Facts Versus Emotions

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com. Are there times when engaging in self-deception can lead to a good outcome? Are there times when we should prioritize functionality over reality? Yes, says today's guest. Hi everyone, I'm Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, and welcome to Actionable Intelligence. My guest today is Shankar Vedantam. Shankar is the host and executive editor of of the hugely popular Hidden Brain podcast and radio show. He's also a longtime journalist who won multiple awards while working at NPR and the Washington Post. He's also the author of the book Hidden Brain, as well as his newest book, Useful Delusions. In today's conversation, we explore the concept of delusions and how in certain situations, they might serve a useful purpose. We also discuss delusions in the workplace and delusions in our relationship to money. And with that, let's get started with Shankar Vedantam. Let's start with a definition. What is a delusion and under what circumstances can a delusion actually be useful?

That's a great question, Steve. I think when most of us think of delusions, we think of delusions at the level of beliefs that are fantastical, where you believe that you have seen you know, a supernatural event, for example. And those certainly are delusions, but the book that I've written encompasses a much larger range of delusions, ranging all the way from some of those big delusions to everyday delusions, the way we perceive one another, the way we talk to one another, the way we think about our own lives and how we derive meaning in our lives. And at an even more elementary level, how our brains operate, the very ways in which we see and hear and taste the world, turns out in some ways not to be accurate representations of reality, but what I would call a delusion. So at a very simple level, a delusion, the way that I'm defining it, is anything that is an invention of the mind, that is not actually out in the world, but is an invention of the mind. And that can range all the way from simple neurological processes to very complex social phenomena.

Now, how would a delusion differ from faith. So we have faith in something, we can't necessarily see it, we can't necessarily prove it, yet we still believe. We have faith. Do you make any distinction between the concept of a delusion versus people having faith in something?

It's perhaps a blurry distinction between those two things, because of course you can have, you can have faith in something without actually believing that it's true, and you can believe in something, and, and sometimes, sometimes the two things are identical. So for example, I could have faith that my sports team is going to do well, but I don't actually know that my sports team is going to do well. On the other hand, I could have a delusional belief that my sports team is actually going to perform better than it actually performs, and you could say that's a delusion, or you can say that that's faith. In some ways, the line between those two things is somewhat blurry.

So your book is called Useful Delusions. So yes, you're making, you're making the point that some of these, I'll call them little lies perhaps, and, and like you mentioned, you talk it from a range. So we've got delusions where we might be deluding ourselves on a minor level that isn't going to have world impact, but then we have these much larger collective delusions that in some cases can be used for good and in some cases can be used for bad. So what's the point, the case that you make in your book about when a delusion can actually become a useful delusion?

The subtitle for my book is The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain, and the paradox is that self- Self-deception can indeed be very harmful to us. It can be harmful in some ways not to see reality for what it is. And all of us can think of examples in our own lives or the lives of our communities or the lives of our nations where we fail to see reality accurately and this harmed us a great deal. So many books and many articles and, you know, many op-eds have been written about dangerous delusions. And I share the concerns that have been raised about dangerous delusions. The contribution that my book is making is to recognize that even as delusions can be dangerous and self-deception can be harmful, there are also many, many domains of our lives where self-deceptions and delusions can be useful. Let me give you a couple of very simple examples. I mentioned a second ago that delusions range all the way from very simple neurological processes to very complex social phenomena. So when I look out at the world at any given moment, for example, my eye is taking in about a billion bits of information. If all of this information was transmitted to my brain, my brain would quickly become overwhelmed because my brain is not just seeing the world, it's doing a whole bunch of other things. It's talking to you right now, for example. It's deciding, you know, how my heart is beating. It's holding my body erect as I'm sitting in my chair. My brain is doing a lot of different things. And so it basically tells the signals coming from the eye to filter what is actually sent up to the brain. What eventually gets sent up to the brain is reduced about 1,000-fold from what actually comes into the eye. Only about 1 million bits of information are actually processed by the brain, and the brain actually takes those million bits and then essentially throws away almost all the information except for about 40 bits of information. This is research from the neuroscientist Donald Hoffman. So on a moment-to-moment basis, your eyes are taking in about a billion bits of information. Your brain is actually processing about 40 bits of that information. At an engineering level, you might say that what's happened is in fact a profound delusion. What you think you see in fact bears very little connection to what actually is coming streaming in through your eyes.. But at a subjective level, it feels completely normal. This is in fact how you see when we look out at the world around us, what we perceive as being the entire reality of the world is in fact a highly filtered version of the world. Now, it's actually useful to have our brains operate in this way. It's useful to have all this filtering go on because if we were to actually see reality for exactly what it is, our brains would not be as functional as they are. And this is a core idea of my book, which is the brain is fundamentally less interested in seeing reality accurately and more interested just in being functional and doing things that will allow us to survive and pass on our genes to our children and so forth. And in many domains of our lives, this involves seeing reality exactly for what it is, but in some domains of our lives, it involves all these kinds of filtering. Here's another example. In our personal relationships, it turns out that when we have delusional beliefs about our partners, when we believe our partners are better looking or more intelligent or kinder or more empathetic people than they really are, we end up in happier relationships than we would otherwise. We can talk more at length about this, but it turns out that in our personal relationships as well, not seeing reality completely accurately could turn out to be quite functional. So those are the kinds of beliefs that I would say are delusional beliefs. But that are in fact quite useful.

