Exploring Grit, with Angela Duckworth

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries, a fan favorite.

I got with me Chuck Nice, Chuck.

Hey Neil, what’s happening?

We’re always doing this, we’re doing it with the Cosmic Queries.

We got this, you got to love it.

People love Cosmic Queries and they love it.

And this, I love it.

But I will say that this episode, I happened to monitor the Twitter and people have really, they are super excited about this episode.

Well, the topic is grit and perseverance, which is not just what athletes have, but anyone who achieves and succeeds and excels in life or anything else they choose.

Generally, it requires a little bit of grit and perseverance.

I don’t think enough credit is given to that.

We so often want to say, oh, they’re natural.

Right.

And so I think they say that because then it absolves yourself from having to believe you could achieve it by working hard.

They’ll just say, oh, they just got it for free, basically, just by being born.

Right.

Well, neither you nor an expert, and I are an expert on this, but we do have someone who is, a friend of StarTalk.

Yes.

Her second appearance, Angela Duckworth.

Angela.

Hello.

I’m so happy to be called a friend of StarTalk.

I’m going to put on my resume.

You were on once and you agreed to come back.

That’s sufficient to call you a friend.

We have a low bar.

I was going to say that sort of thing.

As you can see, the threshold is not.

So, you are a professor of psychology, University of Pennsylvania, and you’re author of an amazing book called Grit, The Power and Passion of Perseverance.

Love it.

And that changed the dialogue on what it is to achieve.

I remembered when the book came out and everybody was talking about it.

It was in the news.

And you’re also founder and CEO of the Character Lab.

Character Lab.

What is that, Angela?

What a great name.

You like it?

I love that name.

I think people like wonder about what character means.

But let me just say what Character Lab is.

It’s a nonprofit.

We advance scientific insights that help kids thrive.

So we help scientists and educators study and improve things like grit, but also gratitude, growth mindset, curiosity, kind of everything that we think Aristotle meant when he said that character is life that’s well lived.

So it’s a little bit new.

It’s a little bit old fashioned.

And I like the term character, but I think it’s a little out of fashion these days, to be honest.

Really?

You guys don’t agree?

I think…

Well, character as a…

that’s the thing.

What’s your character?

Are you a gentleman and a lady?

Yeah.

So I agree.

The way that’s sort of written in 19th century literature, it’s a little out of date.

But if you update it and make it real…

That’s the lab part.

See, there you go.

Maybe it’s my upbringing, because it was stressed highly in my home.

The condition of your character being the thing that measures you as a person and where your value as a person is found.

It is found in your character.

That’s how I was raised that way.

So I don’t know.

How are you going to show up in the world, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it resonates with me.

Martin Luther King’s speech on the content of your character.

That’s right.

We have Martin Luther King quotes, and you know he liked the word character because he used it more than once.

And the one that we have in the biggest font is that character plus intelligence, those are the true goals of education.

And because you were talking about talent just a moment ago, which is the foil, I think, for grit, like this is what I’m not studying.

I couldn’t agree more that character, including your grit and more, you know, these are all things that matter for kids to develop as they grow up.

Sweet.

And also your co-host of the podcast, No Stupid Questions.

So you’re ideal for Cosmic Queries because you’re not going to make anybody feel bad.

Chuck will read a question and say that’s a stupid question.

I will.

Chuck will be all up in it.

I will tell people in a second that is stupid.

You could have just stupid questions as we could pair up.

A spin-off of the ones that Angela rejects.

I like that.

Just stupid questions.

Probably more fun.

And back in 2017, you were a MacArthur Fellow.

That’s the genius fellow that are so widely written about people.

And it’s a huge chunk of money that you could like go to the Bahamas with it if you chose.

I donated my MacArthur to Character Lab.

You know, honestly, I don’t know what MacArthur Fellows do with their money, but I kind of think it would be gross to keep it, don’t you think?

It’s a nice chunk of change.

You want to do something right with it.

You don’t need to go to Vegas or anything.

Yeah, I don’t need to go to Vegas.

I was going to say, thereby being a reflection of your character.

I have to say this, like, no kidding here.

Like, being the titular head of Character Lab, there have been many times where I have thought like, I want to say this, I want to do this, I want to tweet this, I want to retweet.

And then I think, but probably not the best thing for the head of Character Lab.

So, you need an alter ego or something.

Yes.

I know, yeah.

I need like a secret, like, alter identity.

Angela Devilsworth, you know?

So, this is the Cosmic Queries and we solicited questions on grit and perseverance and right up your alley.

And Chuck, you said people were just all in it.

Man, I mean, you have really touched a nerve, you know, with the idea of, with your work on grit, because people are not only just asking questions, but then people were debating each other from the questions that they asked online.

And I’ve never seen that happen before with a Cosmic Query.

Oh gosh, now I’m really curious.

I want to know what people are saying.

It created dust-ups even within the inquiry page.

With people asking questions, it created just responses to the questions.

And that is good.

It means that you are a catalyst for conversation, which is wonderful.

Ooh, I love the alliteration, Chuck, that was beautiful.

So here we go, right?

Let’s do it.

Let’s do this.

And we always start with a Patreon patron because they support us financially.

And of course we’d be fools not to.

So let’s go with Thomas Elinskis.

Elinskis.

There we go.

Elinskis.

There you go.

Thomas Elinskis says this.

Somehow I doubt it, but go on.

I know.

I was like, I’m not gonna try that one.

Yeah, Angela, you will see that a running theme here in StarTalk is that I butcher people’s names.

