Preet Bharara:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay tuned, I’m Preet Bharara.

Maya Shankar:

Even if we do decide to hold ourselves up and keep the same job forever, change will get all of us because that’s just definitionally true if we are living on this planet, right? Whether we like it or not, we all have to reckon with the fact that change will happen in our lives.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Maya Shankar. She’s a cognitive scientist and the creator, executive producer and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, which won Apple’s 2021 Best Show of the Year. Shankar’s study of cognitive Science took her to Oxford on a road scholarship and then onto the White House where she was senior advisor in the Obama administration. There she founded and served as chair of the White House Behavioral Science team. Her team developed ways to apply cognitive science to complex policy issues. Shankar joins the show to discuss how our brains work, how we make decisions relate to one another’s beliefs and handle big changes in our lives. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. Now, let’s get to your questions. By the way, as a reminder, you don’t have to tweet or email your questions to stay tuned, you can call our number 669-24 Preet. That’s 669-247-7338. Here’s a question from caller Miguel.

Miguel Munos:

Hey, Preet. My name’s Miguel Munos. I’m calling from Los Angeles and here’s what I’d like to know. It looks like Donald Trump is being investigated for two unrelated crimes. One is the January 6th insurrection, and the other is for holding onto classified documents that he was not entitled to hold. What I’d like to know is if he gets indicted for both of these, are these going to be handled in the same trial or is it more likely that each will be tried separately? I have no idea how that would work on unrelated charges. Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

So Miguel, that’s a great question. Once again, I just have to remind ourselves we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There’s not been an indictment or a charge against Donald Trump for any of the two matters, much less a trial scheduled. And who knows when a trial would ultimately happen? Now, as I’ve said before, and it should be clear, as you point out in your voicemail, the two matters are very distinct and separate from each other, right? The Mar-a-Lago documents have a certain set of witnesses, have certain legal issues and certain potential charges associated with that conduct. And very separately and in a different timeframe, you have the issue of the January 6th insurrection.

As I’ve also said, I think that the timeline with respect to both of those matters is quite different. So on the Mar-a-Lago documents, I just think it’s an easier matter to bring it to closure. Fewer witnesses, fewer issues, fewer legal, I think, controversies, I assume that’ll be done in the near return. With respect to the January 6th events, partly because I think the Justice Department got a late start, and also because there are many, many more witnesses, I think there are more complicated legal issues that will take some additional time to run down. I don’t expect a decision on the January 6th matter for many months given where the Justice Department is and when they started.

So for those reasons, I think with respect to these two matters, they would be handled in separate charging instruments and there would be separate trials simply because of, as an initial matter, because the timeline for making the decision I think is so different. But your general question is a good one. And ordinarily, to charge an individual with multiple offenses in a single indictment usually requires that there be some relationship, some overlapping conduct.

There’s in fact a federal rule of criminal procedure that I went back and looked at once again, that answers your question. The rule says basically for an indictment to charge a defendant in separate counts with two or more offenses, they must be of the same or similar character or based on the same act or transaction, or are connected with or constitute parts of a common scheme or plan. So you might imagine it’s common in federal criminal practice to chart somebody in the same indictment for a robbery and also in a different offense in the same indictment for a gun offense, particularly if the gun was used in connection with the robbery. You might also see a heroin conspiracy charge in an indictment and also cocaine conspiracy charge in the indictment because even though those are separate crimes and different drugs, there’s overlapping conduct of a similar character.

On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t charge someone in a single indictment with something like a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and also insider trading. Those are two who different things. And even if they happen in the same time period, you probably wouldn’t charge them together. Now, the issue gets more complicated, both with respect to Donald Trump, and as a general matter in federal criminal practice, if you have multiple defendants, right? There’s a rule with respect to putting multiple defendants in a single indictment as well. The rule says the indictment may charge two or more defendants if they’re alleged to have participated in the same act or transaction or in the same series of act or transactions constituting an offense or offenses.

And the rule goes on to say the defendants may be charged in one or more counts together or separately, but all defendants need not be charged in each count. So for example, you might have a RICO, a racketeering indictment that charges many different people who are involved in very different acts in support of the criminal enterprise. Maybe some people are involved in extortion, maybe some people are involved in gambling, maybe other people are involved in homicides. And those all would be chargeable in the same indictment under the rules that I’ve just described. So with respect to the Trump case, different indictments because of timing and also their separate and different kinds of conduct. But good question.

This question comes in a tweet from SkinMD13 who asks, very simply, “Was the special counsel needed/necessary?” So let me answer that quickly. Joyce Van and I discussed this issue with great length on the Cafe Insider Podcast. My view is that the special counsel was not necessary. In other words, it was not legally necessary. It was not morally necessary. It was not ethically necessary. I think it makes some sense. And the justification given by Merrick Garland is reasonable to me, given the fact that Donald Trump has announced candidacy for the presidency and the desire to have some optical remove for the person who’s making the ultimate decision. I guess, a special counsel makes sense. And Jack Smith, based on my experience and my knowledge of him and my office’s relationship with him in dealings with him is competent, thoughtful, has integrity, and is a good trial prosecutor and investigator.

So if you’re going to pick someone, Jack Smith seems like a very good choice. I think also it gives Jack Smith a measure of protection because under the special counsel guidelines, he is not to be fired or dismissed without cause. If the administration changes and the cases are still pending beyond this administration, maybe Jack Smith will be able to continue doing what he’s doing, presuming that nobody can fire him for cause and he hasn’t given any cause to be removed from his position. I also think to the extent people are concerned about a delay, in the investigation, I don’t know that that’s a claim that has any merit. I think Jack Smith can get up to speed quickly. The teams that are already in place will continue to do their work as he gets up to speed. And if anything, maybe combining both matters under one roof, under one person who’s overseeing them both might in the medium term or in the long term speed things up.