And I would imagine we have some evolutionary reason why that happened over time, because those were functional for us and helped us survive.

Indeed. When you think about the brain as an organ that evolved over many millions of years, the brain fundamentally evolved not as a truth-seeking machine, but as a machine that was designed to help us solve problems of adaptation, solve problems related to survival. So the brain is fundamentally a machine that's designed to help us survive and thrive to reproduce, to pass on our genes, to help raise our children to adulthood. This is what the brain is fundamentally designed to do. One of the simplest ways to see a useful delusion at work in the context of evolution is to think about the relationship that parents have with their children. I don't know if you have kids, Steve. I have a, I have a daughter. But even if your listeners don't have children, almost everyone, not almost everyone, everyone does have parents. And so everyone fundamentally understands the parent-child relationship. And it turns out the parent-child relationship is a relationship that is often marked by huge amounts of delusional thinking on the part of parents. Parents believe that children are special, unique, miracles beyond all miracles. We love our children dearly, irrationally, you know, fanatically. And at a certain level, the beliefs that we have about our children are delusions because they don't reflect reality accurately. But they're extremely functional. They're extremely useful because it turns out parenting is extremely difficult. It's extremely time-consuming. It's hard. It's frustrating. And the love that we have for our children, the delusional love that we have for our children, is essentially vital to keeping parents invested in parenting. If we saw our own children the way we see other people's children or the way that other people see our children, we might not invest the kind of love and care and attention that our children need and deserve. And you can see from an evolutionary perspective here why it's extremely functional from an evolutionary perspective to build in sort of delusionally irrational love that parents have for their children. Now, you can certainly point to times when this irrational love spills over into things that are harmful. You know, if I have a child who's a serial killer and I'm unable to come to terms with the fact that my child in fact is an evil person because I have so much love for my child, you can see how this delusion can be very harmful. But you can also see how for many, many millions of people and for many, many millions of children, the delusional love that parents have for children is in fact deeply functional.

Yeah, and that makes total sense. But I think the tricky part is we have these functional delusions, like you say, which makes sense, but then trying to make a distinction between one person's functional delusion and another person's irrational delusion. How do we think about avoiding going down what I'll call this slippery slope of believing a delusion, it might be convenient for me or for a certain group of people because maybe it keeps me in my tribe or it keeps me in my people that I like to affiliate with, but then it can also be extremely destructive. If we're okay with these delusions, how do we avoid that slippery slope there?

