Countering negativity bias | dstill.ai shared chat

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Counteracting negativity bias.

One strategy to counteract negativity bias is through mindfulness and meditation. Research suggests that mindfulness and meditation can have a positive impact on reducing bias . Mindfulness helps achieve emotional regulation and can lead to more emotional regulation and compassion towards others . Loving-kindness meditation, in particular, has been found to create more altruistic responses towards people from different groups . So, practicing mindfulness and meditation may help in reducing negativity bias.

Additionally, another strategy is to practice positive self-talk. Positive self-talk involves challenging negative thoughts and offering a more balanced perspective . This can help counter the negative narratives that our inner voice often tells us and provide a more positive outlook.

It is important to note that reducing bias requires practice and persistence. By noticing our biases and actively working on them, we can become better at recognizing and challenging them . Additionally, building relationships with people from different backgrounds and learning about history can also help reduce bias .

1

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): So I would say that the science is pretty new, but there does seem to be promising evidence that it can have a positive impact. And we certainly do have really good evidence that loving kindness meditation creates more other directed altruistic behavior.

Dan Harris: So it's interesting, if I'm hearing you correctly, there's some evidence that kind of directly suggests that meditation can reduce bias, but there's also a pretty solid inference one can make in that stress can boost the odds that we're biased or owned by our biases, and meditation is good for stress, and therefore, by the transitive property, et cetera, et cetera.

(someone): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, another pretty interesting and compelling piece of evidence is that we do know that our behavior toward other people is actually more predicted by our emotional response than our cognitive response. Our feelings are a really good predictor of how we're going to act. And we know that mindfulness is an effective way of achieving more emotional regulation. So that's another sort of like inferential piece of evidence about why it can be helpful.

Dan Harris: You talked about other modalities for reducing bias. One of them is having relationships with people who are different from you. I suspect some people might hear that and say, well, how do I do that?

(someone): Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of a chicken and an egg problem here, which is that if you are nervous or uncertain about having relationships with people who belong to different, you know, social identities, then it can be hard to have those relationships, which are maybe necessary for actually sort of eroding some of the biases. So is your question like, how does one go about doing that?

2

Oliver Burkeman, The Power of Negative Thinking

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): Yeah, I was just responding. There was another, I don't remember the details, but there was another bit of research, or I think a meta-analysis, suggesting that a lot of the science was not as firm.

Dan Harris: It was a science, it was an article, or what they call it, a meta-analysis, where they review existing studies and make a conclusion, and the conclusion was meditation does not boost compassion, I believe.

(someone): Right, yes. And you know, there's, you know, since that appeared and since I wrote about it, I have been made very aware that there's also lots of other, you know, not just that there's lots of other evidence suggesting meditation is beneficial, but that there are kind of meta-analyses of a similar stature that find the opposite. So I did not try in that column to sort of adjudicate what is right and what is wrong, but I was I was sort of responding to this idea that whenever that happens, among certain scientists and certain journalists especially, there's a kind of enormous amount of glee, like there is something that a certain sector of people love about the idea that meditation might be a huge waste of time.

Dan Harris: Because I have, I read your column with real satisfaction because I have a Google alert set on the words meditation and mindfulness. So anytime there's a big... You must get about a thousand emails a day. Well every day at 11 o'clock at night I get two emails that compile all the articles. Wow. And when this meta-analysis came out There was just a deluge of headlines about how meditation is baloney and there's so much glee. But you sort of talk about why you think that glee exists in the face of negative news about meditation.

3

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): Another strategy that is extremely helpful is Mindfulness, actually. Mindfulness and meditation seem to have an effect on a lot of different aspects of bias. There are, I mean, I'm sure as you know, like compassion meditation has shown to create more altruistic responses to people who are in other groups. There's some really interesting research by a neuroscientist named Yuna Kang who found that after six weeks of meditation, people's responses to the implicit association test went to zero. This is a test that looks at, are you familiar with the implicit association test, the IAT?

Dan Harris: Yeah, as far as I know, though, it's pretty controversial.

(someone): It is really controversial, yeah, and it's unclear exactly what it measures, so we could like talk about those. the IAT controversy too, but it's an interesting finding that she found consistently people's responses to this test that at least purportedly looks at automatic associations. People responded as though they had no bias in their associations. Now that could be that their biases eroded. It could be that they just got better at self-control. There are different explanations for what could be going on here. But one piece of research that I found really interesting was about the impact of loving kindness meditation. Some neuroscientists found that people who were really practiced in loving kindness meditation, who were shown images of themselves and images of someone else, over one area of the brain, they showed more similar responses to looking at an image of the self and looking at an image of the other than people who were not experienced loving-kindness meditators, which is really so fascinating.

4

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): And the experience of getting that negative feedback and kind of working through it was an emotional journey for me. I mean, first, I went through a feeling of denial, like, I don't think this is really true. I sort of rejected the accusation. I went through a feeling of kind of like bargaining, like, oh, well, if I'd been able to get certain interviews, then maybe I wouldn't have come across that way. And as I was kind of going through this emotional experience, I was like, wait a second, Those are really familiar emotions like anger, denial, bargaining. Oh, that's grief. Those are the stages of grief. And then I started asking myself, like, what am I grieving? What's going on here? I think I was grieving I'm not totally sure. Maybe I was grieving my own innocence, the loss of a sense that I was immune somehow to some of the negative patterns that I was also trying to work against. And I mean, maybe it sounds trite to say, but I mean, I think I did get to a point of acceptance, you know, which is one of the final stages of the grieving process. And being able to look closely at some of the assumptions that I had made going into that article, going into the writing and editing, and being able to sort of hold them up to the light and accept some of the assumptions that I had made as being bad assumptions, realizing the mistakes that I had made was ultimately really essential. It was a painful process to go through.

Dan Harris: I think anybody who's ever received feedback, whether it's on bias or

5

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): So I would say that the science is pretty new, but there does seem to be promising evidence that it can have a positive impact. And we certainly do have really good evidence that loving kindness meditation creates more other directed altruistic behavior.

Dan Harris: So it's interesting, if I'm hearing you correctly, there's some evidence that kind of directly suggests that meditation can reduce bias, but there's also a pretty solid inference one can make in that stress can boost the odds that we're biased or owned by our biases, and meditation is good for stress, and therefore, by the transitive property, et cetera, et cetera.