This question comes in a tweet from Twitter user, Nathan Gibbs, who says, “Beyond the legal discussions, I always enjoy hearing anecdotes from your family life. What does Thanksgiving look like in your home?” Well, thanks for the question. For 20 some odd years now, my family convenes at my sister-in-law’s home in the suburbs of Chicago. So we go to the Midwest and my wife and three kids will be there, and my sister-in-law and her family will be there. My other in-laws will be there, my brother-in-law and his kids. And we have, I think a traditional Thanksgiving, much as you would expect. We have Turkey. If you want to know my favorite things, I like Turkey, but I like the dark meat better. I like a lot of gravy. I don’t love cranberry sauce. And my favorite part is dessert. And for dessert, I favor the pies, not the cakes either apple, but even better pecan pie. And even better than that chocolate pecan pie.

I’m also not a big fan of stuffing. We don’t do anything particular or unique on Thanksgiving. But what I think is special about it, as I hope it is for all of you, that you get time to relax and be with family, and most importantly, give thanks for what you have, which I try to do on most days. But you forget sometimes. And Thanksgiving is a time to remember to do that, to count your blessings, because I guarantee you, no matter how tough your life is and what’s going on, you have things to cherish and be thankful for. And I know I do every day, but particularly in a group with my family on Thanksgiving. Please have a great one.

We’ll be right back with my conversation with Maya Shankar.

Why do people make certain decisions? How can you effectively change someone’s mind? These are the kinds of questions cognitive scientist Maya Shankar investigates in her work, a former Obama advisor and the current host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. Shankar applies what she knows about human behavior to important policy initiatives. Maya Shankar, welcome to the show. It’s a treat to have you.

Maya Shankar:

Thanks so much for having me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

So it’s nice to welcome a fellow podcaster, but that’s not the main thing you do, although you’ve had great success, and we’ll talk about that in a few minutes. If my research is correct, you are a cognitive scientist, is that right?

Maya Shankar:

I am, yes.

Preet Bharara:

So could you, let’s start out by you explaining what a cognitive scientist is and what a cognitive scientist generally does.

Maya Shankar:

So my focus is on the science of human behavior, and this can include how it is that we develop our attitudes and beliefs about the world. It can be about how we make decisions. It’s really an umbrella category for helping us to understand the human condition. Cognitive science in particular is interdisciplinary nature. So when I was an undergrad, for example, I took classes in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology. And the goal in doing that is to really try to come up with a comprehensive understanding of how it is that the human mind works in the way that it does. And scientists along the way realized, we’re quite limited if we just look at the mind from one, the perspective of one discipline. It can be quite edifying for us to expand that and really take a multidisciplinary approach to understanding our behavior.

Preet Bharara:

And how young or old would you say the field is?

Maya Shankar:

So it’s carried lots of names, certainly decades.

Preet Bharara:

Decades, but that’s fairly new in the history of science, is it not?

Maya Shankar:

Obviously, there have been people who’ve been studying parts of this space, but my exposure anyway to it, I remember when I was… so I was at Yale for undergrad, and I think the cognitive science major was only two years old when I joined. It was a relatively new perspective and a new approach to the mind. And I was so fascinated because when you’re interested in the mind, you don’t want to have to pick and choose what discipline you latch onto. So this was a very exciting, when I joined college, I think it was a very exciting time for the field.

Preet Bharara:

No, it sounds like it has been. So I want to ask you about something that is central to your thinking and your writing, and certainly it’s a major part of your podcast, which is called A Slight Change of Plans, and that is change. And my first question is, so one of the things that I think you talk about and think about is the degree to which people are resistant to change, don’t handle change while they get stuck in a groove or in a rut depending on your perspective. And my first question is, do you have a normative view on change? In other words, if someone decides to live a static life and have the same job at a factory or an insurance company and live on the same block and in the same house for years and years and years and pursues the same hobbies, is there something not good, or okay or right about that?

Maya Shankar:

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that actually. I feel like at the end of the day, we are trying to optimize for our own mental states given our understanding of our psychology. And you’re talking to someone right now who’s very averse to change. And that was actually part of my impetus for starting A Slight Change of Plans, which is that change really scares me. And I am a creature of habit. I started this podcast because even if we do decide to hold ourselves up and keep the same job forever, change will get all of us because that’s just definitionally true if we are living on this planet, right? Whether we like it or not, we all have to reckon with the fact that change will happen in our lives. And my goal in studying this topic was to figure out how our identities transform in the face of change.

So how the big changes in our lives change us. And you arrive at different conclusions depending on the guests that you’re talking to. But the goal of the show really is to help people build a toolkit for thinking about change differently and thinking about different strategies for resilience, and also understanding some of the factors that underlie our anxiety. So one example of this is we as humans just really hate uncertainty. And there’s a really fascinating study in cognitive science that I think shows this well, people who knew that they had a 50% chance of getting an electric shock were far more stressed than those who were told they had a 100% chance of getting an electric shock. We’d rather be certain that a bad thing is going to happen than have to deal with any ambiguity or any uncertainty around what might happen. That’s helpful for us all to know as we’re navigating our lives and realizing how much we might be trying to stave off feelings of uncertainty, but that might be maladaptive.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to go back to my example of the decades long insurance salesman or farmer who lives a fairly static life. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, obviously, unless I’m guessing you would say that in the particular example, that person is not optimizing for happiness. In other words, if they’re doing that because they’re so resistant to change and have failed to take opportunities to do other things because of an over resistance to change, then it’s maybe not so great. But if someone is doing it because they have a fully content existence and life, then it’s okay. And if you agree with all that, my question is how does the person who has had a fairly static life, or at least for some period of time had a static life know that they should make a change or not?

Maya Shankar:

I think that the thing that I’m finding challenging is the notion that anyone can have a quote static life. Because even if externally things are static, right? Same job, same partner, same kids, same home, most of the change that we experience is internal change. It’s shifts in perspective. It’s mindset change, it’s transformative change that happens because of a conversation we have with another person or a book that we read or an event that happened in the world that changes how we identify with others or an illness.

So it’s hard for me to even imagine what you’re describing because in creating this show, right, certainly it’s about the external changes we experience, but much more. So it’s about the internal things that shift within us. And those things can shift irrespective of how great the external change is. That said, if there are people who are looking to inspire more changes in their lives and fear is a reason why they’re not pursuing those things, which I think was part of your question.

