Episode 292 - Erin Devers

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Okay. I should say as a student, Erin, I am feeling a little bit giddy. I'm feeling like a kid in a candy store. I just read your book, finished it up earlier this week and. And I just like, I couldn't stop now. Part of this is because the subject matter is incredibly interesting to me especially. Okay, I'm not going to make this political, but it is especially interesting to me right now in our political and cultural climate. But also, you're coming at this from a Christian perspective. You're a professor at a Wesleyan University. But this is a psychology book, which I know nothing about. So this is a 101 for me. Anyway, I'm super pumped. Okay, so my guest today, who just had to hear that long intro from me, is Dr. Erin Devers. She, oh, my goodness, has written a fabulous book called the Unbiased Self, the Psychology of Overcoming Cognitive Bias. Thanks so much for coming on, Erin. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so excited, too. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. This. Okay, I have to tell you, I. What a nerd I am. Okay, so, like, first, like, you know, I'm just going to start with this, like, do as I say, not as I do for listeners, for my kids, you know, whatever. I literally read. I am not joking. I read the introduction to your book and I was already preaching. I was preaching at myself. I was preaching at my kids, but. But not really preaching. I was like, basically saying, isn't this such an interesting concept? I hadn't even. I didn't even know why I was supposed to think it was interesting or why I was supposed to buy it. But I buy. But I bought it. I bit it. I buy it. The first, the first. The introduction. And so I want to say what I got out of the introduction, which anyway, we can maybe start with. So I'm thinking about this and you advise us. We're supposed to be thinking about ourself people. We're not supposed to be thinking about everyone else in this. Okay, noted. When we make decisions, a huge factor. Two huge factors in that are that we want to be right. That makes me want to hide my face. And we want to feel good about ourselves. And if we just stop right there when I'm making a decision, what is influencing me right now? I want to be right. Okay. For me, personality wise, I know this is true. So this was no, this was no thing. Like I didn't need a psychologist to tell me that. I know that's true about myself. Myself. But then B, I want to feel good about myself. I know we're going to impact that in, in, in, in more detailed, more technical ways throughout the conversation. [00:03:32] Speaker B: But. [00:03:33] Speaker A: And you did so throughout the book in amazing ways. But could you just start us there with those two things? Because that in itself feels just totally profound to me. [00:03:44] Speaker B: Yes. So this is where I start in my classes. So this is the theme of social psychology. We repeat this phrase over and over. We say we want to be right, we want to feel good about ourselves because it explains so much of human behavior. So when you, we. I even start by playing a game with students where I ask them to think of a bizarre behavior that they've seen recently. And then I say we're going to explain it using these two explanations. And inevitably it works. And the reason it works is because humans. So I should, I should also say I'm a psychologist, but I'm also, I'm not the kind of psychologist that helps people. I'm more the kind of psychologist that studies people and. [00:04:29] Speaker A: Which is helping us. [00:04:31] Speaker B: It's just a little different. [00:04:32] Speaker A: So you're not helping us individually on a couch? [00:04:35] Speaker B: No, and I don't provide therapy to people. So I'm looking at people that are more average. And so this explains a lot of average human behavior. So you're going to find some outliers. It doesn't explain, explain everything. But for average people, this is what most of us are doing most of the time. We're, we're bending reality in order to keep our self esteem high at all times. And it's a psychological immune system that we are constantly making work. It's fighting off the negative messages. So even, even when you look at a, a culture like ours where you've got depression and anxiety, we still have these psychological immune systems, these ways of processing the world to keep us feeling good about ourselves. And so the, the idea that wanting to be right, I write in the book about it being a source of bias because we want to get there so fast. We'd like to get to the right answer as quickly as possible and we want it to fit within our system of making us feel good about ourselves. And that works against actually trying to be accurate, which is. Which is actually how you reduce bias. So that's kind of the. The major kind of abstract message of the book. But, you know, I hope that the reason that you got interested in the introduction was the concrete story of the. Of the book. And so that first story is just a very typical kid who wants to fit in, but feels like maybe he doesn't belong at Harvard. And so he does things that he wouldn't normally do, be liked, but seem like the right thing to do in the moment, and then loses his position at Harvard. And I'm not going to tell the whole story, but it's because he was acting like a normal human. And so it's very relatable because of that. Yeah. [00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I appreciate you clarifying. Social psychologist, as opposed to. I'm going to say, like, person with a couch. Yeah. Again, like I said, this is. This is 101 for me. This is not my area of training or expertise, but I'm totally fascinated by it. But the average. I like that because. Helps me, and I think a lot. You talk about this in the book later, but one of the things that this offered to me is it helped me extend grace. So it helped me extend grace to myself, but it also helps me extend grace to the people around me when I just think exactly what you said. This kid, this. This kid, he was a kid. He was like 18. This kid was acting like a normal human being. And normal human beings, maybe it's not just my personality, but maybe our normal human beings, we want to be right and we want to feel good about ourselves. And there's not anything inherently I didn't get from your book. There's something inherently wrong with either one of these things. No, it just kind of is. It's just how we. It's just how we operate as people. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it is. One of. One of my. One of my students even said when he finally got to be a college student, then he felt like it was his turn to get to be right because his parents had been telling him that they were the ones that were right all the time. And so, of course, he wanted, once he moved into adulthood, to get to be the one who was right. And I thought that's really true. [00:08:04] Speaker A: Spoken like a true college freshman. I just can't. I just can't wait. You know, I just. I love it. I remember when I was close to that age, someone reminded me that my. That my parents were really dumb right then, but that they would get smarter when I was about 25. I was like, oh, my goodness, you're so right. Like, my parents were really dumb when I was, like, 18, but they just got really smart all of a sudden when I turned about 25. So, yeah, anyway, that's hilarious. But you talk about this, as you mentioned, in the context of bias. And so I want to pause right there. And partially I mentioned earlier, but I said I'm really interested in this partially because of the political and cultural climate that we're living in right now. And I think that is probably, like, when. When I say