Oh, that’s good.

I hope you’re doing it indiscriminately.

Like you should equally offend everyone.

Like, yeah, exactly.

Everybody’s name gets butchered and it’s, you know, it’s, yeah, I won’t even say, I won’t go any further.

It says, hey, Dr.

Tyson and Dr.

Duckworth, having served in the army for four years, my fellow veterans have come to realize the importance of resiliency.

Now, as a psychology major, what tools can I use to help others transition successfully into the civilian mindset?

Coming to you from Fort Benning.

Angela, do you think that question…

You can see my shirt here, by the way.

I got my…

Oh, I see that army.

And that was not, you know, this is just, I dressed down a little bit for you guys, obviously.

It was the last thing in the drawer because you haven’t done laundry before.

Well, you know what?

I actually have a lot of West Point swag because I’ve been working with West Point for, I don’t know, 15 years or something.

Yeah, tax dollars at work here.

I wonder if that question relates to the fact that in the Army, you are commanded to perform, right?

And someone is screaming at you, calling you a maggot.

And you don’t want to be a maggot.

Whereas in regular life, no one is calling you a maggot, unless that happens to Chuck.

Absolutely.

Chuck wants to weigh in on that.

It’s normally my father-in-law, but it’s okay.

I think of it as a term of endearment.

So if that force isn’t operating on you, I don’t want to over-interpret his question, but it seems to me, if a military person is trying to offer help to a civilian, they’re trying to find ways that a civilian can get motivated, perhaps from within.

Yeah, and if I’m, again, reading into Thomas’s question, just guessing, I think a lot of people have the question, when you move out of the military into civilian life, or you retire from a sports team, or any of these major life transitions where you were gritty, no doubt, in something, how do you transfer that in another domain?

And I think it is a good question, because I actually don’t think being gritty in one situation, then everything changes.

I don’t think there’s any guarantee that you’re especially going to be passionate and persevering in this next thing.

I mean, it’s not that you change entirely.

I just think that we come to rely a lot on those structures.

And maybe this is what you’re getting at, Neil.

Like, you know, the military is so structured.

So is, by the way, being a part of a professional sports team.

And so are a lot of other professions that require a lot of grit.

And when you take somebody out of that.

And discipline, yeah.

And discipline, right?

And there are routines, there are things that you don’t have to invent entirely on your own.

I mean, getting up early isn’t that hard when you are part of active service, right?

You don’t have to think, like, how am I going to get up early and schedule my day?

So I think it is a good question.

And if the advice is, like, what could I, as somebody who is gritty and is in the military, like say to somebody who is transitioning or maybe there are civilians and they’ve never been in the military.

I always think stories are the best way to do it.

It’s something I’ve not actually fully understood as a scientist.

But there is something about the human mind that learns from stories in a way that we…

And you tell me what you guys think.

Like we never forget them.

Like I hardly forget a story that somebody, you know, tell.

Whereas statistics just run through like water like a sieve.

Right?

And there’s this kind of stickiness.

And sometimes, you know, like there’s a morals that we remember the story, but also the moral.

Anyway, I think telling stories that are true and that are maybe helpful to illustrate, you know, times that you struggled with resilience, but like what you learned and what worked for you.

So not just a story in the abstract, but a personal experience story, which makes presumably makes it that much more real.

What do you think about that, though?

I think you just look back, you know, when children sit in a circle around a storyteller, they are completely wrapped and you don’t even need video for that.

You can just sit there.

And if you’re a good storyteller, you just talk to them and they’re wrapped.

And the adult version of that is when you go to the movies and someone is telling you a story from the screen.

So not only that, the constellations of the night sky, I’ve studied them just because they’re fun to talk about when you have a star party, but they’re stories.

Every constellation has a story.

And I was told, I read that this was a way that you boosted conversational literacy.

Like you would just talk about the sky and wherever you were, the sky was with you.

And you’d be able to tell that to others.

You mean like in ancient times?

Yeah, ancient times, of course.

Not without the app that you look at the app and you hold up the app.

In my day, we had to remember where the stars were and none of this app stuff.

But those were ancient times.

But the mythologies were, one way to remember them was you put them in the sky and they’re in the dome, they’re in your cosmic dome every night.

Yeah, and I think there’s like an emotion that comes with stories that like never really comes through with statistics.

And then, you know, if you tell a story about your own life, there’s a little bit of like people can see themselves like in your shoes.

So, yeah, like I said, I haven’t really impacted like all the, what are all the magic ingredients of stories because they are magical?

I think we named a couple of them.

Another question.

Leslie Goodwill of Patreon also wants to know, she says, My daughter Trinity asks, how the science of grit and perseverance can relate to the cosmic perspective?

What?

I feel like I should pass that immediately to Neil.

No, no, we have to tag team this.

No, no, no.

This is a tag team question.

So we have to figure out.

So first, first, first, so let’s break this down.

First, is there a way to encapsulate the science of grit?

Yeah, we should probably start with that.

That’s probably my part of the collaboration here, right?

So in a nutshell, what I mean by grit is this combination of of passion and perseverance for really long-term goals.

And I think that’s the part I really want to emphasize.

Not being like, oh my God, I want to be a stand-up comic.

And I so want to do it.

Like, and that person’s like staying up, you know, until four in the morning once, right?

Like, it’s really like, how do you sustain passion and perseverance for honestly years or decades?

Because I just don’t think anything great ever happens overnight.

And that’s the emphasis in grit on stamina.

And people want something to happen quickly.

And grit is the opposite of that.

