Hidden Brain - The Enemies of Gratitude

One of the mysteries of human behavior is that it’s often easier for us to focus on what’s going wrong than on what’s going right in our lives. Why is that? Psychologist Thomas Gilovich studies the barriers that prevent us from feeling gratitude, and how we can overcome them.

Duration: 56m
Broadcast on: 23 Oct 2023
Audio Format: other

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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. If you make at least $30,000 a year, congratulations. Your income is 10 times the global median and in the top 5% of incomes worldwide. If you are older than 35, congratulations. For much of human history, many people died before they were 30. If you have a job in stable income, live in a democratic country and have a college degree, you are in a rarefied group in the history of humankind. If you enjoy good health, good friends, nice vacations, you really ought to get down on your knees and thank Providence. So, are you on your knees yet? Why is it, even when our lives are objectively better than the lives of most people who ever lived, we are all prone to seeing the clouds, not the silver lining. This is true not just when it comes to global and historical statistics, but in our daily lives. We notice small delays at the airport, but ignore the miracle that we can literally fly across the world. We take our health for granted and only notice the gifts of our limbs and our senses when they are taken away from us. We zero in on annoyances in personal relationships and rarely pause to acknowledge what is wonderful about our friends, families and coworkers. Our ungratitude for our good fortune is so automatic and ubiquitous that it seems obvious they must be an underlying psychology to it. That's the topic of today's show, the enemies of gratitude and how to fight them. This week on Hidden Brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram teen accounts automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Land Rover. Even the boldest journey starts small with a single decision to go somewhere new. Purpose built and courage driven, the Defender 110 combines on-road presence with off-road capability. It looks tough because it is with a raised hood and an exterior engineered for durability. Inside, capability meets comfort with seating for five and the option for seven plus refined finishes and thoughtful design. The Defender event is on now. Explore enhanced offers at landroverusa.com.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company, affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. If you try to measure the size of an ant using a telescope, you won't get very far. If you try to gauge the distance between stars using a microscope, you'll be hopelessly lost. What's true in the physical world is also true inside our own minds. The tools we use to evaluate our lives shape what we see and whether we see. At Cornell University, psychologist Thomas Gillivitz studies how we think about our successes and failures and why we often get important things wrong. Tom Gillivitz, welcome to Hidden Brain. It's a pleasure to be on your show, Shankar. I want to take you all the way back to high school, Tom. Between your junior and senior years of high school, I understand a friend of yours who was on the football team, invited you over to take a look at a cool new gizmo he had acquired. Yes, the gizmo up to that point didn't seem cool to me. I didn't really have any interest in riding a motorcycle. I always seemed dangerous to me. But my friend was much cooler than I, and when he wrote it, it seemed kind of cool. I asked him if he could give me a lesson, show me how to do it. We're in his front yard, and he's showing me the different brakes. This one breaks the rear wheel. This one breaks the front. Here's the accelerator, et cetera, et cetera. And right before I'm about to start driving, he says, "Oh, this is really important." People often want to press with this brake, which is going to break the front wheel without hitting the rear brake, and people just go flying over the top. So whatever you do, if you get into trouble, make sure you're pressing the rear brake, which on this motorcycle was foot activated. Tom got on the motorcycle and zoomed off. He quickly accelerated. About 40 yards into his expedition, he realized he was going too fast. I'm heading out of his yard across the street. No problem, I say to myself, just find the rear brake, and you'll be okay. And my foot is moving around trying to find it. I can't, and I've just got this mantra. Don't hit the brake for the front wheel.

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