bias, people's minds are probably going in a thousand different directions, and many of them, depending upon how engaged they are, might be to what we see happening politically right now. We're recording this at the end of February. A new administration has been in. In office for about a month. There's a lot of crazy things happening right now. We just came off another contingent election, and there's lots of things happening in homes over holidays, in social media, in classrooms and workplaces. And we're hearing a lot about this, and we hear a lot about it in relationship to. Yeah, just regular social things, like DEI is being thrown out around a lot right now and things like that. But these, I think, are these. This isn't the heart. Heart like this. There is a definition of bias, and we might be thinking about a bunch of different things that are related. And so it's not that those are bad to think about, but I would like for you to help us, if you would give us a definition, like a working definition, for the purpose of this conversation, in this book, when you and I are going to say bias, what do we actually mean by that? For the purpose of this conversation? [00:10:08] Speaker B: Yes, because most people, when they hear bias, they're thinking about race or class or gender. Really, what I'm talking about when I'm talking about bias is a systematic error in thinking. What that means is it's anything that's preventing us from seeing it clearly. And the book's title is a bit deceiving in saying that it's possible to be unbiased because the only God is unbiased. We are not. And in order to be unbiased, I try to point out. So if you're imagining that the mind is a room full of filing cabinets, which is part of the analogy that I use in the book, the room's full of filing cabinets. When someone asks us a question, we often go to our filing cabinets. And these are beautiful, and they're organized and they're lovely and we pull out the filing, the file for whatever the topic is. So let's imagine immigration, since you want to talk about it, like these are political topics. And so if someone were to ask me my opinion, I'd go, I find my file, I'd open it, and then I'd share it as if it were a wonderful opinion. But what I would fail to realize is that I probably don't. First off, not probably, I definitely don't have all the information that is relevant on the topic of immigration. I'm working from the information that I have, but what I'm seeing. So there's just a bias that says what I see is all there is. And so you start to think that all the information that you have is all there is to that. And then you spout the opinion as if it should be taken incredibly seriously and receive a very weighty reply as if it were just. Just a precious thing. And I'm not saying that our opinions are not precious, but they're not complete. And just the incompleteness of the file folder means that there's bias, because in order to be accurate, you'd have to have all the information on the topic. And most things in the world are so complicated and, and difficult to understand that the idea that you would have all that information and process it well and fully. One of the things that I think adults have to come to grips with is there's so many things we're never going to know everything there is to know about, and there are very few things that we're going to even know a large fraction of what there is to know. And so just, just the idea that we're limited in terms of the amount of the kind and quality and depth and breadth of information that we are operating from is so limited that bias is inevitable just based on alone, without adding, in wanting to feel good about ourselves. So, so I, so I resonate when you say, oh, the book made me maybe more accepting towards other people because I think that's what it should do. That when you recognize that you're operating from limited information, you recognize that other people are also operating from limited information. And that makes you a little bit more compassionate when they get it wrong because. Or from your perspective, they get it wrong because it just feels like, well, of course they couldn't have gotten all the information there is to have on a topic as complicated as this. And so that helps me when I see somebody who maybe hold a very different opinion for me, to be more compassionate, because I think, oh, well, the amount and the Kind. And the, of information that you're dealing with and maybe even the confidence with which you pronounce it is based on limit. It's just, it's limited. It's just by nature limited. And, and, and so is mine, you know, but that doesn't stop us from trying to seek accuracy. And I think that's an important point. I want to, I don't want to leave the idea that oh, we, we can't, we can't be unbiased so we shouldn't try. The book actually makes the argument that we should try. And so, but when it's not so tied to your self esteem it allows you, it allows you to pursue that without so much emotional skin in the game. So that if you were to share an opinion that differed very strongly from mine, I could, I wouldn't need to, I wouldn't need to convince you, I wouldn't need to defend it and I wouldn't need to prevent it from us being friends. Because one of the, one of the points I make in the book and one of the quotes that I, that I hope people take from the book is any, any opinion that you hold that makes it harder for you to give someone a hug at the end of a conversation ought to be an opinion that question. Because we ought to be able to talk about differing opinions in a way that's really loving because our identity isn't tied to being right about those opinions because we both, because ideally one of you or both of you understand that those opinions are, are limited. I hope that makes sense. [00:15:10] Speaker A: Or not. [00:15:11] Speaker B: Maybe not total sense, but most, most. [00:15:13] Speaker A: No. I'm so, I'm so excited and I want to, I want to go back, I want to go back to the self esteem piece and I hope that the question I ask is going to get us there if it doesn't take us there anyway. So on a side, on a side note, there was a quote. Of course I can't remember or find it immediately, but there was a place in the book where you mentioned something like this as you were just describing. And it reminded me of a quote that lives rent free in my head from my biblical interpretation professor from my M. Div. And he's a renowned biblical scholar and he is very funny and he quoted another professor from our same institution. Truth, I have no idea who the other professor was at this moment and I don't remember the quote, but I remember what my biblical interpretation professor said. He said he's wrong. So he says the quote and then he says he's wrong. And he goes, and you know what? You are too. And he said, and we all are. And he's theologically speaking, right. And he said, we all are at least about 10% of the time. Now, for me, I would say the number is much greater than that right now. [00:16:26] Speaker B: But he's a really optimistic number. [00:16:28] Speaker A: I agree, I agree. I'm going, for me, it's probably 40 to 60, and that feels kind of conservative. But he said, and you're wrong too, and we all are about 10% of the time. And then this is what he said, that that makes this quote, liberant, free in my head is he said, the problem is none of us know which 10%. And it hit me like a dagger, especially because I feel like, okay, theologians, like, we're supposed to be right. Like there's something about us that's supposed to be right at least some of the time. You know, he's like, no, the problem is none of us know which 10%, which was so humbling. And as into your point of, can we give someone a hug after this