It’s recognizing that it takes long investments.

Yeah, people aren’t very good at waiting.

We all know that, right?

Like, none of us are, you know, if any of us could have instant gratification compared to delayed gratification, we would all take instant gratification.

I think if there were a shortcut to world-class excellence, I would take it too.

But yeah.

That’s just so completely obvious when you put it that way, right?

It is, actually.

There’s a data set on about a thousand four-year-olds, like, all over the country, where they were all given the choice between, like, two treats, say, like, let’s say marshmallows, because that was one of the two marshmallows later.

Is this the famous marshmallow experiment?

It is, but here’s the thing.

Tell it, tell it.

Okay, so a lot of people saw this, like, on the Colbert report, and, like, you know, it’s kind of entered, like, Sesame Street’s done stuff on it.

So a lot of people have heard about the marshmallow test.

The way the marshmallow test works is you get, like, usually around a four-year-old preschool, and they’re sitting at a table, and they’re first given a selection of all kinds of treats.

Say they pick marshmallows as their favorite.

You take away all the other treats, and then you make two piles.

Say you have two marshmallows on the right, and you have one marshmallow on the left, and you just ask the little boy or girl, like, would you rather have two, but you have to wait, you know, until I come back in the room, I got to do something, or one right away.

So it’s two later or one now.

And the test part is really, like, you see how long that four-year-old can really wait it out versus just basically, you know, eat the first one, right?

And then have one now.

And here’s the thing.

Everybody decides that they want to have two.

You ask them, like, do you want to have two later or what?

Everybody says, I’ll wait.

I’ll wait.

I’m good.

Like, I’ll definitely wait.

And then the question is, how long can you wait?

So I think it’s just interesting that we would all prefer to, you know, have more even if there’s a wait.

But I think there’s a, you know, inability to sustain that.

So I can offer a cosmic reflection on that.

That’s a kid test, of course, but if you raise that up to adult level, there’s still that behavior manifested, maybe not with marshmallows, but other treats of grown-up life.

Oh, lots of other things that we have problems with.

Things that are so much better than marshmallows.

Yes, probably some of them are legal.

Only some of which are legal.

So I would say, so biologically, when I think about it, there’s all these people who want to live forever.

And I thought to myself, do I want to live forever?

Well, if I live forever, then I have no motivation to do anything today, because I can always do it tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah.

And so if you recognize, and if you’re not Shirley MacLaine who believes in multiple lives and others in the, or whole religions of course have these foundations, or not just whether you’re reborn, but whether you are born on earth again, whether you’re in Valhalla or heaven or anywhere else.

So if you see your life as just the days on this world, then, and you know you are going to die, that creates a sense of urgency to how you spend your time.

Not only, let me take another step higher.

The number of people who have ever been born is small compared to the total genetic combinations that can make an actual human.

And it will forever be a miniscule fraction.

Tiny fraction.

So most people who could ever exist will never even be born.

Right.

So to quote Richard Dawkins, we, because we die, are the lucky ones because we are alive at all.

Exposed to non-existence, never having existed.

So when I think of what I’m going to do today, it is because I exist, I might not have ever existed, and my days on this earth are limited.

Do you really think about that like on a reasonably frequent basis?

Not daily, not daily, but weekly.

He thinks about it so much that he’s written a children’s book called You’re Going to Die.

You’re all going to die.

Now get something done.

So for me, that can be a motivator for anyone who fully embraces and understands that state of truth.

Yes.

And do you think you’re right that kind of, you know, let’s just talk about procrastination.

Like, yeah, I’ll get to it.

And people procrastinate in small ways.

Like, yeah, they should get around to something and they delay by a week.

But you’re right.

Some people are delaying things by like decades.

Like, yeah, I’m going to get a job that I really care about.

Like, you know, at some point.

And then years go by.

I think I think if you really thought you were only going to live for one day.

If today were the only day, then, you know, that would create an urgency just to like, I don’t know what that would create an urgency for.

But like, but yeah, no, I think having a sense of mortality, by the way, I think about my death a lot.

And I think it’s like.

Well, Angela, you need to see a psychologist.

No, I think it’s very healthy.

I actually try to remind other people of death like a lot, maybe not weekly.

But, you know, especially when I start like a new collaboration, or if I meet somebody that I really want to work with, I’m like, all right.

Hi, my name is Angela.

Like, here’s why I’m reaching out to you.

You’re going to die.

So am I very quickly.

I mean, I’m not exactly sure when we should work on this together.

Like, I literally say that in opening e-mails.

It doesn’t always work.

I was.

I was.

Isn’t it true, though?

It is.

I had been to probably too many, you know, zoom services, like memorial services during this pandemic.

And I was just at one yesterday and it was a great life.

It was the guy who the scientists behind the 10,000 hour rule, the deliberate practice is a beautiful like celebration.

But he, you know, died in his very early 70s and it was very unexpected and sudden and you could say like it was tragic.

But I remember when I well, it was yesterday.

I was like, they are weeping with everyone else.

And I was thinking, you know, whether it’s 72 or maybe 92 or whatever, it is a blink of an eye.

And so I think actually keeping that perspective, like, I don’t know.

I think it’s very helpful.

I’m glad we agree.

And that’s our collaborative project.

Yeah, exactly.

We got to take our first break.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen.

This episode of Death Talk has been brought to you by Dr.

Angela Duckworth and Dr.

Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Very positive topic.

We got to take a quick break when we come back more on breaking down the anatomy of grit and perseverance on Cosmic Queries Star Talk.