(someone): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, another pretty interesting and compelling piece of evidence is that we do know that our behavior toward other people is actually more predicted by our emotional response than our cognitive response. Our feelings are a really good predictor of how we're going to act. And we know that mindfulness is an effective way of achieving more emotional regulation. So that's another sort of like inferential piece of evidence about why it can be helpful.

Dan Harris: You talked about other modalities for reducing bias. One of them is having relationships with people who are different from you. I suspect some people might hear that and say, well, how do I do that?

(someone): Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of a chicken and an egg problem here, which is that if you are nervous or uncertain about having relationships with people who belong to different, you know, social identities, then it can be hard to have those relationships, which are maybe necessary for actually sort of eroding some of the biases. So is your question like, how does one go about doing that?

6

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: is really useful in terms of kind of reducing the amount of inclement weather that may be in your mind at any given moment vis-a-vis yourself. And that in my experience, I don't know if there's any data to back this up, but in my experience, I'm a little less horrified. I'm a little warmer to myself in those moments where I see that I'm thinking something that's completely unfair and ungrounded.

(someone): Yeah, and I think the really important addition to that is that that space of possibility that opens up when we see that these are not preordained and that we have the capacity to change, that possibility is so fertile. We can actually choose another path. And I think it's incumbent on us to choose another path. I mean, we've seen the horrible consequences of not choosing another path. And so I don't want to leave it as like, we just need to feel compassionate toward ourselves and continue doing what we have always been doing. It's like, we want to feel compassion toward ourselves so that we are able to move in a direction of connection and inclusivity and fairness toward our fellow humans.

Dan Harris: I think that's undeniably true, and I'm glad you made that point. Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation,

7

Oliver Burkeman, The Power of Negative Thinking

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): And I think I've heard you talk about the trick is to disassociate yourself, to watch it like a movie that you're not in, which sounds easier than it is. And I'm curious if you'd get more advice on how to do that successfully as a habit, and if there's any materials you could point us to on that. I'd be grateful. Thank you.

Dan Harris: Yes, I have a specific answer on a technique that I found useful, but let me just set the table a little bit on the issue. First of all, thank you for the question, Paul. I really appreciate it. This is something that anybody who's ever listened to the show knows before is a big area of exploration for me. There's no question that being, to a certain extent, self-critical and analytical can be very useful. And how are you going to improve at anything if you're not learning from the mistakes you've made? So all of that is, of course, you have to do that. By the same token, you don't want to be so wrapped up in self-criticism that you're just turning yourself into your own punching bag. And I think that lowers your resilience, lowers your effectiveness, and also just not for nothing makes you pretty hard to live with. I say that all from personal experience because I've done all of that and to a certain extent continue to do all of that. So it's really about finding the balance. And I'll tell you just for me, one of the things that I've found useful recently is self-compassion as a practice.

8

Optimizing Your Stress | Modupe Akinola

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: How do you form the habit of counter-programming your inner dialogue in the face of millennia of evolution that have left us with a pronounced tendency toward, you know, what's called the negativity bias? How do you similarly remember to revert to a stresses-enhancing mindset? These strike me as really attractive, evidence-based strategies, but doing them seems like a whole different kettle of fish.

(someone): is the knowing, doing thing. You have to practice it. And to practice it, you need to notice it. There's nothing more I can tell you but just to keep up. There it goes again. There goes my negative person saying that, you know, I'm not prepared. I'm going to mess up the interview. Oh, but you didn't, that was fine. You're fine. So each time just trying to remind yourself and practicing it and noticing when these thoughts arise, because they arise all the time. So you have ample opportunities to practice, ample. And then watching other people too. So then you become good at noticing it in other people, which I also think helps you notice it in yourself. So practice, I'm sorry, there's no shortcut. Because you are the person who knows yourself the best. So there's no one else that's going to tell you how to do this every day, but you. Watching, noticing, observing, and trying it. And the things I'm saying, some of them might work for you, some of them might not. You need to figure out what works for you.

9

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: In fact, the meditation you're about to hear is from the Kindness Meditation Pack, which is available on the 10% Happier app. If you want more of these meditations, just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps, and then tap on the Singles tab to find the rest of the aforementioned kindness meditations, or you can just click the link in the show notes here. Let's get to today's practice. It's from the meditation teacher Anushka Fernandopouli, and she offers us some guidance on how to recall moments of kindness in our own lives. Over now to Anushka.

(someone): Hi, this is Anushka. Welcome to this meditation on noticing different moments of kindness you've received. This helps us to grow in appreciation and to have a more positive outlook on our life. It also makes it easier for us to continue the chain of kindness by being kind to others and ourself. So let's get started. Come to a comfortable position for this meditation. You could be lying down or sitting. You could even be standing somewhere while you listen to this meditation. But you do want to be in a comfortable position. Let yourself relax your body. If you're comfortable, you can close your eyes. Or if you're standing, you can keep them open. Take a few deep breaths in and out. As you try to let go of the thoughts of the day, see if there's any tension in your face, your shoulders, or any other part of the body. Breathe deeply in and out a few times, relaxing the tension on the out-breath.

10

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): Another strategy that is extremely helpful is Mindfulness, actually. Mindfulness and meditation seem to have an effect on a lot of different aspects of bias. There are, I mean, I'm sure as you know, like compassion meditation has shown to create more altruistic responses to people who are in other groups. There's some really interesting research by a neuroscientist named Yuna Kang who found that after six weeks of meditation, people's responses to the implicit association test went to zero. This is a test that looks at, are you familiar with the implicit association test, the IAT?

Dan Harris: Yeah, as far as I know, though, it's pretty controversial.

(someone): It is really controversial, yeah, and it's unclear exactly what it measures, so we could like talk about those. the IAT controversy too, but it's an interesting finding that she found consistently people's responses to this test that at least purportedly looks at automatic associations. People responded as though they had no bias in their associations. Now that could be that their biases eroded. It could be that they just got better at self-control. There are different explanations for what could be going on here. But one piece of research that I found really interesting was about the impact of loving kindness meditation. Some neuroscientists found that people who were really practiced in loving kindness meditation, who were shown images of themselves and images of someone else, over one area of the brain, they showed more similar responses to looking at an image of the self and looking at an image of the other than people who were not experienced loving-kindness meditators, which is really so fascinating.