conversation? It's like, even theologically, which is how I'm trained, like, what, what am I holding on to so tightly that I would say, I guarantee this is not in that 10. Like, is there anything, you know, that I can hold on to like this? But then I also think, what about all these other things where I just have kind of these precious opinions? Yes. I mean, they're meaningful and all this kind of stuff, but, like, I can't be trained in all of these things. And, and I'm certainly not an expert in, like, most of them. And so. Yeah, so anyway, so how can I, you know, be sure? And then how does that, you know, how do I interact with other people related to that? So I've mentioned that a few times on the podcast because again, like I said, it lives rent free in my head. And so I appreciate you bringing that up. I, I think about this in terms of theology, but then also just generally in these terms. Now I'm hoping that you can get to self esteem from here, but if not, just like I said, just, just go there anyway. [00:18:07] Speaker B: Okay. [00:18:07] Speaker A: Part of what, part of what helped. So part of what I, I want to ask is I was struck by the second and third chapters because I thought, aren't these the same thing that they're not? So I'm going to read the titles and I want, I'm asking if you can help explain the difference, because I think it's more than just a nuance. I think it's a difference. So the title of chapter two is who you think you are creates bias. Okay. Who you think you are creates bias. I was like, okay, got that. I flipped to chapter three when I'm done, and I was like, wait a minute. Didn't I just read this chapter? No, I didn't. Chapter three is what you believe about yourself creates bias. And these are not actually the same thing anyway, and. But also the connection to self esteem. Because if we want to be right and we want to feel good about ourselves, and these are driving our decisions and what we. How we feel about things and our opinions, it all feels really wrapped up to me. Or it can be really wrapped up. So who you think you are creates bias, and also what you believe about yourself creates bias. How are. How are these two things different? Like what? What's the how. How are those. How are those two things different? Or maybe how do we operate in them differently? [00:19:37] Speaker B: So in the. Who you think you are? These are the things that. These are the things that kind of started in childhood where you were told that you were the pretty one or the smart one or the athletic one, and you started to create these ways of thinking about yourselves in these Cate. And so I tell the story in the book. My husband is an athlete. Well, not right now he is not. But he has been in the past an athlete. And so he thinks about himself that way. He categorizes the things this way. And so when we were out walking, we saw a friend of ours about 50 yards ahead. And he looks at this person and says, I think that that's Stuart. And I said, how could you tell? He's so far away. And he says, I. I recognize his lats. [00:20:30] Speaker A: I almost started laughing ahead of time. He's like, I remember this story, his lats. [00:20:34] Speaker B: So I'm like, I don't know what lats are. [00:20:37] Speaker A: Like, do I have lats? Are they. [00:20:39] Speaker B: I don't. [00:20:40] Speaker A: Are they recognizable from far away, from 50ft away? Would someone recognize me because of my lats? [00:20:45] Speaker B: Yeah. That makes zero sense. Makes zero sense to me. I do not categorize as an athlete. I've never categorized that way. I didn't know what lats were at the time that he said it. But it's a really good example of how when you think about yourself in a particular way, not only does it change, it changes how you see other people, and it changes how you see the world, because those are the categories. [00:21:09] Speaker A: It was Stuart. [00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. Yeah. So he was right. [00:21:13] Speaker A: He did recognize him based on his last 50ft away. [00:21:16] Speaker B: He was exactly right. He's really good at recognizing lads. So that will never. That will never be. I will never be able to do that. I figured out what they were, but I still nothing recognizable or distinguishing about them. But the. These file folders, these ways of thinking about the self. So I do it with other things too. So I don't know exactly. I don't remember exactly which stories I include in the book, but there are certain ones that I used and, and some that I still do. And people have pointed out to me that I'm making these kind of judgments about other people. I used to judge interesting really hard. I used very sensitive to who I thought was interesting and not interesting. And I remember when I started doing. Thinking about this, I was like, is that how I want to judge people? Is that how. Is that how crisis. Judging people? And, And I think for women especially body image, I do think I include this example in the book where, you know, anorex. I mean, anorexia and all kinds of eating disorders create all kinds of distortions. And you might think about it just impacting how you judge the self, but it impacts the story I tell. In the book, the person I was with started judging the. The people, the women around her, really harshly about how they were dressed. And I wanted to tell her to stop doing that because can't she see from her own self that maybe there's a distortion here? And then I realized this is the. This is what's constantly running through her head. So who you think you are is going to bias how you take in information about other people and the world. You see different things. Literally. My husband sees different things than I do because of how he thinks about his. His own self. And so, so that's. That. That's in chapter two, in chapter three. Really kind of believe what you believe about yourself. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Can I interrupt on chapter two real quickly? I. I just want, like, we're two women talking about this. And I want to say, I think there was a place in the book where you said something like, if you're a grown woman, like, you probably, like, you know, basically you recognize whether or not you were kind of quote, the pretty one. [00:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Growing up. And I. And I thought that was so fascinating because as soon as you said it, I was like, duh. Of course. Like, I think, I think you would. I wasn't. So I know, you know, like, but. But I'm like, but I think that that's a fascinating thing to think about, you know, that there would be other women who would, you know, particularly to use that example, there would be other women reading this book and for them that would click and they would be like, oh, yeah, you know, like that makes sense to me because yes, I was, you know, the pretty one in. In high school or whatever. And so anyway, that's just like a pause there for me to go, oh, my goodness. But it is so under the surface, as you're saying, like, it's so under the surface that, like, it does. It does come up. But we may not actually recognize to be the. To say the pretty one feels like kind of one of those obvious things. But as you mentioned, like, well, is someone interesting? Oh, I may not realize that that is one of those undercurrents for me. Forgive me, I don't know the psycho, the psychological language. But, you know, like that, that, you know, oh, is that one of the undercurrents for me? Or if you were the smart one or the athletic one, or even if you weren't just like the one, maybe you were. This was something that. Yeah, they like, really, when you think about yourself, is this the schema chapter? Is this the. Is that the right word? Or is that