One piece of reassurance that I can give to those listening is that by and large, every person I’ve interviewed for the show has in some way felt that they’ve grown from a change experience or that they’ve been humbled by a change experience, or they’ve developed a deeper sense of self understanding as a result of a change. Or they have revealed to themselves features of their personality that were previously undiscovered because the situation never called for it. There is an element of discovery that accompanies every change that can fill us with some degree of delight and optimism and curiosity. And I sometimes remember that when I’m resistant to a change, but then I remember that it can really alter me in a profound way that at a minimum leads me to understand myself a bit better, even if he historically, there are some negatives, a deep in self understanding is enriching in its own right.

Preet Bharara:

I was going to ask about that, the role of, and the importance of, and the connection to self-awareness in terms of dealing with change or deciding to make a change or coping with an involuntary change that’s imposed on you, what’s the role and how important is self-awareness in that?

Maya Shankar:

It’s very important, and I think one of the reasons I’ve been interested in the psychology of change as an academic and then now as more of a practitioner of the field is because we have so many blind spots when it comes to our self understanding. In many ways the field of behavioral science reveals the field of cognitive science reveals that there are so many surprising factors that influence our judgments and our decisions and our understanding of the world around us. A lot of times, and this is the most fun part of making A Slight Change of Plans, I’m in conversation with a guest and together we discover something together, whether it was a blind spot, a misunderstanding, a fresh insight or realization that they have when they see their story from a slightly different vantage point.

And those are incredibly fun energizing moments because since awareness is what allows us to make better decisions in the future, right? So that kind of it’s self-awareness, wonderful, when we can revisit our stories and try to figure out where we’ve gotten things wrong and my guests have allowed me to see that I’ve gotten things wrong, right? I’ve equally humbled in the face of their insights, because I realize, oh my gosh, I’ve been thinking about this change in my life so differently than my guest. I should probably revisit it through this new lens.

Preet Bharara:

Self-awareness is not something I’ve studied as a science, and I’m not a cognitive scientist, but just as I’ve done different jobs and worked with different people and had different leadership leadership positions as years have gone by, I think more and more about the importance of self-awareness, not just for the purpose of making better decisions, as you say, but also to socialize better, to be a better leader, to understand other people. Part of self-awareness is understanding how you come across part of self self-awareness also, I think, and tell me what you think of this relates to how you conduct yourself morally.

I think all the studies show that human beings vastly overstate how they’re going to react in certain circumstances, vastly overstate their moral compass when it comes down to it, as we know from the Milgram experiment and other experiments at Yale where you went, if that’s all true, and I wonder what your reaction is to that or if I’m oversimplifying it, and then if self-awareness is so important, how do you go about becoming more self-aware?

Maya Shankar:

Morality is really complex because there’s so much variation even across cultures in terms of, I think Dan Pink talks about this as what our moral taste buds are, which is a phrase that I really like. Self-awareness is, it’s a challenging thing in general because you might discover a lot of things that you don’t like. There might be some dark truths. I think that’s why, most of us are like, “I can’t imagine life without my phone, lest I be let alone with my thoughts for more than 25 milliseconds.”

Preet Bharara:

I may hypothetically be one of those people.

Maya Shankar:

I know I may hypothetically be one of those people too. I think there’s also a lot of genetic variation in how self-aware people are just by nature. I think there’s a liability to being really, I’m one of those people who as a kid had a very high level of what I’d call metacognitive awareness. So I would feel things and think things, and then I would almost immediately recognize that I’d felt those things and thought those things. And in some ways that can actually lead to a little bit less joy in the moment because you’re so aware of the fact that your brain is processing all of these things. I’m a very self-critical person as a result of self-awareness. So there’s definitely a liability to it.

In my mind, the fastest path to building a greater self-awareness is when you hear stories from other people that create a safe space to admit to things that no one really wants to say out loud. And that’s actually why in my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, the goal is to marry the science with storytelling because I think the science of change will fall short on exactly the front you’ve just described, which is this increased self-awareness piece, right? You can learn about all these facets of human behavior, but what’s going to lead you to really internalize that you might want to make changes, right, or there are things that you might want to improve about yourself.

And I think it’s when you hear really candid testimonials from people who are admitting to things that they don’t want to admit, and that opens up this space for you to say, okay, it’s fine to confront some of the darker truths. So for example, I spoke with a first responder who worked in the Berkeley Fire Department, and she opens up about her challenges with PTSD. And I talked to Michael Lewis’s daughter, the author Quinn, who lost her 19 year old Sister Dixie in a car crash. And she talks about the very, very complicated feelings of grief that followed that harrowing episode. And she talks with a kind of candor and reflectiveness that truly I never heard before.

And that led me to revisit times in my life where I had been grieving and I had felt complex feelings and I had engaged in a lot of self-criticism and judgment. Am I grieving the right way? Is this exactly how this process should be unfolding? Quinn talks about the fact that she was the only one who was hungry after this happened, and she was judging braiding herself actually for feeling hunger and actually craving a sandwich as though that was wrong and immoral. I think when we hear people say these things out loud, it just creates some psychological safety that is okay for us to explore the facets of our own mind, however uncomfortable they may be.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Maya Shankar after this.

So you have spent time in your career doing super interesting things, both in the private sector and in government. We’ll talk about a couple of those in a minute. But a lot of these experiments and studies you mentioned one earlier, there are others that have always fascinated me and that you also talk about, so for example, I remember reading about the Trader Joe’s marketing strategy or in-store display strategy, I think based on cognitive science, which teaches that if you have fewer products and fewer choices for a consumer, they buy more, right? You should know and-

Maya Shankar:

They don’t experience choice overload.

Preet Bharara:

… I remember seeing this article talking about the difference between Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, and one of the secrets of Trader Joe’s and how they sell more products per square foot than one of their competitors is by having fewer products. That’s a result of scientific inquiry. I think you talk about one where if you place a limit, if a seller places a limit on how many items one can purchase, often they will sell more items, which is counterintuitive. Can you talk a little bit more about how cognitive science and these areas can alter how businesses engage in their strategies?