Yeah, it's a profoundly important question, Steve, and there's not a simple answer to this question. You know, computer scientists sometimes talk about things that are bugs and things that are features, and bugs are things that are in computer systems that basically are problems. They are things that cause the system not to work properly. And features are things that are very valuable, things that essentially allow systems to work properly. Self-deception is this unusual category of thing that is both bug and feature at the very same time. So if you think about the example I just gave you about parental love, delusional parental love for children, you know, there are examples of parents who love their children so dearly that they cause great harm. The great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, which was written, you know, hundreds or thousands of years ago, is all about the delusional love that a parent has for a child. The child turns out to be a monster, a really evil person, and the parent cannot see that the child is essentially pulling the kingdom into ruin. So if you were to ask the question, where is the line between love that is useful and love that is dangerous, you have to decide on a context-by-context basis, on a situation-by-situation basis. There is no neat dividing line that basically says this kind of delusion is always going to be useful. This kind of delusion is always going to be harmful. Let me give you another example. Let's say you have two teams that are playing against one another on a sports arena. The delusional beliefs that one team has, let's say Team A has, that they're going to do well. These beliefs might help the team perform better. It might help the team actually play better. It might allow the team to play up to their full potential or even potentially exceed their, you know, what people think that they might be able to accomplish. So from their point of view, The delusions they have about how well they can perform might be very functional. Now, you can ask, are those delusions functional from the other team's point of view? And the answer is no, of course not, because if Team A plays as well as it possibly can, that's not in the interest of Team B. And so the delusional beliefs that help Team A might in fact harm Team B. When you extrapolate that in all kinds of situations, you're exactly right. The loyalties that I might have towards my tribe might hold me and my tribe in very good stead, but it could harm another tribe. Or if you think about the delusions that we have in terms of our political parties, for example, the loyalties we have to our individual political parties, those might serve us well from the point of view of our individual political affiliations while simultaneously harming our larger identity as members of a nation. So in other words, we are so enmeshed in our political animosities toward one another as Republicans and Democrats in the United States, for example, that we fail to see or understand how those loyalties might be hurting our larger affiliations as Americans. And so this is the difficult thing about self-deception and delusion, which is there is no clear line that basically says, here are the delusions that are always going to be useful. Here are the delusions that are always going to be harmful.

I want to read a quote here from your book, and I think it ties in with what you were talking about here. So here's what you wrote. Anyone who wishes to overcome the destructive delusions and self-deceptions that pervade our politics, our economy, and our relationships would be wise to ask a new set of questions. What psychological benefits does holding a false belief confer on the people who hold it? What underlying needs does it address? Are there other ways to address those needs? If so, supplying those needs likely provides a powerful way to fight delusion and self-deception. End quote. What I love about that is I think of myself and I think of someone who holds a belief, which to me just is, let's say, insane. And rather than just trying to say, well, here's why you're wrong, you know, and provide all these facts, obviously that doesn't work. But when I read this in your book, I thought, well, that really makes sense because they have that belief, which I happen to think is delusional, they may think is truth. And so we have to ask ourselves, well, what psychological need might that be addressing? So I'd love if you could maybe expand on that a little bit about this idea of if someone does have a delusional belief, there may be underlying reasons why that is helping them overcome something in their life, perhaps.

