Redirect Quotes

“Susan Sontag said in her journal, “I write to define myself—an act of self-creation—part of [the] process of becoming.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“The important thing is to pursue goals that give us a sense of autonomy, effectiveness, and mastery. If we can do so in a way that draws us closer to other people, so much the better, given how important social relationships are to happiness.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By

“Consider a study of college women who took a difficult math test along with two other students. In one condition, all three of the students were women. In another condition, two were women and one was a man. In a third condition, one was a woman and two were men. This seemingly arbitrary gender composition of the group had a dramatic effect on the women’s math performance: they got 70 percent of the answers right when in an all-female group, 64 percent when one of the other group members was male, and 58 percent when two of the other group members were male. The gender composition of the group had no effect on women’s performance on a verbal test, suggesting that the presence of men in the math groups triggered the stereotype that women are not as good at math.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By

“Black students at a predominantly white university, for example, might be particularly prone to feel that they don’t fit in or belong at that university, especially if they experience an academic setback, as many students do in their first semester. If so, then an intervention designed to redirect their narratives from “I don’t fit in here” to “Everyone experiences bumps in the road” might increase their sense of belonging and improve their academic performance. To find out, researchers conducted a study with black and white first-year students at a predominantly white university. In the treatment condition, the students received statistics and read interviews with upper-class students indicating that most students worry that they don’t belong when they begin college, but that these worries lessen over time. To reinforce this message, the students wrote a speech illustrating how this lesson applied to them; that is, how their own worries about belonging were likely to be temporary. They delivered this speech in front a video camera, ostensibly so that it could be shown to future students at their school. Participants in the control group underwent the same procedure, except that they learned that social and political attitudes change over the course of one’s college career—they heard nothing about changes in one’s sense of belonging. The entire session lasted only an hour. Yet, as with other story-editing interventions, it had dramatic long-term effects on the black students’ performance and well-being. Those who got the message about belonging, relative to those in the control group, believed they fit in better at college, became more engaged in college academically (by studying more, attending more review sessions, and asking more questions in class), and achieved better grades in the rest of their college careers. Not only that, but on a questionnaire they completed right before they graduated, black students who had received the “belonging” intervention reported that they were in better health, had visited a doctor fewer times, and were happier than did black students in the control group. The “belonging” message had no effect on the white students, because most of them already felt that they fit in at their university.22”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By

“We can dismiss one claim about the achievement gap outright: there is no credible evidence for innate differences in intelligence between racial groups. I will not summarize all the evidence against the hereditarian view, because Richard Nisbett has done so cogently in his book Intelligence and How to Get It. Here are a couple of the most telling findings: first, if there were genetic differences in intelligence between people of African and European descent, then the more ancestors a person has from Africa, the lower his or her IQ should be, on average. Several studies have tested this hypothesis by, for example, measuring people’s racial heritage with blood tests and correlating that with their IQs. Overwhelmingly, these studies show no relationship between racial ancestry and intelligence. Second, the gap between blacks and whites on IQ tests and standardized tests narrowed substantially in the fifteen-year period from 1975 to 1990, which is much too rapid a change to be accounted for by changes in the gene pool. And finally, there is ample evidence that environmental factors are completely responsible for the differences between the races in IQ and standardized tests.2”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“One study, for example, conveyed information about injunctive norms by associating drinking with an unpopular group, thereby implying that only “uncool” people like to drink a lot. Researchers at Stanford University figured that many students beginning their first year would not want to be associated with older, geeky grad students who spend all their time in the library. At the beginning of the academic year, the researchers posted flyers in a freshman dorm that showed a graduate student holding an alcoholic drink. “Lots of graduate students at Stanford drink and lots of them are sketchy,” the flyer said. “So think when you drink… Nobody wants to be mistaken for this guy.” In another freshman dorm, the researchers posted flyers that portrayed the negative health effects of drinking alcohol but made no mention of graduate students. Then, two weeks later, the students in both dorms completed a survey on which they reported how many alcoholic drinks they had had in the previous week. They also indicated how much they would want other people to think that they were like graduate students. It turned out that the “geeky graduate student” flyer had a dramatic effect on the drinking of students who did not want to be associated with graduate students. Among this group of freshmen, those in the “geeky” flyer condition had only had two drinks the previous week, whereas those in the health flyer condition had six drinks the previous week. (The flyers didn’t have any effect on freshmen who admired grad students; interestingly, they didn’t drink much to begin with.) Young people have a keen eye for what their peers approve of, and associating drinking with a geeky, disapproved-of group proved to be a powerful deterrent.