11

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): As you try to let go of the thoughts of the day, see if there's any tension in your face, your shoulders, or any other part of the body. Breathe deeply in and out a few times, relaxing the tension on the out-breath. and then allow the breath to come to its natural rhythm. You can begin by bringing to mind someone who's been kind to you quite recently. This could be someone who's shown you some generosity, some care, some goodwill, or love. It could be someone you're close to, or even some small kindness that came from a stranger. including someone who held a door open for you, who genuinely smiled at you, or who did their job with kindness. Allow yourself to remember this act of kindness and feel the impact of it. Allow your attention to go to your heart area or anywhere in your body where you can notice this. Allow yourself to feel it fully. Try not to judge how it's supposed to feel or how strong the feeling is. Just be with this sense of kindness, however it's showing up. Next, you can bring to mind another act of kindness that you may not have thought of for some time. Maybe from your work life. Someone who has been helpful to you through mentoring you. Or who was kind in some way. Or it could be a long lost friend that you haven't thought of for a while. Allow yourself to remember the act of kindness. the relationship of goodwill. Let your attention settle in your chest or your heart area or any place in your body where you feel the impact of this kindness.

12

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: is really useful in terms of kind of reducing the amount of inclement weather that may be in your mind at any given moment vis-a-vis yourself. And that in my experience, I don't know if there's any data to back this up, but in my experience, I'm a little less horrified. I'm a little warmer to myself in those moments where I see that I'm thinking something that's completely unfair and ungrounded.

(someone): Yeah, and I think the really important addition to that is that that space of possibility that opens up when we see that these are not preordained and that we have the capacity to change, that possibility is so fertile. We can actually choose another path. And I think it's incumbent on us to choose another path. I mean, we've seen the horrible consequences of not choosing another path. And so I don't want to leave it as like, we just need to feel compassionate toward ourselves and continue doing what we have always been doing. It's like, we want to feel compassion toward ourselves so that we are able to move in a direction of connection and inclusivity and fairness toward our fellow humans.

Dan Harris: I think that's undeniably true, and I'm glad you made that point. Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation,

13

How to Counteract Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Oren Jay Sofer

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Don't miss out on the Enjoy Everyday Walking Meditation Pack over on the 10% Happier app. It's available for free until August 20th. If you haven't tried walking meditation on the app before, I highly recommend you check it out here. is what one user had to say. I'm quoting here. I'm in my sixth year with 10%. I start and end my day with it. I like their walking meditations to use when I'm out exercising or walking the dog. The longer I use it, the more I learn nuances and subtleties and refinements of the process. It is life changing. That's awesome to hear. Download the 10% Happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. Time for a bonus meditation. On the show this week, we've been talking a lot about beauty and art and aesthetics, and we're going to pick up on that theme in today's meditation. One of the more pernicious aspects of the design of the human mind is that we have this negativity bias. We evolved to spot threats, like saber-toothed tigers, and it's served us well in some ways. However, it can lead to some pretty serious degradation of your daily life if you're constantly focusing on the negative. So this is a meditation that will help you do the opposite, to focus on the good stuff.

14

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: I think for many of us, when you hear the word meditation, it conjures images of people sitting alone, maybe in robes, maybe on an outcropping of rock in the Himalayas in lotus position. However, for many people, meditation is better while moving. You've probably heard me talk on this show about walking meditation, which I have found to be an incredibly powerful form of the practice. And it's a really good thing to do if you're feeling too fidgety to sit or if you're too tired to sit. So if you want to give this a try, which I highly recommend, you can now do the walking meditations over on the 10% Happier app for free, the Enjoy Everyday Walking Meditation Pack. in the 10% Happier app is available for free until August 20th. Download the 10% Happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. From ABC, this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, it's Friday time for a bonus meditation. We're going to be talking about the negativity bias today. This is something that's been wired into us by evolution. It made sense on the savannah because our forebears needed to be on the lookout for threats of all manner. And being on the lookout for threats still makes sense to a certain extent today. But we tend to take it too far and view the world through garbage colored glasses. And that's why it's so important to counteract the negativity bias, and we're going to talk about that today in a guided meditation in just a second.

15

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: In fact, the meditation you're about to hear is from the Kindness Meditation Pack, which is available on the 10% Happier app. If you want more of these meditations, just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps, and then tap on the Singles tab to find the rest of the aforementioned kindness meditations, or you can just click the link in the show notes here. Let's get to today's practice. It's from the meditation teacher Anushka Fernandopouli, and she offers us some guidance on how to recall moments of kindness in our own lives. Over now to Anushka.

(someone): Hi, this is Anushka. Welcome to this meditation on noticing different moments of kindness you've received. This helps us to grow in appreciation and to have a more positive outlook on our life. It also makes it easier for us to continue the chain of kindness by being kind to others and ourself. So let's get started. Come to a comfortable position for this meditation. You could be lying down or sitting. You could even be standing somewhere while you listen to this meditation. But you do want to be in a comfortable position. Let yourself relax your body. If you're comfortable, you can close your eyes. Or if you're standing, you can keep them open. Take a few deep breaths in and out. As you try to let go of the thoughts of the day, see if there's any tension in your face, your shoulders, or any other part of the body. Breathe deeply in and out a few times, relaxing the tension on the out-breath.

16

How to Counteract Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Oren Jay Sofer

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: However, it can lead to some pretty serious degradation of your daily life if you're constantly focusing on the negative. So this is a meditation that will help you do the opposite, to focus on the good stuff. And our teacher, Dujour, is the marvelous Oren J. Sofer. He teaches mindfulness, meditation, and also something called nonviolent communication, which is essentially communication skills, and he's written a whole book about that. He's been practicing since 1997, and not for nothing, he's also one of, if not the most popular teachers on the 10% Happier app. So, let's get started now with Oren J. Sofer.