That's right. I mean, at the core of my book is an idea that we need to be curious and empathetic when we encounter people whose views are very different from our own. Now, this is not something that comes to us naturally. I remember some years ago having dinner with a friend of mine whom I knew from my college days, a very smart young man. And we were having dinner and we hadn't met in many years. And we— over dinner, he told me that he was convinced that the United States was behind the 9/11 attacks, that the attacks had been planned by the CIA and the FBI. And by carrying out these attacks, the United States came up with a pretext for launching the war in Iraq and justifying the war in Iraq. And I remember arguing with my friend for about 90 minutes over dinner, explaining to him how this was in many ways a bizarre idea, that it was really just not plausible, that it really didn't make sense. And of course, at the end of the 90 minutes, I hadn't convinced him of anything. He just thought that I had a delusional belief that the United States was not behind the war in Iraq. What I would do differently if I was to go back and have that dinner with my friend again today is not try and argue with him and not try and present him with data and evidence, because I think this is the mistake that many of us make. We believe that if someone has a false belief, that false belief is a result of a lack of the correct information, and that correct information can essentially correct the delusional beliefs that people have. We practice this all the time in journalism. We believe that fact-checking politicians is the way to correct erroneous beliefs that people have about politicians. And then as journalists, we're often shocked when those fact checks don't change people's minds. I would say today, with a little bit more hindsight, a little bit more wisdom, what I would say is I would ask my friend to explain what the beliefs that he has means to him. What does it mean to him that the United States actually was behind the 9/11 attacks? I would try and look at that belief with curiosity. I might even try and look at that belief with compassion, with empathy. And this would be difficult to do because I think we frequently come by people in our personal lives and in our professional lives who have views that are so outlandish, who are so upsetting that we feel like we cannot possibly listen to them or do them the courtesy of even hearing them out because their views are so outrageous and so problematic. However, I do think that this is actually the way to actually challenge people's views, that if you truly want to address the problem of delusional beliefs, it really is helpful to us to sort of ask the question, how do we change these beliefs from the inside out rather than from the outside in? So the illusion we have is that argument and data and evidence can change people's views. And sometimes it can. But for deeply held views, especially views that are tied up with people's emotional beliefs, it often is an ineffective way of going about it. You know, more than half a century ago, the psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated a group that believed the world was going to come to an end. And he infiltrated the group because he wanted to see what would happen to this group when the world did not come to an end. And he expected that when the world failed to come to an end, the group would say, all right, we made a mistake. We had a delusional belief. I'm sorry, and I'm going to change my mind. However, emphatically, this is not what happened. When the Day of Judgment came and, came and went, and the world did not come to an end, the group came up with all kinds of rationalizations to explain why the world had not in fact ended. And one of the rationalizations they came up with was that the various things that this group had done, this little group of believers, the things that they had done as they were preparing for the end of the world, in fact headed off the end of the world. It kept the world from ending. And Leon Festinger came up with a theory that's a theory of cognitive dissonance, which explains how it is we reconcile views when we have two competing ideas in our minds. And one of the sad conclusions of that body of research is that regularly when that happens, we will jettison the facts in favor of our loyalties, in favor of our emotional commitments.

Yeah, and it's like we're just moving the goalposts if something didn't happen the way we expected. We'll just change the circumstances to fit what we want to have happen.

Yes. And I think it's easy for us, especially when it comes to our opponents or people whom we dislike, for us to see delusions exactly as they are, as delusions. It's much harder, I think, to see delusions when those delusions are shared by people we like, people in our own communities, our friends, our families, and most especially when the delusions affect us. One of the hallmarks of the self-deceiving brain is not just its capacity to come up with self-deceptions and delusions, but to give us the illusion that what we are seeing in fact is not a delusion at all. I gave you the example of our eyes and the way we see the world. When I look at the world right now, even knowing what I know and even knowing what I just told you, that what I'm seeing is in fact not an accurate representation of the outside world, yet when I'm looking at the world right now through my open eyes, it still feels as if the world, the world that I'm seeing is the world as it is on the outside. So The hallmark of the self-deceiving brain is that it covers its tracks and keeps us from seeing delusions. The hardest person to sort of truth squad when it comes to delusions is not our political opponents. It turns out that person is ourselves.

Yeah, and there's a couple other areas that I'd like to touch on here as it relates to areas where we may be bringing delusions into the equation. So the first one is in the workplace. So let's take a company like Bridgewater Associates, which many people listening to this would be familiar with. Ray Dalio founded the company, big, big hedge fund. And he wrote a book that basically outlined his set of principles. And one of the key principles of running his organization is this idea of employing radical truth and radical transparency. And so they're trying to encourage open and honest dialogue and trying to allow the best thinking to prevail. Do you have any thoughts about in the workplace, are there some delusions that we see happen on a regular basis that you think might be useful versus someone like a Ray Dalio who says, "We're just seeking the truth. I don't care if it hurts or not.