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“Researchers in California used the social norms approach to try to get people to reduce their use of electricity. They took readings from the electricity meters at 290 houses twice within a two-week period, in order to get a baseline measure of how much electricity each house was consuming. Then they left a flyer on the doorknob of each house that showed how much electricity that household had been using and the average amount of electricity that their neighbors were using. Think about what this would be like: you come home one day and see the flyer on your doorknob, and read that you are using more electricity than your neighbors. “Whoa,” you might think. “I guess I’m more of an energy hog than I thought.” This probably makes you feel a little embarrassed, and so you stop leaving lights on when you leave a room and maybe even use your air conditioning a little less. This is just what the researchers found: people who discovered that they were above-average electricity users decreased their use of electricity over the next few weeks. But what about the people who found out that they were using less electricity than their neighbors? The feedback had the opposite effect, leading to an increase in power use. “Why should I skimp on the air conditioning,” these folks seemed to say, “when the Joneses and the Smiths are pumping out a lot more cool air than I am?” Thus we see the danger of social norms campaigns: they can backfire among people who find out that they are doing better than average. Perceived norms are a powerful thing. If we think we’re conserving more energy than others, we slack off on our electricity use; if we find out we are drinking less than others, we might down a few more beers at the next party.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“D.A.R.E. doesn’t work. A number of well-controlled experiments have shown that the program has no effect on students’ use of tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs. In 2003, the United States General Accounting Office surveyed the evidence and reached the same conclusion. (Apparently, the White House doesn’t pay close attention to reports from the General Accounting Office, or at least not this one.) Amazing amounts of time, effort, and money (more than one billion dollars annually) have been devoted to a program that was not adequately tested and, when it was, turned out to be ineffective.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“As we have seen, there is nothing like a good experiment to settle the question, and researchers in the Netherlands obliged by experimentally manipulating the existence of public signs of lawlessness and observing whether this influenced people’s criminal behavior. In one study, for example, they put a five-euro bill in an envelope that had a cellophane window and placed the envelope halfway out of a mailbox, so that the bill was clearly visible to passersby. Then, from a hidden location, they observed how many passersby stole the envelope. When there were no visible signs of lawlessness, only 13 percent of the passersby gave into temptation and pocketed the envelope. But when the researchers added signs of lawlessness—graffiti painted on the mailbox or litter scattered on the ground below—this percentage doubled. This study shows that signs of disorder, such as graffiti and litter, can cause people to reinterpret a situation as one in which other kinds of disorder are permissible, such as stealing money. People are highly sensitive to social norms (information about what other people are doing and what they approve of), and subtle indicators of these norms can have dramatic effects on people’s behavior (we will encounter this lesson again in the next chapter). When there are signs that lawlessness is the norm, people are more likely to act lawlessly.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“Why does taking part in a scared-straight program make kids more likely to commit crimes? The story-editing approach suggests an answer, by asking how these programs change kids’ interpretations of why they should stay out of trouble. The problem is that the programs provide kids with external motivation—wanting to avoid the horrors of prison—that can, paradoxically, undermine their internal motivation to take the straight path. A number of years ago, Daniel Lassiter and I demonstrated this phenomenon in a two-session experiment with college students.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“A review of seven experimental tests that measured how likely participants and nonparticipants were to commit crimes, in time periods ranging from three to fifteen months after a scared-straight intervention, found that the kids who attended the interventions were more likely to commit crimes than were kids in the control groups in every single study.