing out of parking spots because she's convinced she's not going to back into the wall, or a shopping cart, or another car.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Optimists have higher insurance rates. Hendrkevinsen, your observations are acute. Research from the Journal of Accident Analysis and Prevention concludes that existence of robust optimism appears to be related to an exaggerated sense of control, which can decrease the probability of appropriate anticipatory avoidance responses, AKA checking to see if there's a shopping cart behind you before backing out of a parking space." And finally, @TwistF* writes, "Expect the best, prepare for the worst. It's more work than having blind faith that everything will work out, or absolute defeatism that it's not worth bothering. It's a blend of the better part of each. Let's call it optipism."

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Wise words, TwistF*. Wise words. If you'd like your thoughts to appear on an upcoming show, follow our Twitter account, @NSQShow. Now, back to Stephen and Angela and their conversation about whether it's damaging to live a life where you constantly see the glass as half-full.

• 23:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  One could imagine that the choice set is even larger than it's half full, it's half empty. It could be that Christina, or you, or maybe even me on a good day, could say, not only is the glass half full, but I should find another glass because I've got so much happiness, I'm going to fill up two. It's not so much, well, we're looking at the same picture and we're seeing slightly different versions of it. It reminds me of this book by Barbara Ehrenreich, the journalist who's most well-known for a book called Nickel and Dime, which was an amazing piece of reporting about low-wage work in America. And this was probably 15 or 20 years ago, so it was quite prescient. But she wrote another book called Bright-Sided, which is a play on Blind-Sided. And it came about because she'd been diagnosed

• 24:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  with breast cancer, and she was suddenly being assaulted with all these optimistic and inspirational messages about, you know, keep your head up, everything's going to be okay. And she was more like, hey, shut up, I got cancer here. The book was called A Knockdown of America's Love Affair with Positive Thinking. And it's a bit of a knockdown of the kind of work that you do.

• 24:53Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, and very explicitly a positive psychology.

• 24:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  But I definitely empathize with that view. And I definitely empathize with the idea that if someone is going around being happy all the time, that it'd be very easy to say, you know, when people are happy and they're relatively successful in their lives, and look, let's not lie, you and I, we've both had a lot of good things happen in our lives. We've had good health, we've had good education, we enjoy our work, we have families that we love and maybe even love us back sometimes. And so I think it's very easy from the outside to say, well, of course you're happy.

• 25:30Angela Duckworth?

  Right.

• 25:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  You've got those things working. So what do you say to that argument?

• 25:36Angela Duckworth?

  That happiness is a privilege. I think that's an excellent point. But as many philosophers have pointed out, you do not have to be a rich person to control where you pay attention. It's not to negate that some people just have worse lives, objectively speaking. But I think at the same time, both and, Stephen, right? The optimists of the world tend not to be like hanging out on their couches, just staring blissfully into their half-filled glasses. They're starting nonprofits and becoming teachers and so forth. I really do think it's both and. You can acknowledge that there are objective disadvantages and also say, I'm going to look at the good side, too.

• 26:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  You want a little data on optimism versus pessimism in America?

• 26:16Angela Duckworth?

  Absolutely. Yes, please.

• 26:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is from a 2013 survey by Time Magazine of around 800 people. So let's just say it's not particularly scientific. But anyway, the question was, do you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist? Do you have any guesses before I give you the numbers?

• 26:35Angela Duckworth?

  I'm going to say that 90% of people consider themselves optimists.

• 26:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good God, you're optimistic about the optimism survey. I should also say you could answer somewhere in between. There's also don't know or refused. If somebody refused, I would put them down as a pessimist personally.

• 26:52Angela Duckworth?

  Exactly.

• 26:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Again, let's just acknowledge that this is extremely unscientific. According to this poll, 50% said they were optimists. 43% said they're somewhere in between. Only 4% said they're pessimists.

• 27:07Angela Duckworth?

  50 to four, so it's 10 to one.

• 27:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  50 to four.

• 27:10Angela Duckworth?

  Hey, that's about the same as my estimate of 90%, by the way.

• 27:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, that shocks me.

• 27:15Angela Duckworth?

  What did you think?

• 27:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd because I know a lot of pessimists.

• 27:20Angela Duckworth?

  Grinches.

• 27:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  We've been doing a lot of episodes on Freakonomics Radio this last year about America. You know, I came to this conclusion over the course of many years of reporting and writing that whenever we would look at a policy idea or solution for whatever it is, universal childcare, the way healthcare is paid for and so on, the solution almost always was, well, just copy the Danish model or copy the Hong Kong model or whatever. And when you start to look at how you can try to overlay a solution like that, the answer was usually you can't because we're just too different. And when you look at the US on many, many dimensions, culture, history, politics, et cetera, we're just a major outlier.

• 28:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Along those lines, I do wonder if we are an outlier as optimists as well.

• 28:07Angela Duckworth?

  Hmm.

• 28:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'd like to read you a couple of sentences from Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville's mind-bogglingly interesting book, written in the 1830s from the perspective of a French visitor. He wrote, "They, Americans, have a lively faith in the perfectibility of man. They all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene in which nothing is or ought to be permanent, and they admit that what appears to them to be good today may be superseded by something better tomorrow." So it really does make me wonder if what you and I are talking about now is really not optimism in the human, but optimism in the American human.