We just want to get to the truth." Yeah, so I think organizations that are unable to see the truth clearly are often organizations that come to sorry ends. And so I sort of agree with Ray here, which is that the ability to see the truth and to be honest about the truth is actually very, very important. That, you know, my book is not making the case at all that we should jettison the truth or jettison the search for the truth or jettison all the ways in which we want to fight self-deceptions, because in fact many of those are deeply important to do. However, what I am saying is that I think we ignore the fact that there are many things that happen, including in the workplace, that involve self-deceptions that are in fact functional. Let me give you a couple of very simple examples. In our day-to-day interactions with our colleagues and coworkers, it turns out We regularly shape the truth in order to get along better with other people. If I told my colleagues and coworkers exactly what I thought about their ideas in exactly the language that might spring first to mind, and I later told them, you know, yes, I might have sounded rude when I said that, but I was just telling you the truth. It turns out that this kind of behavior in fact is not functional for organizations. In fact, it causes great harm inside organizations. All of us have had bosses and managers who don't have a filter between their brain and their mouths. You know, all of us have seen leaders and politicians and presidents who don't have a filter between their brain and the mouth. Whatever pops in their head comes out of their mouths. And we recognize that when we are subordinates to those people, that this is not an experience where we say how pleasurable it is to work with someone who's a truth teller. No, in fact, we tell ourselves, I have a cruel boss, I have a I have somebody who is— who basically has no empathy and no kindness in the workplace. And so many of the things that involve people working well together in groups involve subtleties of self-deception where we basically encourage one another and praise one another and flag the things that are positive in conversations. In the conversation that you and I are having right now, Steve, we are being kind to one another in the conversation in terms of how I'm responding to your questions, in terms of the questions you're asking me. The courtesies and good manners that we were taught when we were small children children in some ways are self-deceptions. They are in some ways perversions of the truth, but they play an extraordinarily valuable role in our daily life. And if you look at the average conversation that sometimes unfolds on social media, where people say to one another exactly what's on their minds without a filter, and then you sort of look at social media and what happens sometimes in these flame wars as people are attacking one another on Twitter, you listen to one of these conversations and at the end of it you feel I need to go and have a shower now because I feel like I've been drenched in all this muck. And you realize the importance of good communication, of empathic listening, of emotional intelligence in the workplace. So I would just say in terms of interpersonal relationships, there are robust areas of our interpersonal lives that benefit from a certain amount of self-deception. But at a larger level, many organizations also benefit, I think, from self-deception, from having beliefs about their mission, about their goals, about their purpose, about where they're headed. Many organizations often have to deal with, you know, huge travails and difficult challenges, and the faith that they have that they are actually in the right business, that they're heading in the right direction, even when the evidence suggests that they might not, are often the reason these organizations come out ahead. I just started a small business of my own. I know that anyone who has ever been an entrepreneur has many nights of self-doubt and loneliness where you're not sure if you have done the right thing or if you're making a mistake. The confidence that you have, and sometimes the delusional confidence that you have that you are on the right track, turns out to be an indispensable part of being a successful entrepreneur and running a successful organization.

Yeah, that point you were just making here about when you're on this mission, you've started your new business, and to some extent you might have to delude yourself a little bit because there's going to be some tough times. And that is a way to corral people, to get people on the same mission, the same vision, people moving in the same direction. And so it helps people feel like they're part of something larger. So I think that's absolutely key. And also, as you were talking there, it reminded me of a book from Kim Scott. You've probably heard of it. It's called "Radical Candor." And in the book, she basically tells a story about years ago when she was at Google and she had just given a presentation to the bosses there and Sheryl Sandberg was there and she did a great job. Afterwards, she was doing a debrief with Sheryl Sandberg, And Cheryl said, oh, you did this well, you did that well, and that was good, but you said, um, too many times. And Kim just kind of brushed it off. And Cheryl kept going back and said, you said, um, too many times. And Kim kept brushing it off. And finally Cheryl said, Kim, look, I guess I'm not getting through to you. When you say, um, every third word, it makes you sound stupid. And then Kim said, yep, I finally got it at that point. Well, and the reason why I want to mention that is when you talk about this idea of these niceties around work, which are these useful or functional delusions, I think that's spot on. And I think what Kim basically was saying is we need to be very candid, but you need to deliver it with care. And you can be candid as long as people know that you have their back, that you have empathy. And I think that's what you were just describing here as well about being able to deliver this with empathy?