Maya Shankar:

So this goes back to nudge theory, and this is something that Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein wrote the book Nudge about is also what inspired me to join the Obama White House and actually try to apply nudges to public policy. But basically we should think about the fact that in any situation, any decision making context, we are presented with some kind of choice architecture, right? There’s a way in which the decision space has been designed for us and we can be influenced by the way it is architected. And there’s a lot of factors that go into how we make decisions that aren’t a result of conscious deliberate reasoning. So for example, there was a really interesting study showing that in Texas when a candidate’s name was listed first on a ballot, that candidate garnered a 10 percentage point boost in vote share relative to those candidates who were listed last on the ballot.

And I would like to think, well, when you go to vote for someone, of course, you’re just thinking about the candidate you’d most like to see elected into office. But that subtle change in how high up on the list the person is can exert an outsize influence on behavior, especially in low information voting environments. We also know that when something is available at eye level in a store, right, you’re more likely to purchase it than when something’s on the ground. And in fact, certain companies have made sure that the unhealthy snack food is actually on the bottom shelf and the healthier items are at eye level to try to encourage healthier behavior. When you learn about these biases in our minds, what that allows us to do is design public policies that account for them.

So in the voting context, a lot of states, in a lot of elections, the order in which the candidates names appear is fully randomized. No candidate will confer a advantage in this regard. My goal in all of the work that I did in the public policy space was to understand, okay, what are the surprising factors that influence our decisions and our judgments sometimes outside of our conscious awareness? And how can we then in turn design public policies in ways that accommodate for these biases so that we’re all making better choices?

Preet Bharara:

So you’re in on the public policy region and dimension. I guess, you make a judgment in advance about some good outcome or some virtue, whether it’s fairness in balloting or something else. Just lingering on the private sector for one more second. And if you have a thought about it, and maybe in the public sector as well, and maybe this is an ill thought out question, does there ever come a moment that the use of psychology in cognitive science in trying to create a certain kind of decision structure borders on manipulation, or is that not the right way to think about it?

Maya Shankar:

No, it’s a great question and one I’ve thought deeply about because, of course, I want these insights to be used for social good. I would say two things to that. One is the outcomes that you’re seeking need to be positive and something that everyone can get behind. So when we were working in the government, we would defer actually to government agencies to articulate what their well established goals were. Okay, we’re trying to get more low income students enrolled in the school lunch program. We’re trying to get more veterans signing up for their benefits. We’re trying to get more service members aware of the fact that they can invest in retirement savings plans. We’re trying to educate student loan borrowers about what their repayment options are.

When you take that outcome is fixed and you assume that is the result of a lot of thoughtful deliberative thinking, right, either set by the administration or set by the government agency, then you can use behavioral science insights to help people actually execute on their long-term goals if they do align with this policy objective. And the reason I say align with their long-term goals is that I’ve actually been very humbled by the limitations of behavioral science insights. So what we’ve really learned from our work in public policy and even in the private sector, is that people really will only do what they already want to do. It’s very, very, very hard, if not impossible, to actively change people’s beliefs through these strategies. So what we found is-

Preet Bharara:

Is that right? Because what’s interesting is you were talking before about the voting and, obviously, putting someone first does not completely engage in or cause upheaval, but at the margins a few percentage point difference.

Maya Shankar:

And sorry, so I should clarify that, you’re not changing their belief system in that situation. So the nudges are definitely changing the default preference, right, in a low information environment. It might just be easiest to go for that first candidate. But these nudges are not actually transforming an underlying attitude or belief about the world. That is very, very hard to do.

Preet Bharara:

So just pause on that so I understand it better. So I know I’m going to vote for Joe Biden for president for example, and very vocally and very deeply, I believed that Joseph Biden should be the president in 2020. Or maybe you can make it easier and say a local state legislator or some other less significant and famous candidate, the fact that my candidate is not listed first is not going to change my vote because I’m very sincere and dedicated to my choice.

Maya Shankar:

That’s right.

Preet Bharara:

So in that way I think you mean, is that what you mean when you say it’s not necessarily changing a belief system, but if you’re coming in and you’re trying to decide who to vote for state legislator and you don’t know who any of them are? Did that person… yes.

Maya Shankar:

That’s when you’re particularly susceptible, exactly, to that choice architecture, to that environment. So for example, one of the projects that we worked on when we were in the government is helping veterans get access to benefits, right? And when a program is extremely difficult to sign up for or there’s not a lot of information around it, you’ve actually created a default choice environment in which people are not going to sign up because they either don’t know about it or they’re confused about what their options are, or they’re procrastinating, right? They’re delaying it. When you fill that information gap, right, when you eliminate any sort of information asymmetry and you design the program in a way that’s more easy to access, is more accessible, then you’re now creating an environment that is more conducive to getting the people who actually want to sign up to sign up. But what we found certainly is that if people don’t want to sign up, they don’t sign up.

And we really do see the limits of nudging. This is certainly the case where when we were trying to increase awareness around retirement savings programs for military service members, these nudges, right, providing people with a lot more information during their orientation programs and giving them the opportunity to make an active choice, yes or no about whether or not they want to enroll, those will nudge people who wanted to enroll but were maybe confused about what their options were, confused about what the choices were, we’re putting it off and you might get those people over the finish line. It just did not affect, obviously, when I say did not, there’s going to be numbers of the margins, of course, in both of these spaces, but by and large, you’re not moving people who definitely do not want to sign up for retirement.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s why maybe the term nudge is perfect. It’s not coercion, it’s not brainwashing, it’s just a nudge.

Maya Shankar:

You’re always maintaining choice in any given nudge. So I’ll give you just one last example. Because this is the example that even drove me into government, because I thought it was so powerful. So, Preet, you’ve worked in a lot of these public policy spaces, so you can certainly appreciate that there’s a lot of programs we offer to people that they don’t take advantage of. And the National School Lunch program is kind of a tragic example of this, where we offer nutritious meals to low income students, but despite the fact it’s offered to millions of kids, millions of kids are still going hungry every day as a result of not being enrolled in the program. When the government did what I call a behavioral audit of the program, they recognize that there were behavioral barriers that were preventing people from, preventing parents from signing their kids up for the program.