(someone): Hey, this is Oren. It's easy to notice what's wrong or to find something to stress about. Meditation can help us to balance that negativity bias by appreciating the goodness that's already here and available in life. When we uplift the heart, even a little, we have more energy and strength to devote to the things we care about. So go ahead and find a comfortable posture where you feel at ease and alert. You can let your eyes close and turn your attention inwards. You might take a few slow, deep breaths to shift gears and settle in. Breathing in through your nose, and breathing out through your mouth long and slow. Each breath is a gift, freely given. We don't have to do anything to earn or deserve it. Just wait, and the body breathes in. It fills with new life. See what it's like to appreciate your breathing in this way, receiving each in-breath as a gift.

17

Optimizing Your Stress | Modupe Akinola

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: How do you form the habit of counter-programming your inner dialogue in the face of millennia of evolution that have left us with a pronounced tendency toward, you know, what's called the negativity bias? How do you similarly remember to revert to a stresses-enhancing mindset? These strike me as really attractive, evidence-based strategies, but doing them seems like a whole different kettle of fish.

(someone): is the knowing, doing thing. You have to practice it. And to practice it, you need to notice it. There's nothing more I can tell you but just to keep up. There it goes again. There goes my negative person saying that, you know, I'm not prepared. I'm going to mess up the interview. Oh, but you didn't, that was fine. You're fine. So each time just trying to remind yourself and practicing it and noticing when these thoughts arise, because they arise all the time. So you have ample opportunities to practice, ample. And then watching other people too. So then you become good at noticing it in other people, which I also think helps you notice it in yourself. So practice, I'm sorry, there's no shortcut. Because you are the person who knows yourself the best. So there's no one else that's going to tell you how to do this every day, but you. Watching, noticing, observing, and trying it. And the things I'm saying, some of them might work for you, some of them might not. You need to figure out what works for you.

18

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: If she bends to their demands in exchange for her own success, one of the 10 coveted spots will be hers, but at what cost? Enjoy Academy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge all 10 episodes of Academy early and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus over on the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

19

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): And the experience of getting that negative feedback and kind of working through it was an emotional journey for me. I mean, first, I went through a feeling of denial, like, I don't think this is really true. I sort of rejected the accusation. I went through a feeling of kind of like bargaining, like, oh, well, if I'd been able to get certain interviews, then maybe I wouldn't have come across that way. And as I was kind of going through this emotional experience, I was like, wait a second, Those are really familiar emotions like anger, denial, bargaining. Oh, that's grief. Those are the stages of grief. And then I started asking myself, like, what am I grieving? What's going on here? I think I was grieving I'm not totally sure. Maybe I was grieving my own innocence, the loss of a sense that I was immune somehow to some of the negative patterns that I was also trying to work against. And I mean, maybe it sounds trite to say, but I mean, I think I did get to a point of acceptance, you know, which is one of the final stages of the grieving process. And being able to look closely at some of the assumptions that I had made going into that article, going into the writing and editing, and being able to sort of hold them up to the light and accept some of the assumptions that I had made as being bad assumptions, realizing the mistakes that I had made was ultimately really essential. It was a painful process to go through.

Dan Harris: I think anybody who's ever received feedback, whether it's on bias or

20

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation, cooperating with people who are different from you, learning about history, and perhaps most importantly, you said this earlier, but I'm going to add it back here, persistence, not giving up when inevitably you screw up.

(someone): Yes, absolutely. And then additionally, there are a lot of strategies that organizations can also take. You and I have talked mostly about interpersonal interactions, but if you think about how these biases can have really deleterious consequences in larger organizations, when you have a lot of people interacting with one another, that's another kind of important dimension as well.

Dan Harris: I'd love to hear a little bit about that because I sometimes come across studies that show that these expensive corporate bias trainings are neutral to negative. But I don't have the data at my fingertips. I just recall seeing articles like that. So what does work?

(someone): Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of approaches that can be effective in organizations. Looking at the practices of the organization, I think, is incredibly important. So what are the sort of policies and practices that are in place and where is bias coming in? I think the place to start is not like, is our organization biased, but like, in what ways does bias show up in our organization? Where are these patterns happening?

21

Are You Willing to Challenge Your Own Tribe? | Robert Wright

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): The word cognitive sounds so kind of detached from emotion and feeling, but I think what really drives these biases is feeling. So in the case of confirmation bias, like imagine you're on social media, you're on Twitter or something, and somebody tweets something, you know, it's somebody kind of in your ideological tribe, and they tweet something that confirms your worldview. And you see it, well, if you pay attention, you'll notice that you actually you feel a favorable disposition toward it. You actually have an affection for that evidence, right? And that's why you uncritically embrace it and may retweet it. And on the other hand, if you see evidence that seems at odds with your worldview, if you pay enough attention, and meditation helps you pay attention to things like this, you'll notice that there's a kind of hostility toward the evidence itself. It's kind of an aversion to it. You want to push it away. And because you're hostile toward it, you want to critically interrogate it. And you want to say, well, wait a second, where did they get this? I want to see the study that claimed to find this. You don't naturally do that with the evidence, it seems, to support your role. You just retweet it, right? Because you like it. And I think the first step toward being more careful about what we do and don't retweet and what we do and don't accept is to recognize the feeling that accompany the inclination to retweet or not, to embrace or not.

22

Optimizing Your Stress | Modupe Akinola

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Because I can hear a skeptic saying, oh, well, is this, you know, some like rainbow puking unicorn technique? Or like, what is positive self-talk?

(someone): Well, it's funny because, you know, I know when we first met, we were both like, yeah, meditation for skeptics, because we're both like, yeah, breathe for an hour a day. Like, that's ridiculous, whatever. And here we are. Positive self-talk is just, we have this person in our head that is going to often tell us how we are awful. I mean, this is just, you know, oh, you can't do that well. You totally screwed that up. You know, you can't run up that hill. And positive self-talk is just, offering a balanced perspective to that negative that you always tell yourself. Oh, you might not be able to run it today because you're tired. Your legs are tired. But if you stretch more, you can get to it. That's all I'm saying. It's just every negative thing you can tell yourself, there is a flip side of positive. And remind yourself of that. And it can be helpful.

Dan Harris: How do you form the habit of counter-programming your inner dialogue in the face of millennia of evolution that have left us with a pronounced tendency toward, you know, what's called the negativity bias? How do you similarly remember to revert to a stresses-enhancing mindset?