Yeah, and I think, you know, think about the last interaction you had with your manager where you and your manager were at odds with something. Now, first of all, it's worth paying attention to the fact that there's a power differential between you and your manager, right? Your manager has more power than you. In some organizations, your manager can terminate your employment. So there's a significant power differential here between somebody who's a subordinate and somebody who's a manager. Knowing this, it's really important, I think, for managers to keep in mind how the things that they are said could come across, even if those are inadvertent. So the manager who is very short, who basically has no time to basically engage in these social niceties, who basically just says, here's the feedback I'm giving you on your report. You know, I don't stop to tell you what you did right in your presentation. I only tell you what you did wrong in your presentation. You know, the subordinate could listen to a manager like this and come away with the impression, you know, I really am failing at my job. I really don't fit in this organization. I'm getting all these signals that tell me that I'm a failure. And as a result, the subordinate might say, well, maybe I should find another job. Maybe I should look elsewhere for employment. And this could end up hurting not just the subordinate, but could end up hurting the organization. That someone who in fact is a very good fit for the organization, who just needs to get some feedback about something that he or she has done wrong and could be easily corrected, could inadvertently get the message, I don't belong in this organization. I'm an imposter in this organization. Let me look elsewhere for the organization. Many, many organizations know that one of the biggest challenges that you have in running any organization organization is not just in finding the right people for the organization, but in retaining those right people to stay with your organization. If you're a manager and you're not careful in how you talk to people and how you give feedback to people, if you believe that waving the flag of radical candor gives you license to basically be cruel to people as you talk with them, you will very quickly realize that people will not want to work for you. People will desert you. People will leave your organization. And you will end up harming the organization that you claim to love. So I would argue that smart managers, yes, absolutely, want to be able to give feedback in a way that's honest, that has candor. But you also want to frame that feedback in a way that signals to people in all kinds of ways that they are valued, that they're important, that you're able to listen to them, and that you have their back.

Yeah, absolutely. The framing's important, and having that EQ is critical. Shankar, I'd love to talk about money as well, because many of the folks listening to this deal with people, and all of us have hang-ups around money in one respect or another. So what have you found when it comes to money? What kind of delusions do we have around money?

Well, I think money is one of those constructs that in some ways is a perfect textbook example of how self-deceptions can be very harmful and how self-deceptions can be very useful. And here's what I mean. People who are unable to see their financial outlook clearly, unable to make decisions with a clear mind, with sort of using logic and rationality, often make bad decisions. And they make decisions that end up harming themselves, harming their families, harming their organizations. And so there is much to be said for seeing the world clearly when it comes to money. At the same time, money is wrapped up with all kinds of other things in our lives. It's wrapped up with our sense of status. It's wrapped up with our sense of security, the sense that you have about whether your money is safe determines whether you can sleep well at night. If I do all the things that are rational and logical with my money, but I'm not able to sleep well at night and I ask you, am I spending my money the right way? What would your answer be? Because ultimately, if you are not able to sleep well at night, if your mental health is disturbed by how you are spending your money, you might be spending your money entirely logically and rationally. But in fact, the way you're doing it might not be the right course of action for you. I know in my personal life, I've tried to find a balance between these two things. I've tried to find a balance between, you know, making decisions that are logical, that are rational, that are not overly clouded by emotion. But I've also tried to take into account what is my emotional makeup as a person? What kind of risk am I willing to tolerate as a person? The kind of risk that I'm willing to tolerate, Steve, might not be the kind of risk that you're willing to tolerate. And if you and I both need to sleep well at night, It may be that what is the ideal risk for you is not the ideal risk for me. And I think part of being a good money manager, of being able to help people with their money issues, is not just being able to look at the dollars and cents and be a good accountant and to say, you know, here's what the logical course of action should be. A good money manager, a good person who is a financial advisor, is somebody at heart, I think, who's also a good psychotherapist who understands when someone walks in the door Yes, they have a set of problems they have. They have a set of challenges they have. They have a certain amount of money they want to invest. They want advice in terms of how to invest that money. But if I don't understand them as people, if I don't understand what motivates them, if I don't understand what makes them afraid, if I don't understand what their emotional goals are, if I don't understand something about their history, their dreams, I will not be able to help them very well. And I would argue that if you are successful, the most successful money managers, the most successful people who are able to help clients are not just the people who have the technical ability to see things for exactly what they are, to see things in the most rational and logical way, but also the people who have the emotional intelligence to say, I understand that this course of action, while in fact might be optimal, might not be optimal for the person who's sitting in front of me. Let me figure out how to shape that course of action by 10% so that we can do the thing that is the most logical, but also in some ways suits where this person is emotionally.