The first is that there was a stigma associated with signing up kids for a public benefits program, right, when I was in the White House, I talked to principals who would tell me, these parents work really hard and they don’t want their kids relying on the government just to eat, right? And then it was also very, very arduous, burdensome application process. So imagine you’re a single mom working three shifts to make ends meet. And we’re telling you on this Tuesday you have to take an hour off work to go to the post office at exactly this time and mail this in. And by the way, you have to reference multiple tax documents to fill out the form correctly. And if there’s any mistake that you make, you could be liable for paying a huge penalty or accused of fraud. The burden was so high. And so this was deterring parents who, of course, want the best for their kids from signing up for the program.

What the government did is it leveraged a very elegant insight from behavioral science, which is the power of the default option. And they automatically enrolled all eligible kids using existing administrative data that they had on these kids, right, say, their eligibility for other public benefits programs. And now the system was changed from an opt-in system to an opt out system. So 12 and a half million kids were now automatically enrolled in the program as a result of a policy change. And parents now only had to take an affirmative step if they actively wanted to unenroll their kids from the program.

So as you see here, there’s still choice. Parents can, if they do not want their kids on this program, they do not have to be enrolled. But you’re changing the choice architecture in a way that leads to the most seamless process for making sure kids do get meals, but you’re still allowing parents the agency to decide for their families whether or not they want that option.

Preet Bharara:

Part of it depends on how easy it is to opt out. And I know the business has taken advantage of the difficulty of opting out of being on an email list [inaudible 00:33:23].

Maya Shankar:

Absolutely. And by the way, I’m speaking from the role I played in public policy, and obviously, we thought so much about the ethics around the use of nudges. In fact, one of the things that we implemented very early on in my time running the White House Behavioral Sciences team was total transparency. So we ended up releasing the results of every single pilot we ran, whether or not the pilot was effective so that the public, we could gain trust from the public that whatever it was we were doing, we were very open about. That these nudges were not secret nudges, right, they were things that people could know about and were visible to them and they were aware of.

And that way we could build meaningful trust because we thought it was so important to have this kind of transparency for exactly the reasons you described. And there’s no doubt that nudges can be used for bad outcomes or you can introduce so much friction that it’s nearly impossible, like you said, to unenroll from something or to sign up for something. And this is one of the reasons that I disbanded the White House part of the team when Trump came into power because I was afraid that some of these nudges would be used for bad. And I didn’t want this team that I’d built to be used in any kind of nefarious way.

Preet Bharara:

You like the good scientist to blew up the lab in the back [inaudible 00:34:41].

Maya Shankar:

I was definitely, definitely concerned, I guess. But I do really want to state clearly that these behavioral science insights, these nudges are just not silver bullets. And I think sometimes the popular media narrative is, these can convince everyone to do X, Y, or Z. And as someone who has been a practitioner of the field, I certainly haven’t felt that way. If we were able to, behavioral science really was this silver bullet, then we might have been able to convince people that elections were real and not fraudulent in the way that they’ve thought like there [inaudible 00:35:14].

Preet Bharara:

But this is not, I don’t know if you’re thinking of it as a negative or positive. As I listen you talk about it, I’m glad that-

Maya Shankar:

I am glad too.

Preet Bharara:

… simple devices and methods of the type that you’re describing shouldn’t be able to move massive amounts of the population in favor of one policy and against another policy because presumably there’s a general amount of intelligence and free will and understanding and citizenship that you’re talking mostly about shifting people at the margins in one direction or another. Is that fair or not?

Maya Shankar:

That is totally fair. I wouldn’t feel comfortable working in this space if it wielded too much power. I really wouldn’t. I feel like these nudges are, again, designed for people who want to take an action, but they need a nudge, or your kid, Preet, you’ve got three kids, right? Your kid does want to do their homework at the end of the day because they know it’ll help them get into college and they need a nudge from you, right? I feel like, I think what you said is exactly spot on. I mean everyone has a different viewpoint on this, but I think I would feel pretty uncomfortable if these tools were more powerful than they are. And again, I continue to be humbled by how incremental the impact of these pilots are because you’re really just moving people who already wanted to take that step.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you about the use of nudge theory, if I can call it that in a few mundane areas? Because it’s hearing you talk, I want to know if you have a take. So something that happened in the election season was that I got millions of emails each one a nudge to give money to a candidate because I’m on all these email lists. From some candidates I got five, six, seven emails a day. Does your background as a cognitive scientist and a practitioner of a knowledgeable person about nudge theory tell you anything about the effectiveness of sending me nine emails a day?

Maya Shankar:

So, obviously, it’s an empirical question, however, my very strong instinct is that you’ll desensitize very, very quickly to the nine emails and just create a Gmail filter quite quickly to mark them as read, which is often what I do.

Preet Bharara:

So why do they do it? Why do they do it?

Maya Shankar:

I don’t know. I think we need a lot of analytics in this space because as soon as we start generating empirical data, we collect evidence about what works or not. And look, I should say that while my instinct in this context is telling me, please don’t send the seven emails, you’re way better off sending say one email a week. All of these insights are very context specific. So you do need to be running AV test to figure out what impact they’re having. We found in many cases in the White House that nudges in one context simply did not work in another context because the particular psychology, the particular behavioral environment is slightly different. Or in this case, maybe your relationship with a candidate is different, right, that candidate is their brand is oversharing and being hyper engaged-

Preet Bharara:

It might be that it doesn’t work on me or you, but they’ve determined, or maybe it’s just happened, it’s just they’re flying by the seat of their pants. But they determine through these tests that there’s a small number of people who will only respond when they get the 11th email like enough already. Do you have any sense of how we might have done better or could have done better at nudging in the context of the COVID crisis, whether in mask wearing or in vaccine taking?

Maya Shankar:

The unfortunate thing about COVID is that it became polarized very quickly. And I think this speaks to the fact that we put so much thought into what it is that we say, and we sometimes forget that who is saying that message is just as if not more important, it’s the power of the messenger. And I think with COVID, we had politicians speaking out about this pandemic and this crisis quite early on, and that led people to see it as a political issue versus a medical one. I think we could have been a lot more careful about who the messenger was for a lot of these COVID messages. So we tend to focus a lot on the content of messages. We put a lot of thought into what it is that we’re saying, what is we want to say, but we don’t always put enough thought into who it is who should be delivering the message.