List very concrete and precise steps to counteract negativity bias.

Sure! Here are some concrete steps to counteract negativity bias:

Practice mindfulness and meditation: Research suggests that mindfulness and meditation can reduce bias and increase emotional regulation . Mindfulness can help you become more aware of your biases and provide a more balanced perspective.
Engage in positive self-talk: Challenge negative thoughts and offer a more balanced perspective . Remind yourself of the positive aspects of a situation and focus on alternative explanations .
Develop meaningful relationships with people who are different from you: Interacting with people from diverse backgrounds can help reduce bias . Seek opportunities to connect with individuals from different social identities .
Learn about history and biases: Educate yourself about biases and their impact on society . Increasing awareness and understanding can help challenge biases and promote inclusivity .
Take bias training: Participating in evidence-based bias training programs can increase awareness, motivation, and provide strategies to reduce bias . These trainings offer insights into bias and provide strategies such as looking for alternative explanations and developing meaningful relationships with others .

Remember, reducing bias requires practice and persistence. It is important to be patient with yourself and continue working on recognizing and challenging biases in your thoughts and behavior .

1

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: I think for many of us, when you hear the word meditation, it conjures images of people sitting alone, maybe in robes, maybe on an outcropping of rock in the Himalayas in lotus position. However, for many people, meditation is better while moving. You've probably heard me talk on this show about walking meditation, which I have found to be an incredibly powerful form of the practice. And it's a really good thing to do if you're feeling too fidgety to sit or if you're too tired to sit. So if you want to give this a try, which I highly recommend, you can now do the walking meditations over on the 10% Happier app for free, the Enjoy Everyday Walking Meditation Pack. in the 10% Happier app is available for free until August 20th. Download the 10% Happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. From ABC, this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, it's Friday time for a bonus meditation. We're going to be talking about the negativity bias today. This is something that's been wired into us by evolution. It made sense on the savannah because our forebears needed to be on the lookout for threats of all manner. And being on the lookout for threats still makes sense to a certain extent today. But we tend to take it too far and view the world through garbage colored glasses. And that's why it's so important to counteract the negativity bias, and we're going to talk about that today in a guided meditation in just a second.

2

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: If she bends to their demands in exchange for her own success, one of the 10 coveted spots will be hers, but at what cost? Enjoy Academy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge all 10 episodes of Academy early and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus over on the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

3

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): So I would say that the science is pretty new, but there does seem to be promising evidence that it can have a positive impact. And we certainly do have really good evidence that loving kindness meditation creates more other directed altruistic behavior.

Dan Harris: So it's interesting, if I'm hearing you correctly, there's some evidence that kind of directly suggests that meditation can reduce bias, but there's also a pretty solid inference one can make in that stress can boost the odds that we're biased or owned by our biases, and meditation is good for stress, and therefore, by the transitive property, et cetera, et cetera.

(someone): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, another pretty interesting and compelling piece of evidence is that we do know that our behavior toward other people is actually more predicted by our emotional response than our cognitive response. Our feelings are a really good predictor of how we're going to act. And we know that mindfulness is an effective way of achieving more emotional regulation. So that's another sort of like inferential piece of evidence about why it can be helpful.

Dan Harris: You talked about other modalities for reducing bias. One of them is having relationships with people who are different from you. I suspect some people might hear that and say, well, how do I do that?

(someone): Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of a chicken and an egg problem here, which is that if you are nervous or uncertain about having relationships with people who belong to different, you know, social identities, then it can be hard to have those relationships, which are maybe necessary for actually sort of eroding some of the biases. So is your question like, how does one go about doing that?

4

Optimizing Your Stress | Modupe Akinola

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: How do you form the habit of counter-programming your inner dialogue in the face of millennia of evolution that have left us with a pronounced tendency toward, you know, what's called the negativity bias? How do you similarly remember to revert to a stresses-enhancing mindset? These strike me as really attractive, evidence-based strategies, but doing them seems like a whole different kettle of fish.

(someone): is the knowing, doing thing. You have to practice it. And to practice it, you need to notice it. There's nothing more I can tell you but just to keep up. There it goes again. There goes my negative person saying that, you know, I'm not prepared. I'm going to mess up the interview. Oh, but you didn't, that was fine. You're fine. So each time just trying to remind yourself and practicing it and noticing when these thoughts arise, because they arise all the time. So you have ample opportunities to practice, ample. And then watching other people too. So then you become good at noticing it in other people, which I also think helps you notice it in yourself. So practice, I'm sorry, there's no shortcut. Because you are the person who knows yourself the best. So there's no one else that's going to tell you how to do this every day, but you. Watching, noticing, observing, and trying it. And the things I'm saying, some of them might work for you, some of them might not. You need to figure out what works for you.

5

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): They've been working on this particular bias intervention workshop, I think for about 10 years now, refining it and developing different iterations of it. And it's kind of based on a cognitive behavior therapy model, which is that in order to change, you have to have awareness that there's a problem, you have to be motivated to change the problem, and then you have to have replacement strategies. So in this particular training, they give you all of the sort of like a succinct presentation of how bias works and what its impact is in the world, how serious its consequences are. These are designed to increase awareness and motivation. And then they give you sort of a palette of strategies to use. And the strategies include things like looking for alternative explanations for a person's behavior. Once you realize that you're making an assumption about the reason for someone's behavior coming up with alternative explanations, developing meaningful relationships with people of other groups. That's a whole other strategy, which I can talk about in more detail. And there are like a few other strategies that they offer. So these three things together, the kind of awareness, motivation, and strategies they have found actually changes people's behavior. So after going through this particular training, college students were more likely to speak up about discrimination when they witnessed it in an online context. a set of university science and math departments ended up hiring more women when they went through a gender-focused version of this training. So these components seem to be helpful in changing people's behavior in the real world. Another strategy that is extremely helpful is Mindfulness, actually.

6

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: In fact, the meditation you're about to hear is from the Kindness Meditation Pack, which is available on the 10% Happier app. If you want more of these meditations, just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps, and then tap on the Singles tab to find the rest of the aforementioned kindness meditations, or you can just click the link in the show notes here. Let's get to today's practice. It's from the meditation teacher Anushka Fernandopouli, and she offers us some guidance on how to recall moments of kindness in our own lives. Over now to Anushka.