We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries, grit and perseverance, determination.

Angela Duckworth literally and figuratively wrote the book on this.

And just before the break, you mentioned that you attended a memorial service by the guy who wrote about the 10,000 hours.

Just remind us what the 10,000 hours is.

So there’s an idea that to become a world-class expert at anything, you know, chess, ballet, astrophysics, you need to put in, say, 10,000 hours.

I mean, I say that in air quotes, I’ll unpack it in a second, 10,000 hours of practice.

And that’s, I think, almost become, you know, almost like part of common culture, right?

That like the 10,000 hour rule is the rule of becoming great.

Mountain Gladwell is the journalist who wrote about it, but the scientist behind that research was named Anders Ericsson.

And he passed away and his memorial service was yesterday.

And I was a collaborator and a friend of his.

And I think one of the things that Anders would want everyone to know is that it does take thousands and thousands of hours of practice to become great.

His own brother said during his memorial service that if you added up the number of hours this guy spent on the science of expertise, it easily would have exceeded 100,000 hours.

But what Anders would really want everyone to know…

But it’s very meta to say he spent at least 10,000 hours trying to prove that 10,000 hours would make you an expert.

It was so meta.

I mean, actually, in his own family, but also among friends and colleagues, we used to just all joke that he was the world expert on world experts.

I mean, super meta, right?

And he actually did all the things that he studied.

It was meta, meta, meta.

But here’s the thing that I think a lot of people don’t appreciate, which is that it’s the quality of the practice that really distinguishes experts.

I mean, obviously, it’s the quality and the quantity, but what experts do with those hours is different from what other people do.

So it’s not just, let me get in the water and slap my hands to try to swim.

Let me improve the stroke.

I mean, I think built into the concept of practice is you’re trying to get better at it.

You’re not just doing it.

So it’s 10,000 hours of improving yourself, not 10,000 hours of just doing it.

Okay, well, you guys have just hit upon a really great point.

I’m going to interrupt and throw in two questions because they’re so apropos to what you just said in a different way, but still, Kunal Kahana from Facebook says, does perseverance really lead to success?

And when should a scientist slash person slash athlete know when to quit?

That’s one, that’s one.

Okay, that was a long one.

If you tell me the next one, I’m going to get the first one.

Just remember, when should I know when to quit?

When to quit.

And then Nathan Ward along the same lines.

Okay, you guys can combine this.

There’s a saying, you can run a donkey around the track and train them harder than any race horse that’s ever been trained, but they’ll never win the Kentucky Derby.

Is there a limit to the amount of success that we can expect from grit when competing?

So that goes to what you guys just finished saying about how to train, how to practice.

But then the second part of that is, okay, you’re doing all the right things.

Is there a point where you should say, enough is enough.

I’m going to quit.

But Chuck, Chuck, that donkey would win of donkeys, of donkeys.

And nobody wants that.

Okay, there are worse things that you could be, but definitely not.

Okay, so are you guys watching, you already watched the last dance, right?

Oh, the Michael Jordan thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve seen four episodes.

Did you stop?

Are you not watching the rest of it?

Angela, I’m a busy man, okay?

You’re like, come on, priorities here.

You don’t have to like…

I’m only on episode two.

I’m not going to shame you.

I’m really on episode two.

Like binge shame me for seeing only four out of eight episodes.

Well, I’m having a hard time delaying gratification because every time I start watching it, all I want to do is just watch it all the way through.

So actually, it’s…

Okay, anyway, the reason I bring it up is because people ask the question, if I trained for 10 or 20,000 hours, like, could I ever be Michael Jordan?

Right?

And I think for most people, it doesn’t take much thinking to think, like, nope, would definitely not be Michael Jordan, even if I trained for 100,000 hours.

Right?

So I disagreed a little bit with Anders on this.

We had many spirited conversations.

But I do believe that there are abilities that are not, you know, like equally distributed, you know, between all of us, like anybody could be Michael Phelps, anybody could be Katie Ledecky, anybody could be fill in the blank.

I think Anders may have been a little more skeptical that there really are things as like talents that, you know, really limit what we can do.

I think what we agreed on is that people are so far away from their potential that it’s just like this hypothetical that they throw out there like, what if I, you know, what if I really worked really hard?

But I think if you’re not even approaching that hypothetical limit in your actual life, it’s, it’s a kind of silly almost like to ask.

So not to put words in your mouth, but you’re, are you saying, and if you are, I agree entirely, that it’s, it’s a, it’s a false comparison to say, if I work hard at best, will I ever be as good as Michael Jordan?

What they should be asking is, if I work harder than I am at any of these other hundred things, will I get much, much better at it?

Yes, then I was, right?

Because like, you know, like the comparison between you and other people, which is by the way, totally natural, we all do it, is not as useful as the comparison of you and yourself, right?

To what you could be, to what you could be, to what you want to be, to what you were, to today, to tomorrow, all those comparisons, I think are very useful.

The other ones are less useful.

Okay, so when should you give up?

Oh, yeah, the quick question.

I think there are occasions where we should give up.

The times that we should give up are when there’s something better you can do, right?

I mean, it’s kind of that simple.

In economics, they call it like opportunity cost, right?

Like when the opportunity costs exceed, right?

So should I be doing this podcast anymore?

I was like, I don’t know.

Maybe there’s something better you could do, right?

I think that’s giving up, you know, on a good day, right?

It’s like, you know, I’ve been thinking about it.

And so I got one.

I got one, Angela.

So I have a cameo in Ice Age five.