Well, Shankar, if I didn't know better, I'd say you are one of the most successful financial advisors in the country because what you just said was so spot on with how the most successful financial advisors actually operate. And one area related to what you're just talking about that I'd love for you to just touch on too is I know you talked in your book about the power of story. And as it relates to financial advisors, Understanding the client's story, particularly their story around money, I think is critical as well. So what thoughts do you have as it relates to where story might intersect here with money?

So I think the power of stories intersects with money in all kinds of different ways. I mean, at a certain level, money itself is a story, right? I mean, so, you know, I had some Deutsche marks many, many years ago before the countries in Europe decided to form a common currency, and I forgot to to exchange my Deutsche marks for euros during the window when they were available. So I still have some Deutsche marks with me right now. And of course, right now all they are is colorful paper. They have no meaning. They have no— I can't transact those Deutsche marks anymore. And you realize when you look at those Deutsche marks that money itself, currency itself, is nothing but a story. It's a story that I choose to believe in and you choose to believe in. And the fact that all of us believe in the story is what gives money its value. So the story of money is in fact what money is. Money is in fact nothing more than a story that we've all agreed by common convention to agree on. But stories intersect our lives with money in all kinds of other ways, including how we think of money. So how we were raised, you know, the experiences we had growing up, how our parents thought about money, the setbacks that we've had in our life end up shaping how we think about money in really profound ways. You know, all of us who've seen movies about the aftermath of the Great Depression know that people who lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s in the United States, you know, even when, you know, good times rolled around in the 1950s and 1960s, people who lived through the Great Depression didn't think of their money the way that other people thought of their money, because in fact, the trauma of what had happened during the Great Depression stayed with them. When we think about our lives and whether we're successful people, Part of the story we tell ourselves that has to do with money is not just how we are doing in absolute terms, but how we're doing in relative terms. Our conceptions about whether we are doing well in life are very closely tied in to how we think other people are doing in their lives. Psychologists have sometimes run these experiments where you ask people, would you rather live in a world where, you know, you are making $100,000 a year and everyone else is making $50,000 a year? Or would you rather live in a world where you are making $200,000 a year, but everyone else is making half a million dollars a year? And of course, the rational thing to say is you would rather live in a world where you are making $200,000 rather than $100,000, because that's twice as much money. But repeatedly, when people have run these experiments around the world, people say they prefer to live in the world where they are making less money, so long as in relative terms they are making more money than the people around them. So this is another example of how when someone is engaging with somebody who's coming to you as a, as a client in terms of financial advice, understanding how the stories that they have in their lives, their relationship to money, what money means to them, what money means in terms of their security, what money means to them as a status symbol. These things are integral to how people are thinking of money, because in fact, those stories ultimately are what drive our relationship to money, how we spend our money, how we save our money. How we invest our money.

Shankar, that is so well put. So I appreciate you sharing that. Well, as we wrap up here, is there anything else that you want to mention that we haven't talked about yet? And I also want you to mention your book, how people can get that and how people can reach out to you. I know you've got a great podcast called Hidden Brain as well that I certainly encourage folks to subscribe to. So any final thought here?

That's right. So anyone who'd like to tune in to Hidden Brain, we're available on every podcast app, Spotify, Apple, your favorite podcast app. We're a weekly show that explores human behavior and the unseen patterns of human behavior. If you'd like another conversation about my book, Useful Delusions, that's in the Hidden Brain feed. But really, I think the one message I would leave people with— both this is true for my book and it's also true for the podcast that I host— the two things that I try and hold as sort of my north stars are the values of compassion and the values of curiosity. And I think in our daily lives, the more compassion and curiosity we can exhibit, even when that comes to the delusional beliefs of other people that we find upsetting and dangerous, I think we're going to be more effective in combating dangerous delusions and also more understanding about the delusions in our lives that are functional.

Compassion and curiosity. That's a great way to end the show here, Shankar. So I really appreciate you again being on the show, and congratulations on the new book.

Thank you for the opportunity, Steve. It's been a pleasure and a delight to talk to you.

My key takeaway from my conversation with Shankar is I now have a new lens through which to view people who I think are deceiving themselves. I can approach them with compassion and curiosity and try to discern what psychological benefit are they getting from that delusion? What underlying needs does it address? And are there other ways to address those needs that won't be destructive. All right. That's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at Barrons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe. This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions. With wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.