(someone): Hi, this is Anushka. Welcome to this meditation on noticing different moments of kindness you've received. This helps us to grow in appreciation and to have a more positive outlook on our life. It also makes it easier for us to continue the chain of kindness by being kind to others and ourself. So let's get started. Come to a comfortable position for this meditation. You could be lying down or sitting. You could even be standing somewhere while you listen to this meditation. But you do want to be in a comfortable position. Let yourself relax your body. If you're comfortable, you can close your eyes. Or if you're standing, you can keep them open. Take a few deep breaths in and out. As you try to let go of the thoughts of the day, see if there's any tension in your face, your shoulders, or any other part of the body. Breathe deeply in and out a few times, relaxing the tension on the out-breath.

7

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: is really useful in terms of kind of reducing the amount of inclement weather that may be in your mind at any given moment vis-a-vis yourself. And that in my experience, I don't know if there's any data to back this up, but in my experience, I'm a little less horrified. I'm a little warmer to myself in those moments where I see that I'm thinking something that's completely unfair and ungrounded.

(someone): Yeah, and I think the really important addition to that is that that space of possibility that opens up when we see that these are not preordained and that we have the capacity to change, that possibility is so fertile. We can actually choose another path. And I think it's incumbent on us to choose another path. I mean, we've seen the horrible consequences of not choosing another path. And so I don't want to leave it as like, we just need to feel compassionate toward ourselves and continue doing what we have always been doing. It's like, we want to feel compassion toward ourselves so that we are able to move in a direction of connection and inclusivity and fairness toward our fellow humans.

Dan Harris: I think that's undeniably true, and I'm glad you made that point. Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation,

8

How to Counteract Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Oren Jay Sofer

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Don't miss out on the Enjoy Everyday Walking Meditation Pack over on the 10% Happier app. It's available for free until August 20th. If you haven't tried walking meditation on the app before, I highly recommend you check it out here. is what one user had to say. I'm quoting here. I'm in my sixth year with 10%. I start and end my day with it. I like their walking meditations to use when I'm out exercising or walking the dog. The longer I use it, the more I learn nuances and subtleties and refinements of the process. It is life changing. That's awesome to hear. Download the 10% Happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. Time for a bonus meditation. On the show this week, we've been talking a lot about beauty and art and aesthetics, and we're going to pick up on that theme in today's meditation. One of the more pernicious aspects of the design of the human mind is that we have this negativity bias. We evolved to spot threats, like saber-toothed tigers, and it's served us well in some ways. However, it can lead to some pretty serious degradation of your daily life if you're constantly focusing on the negative. So this is a meditation that will help you do the opposite, to focus on the good stuff.

9

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: I think for many of us, when you hear the word meditation, it conjures images of people sitting alone, maybe in robes, maybe on an outcropping of rock in the Himalayas in lotus position. However, for many people, meditation is better while moving. You've probably heard me talk on this show about walking meditation, which I have found to be an incredibly powerful form of the practice. And it's a really good thing to do if you're feeling too fidgety to sit or if you're too tired to sit. So if you want to give this a try, which I highly recommend, you can now do the walking meditations over on the 10% Happier app for free, the Enjoy Everyday Walking Meditation Pack. in the 10% Happier app is available for free until August 20th. Download the 10% Happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. From ABC, this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, it's Friday time for a bonus meditation. We're going to be talking about the negativity bias today. This is something that's been wired into us by evolution. It made sense on the savannah because our forebears needed to be on the lookout for threats of all manner. And being on the lookout for threats still makes sense to a certain extent today. But we tend to take it too far and view the world through garbage colored glasses. And that's why it's so important to counteract the negativity bias, and we're going to talk about that today in a guided meditation in just a second.

10

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: is really useful in terms of kind of reducing the amount of inclement weather that may be in your mind at any given moment vis-a-vis yourself. And that in my experience, I don't know if there's any data to back this up, but in my experience, I'm a little less horrified. I'm a little warmer to myself in those moments where I see that I'm thinking something that's completely unfair and ungrounded.

(someone): Yeah, and I think the really important addition to that is that that space of possibility that opens up when we see that these are not preordained and that we have the capacity to change, that possibility is so fertile. We can actually choose another path. And I think it's incumbent on us to choose another path. I mean, we've seen the horrible consequences of not choosing another path. And so I don't want to leave it as like, we just need to feel compassionate toward ourselves and continue doing what we have always been doing. It's like, we want to feel compassion toward ourselves so that we are able to move in a direction of connection and inclusivity and fairness toward our fellow humans.

Dan Harris: I think that's undeniably true, and I'm glad you made that point. Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation,

11

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: In fact, the meditation you're about to hear is from the Kindness Meditation Pack, which is available on the 10% Happier app. If you want more of these meditations, just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps, and then tap on the Singles tab to find the rest of the aforementioned kindness meditations, or you can just click the link in the show notes here. Let's get to today's practice. It's from the meditation teacher Anushka Fernandopouli, and she offers us some guidance on how to recall moments of kindness in our own lives. Over now to Anushka.

(someone): Hi, this is Anushka. Welcome to this meditation on noticing different moments of kindness you've received. This helps us to grow in appreciation and to have a more positive outlook on our life. It also makes it easier for us to continue the chain of kindness by being kind to others and ourself. So let's get started. Come to a comfortable position for this meditation. You could be lying down or sitting. You could even be standing somewhere while you listen to this meditation. But you do want to be in a comfortable position. Let yourself relax your body. If you're comfortable, you can close your eyes. Or if you're standing, you can keep them open. Take a few deep breaths in and out. As you try to let go of the thoughts of the day, see if there's any tension in your face, your shoulders, or any other part of the body. Breathe deeply in and out a few times, relaxing the tension on the out-breath.

12

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation, cooperating with people who are different from you, learning about history, and perhaps most importantly, you said this earlier, but I'm going to add it back here, persistence, not giving up when inevitably you screw up.

(someone): Yes, absolutely. And then additionally, there are a lot of strategies that organizations can also take. You and I have talked mostly about interpersonal interactions, but if you think about how these biases can have really deleterious consequences in larger organizations, when you have a lot of people interacting with one another, that's another kind of important dimension as well.