the. Yeah, but like these self schema. Yeah. You know, and I thought, oh, my goodness, this is so. Yeah, this is so fascinating. So sorry, I just. I. That was one that resonated with me. It clicked for me because I was like, oh, man. I think that if other women were reading this who maybe were the pretty one in high school or college or whatever, that they would recognize that in themselves and it would be an easy. Like they could pull from that easily. You know, this is not a stretch if. If that was who you think you are, you know, like, who you know for, that wouldn't be a stretch for them. So anyway, so that's interesting. It made me think, what are those things then? [00:25:17] Speaker B: Yeah, and those just kind of become your, like, further on in the book. I distinguish between fast and slow thoughts. [00:25:24] Speaker A: And I think I can't wait to get there. [00:25:25] Speaker B: For most people, those are part of the fast thoughts. Like, I realized I was judging in people's interestingness until someone, a friend of mine said to me, I always feel like I need to be over the top when I'm with you. And I thought, gosh, I didn't know I was inflicting these expectations on other people. And I want you to be able to sit with me and be comfortable and not think you have to perform. And that's when I realized, man, I don't want people to feel that I'm judging them that way. And as a college professor too, I think I don't want people to think I'm constantly judging how smart they are. And that's the real, you know, because I want, I want people to feel like that's not the value of. Those aren't the values of the kingdom. And so all of those body image, intelligence, interestingness, those aren't who we are. And so. But they feel like they're who we are and they're the fire. They're the ways of thinking about ourselves that we bring to the world. And so just calling them to attention is part of what that second chapter was designed to do so that people could address do I want to. And so I had to think to myself, I don't want to use, I don't want to use those as my ways of judging. Which then segues the third chapter. Who. Well then what do we want it to be? Who do we want to believe about who. What do we believe about who we are? And I think that's where the idea of being a child of God and a sinner saved by grace and thinking about that identity, saturating in that identity, activating that identity on a regular basis so that you, so that you can bring that to your interactions with others so that when you see someone, you see, oh, you're a beloved child of God, you're a sinner saved by grace. Which is why I can look at your flaws and write, recognize that we're part of the same group, humans and, and that's, that's part of where the self esteem part comes in. So in that chapter I talk about how we have some of these categories that I call the categories in which it feels too big to fail. And so for me, those categories are really tied to motherhood. And probably motherhood is the biggest one, I think. And so, so yeah, in fact, the publisher told me I have too many, too many stories about this book. But I couldn't. [00:27:40] Speaker A: That's I related. There you go. [00:27:42] Speaker B: It's just part of how this, this played for me. But, but all of us have some of these identities that feel too big to fail. And then figuring out, well, who I believe about who I am, I don't think it's possible to totally disregard those identities. Like they feel too big to fail because they're important. So, but, but who you believe you are, I believe at the bottom of it that I'm a child of God, a sinner saved by grace. And those identities are ones at which I cannot fail, that there is a place to fall. So even in those categories that feel too big to fail, I've got a built in, I've got a built in net to catch me. So that when, on days when it looks like maybe I haven't done all the things that a mother's expected to do, or brought my very best stories to a classroom setting, or been the most supportive wife I could have been, that there's, that's not who I am. That who I am is so, so much deeper than that. And that, that, and that's really part of the reason that I got interested in the field of social psychology to begin with was this idea that the self shouldn't have to be so fragile if, if our identity is already secure. And so I got started doing research on self esteem maintenance mechanisms. And what those are, are these, I call them quick and dirty ways to feel better. And I'm not against the quick and dirty ways to feel better. I think sometimes you do need a quick boost to your self esteem. So. But if you want to grow into a real identity with a real secure self esteem, you need to, you need to have a coherent worldview and a belief that you're living in a way that's consistent worldview. And that always made sense to me that that would be Christians, that we would have a worldview believe that we're living in a way that's consistent with it and that that should provide a buffer to our self esteem that doesn't make us need to hold so tightly to being right so that I can be wrong, I can fail. So I'm actually teaching a class right now called the Psychology of Failure. And students have to go out and do funny rejection attempts is what they're called. And I've loved watching students do them because, and these are just simple things where you just have to like challenge a stranger to an arm wrestling match or you have to like, you have to ask people at a store, what did they buy? You have to do some of these things where people can say no, but it requires that you put yourself out there and risk some sort of hit to your self esteem. And I think Christians, we ought to be people who can go out there and be like, okay, so, so nobody wanted to arm wrestle me. It's okay. [00:30:30] Speaker A: Okay. So there's so many things going through my head right now. Number one, I read Harry Potter for the first time. I just finished a couple of weeks ago and my kids are stoked. We're going through the movies right now. But anyway, They've labeled me a Hufflepuff. And so part of this hufflepuffing is, like, these things. Maybe not the arm wrestling, but the asking a stranger at the store what they bought. I'm like, yeah, this just feels like natural Hufflepuff behavior. So, you know, whatever. I feel. I feel great with that. Like, I feel super confident. Anyway. Yeah, that's beside the point. Okay, so one of the things that I love when you're. When you're saying this, I want to say a couple of things, and then. And then we can. And we'll go on. But one is I love. Okay, failure is scary. Failure is just scary. It is just scary. So I love that you're teaching something on that. I often think about Sarah Blakely. I don't know if you know who she is. She's the founder of Spanx. So she. Yeah, she. Anyway, I love following her on social media because she just has what love looks to be this, like, super fun household. And she's, like, real creative and all these things. Anyway, she. For a while, she drove a van that was, like, a remake of, like, the Scooby Doo van. Anyway, she's just, like, she has a lot of kids, and it's really fun, and. But. And she doesn't take herself too seriously as part of it. Like, she's super, you know, successful as far as, like, what. What. What do we think? What does culture say is successful? And she's that. But she just seems not to take herself too incredibly seriously. Anyway, she has a lot of fun, but one of the things that she tells when she's talking about her business success is that when she was growing up, one of the things that her dad used to ask her and her siblings at the dinner table was, how did you fail today? Like, tell me how you failed today. Like, what's one of the