Have you learned anything from me?
- Oh, I mean, a lot of the
stuff that you've told me
I've already kind of known--
- Okay, I inserted myself in the middle
of a controversial culture wars issue
to try to change minds.
Things that feel more divisive than ever.
Every issue is reduced to a war,
and it seems people aren't willing
to consider changing their minds.
But there's a little
known new area of psychology
that promises to solve our conflicts.
And research tells us
that practicing this science
can lead to less political polarization,
greater personal
relationships, and wellbeing.
But in real life, is
that actually the case?
To find out, I spent a year training
in creating good conflict,
speaking to researchers--
- We're not even
talking to each other anymore.
Everybody is
convinced that they're right.
- And people with wildly different
viewpoints than myself.
- Do you see how that
like throws me for a loop?
- I found most of it deeply uncomfortable
and kind of terrifying.
But would I do it all again?
Yes, in a heartbeat.
Because what I learned
completely transformed
the way that I think.
So this new area of psychology,
it's called intellectual humility.
It's a trait similar to open-mindedness.
And at its most basic, it's the
willingness to acknowledge
that your beliefs may be wrong.
- There's all kinds of humility.
There's like relational humility,
and there's like religious humility.
It just means being
humble about your intellect.
So being humble about what you know
and what you don't
know, how smart you are,
how smart other people are.
- Of course, this is
easier said than done.
But the benefits of
being intellectually humble
can be huge.
Researchers have found
that intellectual humility
is associated with
greater emotional stability,
self-esteem, and life satisfaction.
And on a broader scale,
it could decrease extremism
and susceptibility to
conspiracy theories.
It can also make you a
more persuasive communicator.
And I wanted to see if I
could harness this science
to change people's minds.
So I started last year
with specialized training
and a conference at UC Berkeley.
Because being open to
different ways of thinking
can be really hard.
- When we feel threatened,
when we think about our mortality,
when somebody is
attacking us for our beliefs,
when we're being criticized,
all of that will actually make us
less intellectually humble.
We will tend to kind of close down,
we'll tend to dig our heels
into our entrenched beliefs.
- Think about it.
You have all sorts of beliefs,
some that you're more open to change
and others that you aren't.
By default, most of us
think we're quite humble.
But what tends to happen is we develop
a line of non-negotiables.
And we put a lot of
our tightly held beliefs
behind this line.
And if you can't
accept that those beliefs
could be changed,
researchers would say you're being
intellectually arrogant.
Sociologist Alana Redstone calls
intellectual arrogance
the invisible certainty trap,
which can make us look
down upon or flat out reject
other ideas or
positions that are different
from our deeply held beliefs.
It can make us stop listening.
Now, to be clear,
having strong
opinions can be a good thing.
Scientists aren't
telling you to be wishy-washy.
The key is to strike a balance.
And to recognize that,
while you may hold
certain beliefs very strongly,
you're not infallible.
- We have to have some principles
and we wanna be accurate about what we
know and don't know.
- Think back to a time
that you changed your mind
or at least grew in your beliefs.
For me, a few years back,
I switched to a mostly plant-based diet
after years of being a
pretty big meat eater.
The change made me feel great physically.
And the more facts I saw
about the impact of beef
on the climate, the more I was convinced.
This made me wonder,
if I could drastically
reduce my meat consumption,
could I convince someone else to?
Could I change someone's mind?
- Okay, so what I wanna
do as part of this video
is to harness intellectual humility,
to change someone's mind.
Is that possible?
Do you think that's possible?
- I mean, there are a few
things that you could try to do,
which is to assume the
best of the other person
until you have very
strong evidence otherwise.
- Approaching a
disagreement with humility
can help foster
meaningful, thoughtful discussions.
So how do you do that?
- Intellectual humility involves a lot of
what psychologists call
metacognitive work, right?
Where you're not just
thinking about the world,
but you're reflecting
on your own thoughts.
- Yeah, thinking about your
own thoughts is difficult,
but this practice can
keep your bias in check
and beliefs in perspective.
- The thing is that we think that we
change people's minds
by sharing them the facts, right?
Like the data and creating a really
persuasive argument.
And that's actually not
how we change people's minds.
- I find this bit really hard,
but for going facts to change minds
is supported by research.
- Research shows you
change people's minds
by telling them stories.
It's a little bit more work,
because then you have to say,
what about my life and my experiences
have led me to believe what I believe?