And we saw this play out with politicians talking about COVID and it very quickly becoming a political issue versus a medical one. And it reminds me of an experience that I had in the government and us seeing up close the power of the messenger. So it was 2016, it was the final year that I spent in the Obama White House, and we were on the ground in Flint, Michigan. And my team had been tasked with helping to design safety sheets around water quality. So you know how to install filters, how to make sure that you’re not falling to some of the myths that exist around water quality.

And there was this question around who it is who should deliver the message. And I think instinctively it was, well, the Environmental Protection Agency, right? They are the leading authority figure on the sorts of matters. So we should put the big EPA seal on the fact sheet and it should be delivered by members of the EPA. But then we had to think about the psychological context in which residents of Flint were taking this information in, right? So, Preet, they had been lied to for a very long time about the quality of their water. And it had led by-

Preet Bharara:

By officials, by government officials.

Maya Shankar:

Government officials, by government officials, and it had led to the poisoning of an entire generation of kids and the poisoning of full families, right? There was already a lack of trust between residents of Flint and their local government. And this was also stemming from decades of disenfranchisement and mistrust. So there was a larger issue here at play. In fact, in many ways water quality was just a symptom of a much larger problem. Then you have to ask yourself, okay, well, residents of Flint don’t trust their local government. Certainly that might spill over to their relationship with the federal government, right? Because they’ve now basically been told, don’t trust authority figures in government positions because we can be lied to and it can lead us to poison ourselves and our kids.

What the local EPA did on the ground, which was so smart, was organize a canvassing effort where members of the Flint community, so heads of the local Red Cross heads of churches, heads of the YMCA, people who you see on Sundays at the grocery store would go to door to door knocking and saying, “Hey, friend. Hey, neighbor, hey fellow church goer. Here’s a fact sheet of how it is that we should engage safely with our water. And I endorse it. I’m blessing the content of this document.” And by making members of the community the messengers of this information, it was far more likely that residents actually took it in, internalized the content, and it helped combat some of the disinformation misinformation that’s just flying about in high stress, high agitation environments.

Preet Bharara:

What’s interesting about that, what’s fascinating about that, and it makes total sense to me because during COVID we saw a lot of, at least in New York, the state health official doing public service announcements. And probably there’s some of the same concern because they have been given conflicting information from health officials. But when you talk about having members of the community, those are non experts. And I just wonder how you think about messaging from or changing the me or from the, quote, unquote, “the expert,” who has lost trust to the non-expert who endorses the expert view. You follow what I’m saying?

Maya Shankar:

Absolutely. It’s a great question. You’re joining forces. So the information fact sheet still had the logo of the EPA and the White House on it from what I remember. But the messenger of that information was someone who was trusted within the community. I think the most powerful formula here is that you combine the best of both worlds. So you combine the leading scientists and experts who weigh in on the content of these fact sheets, but then they’re delivered by trusted members of the community so that the message doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Because oftentimes, I’m pretty, I’m sure you can imagine this, right? We face our own biases every day. At this point, for me personally, right, Donald Trump could get his PhD in anything. And when he opens his mouth, I’m just not going to trust whatever it is he says. Okay?

Preet Bharara:

Fair assumption for me too.

Maya Shankar:

Yes, that’s assuming he reads enough to get the PhD. But what I’m saying is we have an implicit set of biases that we come to the table with when any given person or any person who represents an office of some kind or a professional role of some kind. And I gave an extreme example about my personal views on Trump, but for a lot of people, they carry these biases. We don’t want the message to be disregarded because of who the messenger is. We just want to be thoughtful about who it is.

And I think this can be surprising for some folks because I think our instinct when we are figuring out who it is who should deliver a message, and this is along a different access than expert, trusted community member is we go to the highest person in the organization and we say, “You deliver it because you’re the most powerful person and you’re the one who has the most reverence in this org.” Or maybe not even reverence, but you’re the big shot, right? So you should be the one with the microphone. And I think that’s where we sometimes get things wrong. It actually might be the manager of a much smaller team who’s a better deliverer, the messenger.

Preet Bharara:

So all of what you’ve said, I think requires me to ask a question that you may not want to answer. And that is just speaking about COVID and I kept thinking about this as you were speaking because just because you and I trust a particular messenger, that messenger may have long ago lost their efficacy with respect to another population of people. Did there come a time keeping these principles in mind that Dr. Fauci should not have been so front and center as a messenger on the best way to combat COVID?

Maya Shankar:

It’s very possible that that’s the case though. It’s really hard to envision a counterfactual world when it comes to COVID because there was so much unknown at many points along the way. And we just don’t know what that counterfactual world looks like. But I do think that at a minimum, the way things unfolded should give us pause in the future and really ask ourselves, be really, really strategic, really thoughtful about how it is we convey messages from institutions like the White House.

Preet Bharara:

We need more cognitive scientists. Is that what you’re saying?

Maya Shankar:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Advocating for your guild.

Maya Shankar:

Making sure that, again, our understanding of these biases and the importance of, I’m also thinking back to a project we ran with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the goal was to get those in low income housing units to understand what their financial aid options were and to apply for the FAFSA and no Sherlock, the mailers that had Michelle Obama’s picture on it and her personal testimonial far outperformed those that came from the Department of Education. So you can really use this-

Preet Bharara:

Shocking.

Maya Shankar:

… as a… that’s shocking, right? One of the most popular people in America in the world, I’m sure. But we can see this as a insight that can be a huge force for good when we crack the nut on who the ideal messenger is. But I think it’s really just around, I think the takeaway for me anyway, is to have more humility around what we think is the ideal messenger and to kind of revisit some of our assumptions because they might be misguided.

Preet Bharara:

So you’ve done many interesting things. You’ve talked about some of them, including your time in the Obama administration and other things you’ve done in the podcast, of course. So what struck me in preparing for this interview, one of the things that struck me was that you were one of the core advisors, presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg in his campaign for the presidency. What is a cognitive scientist doing in that debate prep room?