What animal are you?

Okay, I’m a weasel.

So now the critics said of Ice Age five, by the way, you didn’t know there were four of them.

I didn’t.

Yeah, my kids are a little too old for that.

Neither did I know that there were four when I met.

So one of the critics said, Ice Age five makes it clear that this franchise should have gone extinct a long time ago.

Oh, that’s a good line.

I love that.

That was telling them they should quit.

They haven’t made another one since.

Oh, maybe.

Yeah, maybe the critic finally got to them.

I mean, look, there are times where you’re like, instead of making Ice Age six, like, maybe there’s something better we could do.

Right.

Like that really is always the rational answer.

The thing that I also study, though, is like giving up too early.

You know, there are people who like, you know, that initial discouragement.

Right.

You know, one thing that happens in life and you guys are both successful that, you know, that was flattery, but it was sincere.

But, you know, you get into like bigger and bigger ponds.

And like, suddenly, you’re not the biggest fish in the pond anymore.

You’re in a much bigger pond.

That’s what it means to be successful is to move up like that.

That initial drop in your ego, it almost feels like the bottom of your stomach falls.

It’s like, it’s like, oh, wait, I’m not the special shiny one.

I think a lot of people quit then.

Right.

And like, I think that’s too early to quit.

Like you just transition into, you know, West Point, which I studied for, you know, more than a decade.

And that initial kind of like you are not number one, you’re not even number two, half the people are below average.

Right.

Can you, can you not quit?

No, everyone’s above average, Angela.

That’s Lake Wobegon.

That’s not a, that’s not West Point.

So, so I think you, I think there are times you should quit, you should quit when there’s something better you can do.

But I don’t always think that we’re an emotionally like a clear eyed frame of mind to make those decisions.

And, and so I also think we should be careful not to quit too early.

You know, that’s great.

And I think your, your economic analogy of opportunity costs is really very useful because when the cost of doing something greatly outweighs the benefits gleaned from doing it, or the returns, or the returns, it’s, it’s no longer enjoyable.

And so what you’ve done is taken that from a number standpoint and put it into human terms.

Basically, look, if this is like not fun and you’re not getting anything out of it, and you’re not getting any better and you’re never going to be what maybe it’s time.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think that’s exactly what it comes down to.

Awesome.

All right.

This is Eric Varga from Facebook.

And Eric says, Hello, Dr.

Tyson and Dr.

Duckworth.

I am a middle grade science and social studies teacher.

Congratulations.

Good for you.

One of the greatest issues facing our education system is the stigma surrounding failure and intelligence.

Every year, I and my colleagues have students that help that we help overcome learned helplessness.

What are some of the best practices that teachers and school systems can implement that could help students achieve success beyond the framework of standardized tests?

This sounds like it’s right down the center line of your project for which you’re CEO of character building.

I mean, what’s the term Chuckie used?

There’s a term there.

Learned helplessness is what he helps overcome.

Helplessness.

Angela, what is learned helplessness?

I’ll zoom in on that.

I guess I’ll zoom in on that.

One of the scientific advisors to Character Lab, this nonprofit I help run, is Marty Seligman.

He coined the term learned helplessness about 50 years ago.

Marty is a psychologist who was at the time he was studying dogs.

He was doing these random assignment experiments where, for example, some dogs got painful electric shocks, and they had a harness, but they had a button in front, like a panel, that if they leaned forward far enough, their button would touch the panel, and then the panel would just like terminate the shock.

So you couldn’t control that the shocks were going to start, but you could end them.

So that’s a group of dogs.

Then there was another group of dogs.

So this is 50 years ago when you could do experiments like that.

You know, he’s a total dog lover.

I have to say, I can’t even explain these studies.

But PETA PETA wasn’t invented yet.

You know, Marty would point out, by the way, that these were not harmful.

They were just painful.

So anyway, I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.

They’re innocent thousand volt shocks.

That’s all.

Yeah, he might also point out that like lots of people are doing these studies.

But anyway, these dogs, so the point is that these dogs, there’s another group of dogs that are what’s called yoke to the first group of dogs.

And that means that they are experiencing the same pattern of shocks, the same schedule.

So when a shock goes on in one cage, it goes on the other.

Then when one dog with the harness and the button turns it off, that other dog is sitting in another cage, can’t see the first dog, but like all of a sudden the shock goes off.

So if you’re in that second group, all you experience is like shock comes on, shock goes off.

Shock comes on, shock goes off.

You have no control.

And what Marty discovered is that the dogs in the cages that had no control over even terminating the shock, right, they have no control over anything, just like bad stuff happens seemingly at random.

They developed learned helplessness.

They had a kind of basically it was like dog depression, right?

Like they weren’t eating right, they weren’t sleeping right.

And the most important thing was when you put the dog that just has had this experience of like things happen to you, you can’t control them, you give them another situation, you put them in a different cage and you allow them to actually, you know, escape the shock because you know, you unharness them.

They kind of like lie down and they don’t try.

They don’t try.

And that was learned helplessness.

You learn that you’re helpless.

And I think a lot of teachers, like middle school teachers, they see this happening, you know, not with electric shocks, but they see kids fail things.

And then for the kids, they learn that they can’t do anything.

They’re like, look, I, like, I can’t do math.

I’m not like a math person.

It’s just like, it’s just impossible.

Chuck, Chuck, it’s clear Angela’s making the case for electric shocks in elementary school.

By the way, by the way, that’s what she said.

I am 100% for it.

She just said that.

Chuck, Chuck, I heard her say that.

