Ep19 -- The Kids Aren't Alright

 Have you ever heard of the marshmallow test,  first conducted in 1970 by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel?  If you have, then it's pretty likely you've internalized its findings.  Basically, Mischel was studying delayed gratification in children.  He'd give his young subjects a choice. They could have one marshmallow now, or if they waited 15 minutes, they get two.  So the experimenter would leave the kids in the room alone with a single marshmallow, and if that marshmallow was still there when he returned, the kid would get another one.  Later on, follow-up studies were done to see if a child's ability to delay gratification was correlated with certain life outcomes. And this study found that it did, with kids who were able to wait, scoring better on SATs. Higher educational achievement and even lower body mass index. It's pretty amazing, right? 

 And it's difficult to overstate the influence of this study on American parents and their children.  It's like a curtain was pulled back and a magical innate secret to success was revealed.  And today, 50 years later, if you were to ask people who know about the marshmallow test to summarize its findings, most of them would probably tell a similar story. But there's a problem.  The original study was conducted on a pretty homogeneous group of kids. When a replication was done on a much more diverse group of kids, only half of the effect was found.  And the remaining effect was pretty much totally explained by the kids' economic background.  

And recently, UC Davis psychology professor, Yuko Munakata uncovered some fascinating cultural biases in the marshmallow test.  She found that Japanese kids were much better than American kids at delaying gratification, but only when it came to food.  They weren't as good when it came to waiting to, for example, unwrap a gift. So what is going on with that?  It turns out that in Japanese schools, when kids get their lunch, they wait until everyone has their food and is seated, and then everyone starts eating together.  So, of course, they'll be better at resisting the marshmallow in front of them.  And with presents, American kids are used to seeing their birthday presents sitting there for their entire birthday party before they open them at the end. Or they see Christmas presents under the tree for days. Whereas, in Japan, they don't really have the same traditions of waiting for presents.  I was thinking about all of this as the campus protests over the Israel - Palestine conflict were roiling universities across the country, and the different reactions to those protests from older generations.  And while I'm not going to dive directly into that debate, I wanted to just talk a bit this week about how we're thinking about the younger generation, how we older folks expect them to behave, and what it means when they don't meet our expectations. Stay tuned.  

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we've all been conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature, and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind.  

But first, a word about a sponsor.  

The Great Ungaslighting is still not sponsored by Red Lobster.  You may recall a couple of weeks back, I poked fun at Red Lobster and how they're ostensibly endless shrimp promotion led to a recent bankruptcy filing.  Well after reading Luke Goldstein's piece in The American Prospect, I realized that the endless shrimp excuse was clearly bullshit.  Sure, an $11 million loss over a promotion is a big deal.  But when you realize that Red Lobster's previous owner Golden Gate Capital bought the business for $2.1 billion, and then turned around and sold off 1.5 billion worth of real estate the company owned, adding a huge expense the company didn't previously have, that is rent.  You begin to realize the endless shrimp, excuse doesn't really pass the smell test.  And on top of that, Red Lobster's current primary shareholder Thai Union Group, which assumed a ton of debt when it bought up Golden Gate shares, is also the primary seafood supplier for Red Lobster,  so while the endless shrimp offer is bleeding Red Lobster, dry, Thai Union is making a bundle, selling its own company those shrimp.  Oh, that sounds legit. Doesn't it?  

And remember that $11 million that apparently caused the downfall of Red Lobster. Well, the legal fees to date for the bankruptcy already total about 10.5 million.  

So the endless shrimp promotion appears to look more and more like a convenient scapegoat to distract attention from the fact that rapacious venture capitalists simply bled the company dry for the benefit of its shareholders.  Not nearly as catchy and click-baity of a story as "Death by Endless Shrimp".  

And we're back.  