Maya Shankar:

I sent a cold email to Pete, thankfully got tracked down his email address and I was like, “Hey, I’m a behavioral scientist, do you want me to help out?” So interesting, Preet, because I just come from four years of working in the public policy sphere. Naturally my instinct was, I’m going to help write policy papers and figure out some really ambitious proposals for how we can apply behavioral insights to how we deliver the supplemental nutrition assistance program to low income kids, or how we think about women in children’s health and all the materials that I’ve been prepping for a potential Hillary administration.

But then Trump threw all the rules out the window and what I realized is that so much of what we needed to solve for as Democrats was how compelling our narratives are and how much we’re able to humanize our messages around the kind of transformative impact we want to have on policy. It felt suddenly like policy was a secondary matter and storytelling was the most important thing that we needed to get right in that election. That’s what I was offering was-

Preet Bharara:

Wait, so why Pete, can I ask you first? If you want to say, because my recollection is there are a lot of people running. Did you Pete the best? Did you think Pete was going to be the most open to a cognitive scientist? Why Pete?

Maya Shankar:

I was a fan of so many of the candidates who are running, in debate prep, I played Elizabeth Warren for a while there and I was like, “This woman’s quite convincing.” So at times you’re trying to-

Preet Bharara:

If you say so yourself.

Maya Shankar:

I was a fan of a number of the candidates. I think what moved me about Pete was that, well, one, I really wanted to see an openly gay man thrive. I wanted to see an openly gay person thrive, a member of the LGBTQI community thrive in politics. I felt that would be, I hope it’s not lost on anyone that an openly gay person won the Iowa Caucus. That is extraordinary. It gives hope to hopefully so many kids out there about what is possible.

And then I was energized by the fact that we were in the same generation, right? We grew up in the same generation, we grew up thinking about the threats of climate change and whatnot. And all of that was very inspiring for me. I had heard about, so I was in the Rhode Scholar class I think two years later than Pete and I’d heard about this wounder kin that existed at the time, and I never met him personally, but I had heard that he was a star in the making. I was just really curious about whether or not I could be helpful. And then it was wonderful because he was very open to these very innovative approaches. He had a very Obama-like approach to bringing in novel scientific insights, technological insights, what have you. And so that’s what led me to reach out.

Preet Bharara:

If you can take us inside a mock debate or debate prep. And what that was like and how tight a ship Liz Smith ran?

Maya Shankar:

Oh my gosh. So at the helm is the formidable Liz Smith. I learned an incredible amount from her. So we had veteran debate prep aids in the room, so people who had advised Obama and helped him win elections. And then there was the cognitive scientist person, me sitting in the corner and I think there was about five of us. And we traveled the country and we sat in prep sessions. And one thing that I’m so grateful for is that I was there at the beginning of the campaign, which meant that we were trying to figure out what it was that he stood for, period, right? Who is Pete the candidate and why is he running for president? And it was fascinating to see the process unfold and see Pete come into the role. I don’t think he’s naturally that extroverted or enjoys all of these sorts of environments. it was wonderful to witness a lot of growth in our candidate.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, I don’t know if you this, but the thing that propelled Pete Buttigieg to stardom and likely the victory in Iowa was his appearance on stay Tuned.

Maya Shankar:

I did not know that.

Preet Bharara:

This podcast, so it’s true [inaudible 00:50:44] science. It’s born out by science. You can ask anyone and look at the clippings.

Maya Shankar:

And by the way, I think that another really valuable lesson for me in working for Pete is that in the same way that you come to learn that your parents are flawed, you come to learn that your candidate is flawed, and that’s okay, right? There are a lot of challenging issues that we had to grapple with his record in South Bend and elsewhere. And that’s part of the challenge of working for a candidate is that you need to be comfortable with gray areas. With gray spaces. And I actually think that the purity sometimes, the purity lens, the purity standard that we hold people to generally is something that really harms politics and harms, inhibits people’s growth. It was nice to just have that personal lesson of people are complex and they have complex histories, and it’s okay to not actually endorse everything that they have said or continue to say or will say, but overall you need to just believe in the overall message.

Preet Bharara:

Is there anything about cognitive science, given the week we’re in, I wanted to ask this question. Is there anything about cognitive science that we can apply or our listeners can apply to dinner at Thanksgiving with their families?

Maya Shankar:

So we’re coming up on a tough Thanksgiving week.

Preet Bharara:

So people have different views and political views and there are stressful things and it’s an uncertain time. Do you have, maybe this is outside of your wheelhouse?

Maya Shankar:

No, this is very much in my wheelhouse.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Maya Shankar:

I think the biggest thing for us to appreciate is that we like to believe that people are moved by facts and by data. What can happen in these conversations is we beat people over the head with facts and data hoping that, of course, that will lead people to see the light and change their views. But what we know from research and we know this from research and cultural cognition and moral cognition elsewhere, is that we arrive at our attitudes and beliefs based on so many other factors including our group allegiance, our group membership. When we take that into the equation, what we realize is that one reason people might be resistant to facts is that it’s threatening their group membership, right? So we might think, Preet, you and I are thinking, “Just wear a damn mask. It’s a piece of fabric. It will help keep you safe.” But for some people that might threaten their group membership, right, they may be ostracized for wearing a mask.

When we take that into account, it can change the way that we approach people who have very, very different views from our own and who don’t seem to be swayed by data. And there’s a couple tactics for engaging in people differently that are emerging from the field. And by the way, in the field of behavioral science, I think this is one of the hardest nuts to crack, is how you change people’s minds, right? You can try to change their behaviors, you can try to nudge them to change their behaviors very, very hard, as we were talking about earlier, to change people’s minds. So one is you want to in conversation, increase your question to statement ratio. So we love talking at people rather than talking with them.

And I learned this firsthand, by the way, from a guest on A Slight Change of Plans. Darrell Davis, he’s a black jazz musician who effectively convinced dozens of people to leave the Ku Klux Klan. And he used a lot of these strategies. It’s like he discovered them before the scientist discovered them. But he showed a genuine curiosity for why it is that people had arrived at these absolutely vile, disgusting beliefs. But he focused on asking more questions than speaking at the person. And that we know is an effective strategy for getting people to feel like you are not necessarily attacking them, even though you might not believe. You might have a very strong belief against what they think, but you’re showing that kind of curiosity.