• 28:51Angela Duckworth?

  It's an excellent question. I don't know the answer. I'm guessing there have to be national differences in optimism. We know for sure that there are international differences in happiness, because for some years now, there are these annual happiness polls that happen around the world, and you can find out things like Denmark and Finland are especially happy places. The one that's coming to mind that I remember teaching was that Togo was the least happy country on the planet. So we know happiness varies by national culture. My guess is that optimism would too. It may be more pronounced in the United States. Benjamin Franklin, he had this parable of the handsome and deformed

• 29:36Angela Duckworth?

  leg. Have you heard of this parable?

• 29:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh-uh.

• 29:39Angela Duckworth?

  So, you know, Ben Franklin-

• 29:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Him I've heard of.

• 29:41Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, but I was gonna say, I'm at Penn, so we quote Ben Franklin a lot. So I can read to you this little story. Franklin is speaking about pessimists here. "An old philosophical friend of mine was grown from experience and carefully avoided any intimacy with such people. He had, like other philosophers, a thermometer to show him the heat of the weather to mark when it was likely to prove good or bad, but there being no instrument invented to discover at first sight this unpleasing disposition in a person, that of being a pessimist, he for that purpose made use of his legs, one of which was remarkably handsome, the other, by some accident, crooked and deformed."

• 30:22Angela Duckworth?

  If a stranger at the first interview regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him. If he spoke of it and took no notice of the handsome leg, that was sufficient to determine my philosopher to have no farther acquaintance with him. Everybody has not this two-legged instrument, but everyone with a little attention may observe signs of that carping, fault-finding disposition and take the same resolution of avoiding the acquaintance of those infected with it. I therefore advise those critical, queryless, discontented, unhappy people that if they wish to be respected and beloved by others and happy in themselves, they should leave off looking at the ugly leg.

• 31:04Angela Duckworth?

  I'll stop there, but obviously, this is Ben Franklin, well before June Gruber's and Maurice Schweitzer's research, saying that I think what's going on here is a tension. And, you know, he's famously a founder of this country and perhaps not only somebody who shaped our culture, but also the fact that we keep quoting him and keep his parables alive. Maybe it is a sort of particularly American, I won't say uniquely American, but maybe particularly optimistic American bias.

• 31:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  I can imagine one other large reason why America may be more optimistic than many other countries, which is that we have overall a very strong religious belief in this country and a very strong belief in an afterlife. I mean, if you want to think about the ultimate example of a happy ending, that's what heaven is. And if you want to think about a reason to be optimistic, it would be the belief that your ending will be good, will be better than now. So I wouldn't be shocked if America is indeed near the

• 32:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  top of the optimism scale, if it's related in some significant measure to that wide belief in heaven.

• 32:19Angela Duckworth?

  Maybe. I don't know. You have a religious tradition that emphasizes that things will ultimately be very good, but also maybe itself a product of a bias to want to see that kind of thing. Hence the difficulty of studying culture, right? It's very hard to do this scientifically.

• 32:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  What you're saying now relates back to what Franklin is suggesting. Franklin was essentially saying, smile and you will feel happy. And now you're saying that if you tell yourself a certain kind of story, it may make you feel happier, optimistic, but it may not have a basis in the reality. But at the end of the day, does it matter?

• 32:58Angela Duckworth?

  I think there could be virtuous cycles here where the causal arrows go every which way. Maybe when you're a happy person like Franklin and maybe Christina are saying, people are attracted to you, they're drawn to you. Maybe if you have people who are drawn to you, you have even more reason to be happy. There are these virtuous cycles and there's a lot of very good data now on the causal influence of happiness on future outcomes. So we do know at least that the causal arrows go from happiness to, for example, doing better at work. And then if you're doing better at work, you can just imagine, and there's research on this too, that makes you happier. So this upward spiral is real. But when you go back to Christina's worry, can you be too optimistic? Can this get toxic?

• 33:42Angela Duckworth?

  If we go back to this attention hypothesis that even Franklin had centuries ago, if you are ignoring other people's pain, if you are ignoring the gradient of privilege, if you are kind of tone deaf, I guess, for example, a roommate comes home and they've just had a [BLEEP] day and they really want to complain and all you want to do is dance around them in a jig of joy, that can be bad.

• 34:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's exactly what I did last night. So you're saying that was a bad thing?

• 34:12Angela Duckworth?

  But look, both end, right? It's both possible to have a high center of gravity when it comes to positive emotion and to be pretty stable around that. And I think it's possible to allow your intentional field to encompass these other things.

• 34:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  So in other words, diehard optimists, constant optimists, should understand that there may be occasions where even if you don't feel it, you should tone it down a little bit for the sake of others. And that pessimists should maybe jack it up a little bit because it's a free pass toward improving your outcomes. Is that the advice?

• 34:51Angela Duckworth?