things that you failed at today? And she said what that did for them was really normalize this. Like, they talked about it. It wasn't embarrassing, you know, it wasn't something that they had to hide. Like. Like, they knew that when they home, like, at dinner, their dad was probably gonna ask them how they failed. And, like, it'd be good to have a story, you know, to be able to say, to not. Not be embarrassed about that. And I love that. It feels. Still feels scary and hard to me, even at this point in. In my life. But to. To just have that out there as, like, failure is just, like, a normal experience. [00:32:44] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:44] Speaker A: This is not something that is. That is abnormal. That is that is, you know, you talked earlier about like, like this kind of average stuff. These are not outliers. To fail is not an outlier. To fail is just to be kind of a normal human and to be able to talk about that. So I love that. I also appreciate the connection to the self esteem. When I was reading your book again, I related to a lot of the mothering stories and it feels too big to fail. It really does. We have four kids and I just feel most of the time that I'm just like, I don't know, I'm just kind of feeling my way through this, right? Like I have no idea what I'm doing. I've read a lot of parenting books and all the, and this stuff is not, they don't come with a manual and it feels very hard sometimes. And several years ago I was crying on the phone with a friend and I was telling her how upset I was because I felt like I was failing at this mothering thing. You know, it was just so hard and I had not to, to, to mirror your language. I had not brought my best self to my kids that day. I felt, oh gosh, like this is just happening. And I, I, I, I, I don't know what to do. I was very, very upset about it. And, and I would say what she said to me in that moment, I don't want to dissect theologically, but what she said to me in that moment, fellow kind of cold water in the face. And she just stopped. She called me by name and she said, you do know that's why Jesus died, right? And it was just this, like, oh my goodness. But what I received from that in that moment, and sometimes I think back to it and I receive it all over again, was exactly as you're talking. Like a, this identity I have as a beloved child of God does not change, even if I do fail miserably at parenting. Yeah, it does not change. And, and b, not only does it not change, but like, Jesus isn't surprised by my failings. Like, he's not, this isn't, you know, I, I, I was listening to a friend's podcast the other day. I'll link it because it was so great. I'm not finished with it yet, but she had an attachment expert on it. And, and this, this attachment expert said, I often like to take John's verse of we love because God first loved us, and he reframes it and rephrases it for himself and says, we are attached to God because God was first attached to us. And I cried walking the neighborhood listening to that. Because if my identity is that God has attached God's self to me, that as a person, that feels like the most powerful thing I can grasp. And for that to be true, which I believe it is that God attached God self to me before I return that attachment relationship, that is some powerful stuff. And I mean, I still want to be right in a stone of feel good about myself, but when I fail or my opinions are stupid, you know, or whatever, there's some amount of solace that I can take. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:09] Speaker A: In, in, in those, in those things. And so if I believe. To go back to your third chapter. If I believe that about myself. [00:36:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:18] Speaker A: That becomes very powerful. If I believe that about the people that I'm in contact with. Oh my goodness, this person. God has attached God's self to you, Aaron. [00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And then there's freedom. [00:36:29] Speaker A: There's so much freedom there in that. Yes, we're still thoughtful. We're having meaningful conversations and we want to, you know, do these things together. But that's very, that's very powerful and, and that feels very meaningful as we kind of go through, even in this, this context you're. That you're talking about, about, you know, rightness and bias and our file cabinets and, you know, and, and, and maybe we'll. Maybe we can go there next, depending upon your response to this. But also like, it's this reminder of this, of this bigness, you know, of, of God. And it's like, okay, I can't have a full file cabinet. God, it has a full file cabinet. I'm just over here operating how I can with what I have. That's a phrase my therapist helped me with years ago is, you know, people are doing the best they can with what they have. Right. I'm doing the best I can with what I haven't. People are doing the best they can with what they have. And I believe that, you know, anyway. But that matters, I think, in how we're, in how we're interacting with each other. So anyway, that wasn't intended to be like a, like a full thing, but it was. So. Yeah. I don't know. That takes me. The self esteem piece there is so important, but also like our relationship, how are we relating to God in that, you know, and in God's bigness in our. And everyone else is not as bigness. [00:37:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if it's okay. This, this is probably one of the most, to me, most profound parts of the book is just like the Reflecting on God's bigness and thinking about just the magnitude of God's bigness in all dimensions, and then starting the day thinking about that and then recognizing where I fit relative to God. And I. That's the only graphic in the book that is there. But basically saying that the distance between us and God is just the biggest distance you can imagine. And I say, like, between us and the moon, there's no way to capture that huge distance in every dimension possible to measure. And if you sit in that for a second and then you compare yourself to your neighbor or your friend or the person that you're sitting across from, you're like, oh, wow. Relative to that difference, this difference is so tiny, so small. I say, it's even like we're on a subway train together and deciding who's going to get off first. And it's like, oh, the distance and the time and the location is just so small. And so one of my best friends, she was one of the early readers of the book. And so she had this amazing opportunity to pitch an idea at the Gates foundation in front of Bill Gates. And so this was, like this phenomenal, amazing thing. And she's, like, terrified. She's so scared. And so she told me, she said, I went into the bathroom and I used your technique, thought about how big. And then I thought, the distance between me and Bill Gates is now tiny. [00:39:16] Speaker A: That's right. Bill Gates puts his pants on one leg at a time, everybody. [00:39:21] Speaker B: She did it. And the reaction that she got from him, I think he said something like, that makes sense. And she felt like I said made sense. But I wasn't nervous because I was thinking about how we were the same. And I thought, oh, but that's totally true. It sounds crazy to think that my friend is the same as Bill Gates because Bill Gates is a famous person and my friend is a normal person. But. But there really isn't. And. And that's. That's really profound. But it also goes, you know, in other directions where the person that maybe I disagree with fundamentally about something is also right there. Next. [00:40:01] Speaker A: That's right. [00:40:02] Speaker B: And that's challenging because it maybe feels like that person's hard to love and must therefore be fundamentally different from me. But. But they're no more fundamentally different for me than anyone else is. And so. So I think for me, that's one of the most important things I hope that people get from this so that we could love each other better. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Again, I felt like a real 101 student here. And that's probably giving myself entirely too much credit. But I want to see, to ask you about this, this, the fast thinking and slow thinking. So, so first tell us what those are. It made sense to me after I read the definitions. And then I was like, oh. And then, then of course my mind starts racing right about like, changes and what do we do and how do we think about things and all of this kind of stuff, it feels, it feels very, very profound to me. In a way, I feel like it's related to the spiritual practices and disciplines in some way. You know, you think, okay, like sometimes these, these things are hard, but then they get easier once we practice them. And you know, these kinds of things, they change our perspectives and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so can you walk us through that slow thinking and fast thinking. [00:41:27] Speaker B: So slow think is. Slow thinking is what most people think of as thinking. So it's your control, it's your controlled thought, which means it's what you could put down on a piece of paper. It's what you can say out loud when you're speaking. It's what you're actually aware of as a thought. So this is what most people think thinking is. And it, but it probably comprises a small amount of our thinking. Underneath our controlled thinking is our, is our fast thinking. It's also called implicit thinking. And this is the stuff that doesn't require conscious awareness to be operating. So these are things like your ability to judge the affect of the people, the emotions of the people around you that you can know when somebody might be happy or sad or need a hug. It's not because you were necessarily thinking about it. You probably just reacted to that person and their emotional state. It's also your ability to, you know, drive cars and do things. Yeah, things like that. A lot of your, your motors, motor skills rest on implicit thinking. So we're constantly, I'm not sure we can even measure exactly how much of that implicit thinking is going on at the same time, but often we, we aren't aware. But implicit thinking then impacts our behavior. And so both of them are functioning to, to impact our behavior. And sometimes they're talked about as like system one and system two. So a lot of this work for psychoners out there. This is based on Daniel Kahneman's work. So he wrote a book, Thinking Fast and Slow. That was part of how psychologists started to think about this. Daniel Kahneman was the first psych person to win a Nobel Prize and recently passed away. Did a lot of work with Amos TVERSKY and so. So that distinction though, has really been profound and influential in my field in thinking about all kinds of cognitive processes operating on these two different systems. So from a Christian perspective, this brings these questions of like, take every thought captive. Right. Well, wow. And so a lot of thoughts. That's a lot of thoughts. [00:43:48] Speaker A: And a lot of thoughts we don't know we're having. Yeah. [00:43:50] Speaker B: And if those thoughts we don't know we're having, what do we do about those? That creates a whole, whole, whole host of issue. [00:43:56] Speaker A: They're fugitives. We cannot, I don't even capture those. We cannot take captive those ones. [00:44:01] Speaker B: I don't even know what you do with that. [00:44:03] Speaker A: I'm like really always going to know how to ride a bike, I think. So. Like, yeah. [00:44:08] Speaker B: So all these implicit things. So it requires working through both systems to think accurately. And so I decided to organize my, my kind of the research that suggestions for how to change slow thinking and separate those from some of the ones that could help change the fast thinking so that you could kind of think about both. Because both of them are going to lead to error and both of them are going to lead to good decisions. So some of us, you know, are blessed with some automatic thinking that works really well and is, is guiding us towards holiness, but is probably the result of a lot of disciplined slow thinking to lead to that kind of really good fast thinking. And some of it's just conscious choice of setting up your environment to be good fast thinkers. And so I could spend time on the slow thoughts, but I think there's. And please read the book, it gives you some good suggestions on the slow thoughts. But for the fast thoughts, these are the ones you're not always thinking about. And these have to do with how you set up your environment. So choosing to spend time with people that are good thinkers is a really quick hack to get to good thinking. So be careful whose voices you're listening to if you want to try and protect your, your, your thinking. So having a, having a coalition of really good thinkers is one of the best suggestions. What mood you're in is going to impact how you're thinking. And so being aware of how to harness your mood. So some of my early experiments as a graduate student had to do with how positive mood impacts creativity. And so being in a good mood is really great for creativity. It's less good for critical thinking. And so trying to figure out how to recognize how your mood might impact things. Scarcity has a really strong biasing effect for people. And so making sure that if you're about to try and do some really important slow thinking, you want to make sure that, that the fast thinking that's telling you that you're hungry, that you're tired, that you're irritable, if you can shut that noise down, that fast thinking down so that you can be a better slow thinker, that's really important. There's a lot of really interesting research, research on what happens when people are in positions of scarcity. And one of the. I don't know how much space I gave to this idea, but Christians should have a built in buffer against this because we don't live in a position of scarcity. I think the world's telling us a message that things are scarce, but we actually live in a system of, of abundance. And so I frequently remind myself in moments when I'm thinking like, oh, and I get hyper focused on whatever the thing that feels, feel scarce is that I've already received. And so recognizing and focusing on abundance thinking rather than scarcity thinking, which is really just like saying be grateful, have a, have a gratitude mindset. Having a gratitude mindset is going to lead to better thinking. So all of those are just kind of ways of setting up your environment to make it easier to be a good thinker. And I think, yeah, I don't know how to end that thought. [00:47:08] Speaker A: But no, I don't want to end it just yet because this was one of the places that was so great for me. Again, I don't know if I explicitly said this earlier when I've been talking about how I was really felt totally like a student while I was reading this many of the things that I read these concepts, I'm like, oh yeah, that tracks or oh, this is familiar or whatever. And you helped give language to some of it, which is really helpful for me. And kind of how I, and kind of how I think or it felt something like, oh, that feels familiar. And then I'm like, oh, that's actually a thing. Oh, okay. You know, so this was one of them. And I will say as, as, as this was. This one feels hard for a seminary student. This one feels hard for a theologian. But in this same chapter, you, you, there's a sentence where you said we need to set up the environment to