The other thing you can do is you can ask people why it is that they arrived at the beliefs that they arrived at. So you kind of bring them through their journey of discovery and you make it a point of inquiry how it is that they got from point A to point B. And that can sometimes lead people to look back and examine where there might have been some errors in thinking. And in a similar vein, you can ask people, well, in theory, what evidence could change your mind? And I love this question, Preet, because it presupposes that they ought to be willing to change their mind in the face of some kind of evidence. You’re not being prescriptive about what that evidence ought to be or who it should come from, or whether it should be evidence given to them by a scientist or a Democrat or Republican.

You’re simply saying in theory, if you can imagine all the possible things that could come into existence, which of those things could change your mind on this particular topic? And if they say literally nothing, well, then you have your answer that you’re not really going to make a lot of progress. But if there’s an in, if they do identify that there could be something, well, now you have something to work with, right, and somewhere, a direction to take the conversation.

Preet Bharara:

And you’re kind of, I assume, forcing if the person’s a good faith person and not all of them, not everyone is, you’re forcing them to reflect on the reasons for and the basis for their opinion about something. And if they find themselves, people can tell when they’re spouting BS. If they find themselves in response to a question about the vaccine or about a mask or about any other issue, not being able to say anything that sounds coherent, even though they might not admit that at the moment, the hope would be, I think, that they go home and the next day try to, in their mind, replay the conversation and come up with a better reason. And in the absence of a better reason, maybe think about shifting a little bit. Is that too much to hope for?

Maya Shankar:

No, I think that’s exactly the right approach. And it’s interesting. One thing I feel very strongly about is, and this is, I say this because it is so tempting to do this in conversation. We want to try our hardest to not question the other person’s humanity, their fundamental sense of morality-

Preet Bharara:

Never?

Maya Shankar:

… because the minute they feel at the beginning, again, because don’t forget, our goal here is not to prove that they’re wrong and that we’re right. Our goal here is to actually try to convince them to believe something different. So we have to be careful, right, we have to be judicious about the tactics we use in a situation like that. But the minute you question their underlying humanity, obviously, walls are going to go up and they’re going to feel attacked and they’re going to be closed off to whatever line of argumentation you have after the fact.

I think what we need to do is just bite our tongue as much as possible. If again, if our goal is to feel righteous and to just get it off our chest because we’re feeling so irate that this person has this belief, then that’s fine. You can go with the first approach as just being like, “How the hell can you think this?” And, of course, I’ve attempted to do that many times and have. But if you are trying to see if there’s any room for growth or progress in this person’s thinking, any room for change, then you want to do everything you can to question the belief, but not question who they are in this really fundamental way.

Preet Bharara:

That makes good sense. And always compliment the food.

Maya Shankar:

Always compliment the food.

Preet Bharara:

Always compliment the food. And very generous with your time. Congratulations to know your success and-

Maya Shankar:

It’s really fun.

Preet Bharara:

Keep helping us understand things. Maya Shankar, thanks for being with us.

Maya Shankar:

Thanks so much for having me.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Maya Shankar continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. To end the show this week, I want to call your attention to something that brought me a lot of joy this week. You know those days when it feels like all you need is someone to give you some words of encouragement to tell you that it’s all going to be all right, in the world we live in Now, there are a lot of those days. Well, as I recently learned, there’s a number you can dial for that and this is what you’ll hear.

Speaker 1:

Hi, welcome to Peptoc, a public art project by Westside School.

Speaker 2:

[foreign language 00:58:26].

Preet Bharara:

That’s a kindergarten student from Westside School in Healdsburg, California, led by their teachers, Jessica Martin and Asherah Weiss, a class of elementary school students created Peptoc, A free hotline for anyone with access to a phone to get inspiration from children. Here’s the menu.

Speaker 1:

If you’re feeling mad, frustrated, or nervous, press one. If you need it words of encouragement and life advice, press two. If you need a Peptoc from kindergartners, press three. If you need to hear our kids laughing with delight, press four to hear how awesome you look, press six.

Preet Bharara:

According to the Peptoc website, Jessica and Asherah were motivated by their students resilience and courage in the face of the pandemic, wildfires on the west coast and the challenges of growing up. So in an effort to celebrate the power of young people and spread joy to other people who may be having a hard time, Peptoc was born. And let me tell you, it really does the trick. Some kids offer pretty sound advice.

Speaker 3:

When you’re feeling mad, you should take three deep breath and think of things that make you happy. If you are nervous, go get your wallet and spend it on ice cream and shoes.

Preet Bharara:

Some kids tell you what you need to hear.

Speaker 4:

Be grateful for yourself.

Speaker 5:

Dude. Live it up.

Speaker 6:

Be you. I trust that you can make things right. Be happy. Try it again.

Preet Bharara:

And some offer really wise words of encouragement.

Speaker 7:

The world is a better place with you in it.

Speaker 8:

Everyone is capable of doing anything. You just have to let yourself shine.

Speaker 9:

Bro, you’re looking great.

Preet Bharara:

I could listen to these all day. In a world that is so overwhelming and cruel, sometimes projects like this can make all the difference in someone’s day. And they made a lot of days within the first month of their launch. Earlier this year, the hotline went viral and received 5 million calls from all over the globe. So especially this Thanksgiving week, I think it’s important to take a moment, even if it’s brief away from all the noise of the news cycle and the doom scrolling and focus on joy just like these children did. So show your support for this class. Call the hotline at (707) 873-7862 or visit their website@peptoc.net. That’s P-E-P-T-O-C.net. And if you feel so inclined, you can make a donation to keep the hotline running. And for me and the whole Cafe team, we hope you have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. We’ll see you back here next week and I’ll leave you with this.

Students:

We love you.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Maya Shankar. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag, ask Preet or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669 24 Preet, or you can send an email to letters cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the V Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The Cafe team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jake Kaplan, Nama Tisha, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara Stay tuned.