This is on you guys.

This is where rumors get started.

You guys have just arranged this whole episode so that you could, that I could tee up Chuck for that.

That’s what I want.

You want to order them immediately.

But it means such a thing exists.

And that’s tragic.

Have you guys ever felt that way about anything or maybe not?

Because maybe you are more like the resilient, you know, like individuals that Marty has studied.

Do you identify at all with that story?

Are you kind of like, oh, yeah, I kind of felt like that once.

Yeah, I feel helpless on Twitter.

It’s learned helplessness.

It’s funny though because bad things happen and you have no control over them.

I think it’s very interesting that the way it’s, the way the experiment is presented, you know, it’s persistent and pervasive.

I think everybody has that experience.

You know about Marty’s research if you’re using Marty’s words, right?

Like when adversity happens and you perceive it to be persistent, like this is not ending, and pervasive, it seems like everything in your life is going wrong.

I mean, and those are really like the cognitive hallmarks of depression, right?

You’re like, I can’t do anything.

It’s everywhere.

It’s everything that’s not going to end.

Because I think we all have that experience in some way.

But what gives us the ability to take charge or to say that we will change is that we don’t have the overwhelming depression.

We’re not bearing that like there’s nothing I can do.

We actually because and also we’ve also had successes in the past.

I think that is really truly like, you know, I don’t want to oversimplify things, but like small mastery experiences like small wins.

I mean, just to answer this eighth grade teachers and you know question a little more directly like, you know, took a little I took a little bit of the long route getting there.

But I really do think you have to engineer like small wins for young people so that but Angela they’ve already done that and it’s handing out trophies for everything.

I am not a big fan of like participant trophies, but this is what it is.

It’s it’s there are no losers.

Everyone is a winner.

And this is awesome.

You guys are are you guys.

I think you’re like telepathically connected to these questions.

Oh, let’s move into the next question.

What Chuck will do exactly that when we come back for the third and final segment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, the grit edition will be returned.

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Back.

StarTalk Cosmique Query is the grit edition with Angela Duckworth, one of the world’s experts.

I’m going to say the world’s expert.

Would you agree, Chuck?

I would indeed.

Well, not on everything.

Maybe on grit.

On grit.

On grit.

So what do you do, just before the break, you mentioned that small successes can help prevent you from falling into some kind of achievement funk, where you might think that you will never achieve.

But in the limit of that, you’re getting trophies and medals and you’re getting complimented under circumstances that in a previous generation would have never been warranted.

So Chuck, you had a question that was exactly that.

Yes.

You guys really teed up Miriam Masarykova.

Masarykova, Miriam Masarykova says, and wants to know this.

Hey Dr.

Tyson, hey Dr.

Duckworth, I’m wondering if there is any relationship between grit and self-esteem.

So now this goes to small wins, participation trophies, and you know is there something to do with how you feel about yourself that propels you to keep going?

All right, so here’s the answer.

I think grit is more related to self-efficacy than self-esteem.

And I think this is the difference between getting participant trophies for being like 8th out of 8th or anything you do, like your parents give you a standing ovation.

I don’t believe in any of that.

That is all about like, let’s make this person have-

I do.

I have a 19 year old, well almost 19, and let’s just say 18 and 17.

I shouldn’t round up.

So did you give them standing ovations for their school play?

I am pretty sure that if my girls came in here, they would tell you that I was the opposite of the parent who was like, everything is great.

You’re perfect.

That’s like what grandparents do.

But I did actually experience this with them because they would also be living American life and there would be eighth place ribbons for being eighth out of eighth, which I didn’t think was necessary or helpful.

But I think the difference is this.

When I say small wins, I’m not saying like, praise your kid for drinking their orange juice in the morning.

What I’m saying is if you have a kid who’s struggling, let’s say with math or foul shots, whatever it is they’re struggling, a great parent and a great coach and a great teacher, they all do the same thing, which is they figure out what is a challenge that is smaller than the one that this kid consistently fails, that is a stretch, but that they’re likely to be able to master with some support.

And there was this Russian psychologist named Vygotsky who thought that that was basically the recipe for development through childhood, which is that you’re a little kid, you’re three years old, you can’t reach something, but with a little bit of assistance, you might be able to reach just this much higher.

And that’s the thing that you need to do.

You have to like break down things that students are not doing well consistently into smaller, more manageable parts.

This means as a teacher or as a coach, you actually have to get to know your students.

It’s a lot of work by the way.

Yeah, you have to work for that.

Angela, I’m being reasonable.

There was this like, I mean, yeah, I know, this is a lot of work.

The next thing you’ll be telling me is that I need to parent my children instead of just letting the tablet do it.

Yeah, I know, right?

It’s starting to be unreasonable, right?

Oh, yeah, don’t be unreasonable.

I mean, it’s not only a lot of work.

I have to say, it takes a lot of skill.

I remember listening to this interview with a US.

Olympic gymnastic coach, right?

And I’m sorry that I can’t remember the name.

It wasn’t like Bella Carolla or anything, but the interviewer said like, what is the secret to like training these athletes to like Olympic gold medals?

And they were like, the secret to everything is to be able to break things down and then break them down again and then break them down again.

So that it’s tractable, right?

And I think that will lead to self-efficacy, which is the belief that you can do something if you try, as opposed to self-esteem, which is that you are just great.

Like, you know, like, and I think that’s a big difference.

Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent.

Well, I got to tell you, I just wish Angela was like every guest that we ever had, because every time you say something, it leads to another question, which means I don’t have to go searching.