- So I set off to
attempt to change a mind
using intellectual humility.
I planned to tell my story,
assume the best in people,
and use a technique I
learned about called looping,
to listen and connect with others.
And think about my own biases as I
respond to conflict.
I inserted myself into the
middle of the war on beef.
The idea that meat is under attack
from plant-based substitutes and even
protein-rich insects.
I spoke with a beef farmer in Texas,
though speak with is fairly generous
because I kind of lost my voice.
- I have so much horse
alive on me right now.
(both laughing)
Elvis is the black one over here.
This one we call Mrs. Robinson.
Because she's 18 to 20 years old.
- This is Ryan, who moved
to Texas a few years back
to start Freedom Foods Farm,
and has a YouTube
channel about farm life.
- Longhorns, you have
to remain in the middle.
You can't go on the side of them.
Because one little
thing, you just schisk about.
- Yeah, I'm probably good,
but we can get some
footage of you feeding them.
- Okay, I was very
nervous chatting with Ryan
about plant-based diets.
And I think that animals could just tell.
Priscilla.
- The llamas don't like me.
- Okay, how can somebody
that doesn't know my life,
doesn't understand what I'm doing,
criticize me and say
that I'm the problem?
- Could I use intellectual humility
to move from criticism to curiosity?
- When we're talking
about this war on beef,
who do you imagine if it was a war,
who were the two sides?
- Oh, you have your
liberal New Yorker LA person
on one side.
- In other words, me.
- Then you have your hard-nosed
Republican Texas rancher.
It's the coast versus the middle.
That's the way I think about it.
- So I'm here because
you're a beef farmer.
I'm a person who
believes that people should eat
a plant-based or a
more plant-forward diet.
Can I tell you about my perspective?
- Sure.
- So I am from a country that is a big
meat-eating country.
When I was a kid, all we ate was meat.
Our dinner every night was
meat and three veg, you know?
Sausages, rissoles, which are like
a little Australian meatloaf patty,
things like that, steaks, everything.
And I didn't really think about it.
Like I just went about life that way.
And probably about five years ago,
there was kind of
whispers of people going vegan
and doing plant-based
diets and things like that.
So I started exploring that.
- Okay, we're starting off well.
I'm telling my story.
- And there were two things
that really changed my mind.
One was the environmental impact of beef.
That really concerned me.
Like there's some wild
statistics around this.
In the American West, there's a drought,
like a decades-long
drought at the moment.
6% of all of the water
use in the American West
is for residential houses.
8% is for commercial use.
33% is for food to feed cattle,
like just for alfalfa,
hay, all that kind of stuff.
So it's like a huge impact.
- Oh no, here I fell into that old trap,
front-loading the
conversation with statistics.
- The other thing was the health effects
of having a more plant-based diet.
So having a more plant-based diet
lowers your risk of
heart disease and dementia.
So I was like, I'm just
gonna try this for a while,
see what happens.
I did it for a while.
And the thing that was
a game changer for me
was it actually changed my mood.
And I felt like I was
a more kind of stable,
like happier, positive person.
I could just like
manage my emotions better
when I was doing the plant-based diet.
And that is what like really
encouraged me to keep going.
- Okay, wow.
That's pretty awesome.
You find something that
works for you, you do it.
- Yeah.
- There we go.
- If you wanted that other side,
like the kind of like
liberal New York person
to understand something
about you, what would that be?
- About me?
- Yeah, yeah.
- The way that I manage things here is
it has to meet all three
of these criteria for me
to add it to the farm, okay?
One, it has to respect the animal, okay?
By far, my allegiance is to the animal.
When it's cold out, when
it's hot out, guess what?
I have to come take care
of them no matter what.
And I need to be able to make it
to where they're not
putting bad stuff in their body.
Number two, it has to
respect the planet, okay?
To where we're not going backwards.
We're actually improving.
We're creating more
biodiversity around the farm.
We're growing more grasses.
We're sequestering more carbon.
And number three, it has
to be healthy for us to eat.
- At a certain point, I
realized my entire idea
to change the mind of a beef farmer
about their very livelihood was
incredibly arrogant.
I didn't exactly
approach it with humility.
This whole process made me think,
maybe I'm not as humble as I thought.
- How intellectually humble am I?
Let's find out.
- With Eranda's help, I'm going to take
this intellectual humility survey
developed for use in research.
- Number one question.
I complimented the good ideas of those
who disagreed with me.