Dan Harris: I'd love to hear a little bit about that because I sometimes come across studies that show that these expensive corporate bias trainings are neutral to negative. But I don't have the data at my fingertips. I just recall seeing articles like that. So what does work?

(someone): Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of approaches that can be effective in organizations. Looking at the practices of the organization, I think, is incredibly important. So what are the sort of policies and practices that are in place and where is bias coming in? I think the place to start is not like, is our organization biased, but like, in what ways does bias show up in our organization? Where are these patterns happening?

13

Counteracting Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): As you try to let go of the thoughts of the day, see if there's any tension in your face, your shoulders, or any other part of the body. Breathe deeply in and out a few times, relaxing the tension on the out-breath. and then allow the breath to come to its natural rhythm. You can begin by bringing to mind someone who's been kind to you quite recently. This could be someone who's shown you some generosity, some care, some goodwill, or love. It could be someone you're close to, or even some small kindness that came from a stranger. including someone who held a door open for you, who genuinely smiled at you, or who did their job with kindness. Allow yourself to remember this act of kindness and feel the impact of it. Allow your attention to go to your heart area or anywhere in your body where you can notice this. Allow yourself to feel it fully. Try not to judge how it's supposed to feel or how strong the feeling is. Just be with this sense of kindness, however it's showing up. Next, you can bring to mind another act of kindness that you may not have thought of for some time. Maybe from your work life. Someone who has been helpful to you through mentoring you. Or who was kind in some way. Or it could be a long lost friend that you haven't thought of for a while. Allow yourself to remember the act of kindness. the relationship of goodwill. Let your attention settle in your chest or your heart area or any place in your body where you feel the impact of this kindness.

14

How to Counteract Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Oren Jay Sofer

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: However, it can lead to some pretty serious degradation of your daily life if you're constantly focusing on the negative. So this is a meditation that will help you do the opposite, to focus on the good stuff. And our teacher, Dujour, is the marvelous Oren J. Sofer. He teaches mindfulness, meditation, and also something called nonviolent communication, which is essentially communication skills, and he's written a whole book about that. He's been practicing since 1997, and not for nothing, he's also one of, if not the most popular teachers on the 10% Happier app. So, let's get started now with Oren J. Sofer.

(someone): Hey, this is Oren. It's easy to notice what's wrong or to find something to stress about. Meditation can help us to balance that negativity bias by appreciating the goodness that's already here and available in life. When we uplift the heart, even a little, we have more energy and strength to devote to the things we care about. So go ahead and find a comfortable posture where you feel at ease and alert. You can let your eyes close and turn your attention inwards. You might take a few slow, deep breaths to shift gears and settle in. Breathing in through your nose, and breathing out through your mouth long and slow. Each breath is a gift, freely given. We don't have to do anything to earn or deserve it. Just wait, and the body breathes in. It fills with new life. See what it's like to appreciate your breathing in this way, receiving each in-breath as a gift.

15

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Just to sum up, and I don't know if I'm gonna sum up correctly, I'll take a stab at it and you'll correct me if I'm wrong. After an enormous amount of research on your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that you've found that have evidence behind them that an individual can take to reduce their bias, and those include taking a bias training that has evidence to support it, meditation, cooperating with people who are different from you, learning about history, and perhaps most importantly, you said this earlier, but I'm going to add it back here, persistence, not giving up when inevitably you screw up.

(someone): Yes, absolutely. And then additionally, there are a lot of strategies that organizations can also take. You and I have talked mostly about interpersonal interactions, but if you think about how these biases can have really deleterious consequences in larger organizations, when you have a lot of people interacting with one another, that's another kind of important dimension as well.

Dan Harris: I'd love to hear a little bit about that because I sometimes come across studies that show that these expensive corporate bias trainings are neutral to negative. But I don't have the data at my fingertips. I just recall seeing articles like that. So what does work?

(someone): Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of approaches that can be effective in organizations. Looking at the practices of the organization, I think, is incredibly important. So what are the sort of policies and practices that are in place and where is bias coming in? I think the place to start is not like, is our organization biased, but like, in what ways does bias show up in our organization? Where are these patterns happening?

16

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): They've been working on this particular bias intervention workshop, I think for about 10 years now, refining it and developing different iterations of it. And it's kind of based on a cognitive behavior therapy model, which is that in order to change, you have to have awareness that there's a problem, you have to be motivated to change the problem, and then you have to have replacement strategies. So in this particular training, they give you all of the sort of like a succinct presentation of how bias works and what its impact is in the world, how serious its consequences are. These are designed to increase awareness and motivation. And then they give you sort of a palette of strategies to use. And the strategies include things like looking for alternative explanations for a person's behavior. Once you realize that you're making an assumption about the reason for someone's behavior coming up with alternative explanations, developing meaningful relationships with people of other groups. That's a whole other strategy, which I can talk about in more detail. And there are like a few other strategies that they offer. So these three things together, the kind of awareness, motivation, and strategies they have found actually changes people's behavior. So after going through this particular training, college students were more likely to speak up about discrimination when they witnessed it in an online context. a set of university science and math departments ended up hiring more women when they went through a gender-focused version of this training. So these components seem to be helpful in changing people's behavior in the real world. Another strategy that is extremely helpful is Mindfulness, actually.

17

How to Counteract Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Oren Jay Sofer

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: However, it can lead to some pretty serious degradation of your daily life if you're constantly focusing on the negative. So this is a meditation that will help you do the opposite, to focus on the good stuff. And our teacher, Dujour, is the marvelous Oren J. Sofer. He teaches mindfulness, meditation, and also something called nonviolent communication, which is essentially communication skills, and he's written a whole book about that. He's been practicing since 1997, and not for nothing, he's also one of, if not the most popular teachers on the 10% Happier app. So, let's get started now with Oren J. Sofer.

(someone): Hey, this is Oren. It's easy to notice what's wrong or to find something to stress about. Meditation can help us to balance that negativity bias by appreciating the goodness that's already here and available in life. When we uplift the heart, even a little, we have more energy and strength to devote to the things we care about. So go ahead and find a comfortable posture where you feel at ease and alert. You can let your eyes close and turn your attention inwards. You might take a few slow, deep breaths to shift gears and settle in. Breathing in through your nose, and breathing out through your mouth long and slow. Each breath is a gift, freely given. We don't have to do anything to earn or deserve it. Just wait, and the body breathes in. It fills with new life. See what it's like to appreciate your breathing in this way, receiving each in-breath as a gift.