  I'm going to give the advice my way, which is that rather than thinking about toning down your behavior and your voice and trying to get to something which is going to be good for everyone, I want to actually focus on attention. I think that if you diagnose yourself, as I guess most Americans apparently do, as an optimist, then you might want to make sure you are at least noticing when the glass is half-full and for whom the glass is half-full and who doesn't have a glass at all and who has two glasses. So just attention-wise, make sure you're not neglecting a part of the bigger picture, even if you're going to go back to the good parts. That's my recommendation for optimists.

• 35:34Angela Duckworth?

  My recommendation for pessimists is, again, notice your attention. What part of the picture are you obsessively dwelling on? Have you failed to notice that the glass is half-full? Have you failed to notice other things that might actually improve your mood? And I would also draw the attention of the optimists and the pessimists listening here to the reality of these cycles, because I really do believe there are virtuous and vicious cycles. And being unhappy, being negative, and always being hypercritical, et cetera, can really be a spiral downward. If you do pay attention to that, you could say like, hey, look over here. It's this virtuous upward spiral. I think I'm going to join that one.

• 36:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Has this conversation about the possibility of too much optimism dimmed your own optimism even one watt?

• 36:22Angela Duckworth?

  Not even half a watt, Stephen.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. And now here's a fact check of today's conversation. Angela describes pathological mania as a symptom of bipolar disorder. And she notes that during manic episodes, a person may have no need to sleep and could lose all impulse control. This sort of episode is generally tied to bipolar 1 disorder, although individuals with this illness may not experience these exact symptoms. Less severe hypomanic episodes are common with bipolar 2 disorder. Hypomanic episodes and periods of depression are also associated with psycholymic disorder. We'll link to more information in the show notes at Freakonomics.com.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Also, Angela recalls that Togo was, at one point, the least happy country on the planet. In 2015, the West African nation indeed ranked dead last, 158th out of all 158 countries measured in the World Happiness Report, which uses data from the Gallup World Poll and the World Risk Poll. However, in the 2021 report, Togo ranked 136th. The change may be attributed to a steady drop in infant mortality and an increased number of children receiving education. Afghanistan is currently ranked as the least happy country in the world, with Zimbabwe right above it. The happiest country in the world, as Angela suggested, is Finland,

• 37:55Speaker 02

  with Denmark as a close second. The United States sits at number 19 on the list, a slight drop from its rank as number 15 in the 2015 report. Finally, Stephen surmises that the United States may be one of the most optimistic countries in the world. According to a 2020 survey from market research firm Ipsos, this is true. Americans ranked fifth out of 28 participating countries when it came to optimism about their nation's future. China was ranked as the most optimistic country, and Italy was ranked as the most pessimistic country. That's it for the fact check.

• 38:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hello again, Freakonomics Radio listeners. I hope you enjoyed this special episode of our spinoff podcast, No Stupid Questions, where Angela Duckworth and I hold conversations every week about happiness, cognition, and all the weird and wonderful ways that humans behave. You can get No Stupid Questions wherever you get your podcasts. If you are new to the show, there are 80 episodes waiting for you. If you would like to submit a question to Angela and me, write to [email protected]. Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio, are you the kind of person who knocks on wood to prevent bad luck? Do you refuse to clink the glass of someone who's drinking just water?

• 39:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Perhaps you even believe in the sweater curse.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  It is irrational, and yet it's very popular. Many people are superstitious, probably more than admit to it.

• 39:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Before you laugh it off entirely, consider this.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  The embracing of superstition at the official courtroom level isn't totally rejected in the American legal system.

• 39:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  The legalities, history, and, yes, economics of curses. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else, too. No Stupid Questions and Freakonomics Radio are part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes people I mostly admire and Freakonomics MD. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne. Our staff also includes Alison Kreglo, Greg Rippon, Zach Lipinski, Ryan Kelley, Mary Duke, Jasmine Klinger, Emma Terrell, Lyric Bowditch, and Jacob Clemente. The No Stupid Questions theme song is "And She Was" by Talking Heads. Special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chapel Music.

• 40:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  If you want to read the show notes or a transcript, go to Freakonomics.com. As always, thanks for listening. All right, I'm ready when you are.

• 40:32Angela Duckworth?

  Yes, go.

• 40:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  You asked the question, though.

• 40:35Angela Duckworth?

  No, you're asking me the question, aren't you?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Stitcher.

• 40:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Ozempic. Innovation happens through rethinking what's possible, and when it comes to GLP-1s, Ozempic pill does just that. Learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 4 and 9mg, by calling 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and ask your doctor what's possible with FDA-approved Ozempic pill.

• 41:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern Company. The world and its energy needs are always changing. Southern Company's commitment to meeting this demand stays the same. That's because Southern Company believes energy is more than a utility. It's what powers possibilities. So they are looking ahead and investing $80 billion in infrastructure upgrades and are committed to fueling growth in ways that benefit all customers so that reliable and affordable energy is accessible for generations to come. Go to southerncompany.com to learn more. Southern Company, building the future of energy.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  This podcast is supported by Nurtec ODT. Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtec. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtec can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtec is right for you, because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtec ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain,

• 42:48Speaker 04

  or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NURTEC or visit Nurtec.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often, your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the cognitive and emotional biases that may affect your investing decisions. Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.