No one’s ever going to believe that I don’t actually know these questions.

I know, it’s amazing.

It’s amazing.

I love it.

Okay, so Kara Klee from Facebook says this.

What does the science say about grit in different generations?

Popular opinions suggest that young people, whether we define them as millennials or Gen Z or even younger, lack the resilience of older generations.

But is it really true?

And if so…

Get off my lawn.

Get off my lawn.

I’m older than that.

And if so, back in my day…

Is it because society is changing or is it because grit is developed and fine-tuned over one’s lifetime and therefore younger people will always appear to be less resilient, regardless of the generational identity?

Right, so that’d be a delusion of older people that they had grit when the younger generation doesn’t.

Right.

So Angela, what is it?

And by the way, it’s Dr.

Kara Blakely from Ohio who goes by…

I was going to say, Dr.

Blakely, this is a 10 out of 10 question.

I was like, they should just get a little prize for having such a sophisticated, thoughtful question which almost answers itself, right?

Because it says, look, there’s two possibilities, right?

Right.

I think if you grew up in the 50s, culturally, maybe you’re different, right, than somebody who grew up in the Millennials.

But here’s the answer.

The short answer is nobody knows because I don’t have a time machine and I can’t go back and measure these generations of people who came before.

So that’s a really short answer.

I don’t know, right?

But the longer answer is scientists are debating how much of people’s personalities is generational, right?

So there is this idea of generation me, like narcissistic, inflated self-esteem, etc.

But there are scientists who are on both sides of this debate and they publish papers saying their own sides.

My guess is, though, in terms of this, what’s the ratio?

Say there are generational changes, which I just told you, like I can’t go back in time and measure, but let’s assume that there are.

My guess is that more of it is from maturation than from the decade that you were born in.

And it is really hard to be 50, which is how old I am, and like look at a 20 year old.

And it’s really hard to remember what I was like when I was 20.

So so often we’re like, God, what’s wrong with you?

You know, you grew up in the wrong generation, but really they’re just 20.

They’re like literally half your age, less than half your age.

Right, right.

But it is funny.

I remembered thinking when I was 21.

Yeah, I was badass.

And now I look back and I say, I didn’t know shit about anything.

Right.

I mean, like most of us were just total idiots when we were younger, but we forget.

No, I think you’re right.

Well, it’s a fantastic question, I have to tell you.

I would like to just put a little gold star next to that question.

Thank you, Kara Clay or Dr.

And Kara, with that gold star, you’ll do even better next time.

Yes, exactly.

You’ve been encouraged to take that little increment.

Another step.

We want to see an even more sophisticated question next time.

Absolutely.

All right, let’s move on to Ursula Lawrence.

Ursula Lawrence from Facebook says, Did either of you ever learn to grid it out as a child or did that come later on?

Now, I ask this for selfish reasons.

One, I grew up under the auspices of tough it out.

You’re now speaking personally.

Are you speaking or the person asking?

This is me personally.

This is why I’m asking Ursula’s question, because I want to know if my parents were bad parents.

And am I a bad parent?

Because I was raised that way.

I am a tough it out kind of parent, which means if it ain’t that bad, you need to handle it on your own.

Don’t come to me.

That’s the way my parents did.

Now, people, when I say that to people, other parents at the park look at me like I am out of my frickin gourd.

Give me an example, Chuck.

Give me an example.

Also, how old is the kid?

Six years old girl.

I am a proponent of reinforcing that she is able to do whatever she wants to do.

That means I cannot come to her aid every single time she is having difficulty.

She’s climbing the wall at the park.

They have a rock climbing wall.

She gets up to a certain point and I notice she always stops and comes back down.

I know it’s because she’s afraid to go any higher than that.

So I go over and I say, you know you can make that, right?

You can go ahead and you can make that.

Well, go up to the top and grip my hand.

I can’t do that, but you can make that.

Go ahead and do it.

I’m telling you, we have some pushback back and forth because she’s scared.

She does it.

And then she’s like, I did it.

Like, right?

Right?

When when the pushback was happening, the other moms were looking at me like, Oh, he’s one of those.

Yeah, he’s one of those like pushy sports dads.

He’s a pushy sports dad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they were tis-tisking.

And they were tis-tisking me and they were like looking.

And you know, plus I’m the only black dude there.

So they were trying not to look like they were tis-tisking me.

Right.

Secretly tis-tisking.

Look, demanding is good.

That’s what was done to me.

Yeah.

I mean, demanding is good.

You know, obviously.

So that story tells me that, you know, you weren’t asking your daughter to do something which was impossible.

Right.

Like you’re asking your daughter to go just a little farther than she was comfortable.

And you knew that without you, you know, encouraging her, like she wouldn’t.

And I think that’s exactly what this Russian psychologist Vygotsky meant.

It’s like kids need to be asked to do things that are just, like just beyond their reach.

And Vygotsky also said, it’s like just what you, like, can’t do.

But if you had support, you would be able to do.

Right.

So just, you know, imagine the visual picture of your six-year-old daughter trying to reach something.

Right.

And it’s four inches away, but you give her like just a little boost.

And I think that’s what.

And then they then they’re like, oh, I can do it.

And Vygotsky, well, it was Russian.

But the term in translate would be like scaffolding.

Like that’s what parents are there to do, to be demanding, but also to provide, you know, the support just so that it’s not it’s not impossible.

And I agree with you.

You know, the one thing about parents judging other parents is that from the outside, you can’t really tell whether somebody’s being, you know, too demanding, not demanding enough, you know, they just not enough information.