18

Optimizing Your Stress | Modupe Akinola

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Because I can hear a skeptic saying, oh, well, is this, you know, some like rainbow puking unicorn technique? Or like, what is positive self-talk?

(someone): Well, it's funny because, you know, I know when we first met, we were both like, yeah, meditation for skeptics, because we're both like, yeah, breathe for an hour a day. Like, that's ridiculous, whatever. And here we are. Positive self-talk is just, we have this person in our head that is going to often tell us how we are awful. I mean, this is just, you know, oh, you can't do that well. You totally screwed that up. You know, you can't run up that hill. And positive self-talk is just, offering a balanced perspective to that negative that you always tell yourself. Oh, you might not be able to run it today because you're tired. Your legs are tired. But if you stretch more, you can get to it. That's all I'm saying. It's just every negative thing you can tell yourself, there is a flip side of positive. And remind yourself of that. And it can be helpful.

Dan Harris: How do you form the habit of counter-programming your inner dialogue in the face of millennia of evolution that have left us with a pronounced tendency toward, you know, what's called the negativity bias? How do you similarly remember to revert to a stresses-enhancing mindset?

19

How to Counteract Your Negativity Bias | Bonus Meditation with Oren Jay Sofer

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Dan Harris: Don't miss out on the Enjoy Everyday Walking Meditation Pack over on the 10% Happier app. It's available for free until August 20th. If you haven't tried walking meditation on the app before, I highly recommend you check it out here. is what one user had to say. I'm quoting here. I'm in my sixth year with 10%. I start and end my day with it. I like their walking meditations to use when I'm out exercising or walking the dog. The longer I use it, the more I learn nuances and subtleties and refinements of the process. It is life changing. That's awesome to hear. Download the 10% Happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. Time for a bonus meditation. On the show this week, we've been talking a lot about beauty and art and aesthetics, and we're going to pick up on that theme in today's meditation. One of the more pernicious aspects of the design of the human mind is that we have this negativity bias. We evolved to spot threats, like saber-toothed tigers, and it's served us well in some ways. However, it can lead to some pretty serious degradation of your daily life if you're constantly focusing on the negative. So this is a meditation that will help you do the opposite, to focus on the good stuff.

20

Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): So I would say that the science is pretty new, but there does seem to be promising evidence that it can have a positive impact. And we certainly do have really good evidence that loving kindness meditation creates more other directed altruistic behavior.

Dan Harris: So it's interesting, if I'm hearing you correctly, there's some evidence that kind of directly suggests that meditation can reduce bias, but there's also a pretty solid inference one can make in that stress can boost the odds that we're biased or owned by our biases, and meditation is good for stress, and therefore, by the transitive property, et cetera, et cetera.

(someone): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, another pretty interesting and compelling piece of evidence is that we do know that our behavior toward other people is actually more predicted by our emotional response than our cognitive response. Our feelings are a really good predictor of how we're going to act. And we know that mindfulness is an effective way of achieving more emotional regulation. So that's another sort of like inferential piece of evidence about why it can be helpful.

Dan Harris: You talked about other modalities for reducing bias. One of them is having relationships with people who are different from you. I suspect some people might hear that and say, well, how do I do that?

(someone): Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of a chicken and an egg problem here, which is that if you are nervous or uncertain about having relationships with people who belong to different, you know, social identities, then it can be hard to have those relationships, which are maybe necessary for actually sort of eroding some of the biases. So is your question like, how does one go about doing that?

21

Oliver Burkeman, The Power of Negative Thinking

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): I mean, there are lots of different layers to this. There are sort of political objections and objections having to do with the sort of the effects on a broader societal level. But I think right down at the psychological root of it, there is just this fact that the human mind is not the kind of thing where if you give it a certain instruction and, you know, you're really relentless about it, it will follow that instruction. especially when it's the same mind that's dispensing the instruction, right? So if you tell yourself to feel happier, if you tell yourself to ignore negative things that are happening, you get this, you very reliably get this ironic backlash effect where All you can do is think about the stressful and negative thoughts you're supposed to be eliminating from your mind. All you can do is constantly monitor your internal experience to see if your attempts to feel happier are working. The analogy that I start off with in the book is that old thing about where you challenge somebody to not think about a polar bear for a whole minute. And they've actually done this now in psychology labs, right? Where they try to get people to narrate what they're thinking of in the minute that they spend not trying to think of a polar bear. And some people have a certain amount of success for a few seconds by sort of flooding their mind with other alternative things. But it always comes back to polar bears because as soon as you're trying not to think about a polar bear, it's all you can think about. And I think that works as an analogy for all kinds of positive thinking and other kinds of self-help intervention.

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Ways to End Bias That Will Also Make You Happier | Jessica Nordell

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

(someone): Another strategy that is extremely helpful is Mindfulness, actually. Mindfulness and meditation seem to have an effect on a lot of different aspects of bias. There are, I mean, I'm sure as you know, like compassion meditation has shown to create more altruistic responses to people who are in other groups. There's some really interesting research by a neuroscientist named Yuna Kang who found that after six weeks of meditation, people's responses to the implicit association test went to zero. This is a test that looks at, are you familiar with the implicit association test, the IAT?

Dan Harris: Yeah, as far as I know, though, it's pretty controversial.

(someone): It is really controversial, yeah, and it's unclear exactly what it measures, so we could like talk about those. the IAT controversy too, but it's an interesting finding that she found consistently people's responses to this test that at least purportedly looks at automatic associations. People responded as though they had no bias in their associations. Now that could be that their biases eroded. It could be that they just got better at self-control. There are different explanations for what could be going on here. But one piece of research that I found really interesting was about the impact of loving kindness meditation. Some neuroscientists found that people who were really practiced in loving kindness meditation, who were shown images of themselves and images of someone else, over one area of the brain, they showed more similar responses to looking at an image of the self and looking at an image of the other than people who were not experienced loving-kindness meditators, which is really so fascinating.