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“The moral of all of this is what the social psychologist Mark Lepper calls the minimal sufficiency principle. If the goal is to get kids to internalize desired attitudes and values, then parents should use threats and rewards that are minimally sufficient to get kids to do the desired behaviors, but not so strong that the kids view the threats or rewards as the reason they are acting that way. Minimally sufficient threats and rewards are an effective story-editing technique, convincing kids that they are doing the right thing because they believe in doing the right thing. Although this is great in theory, I have to say that in practice it isn’t always easy to pull off. The problem is that we don’t always know in advance what a minimally sufficient threat or reward will be. How much of a reward is enough to get a preschooler to practice the piano? How much of a threat is sufficient to get a teenager to avoid smoking? Further, there is a danger to erring on the low side. If the threats or rewards are too weak, our kids won’t do what we want them to do. This can backfire, because the kids might become even more enamored of the undesirable behavior. If teens decide to smoke even though their parents would be annoyed, for example, they are likely to infer that smoking must be a really attractive thing. Similarly, if they decide not to practice the piano, even though they could have gotten some candy for doing so, they are likely to infer that piano playing must be really boring. The best approach is to start with threats or rewards that are strong enough to get kids to do the desired behavior, but then, on future occasions, dial them back a bit, making it harder for kids to attribute their actions to the threat or reward. Another possible objection to the minimal sufficiency principle is that it might seem devious or controlling. Is it right to “trick” our kids into thinking they are doing something because they want to? Parents will have to decide this one for themselves, though in my view it is our job to get our kids to internalize desired attitudes and values. The irony is that this can be done more effectively with mild threats and small rewards than with severe threats and large rewards. Isn’t it more controlling to take an overly authoritarian stance, one that will ultimately lead to less internalization of desired attitudes and values?”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“Although this intervention was successful, it required facilitators to guide people through the exercises. Fortunately, there is also a simple exercise that you can do on your own. Here’s how it works: Think about your life in the future and write for twenty minutes, on four consecutive days, about how “everything has gone as well as it possibly could” and your life dreams have come true. (The exact instructions are at the end of this chapter, on page 73.) College students who completed this “best possible self” writing exercise, compared to students who were randomly assigned to write about a neutral topic, reported greater optimism on the questionnaire reproduced on page 65 and greater satisfaction with their lives—not just right away but three weeks later. And, in the five months following the study, the students who had written about their best possible selves visited the health center significantly less often than did students who wrote about the neutral topic.24”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“What really sets optimists apart is that they have better coping strategies in the face of adversity—they confront problems rather than avoid them, plan better for the future, focus on what they can control and change, and persist when they encounter obstacles instead of giving up. It is important to add that optimists do not have their heads buried in the sand. Obviously it would not be good for people to smoke cigarettes with abandon, eat whatever they like, and drive 120 miles per hour on the interstate because they are convinced that nothing bad will happen to them. Instead, optimists see the world the way it really is and recognize the obstacles in their path, but also believe that they can overcome these obstacles by planning for them and redoubling their efforts when they fail. In short, optimists don’t just sit back and think positive thoughts—they have an adaptive, healthy way of coping with the world.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“Researchers followed a sample of young adults who had a 50 percent chance of getting Huntington’s disease and who agreed to take the genetic test. The participants completed measures of depression and psychological well-being before they knew the results of the genetic test, right after they got the results, six months later, and one year later. Those who got the bad news were, of course, initially devastated, reporting considerably more distress and depression than did those who got the good news. At the six-month and one-year points, however, the two groups were indistinguishable—those who knew that they would die at a relatively young age were no more depressed, and expressed just as much well-being, as did those who knew that they were disease-free. The participants who learned they had the gene received the worst news one can get, and yet within six months they were as happy as anyone else. Even more striking were the results of a third group—those for whom the test was inconclusive or who had chosen not to take the test. At the beginning of the study, before any genetic testing had begun, this group was as happy and well-adjusted as the others. But as time went by, this group did the worst: at the one-year mark, they exhibited significantly more depression, and lower well-being, than those in the other two groups—including the ones who had found out that they had inherited the Huntington gene. In other words, people who were 100 percent sure that they would get the disease and die prematurely were happier and less depressed than people who were 50 percent sure that they were healthy and disease-free.