There's a fascinating book called The Extended Mind by science writer Annie Murphy Paul, in which she challenges the notion that all thinking occurs inside our brain, when in fact there are mountains of evidence supporting the idea that our bodies, our surroundings, and other people profoundly affect how we think.  She quotes psychologist William James from a century ago, reminding us that while we tend to believe that our brains register fear or some other emotion, and then our bodies react. In fact, the arrow of causation seems to point the other way. That it's the physical sensations that arise first. And then we register the emotion.  So that statement from Rene Descartes. I think, therefore I am, should more accurately be, I feel therefore I am.  And the book also cites some amazing research, like one study that looked at how we react to being conned. Research has found that subjects showed physiological reactions to the scam before they consciously realized they were being scammed.  Another study found that parts of the brain that light up when we feel pain, also light up when we observe others feeling pain.  But probably the most interesting insight from the book relating to this week's episode is that body movements can regulate our arousal and improve our thinking. 

It's the concept of embodied self-regulation.  She notes that the brains of kids with ADHD are chronically under aroused. And the fidgeting, the tapping of fingers, that bouncing of knees actually helps summon the mental resources needed to focus.  There's also research showing how moving around can create a positive mood, which is conducive to creativity and flexible thinking.  Now to bring it all around to the norms of behavior that adults have created for children,  the idea of forcing kids to sit still because we think it helps them focus,  may not just be frustrating for teachers and parents, it may also hinder the very behaviors and results 

we're trying to encourage.  So I think the point of all this and how it even relates to campus protests, is that we adults tend to have a pretty clear idea in our heads of what constitutes proper and productive behavior.  It's pretty much whatever behavior is currently producing the results we most value.  You know, in the us today, what do we value most? 

Well, what's the single most important metric of societal success right now.  I'd say it probably is and has been for a long time, gross domestic product or GDP, which is the sum total of all goods and services bought and sold in the country.  We might say we're all about family and faith and all that, but not only do we not have any way of gauging how those things contribute to our society, when it comes to GDP, they're actually negatives.  For example, if someone leaves the workforce to care for their children, GDP goes down. And that person's work to create a better life for their family. 

And our society is not valued at all.  Basically, if you can't value a person based on the dollars and cents, they create, they're effectively worthless as far as GDP is concerned.  And also GDP doesn't consider anything about the destructiveness of a behavior, just that it makes money. 

That's all that counts.  It's no wonder that Robert Kennedy Sr once said, "It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile".  So, okay, back to the kids. We seem to define success a certain way and then work backwards to see how kids should behave so that someday they too will be able to meet our definition of success.  We saw that with the marshmallow test, and with the sit still and be quiet idea of learning in the classroom.  

But I think every once in a while, things get so screwed up in society, and the young adult kids tend to be the first to take some action, to try to remedy it.  Of course, they have very little power and they're usually not particularly well-organized,

so the effort appears quite messy. But it's that messiness that should alert the older generations that something is really wrong.  And I think that's one way to look at the campus protests.  Sure you could be like Bill Maher, who never misses an opportunity to punch down, and dismiss protesting college students as entitled idiots, or you could view them as Anand Giridharadas  does, as trying to tell society something important. 

Something that adults can't see, because we're too jaded, or we've bought into the current system too completely.  And that is that we need to go back to that David Foster Wallace graduation speech. We need to see the water that we fish are swimming around in.  So don't just dismiss the kids on campuses as naive. 

I mean, regardless of what you personally believe about the Israel, Palestine conflict, countless things have gone very, very wrong to get us where we are today. That much we can all agree on.  And young adults are looking forward to the uncertainty of a long life ahead, and they see a lot wrong with a lot of things.  Dismissing them may make us feel smart and grown up and worldly and wise, but it doesn't do anything more than that. And that feels like a big missed opportunity to me. 

 If on the other hand, we can take this opportunity to interrogate what we believe, what has been so inculcated in us over decades,  we might be able to use this opportunity to look at the world in general differently and begin to take more creative, flexible approaches moving forward. It's a little bit like not looking at the $11 million endless shrimp promotion as the downfall of Red Lobster, but digging a little deeper and seeing what actually led to it, who benefited from those things,  and how we might want to change the system to prevent that from happening in the future. 

Well, that's it for this week. 

If you like The Great Ungaslighting, please post a review on whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with anyone you think might also dig it.  And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack. And use your damn turn signal.