So if I just saw you in the park, parenting your little girl, honestly, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what parenting style you had because there’s too much like context and so forth.

But as a parent, you yourself know everything.

And I think you just have to ask yourself, like, am I being demanding enough?

And am I being supportive enough?

So the key point here is Chuck knew that this little increment that his daughter was afraid of, that she could do it if she tried.

Yes.

It was not an impossible task.

It wasn’t, you know, grow wings and fly to the top.

It was this little extra increment, which became that much more of an achievement for her, the fact that you didn’t help her.

Right.

Exactly.

And that’s the difference between that and a participant ribbon also, right?

Because that’s just giving a person a ribbon for not stretching, right?

And it makes all the difference.

So getting back to the question, I would say for me, I didn’t need grit in doing what I love to do.

Which is physics.

Yeah, just science.

So you didn’t have to use discipline because you just wanted to do it.

Yeah, I just wanted to do it.

I derive pleasure from the act of doing it and learning more.

So at no time could I or would I have ever called that grit.

There are other things that I had a really hard job one summer when I was in high school.

I wasn’t paid very much.

I was a camp junior counselor, but we did all kinds of other things and it was a nightmare.

But I thought, I realized that there’s a point where it ends.

You know, the summer ends, the days go by.

I felt like the prisoner putting X’s on the calendar.

There’s a point where this ends.

And so I needed some grit to…

Well, let me, you can use the word grit however you want, honestly.

But like when I say grit, the reason I say passion and perseverance is that I really do think that gritty people, they’re not using a lot of self-control to do what they’re doing.

They’re doing it because they do love it.

For me, grit is something goes wrong and do you recover from that?

Yeah, I don’t want to define a word that you wrote a book on.

Well, you can do that.

I mean, I think that’s like stamina is like, you know, keeping going when you’re not, you know, when things are going wrong.

And it’s like staying engaged.

I mean, you know, like Isaac Newton and Einstein, they both said that like the behind their genius, they probably didn’t say it was genius, but whatever, like behind their accomplishments that was that they were still trying to solve the same problems.

And to your point, that only happens when you intrinsically are interested.

All I really mean by great is the sustained, you know, over time part.

So also, I used to wrestle.

I wrestled for like eight years of my life.

And that is the single hardest physical thing I’ve ever done.

And so by the way, anyone who has wrestled will say exactly that same sentence.

If you haven’t wrestled…

Does that count emotionally?

Like when you’ve wrestled with things emotionally, like I have for so very long?

Or wrestled with what?

I’ve wrestled a lot of things.

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s the same.

We have to ask Angela about that.

But I just know that if you’ve never wrestled and you’ve done any other sport, you could list a dozen other sports there.

But if you’ve wrestled, your answer will be wrestling.

And I’ve done that experiment and it’s really there.

So in terms of just the physical exhaustion and how fit you have to be.

So what would your life be like if you hadn’t wrestled?

Oh, good question.

There are many places I would have just given up.

Because I said, I don’t have the energy to complete this.

Even though you loved what you did.

No, for other things where, let’s say, there are things sometimes you have to do if you don’t completely love it.

That’s what I wanted to say.

Even though you love what you do so much, there are some things where you’re like, oh, God, I want to give up.

For example, I’m going to quote a famous writer who I don’t remember who said, I like having written.

Oh, yeah.

You know what?

Writers say those things all the time.

They’re always whining about how hard it is to write.

I had a column every month for Natural History Magazine.

Damn near killed me.

The deadline just creeps up.

What about your book?

How about your best selling book?

How much work was that?

That was a collection of essays I had written.

But I remembered the effort of every single sentence and the choice of words.

And now I step back and look at it.

Yeah, that works together there.

And that’s the thing.

What was a bigger effort was my war book, which I had a co-author, with 600 pages.

And it was 10 years in the writing.

And he said to himself, this will never get finished.

This will never get done.

Of course, having done a Ph.D.

thesis, it also has a never-ending feel to it.

So that’s a…

So was wrestling helpful during this?

Yes, yes.

Even when I’m not actually wrestling.

So I think the idea that you’re in a struggle and you overcome the struggle and it’s one of the great struggles of your life, I agree with Chuck that it can apply in other dimensions to what the challenges are in your life.

And I’ve done that.

Yeah, I think that’s why parents send their kids to do hard things.

Not that they think they’re going to be like professional wrestlers, for example, or professional whatever.

But challenges, challenges of life.

It’s challenges, yeah, I agree.

I’m reminded of Don Quixote, where there are, or at least in Man of La Mancha, the Broadway musical and the song, to reach the unreachable star, to move the immovable object, to fight the unbeatable foe.

That if you have struggled and you know what it is to struggle, even if you do not see the end in sight, you can tap that source of energy and inspiration and emotion to keep you going because you might succeed.

Right, you can learn to strive, right?

Yeah, there you go.

That’s the way to say it.

Learn to strive.

We got to wrap this up.

But I don’t think we have time for any more questions.

No, we don’t.

But I got to tell you something.

One, two, three, four.

I still have five pages.

Five pages of questions.

That means we come back to this topic.

If Angela deigns to grant us another…

They keep you out of the lab, Neil.

We will totally bring her back because this is a very important subject for parents, for people who want to succeed, people trying to get out of the doldrums.

So, Angela, always good to have you.

I get to say that because it’s our second time.

Because we’re like friends.

We’re totally there.

Always good to have you.

Chuck, you’re there for us.

Always a pleasure.

Alright, man, I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you.