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“What kinds of perspectives make us happy? Research reveals three key ingredients: meaning, hope, and purpose. First, it helps to have answers to the most basic questions about human existence and our place in the world, in a way that allows us to make sense of why bad things sometimes occur. Second, it helps to be optimistic—not because positive thoughts magically attract things to us, but because optimistic people cope better with adversity. Third, it helps to view ourselves as strong protagonists who set our own goals and make progress toward them; in other words, to have a sense of purpose. The good news is that there are relatively simple story-editing exercises any of us can do to shape our views in these directions.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“If I were to give one piece of advice for how to be happier, it would be to carve out more time to spend with friends and loved ones, because, as we’ve seen, the best predictor of happiness is the quality of our social relationships.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“the idea that material riches make us happy has been around for a long time. In fact, the original definition of the word “happiness,” traced back to 1530 by The Oxford English Dictionary, was “good fortune or luck in life,” which reflected the belief that happiness comes from external circumstances largely outside of a person’s control. Psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, who has examined the historical definitions of happiness, notes that it was not until the 1961 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary that the definition of happiness as “good fortune; good luck; prosperity” was deemed archaic. Rather than uncontrollable things that happen to people, happiness came to mean a pleasant internal state or the satisfaction of one’s desires. Oishi suggests that because life became more controllable over time, happiness was no longer viewed as the result of whims of fortune but something that people could strive for and achieve.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“There are several well-known studies that fell into this trap and yielded misleading results, sometimes with life-and-death consequences. One was a survey that asked thousands of women questions about their health and whether they were taking hormone replacement therapy at menopause. The researchers found that the women who used hormone replacement therapy had fewer heart attacks than those who did not, after statistically controlling for a host of potential confounding variables. Many physicians relied on this study to recommend hormone therapy for their patients. But a later clinical trial, in which women were randomly assigned to receive hormone therapy or not, yielded the exact opposite results: hormone therapy increased the risk of heart attacks. It now appears that women in the first study who chose to undergo hormone replacement therapy were healthier at the outset in ways that the researchers did not measure, which led to the misleading results. Only by randomly assigning people to conditions can researchers be confident that they have controlled for all possible confounding variables and have identified a true causal effect.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“Once people have gone through a program designed to help them in some way, there is a tendency for them to misremember how well off they were before the program began, thereby overestimating the effects of the intervention. One experiment, for example, found that a study-skills program had no effect on college students—after the program their study skills were no better than those of students who hadn’t taken part in the program. But the participants believed that the program had been effective, because they mistakenly recalled that their skills had been much worse before the program began.6”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“Fortunately, most medical treatments are now tested scientifically before being widely implemented. But the same cannot be said of attempts to solve the major social and behavioral problems of our day, such as racial prejudice, adolescent behavior problems, drug use, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The same goes for advice given in countless self-help books about how to live a happier and more fulfilling life, and for parenting books that tell us how to raise our children. Many “solutions” are like nineteenth-century medicine—treatments that seem to make sense but are ineffective or even do more harm than good. Some diversity-training programs, for example, are like blistering—they are somewhat painful to endure and have no beneficial effects. Some well-known programs to prevent drug use and delinquency are like bloodletting—they actually do harm, increasing the likelihood that teens will experiment with cigarettes and alcohol and commit crimes. In the chapters to come I will confer a “blistering” or “bloodletting” award on many current programs in order to identify the ones that don’t work or do harm. Even when effective approaches are discovered, often they are not widely disseminated, in part because they violate common sense. Again, a medical analogy is apt: who would have thought, until research showed it to be so, that giving people mold from bread would be an effective way to treat infections? I hope to show that, unlike the many ineffective behavioral interventions that are in use today, the story-editing approach is like penicillin: it may violate common sense, but it works.