change behaviors and stop trying to change hearts and minds. And I'm like, okay, Aaron, let's, let's, let's have a conversation about this. But that was my initial gut kind of, you know, reaction. Plus also I'm like an enneagram one and so there's like the strong justice, you know, impulse that I have and all of this stuff, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But. But I reread it. I read it out loud to my husband because. So I want to mention these two things and then just have you comment. I want to kind of say how they stood out to me and where I ended. Again, like, I bought what you sold me here, and so it's fine. But this is what I thought was fascinating. So you tell a little fictional anecdote. Hypothetical, right. And you say, okay, so you kind of air quotes, you borrow something from your roommate, and then you basically say you're. You feel bad about it. Okay, so I'm like, yes, I'm tracking. Okay, you steal something or you borrow something from your roommate. You don't ask, you don't give it back, you feel bad about it. But the inclination, like what? And you correct me, but the inclination. What comes next? I would think, okay, this. What comes next is you feel bad, so you decide you're not going to do that anymore. Like, you're just. You're. You're going to change your behavior, you're not going to steal the next time. But that's not actually really what happens most of the time. Because that's hard. [00:49:25] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:26] Speaker A: To change our behavior. And so we change our attitude, we change our perceptions, and we're like, well, I didn't really steal it. I mean, like, yeah, technically, it wasn't home and I, you know, or whatever the excuse is. And you just kind of make yourself feel better about what you did. [00:49:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:42] Speaker A: And so it's not like, no, I'm not going to steal next time. It's like you soften the blow of the behavior that you did, which I'm like, yes. Also, I hate that. Like, it's so eerie. And I don't love that. But again, like, this is natural human, right? Natural human. [00:49:59] Speaker B: That's a normal human behavior. [00:50:00] Speaker A: It's a normal human. Because it's hard to change the things we do. Like, it's hard to change the behavior. And so to think about that, oh, what is a remedy for that? That we come up with ourselves, or we just, like, reframe it. We're like, oh, that's. It wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was. So then I can keep doing the thing. Okay, this sucks. I don't like that at all. But it's. But it's true. And it's what happens. And I track with that. And then you give an Example next of like, okay, we can see, you know, there's some problem, let's say there's some problems in policing in this certain department, they're having an issue with this particular thing. And in this. And use the example in foot races or we have issue foot chases, we have issues. So we're going to change the policies around foot chases, chases. We're not going to tell a bunch of cops that they are racist, mean people. We're going to say we're having some issues when it comes to this and foot chases. And so we're going to change the policies that we have around foot chases. We're going to train this, this is more effective to do things this way. And then you say changing, you say, so let's change the environment to change behaviors by creating cultures of good thinking. As you mentioned before, given changes in the environment, you say people change. And I'm like, ah, this, all of this makes sense. And I think the last thing I want to say on this is it feels good and also not. But I'm like, this is what? And I would say, okay, again, parenting, right? I'm like, this is also like what we do with our kids. Like, you know, like I have a three year old, right? Or I don't now, but I did, I had four of them at different times. And so I'm like, I know like a tiny bit, I remember a tiny bit about parenting toddlers. And it's like, this is why God created baby gates, right? Like you cannot just tell, like you don't. My 3 year old is not gonna have a heart change about, you know, breaking the expensive vase. Like, this isn't really going to happen. And so what do we do? We put stuff on a high shelf so they can't reach it. We put a baby gate up and say this area of the house is not safe for you. No, you cannot go in the garage unattended. You know, there's tools out there or whatever it is and we change the environment and this sets them up for success because then they're not out there wandering around in the garage with these unsafe tools that could cause all these problems. We just shut the door and I'm like, you know, part of me, okay, yes, my self esteem takes a hit because I don't want to think of myself, myself as a 3 year old. But also I'm like, yeah, but what if this isn't like, I'm not trying to infantilize anybody, but I'm just saying like, yeah, but we just set up boundaries for our own selves, or we create these things. And then knowing now I have the cognitive ability to say, I'm doing this because what I want is to have better behavior. What I want for myself is to have better thinking. How can I help myself do this? You know, I know people do this a lot. They talk about when they're, you know, trying to eat healthier. And it's one of the major things dietitians say. Right. Just don't keep it in the house. [00:53:01] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:02] Speaker A: Don't keep the junk food in the house. Like, this applies to us in all these practical ways. But part of what I'm hearing is that we can now, again, I think in terms of systems often, but it's like. But we can create systems for ourselves that help us in other ways, things that might feel more profound or meaningful or thoughtful for us to change and help us become better thinkers in a lot of different areas by helping change the environment. [00:53:31] Speaker B: Yeah, because one of the points that I try to make is that self control is hard to get. Habit is easier. [00:53:38] Speaker A: Say that again. Say that again. [00:53:40] Speaker B: Self control is hard to get. Habit is easier. [00:53:45] Speaker A: Break that down. [00:53:46] Speaker B: So I think if I have tasks that are difficult and I'm trying to force myself to do these difficult things that maybe don't feel very good, comfortable, it's going to expend a lot of mental energy, physical energy to try and get my. Get me to do those things. But if they're part of just the habit. So I think I even talk about, you know, when I was writing this book, I know that writing is a cognitively difficult task, but what made it easier for me was I developed just a system of habits. And most people have this, you know, you're like, okay, I get up, I have some coffee. Coffee. I go through this routine. I have, you know, time of devotion. I drop my kids off at school, I exercise. And then I was like. And this is. Then I have this block of time that I'm going to write, and I'm not going to do anything else until I'm done with the writing. But it came after a whole series of things that I just trained my body to be doing. And that just made it easier because that just felt like the next thing. And so when you're trying to introduce something into your life that feels uncomfortable, you could just. Just battle it with your willpower, or you could build it into a system of things that you just naturally do anyway, and then your body and your mind get used to doing them. And that's. That's just a lot easier. [00:55:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, it is, it is. Yeah, you're right. It's almost as you were saying. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, you built a habit. Instead of just saying randomly at 2:30 in the afternoon, I'm gonna will myself to sit down and write for two hours. Like that's gonna be pretty difficult. Yeah. And you may not, you may not do it, but if you have the habit built in, then heck, you may get a three hour block earlier in the day with all of that habit. Okay, okay, that tracks. Okay. I am having entirely too much fun and I just looked at the clock so I'm going to do two more things. I hope you have time. Do you have time? [00:55:33] Speaker B: Yes, I have plenty. [00:55:33] Speaker A: Couple more things. [00:55:34] Speaker B: Okay. [00:55:35] Speaker A: So one is it might feel like a sharp veer, but, but I trust you. You can make it softer. So I'll do two more things. One, I'm going to ask you to talk about the research on awe because I just like people are maybe going, ah, is that related to this bias? Yes, it is. So stay tuned. And then the last thing is when I have, especially when I have professors on. I love to, I love to give my guest the final word. Anyway, I try and do that but, but I, I love to say like if you were in, if we were in class, kind of like, what would you leave us with at the end of this time? Um, you know, you have, you have students who are, you know, who are listening right now. Right. All of us are students. You know, kind of. What would you leave us with as like a last word on this topic before people grab the book? So those are the last two things. If you have time is one, if you could talk about this research on awe that was really interesting and compelling and how that really relates to this bias piece. And then. Yeah, and then just, and then just leave us with, with a professor. Ish, you know, last word. Sure. [00:56:48] Speaker B: I love talking about the research on awe just because I think it's one of the places where Christian faith and psychology and bias are all really strongly connected. They've done these really interesting. And these are qualitative studies where they interview astronauts about what the experience of going to space is like. And when they, when people come back from space they are much more pro social. They're much more kind of egalitarian in their approaches to people. It just on an experiential level for them because they've seen the smallness of humans and the fragility of the world and that changes them. And, and In a. In a. Less maybe, I don't know if I don't want to say less proud. But it's just a smaller way. Psychologists have done this by having people look up at tall trees and look up at tall buildings. And looking up at tall trees leads to drawings of the self that are smaller than looking at buildings. So when we. When we encounter God in nature, when we encounter God, God in music, when we encounter God in these ways. One of my grandmother's favorite hymns is called the Love of God. And it says to write the love of God, if. If every man on earth were a scribe and the whole sky were a scroll and every. All the ink was used to write the love of God would drain the ocean dry. And nor could the scroll contain the whole from the stretched from sky to sky. I was trying to get the actual quote part and that I. That mu. The music, the art, the trees. When people are immersed in the. That in that kind of moment they see the bigness of God and then they draw themselves smaller and that's an actual psychological finding. And. And they're more pro. Social. And I think if we want to reduce bias, it doesn't have to be a painful process of inwardly looking at our demons. Sometimes it's just looking outward at the beauty that we're already surrounded by. And I think that's one of the. One of the ways that I want people to think about this because I think when we talk about bias in the traditional way, when people are thinking about racism and sexism, it has ugly history and it requires confronting things that are maybe hard to look at. And I'm not saying that that's not part of. Of part of reducing bias. But there's another side of it that just says man. If I want to be more accurate in my thinking, I need to start looking at. Looking at the bigness of God and the smallness of me in order to see things more clearly. The way that I would end this would be with the work on self compassion. I think the work on self compassion is just amazing and beautiful. And it basically says that when we think about ourselves, we ought to recognize that we're flawed, which is we're sinners, but also that we're. That we're. That we're amazing, that we're children of God. And so that work just really mirrors this kind of core identity of who we are, that we're children of God, that we're Sino. Saved by grace, and that we ought to be offering ourselves that moment of saying, I'm both of those things all at once. And, and that's an amazing position to be in. And so I hope that my students and people listening to this podcast just get to take a breath, recognize it's okay to be wrong, it's okay to fail. It's okay even in the categories that feel too big to fail because of who we are. And that should allow us to approach other people with, with generosity, with patience, with love, with kindness, even when they differ from us on things that maybe feel really fundamental because our identities are really secure in something that's more fundamental than what feels fundamental to us in that moment. So I think that's where, where I'd want to leave students and, and listeners. [01:00:54] Speaker A: That, that feels like an excellent place to leave us. Yeah. Because I, I think it is. It is hard. I think it's hard. I don't know, folks, Folks like me have personality tendencies. Like me. We, we tend to. I would say from, from myself, I want, I want to see justice so much. You know, I want to see these things, generosity and mercy. I want to see these things. And when I feel like I have failed in those areas, how hard I can be on myself is. Yeah, it can feel tragic sometimes. So it feels good to be reminded of that self compassion piece. So I appreciate it. And the awe. I mean, I'm imagining that looking up at the trees and. Yeah. And I think, you know, the smallness is there for me. I start to think about the proportion. You know, like you're saying like that this is. It's. Maybe, yes, I'm smaller, but what I really am is in proportion to what's. Yeah. To what's around me and to who's around me. This is beautiful. Thank you so, so much. I'm going to say the name of the book again. This is the Unbiased Self, the Psychology of Overcoming Cognitive Bias. I want to say this is from IVP's University Press's Academic imprint. And so. But I would say, like, this is totally readable. So like, don't let that. Don't, don't look at the academic and be like, oh, no, can I read this? Like, like, absolutely, 100% you can read this. Like, definitely. This is very, very readable for lay people. This isn't. It is not. I don't know what people think about academic books. I love them. Some people think, oh, it's dry or it's boring or it's complicated or something. No, this book is none of those things. It is very wonderful and beautiful. Perfect for a lay reader. I would say. I don't know if you would agree. [01:02:53] Speaker B: Yes, I would. Yeah. I wrote this with the idea that this is for everyone. [01:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah, this is totally for everyone. So. So I really recommend it. Yeah. Like I said, I just felt like a kidney candy store when I was reading it. So thank you so much. The Unbiased Self, the Psychology of Overcoming Cognitive Bias by Erin Devers. Erin, thank you so much again for joining. [01:03:11] Speaker B: Oh, Alexis, thank you so much. This was so much fun for me. [01:03:15] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit [email protected].