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“To summarize, the story-editing approach tries to change people’s personal interpretations of themselves and the social world in ways that make them happier and lead to more desirable behaviors. It is a family of approaches developed by social psychologists that includes writing exercises, such as the one developed by James Pennebaker; the story-prompting approach, in which people are directed toward new ways of explaining and understanding their behavior to replace self-defeating thinking patterns; and the do good, be good strategy, in which people are encouraged to create new interpretations by first changing their behavior. The key to each approach is that people end up with a more desirable way of viewing themselves that builds on and reinforces itself, leading to sustained change. To be sure, this approach is not the cure for all societal problems. No one would argue that the cure for homelessness is to get homeless people to interpret their problem differently. Sometimes big structural changes are needed to attack deep-seated problems. But story editing can help solve many vexing problems, even some seemingly deep-seated ones.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“It is worth noting, though, that kids who have been spanked or slapped are bad at what psychologists call “moral internalization.” Rather than learning that “I shouldn’t hit my little sister because that’s the wrong thing to do,” kids learn that “I shouldn’t hit my little sister because Mom will slap me if I do.” This means that the child won’t hit his little sister when his mom is around, but what happens when she is out of the room or at work? Watch out—the kid who behaves only to avoid Mom’s wrath is now free to unload on his sister. Further, his mother has taught him that violence is a reasonable way to try to control someone else’s behavior, so why shouldn’t he use it himself? Studies have shown that kids are excellent imitators of the techniques other people use to get what they want, including aggression. In short, many parents who use corporal punishment focus too much on controlling their children’s behavior and too little on what they are doing to their kids’ narratives. Ultimately, we want our kids to internalize appropriate values and attitudes, rather than obeying in order to avoid being punished.10”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“back to the time and place of the experience you just recalled and see the scene in your mind’s eye. Now take a few steps back. Move away from the situation to a point where you can now watch the event unfold from a distance and see yourself in the event … As you continue to watch the situation unfold to your distant self, try to understand his/her feelings. Why did he (she) have those feelings?”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“According to at least one study, that would be the wrong decision. Researchers followed a sample of young adults who had a 50 percent chance of getting Huntington’s disease and who agreed to take the genetic test. The participants completed measures of depression and psychological well-being before they knew the results of the genetic test, right after they got the results, six months later, and one year later. Those who got the bad news were, of course, initially devastated, reporting considerably more distress and depression than did those who got the good news. At the six-month and one-year points, however, the two groups were indistinguishable—those who knew that they would die at a relatively young age were no more depressed, and expressed just as much well-being, as did those who knew that they were disease-free. The participants who learned they had the gene received the worst news one can get, and yet within six months they were as happy as anyone else. Even more striking were the results of a third group—those for whom the test was inconclusive or who had chosen not to take the test. At the beginning of the study, before any genetic testing had begun, this group was as happy and well-adjusted as the others. But as time went by, this group did the worst: at the one-year mark, they exhibited significantly more depression, and lower well-being, than those in the other two groups—including the ones who had found out that they had inherited the Huntington gene. In other words, people who were 100 percent sure that they would get the disease and die prematurely were happier and less depressed than people who were 50 percent sure that they were healthy and disease-free.”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

“I don’t mean to nitpick, but there are a few questions that come to mind about this scientific explanation of the law of attraction. How, exactly, does sending out thought frequencies make something materialize in our lives? Let’s say I have my heart set on a new wide-screen TV that is sitting in the showroom of my local electronics dealer. I ask the universe for the TV, believe that I will get it, and receive positive thoughts and feelings about it. My positive thought frequencies zoom out of my head and into the showroom, and because they are magnetic, the TV moves closer to me. But wait a minute—does it actually inch closer each day? Won’t the store personnel be a little suspicious when they arrive in the morning and find that the TV has moved to the loading dock? And how exactly does the TV get into my living room? Does it swoop in through the chimney like Santa delivering presents on Christmas Eve? Aren’t there a few unresolved questions here?”
― Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change