- So here, you're thinking about
recent interpersonal
disagreement you had.
- Yeah.
I probably disagree.
Okay, I viewed the
challenging of my ideas
as an opportunity to grow and learn.
I would say five.
I searched actively for reasons
why my beliefs might be wrong.
I mean, two, even when I
was certain about my opinion,
I researched information
supporting the opposing viewpoint.
No, strongly disagree.
I prefer to seek a second opinion
from someone who has a
different point of view from my own.
Sometimes I use new information
to reevaluate my existing viewpoint.
I'd say five.
I do that quite a lot.
- So your mean score on
this scale was a 3.27.
- Out of five?
- Out of five.
So that means you're just
above neither agree or disagree,
which means you
manifested a moderate level
of intellectual
humility in the situation.
- That's very kind of you to say.
- There's room for growth.
- Finding out that I
was basically neutral
in intellectual humility was
surprising, to say the least.
I began to realise that
many of us, perhaps even you,
are overconfident about how
humble and open-minded we are.
I'd hit a blind spot
in how I view myself.
Perhaps turning to vegetables
wasn't such a dramatic change.
I was already pretty open to it.
I live in an area with a
lot of vegan restaurants.
I mean, I drink pea milk.
Yet I assumed that I was
going to teach Ryan something
and not that Ryan had
anything to teach me.
- You mentioned that you
have this type of farming,
which is carbon neutral, did you say?
- Oh, no.
- You're regenerating the soil?
- We're not even sustainable.
It's because sustainable is kind of a--
- Catch word.
- Oh, yeah.
And it's funny because
we're going to sustain
what we're doing right now.
We're not getting any worse.
If we just keep doing what we're doing,
we're going to get worse.
Regenerative means we're
bringing the grasses back.
We're building up the soil again.
We're able to capture more
carbon than we're putting out.
- Ryan has a small regenerative farm.
He creates his own
compost from almanua and hay.
- We're able to capture the nitrogen.
We're able to capture all the nutrients
by binding it with
carbon in the form of hay
and producing a compost.
Doesn't smell.
This used to be a ton--
- Can I smell it?
- Yeah, go for it.
- It doesn't smell.
- It doesn't smell like anything.
- Ryan keeps moving the
cows between pastures.
So he can use the
compost on the old pastures
to regenerate the soil.
In the process, he uses
the cows as a lawnmower.
- So moving, mobbing and mowing,
and by doing that,
we're building up soil.
We're allowing the
nutrients to be spread out
all throughout the pasture,
and we're seeing native grasses grow up
like you wouldn't believe.
- And the cows seem pretty happy.
- I'm giving you food, come on.
You want scratches.
Okay, fine.
- That's kind of incredible.
- Yeah. - Process.
- It really is.
It's just doing what nature
has done for millions of years.
- Some claim that
regenerative agriculture
has the potential to not only lower,
but even sequester carbon.
Though other experts are more
cautious about its potential
and make critics claim it's not scalable
because it requires so much land.
How we measure these
things is complicated,
but regenerative
farming of one type of beef
probably has a smaller
carbon and water footprint
than feedlot farming,
the other type of beef.
- Before I reached out to you,
I didn't know that there
were two types of beef.
And when you see a lot of
those stats and things like that,
it had never occurred to me
that they were taken
from a certain type of farm.
And like I've heard of more
regenerative farming practices before,
but I hadn't thought of
that like relating to beef.
I was thinking of that
in relation to like fruit
and vegetables and other chickens.
And do you know what I mean?
Like that kind of stuff?
- Yeah, two totally different things.
It's two totally different things.
- I learned so much,
but did I achieve my original goal
of changing how someone else thought
about plant-based diets?
- Have you learned anything from me?
- Oh, I mean, a lot of the
stuff that you've told me,
I already kind of know
because I've been
exploring this for four years.
And I understand where you're coming from
with the health benefits
of the vegetarian diet.
Because back in the
city, which way would I go?
I mean, immediately until I found a
farmer that I trust,
I might go vegetarian, you know?
And I get it, I get it.
Maybe not all the way,
because I still like a hamburger
and a steak every once in a while.
But I completely
understand where you're coming from.
- We did find some common ground,
but I put in all of these words
to improve my own intellectual humility.
And I left with doubts that I was
actually more humble.
And then after a few months,
I saw online that Ryan
had adopted a carnivore diet
where he mainly eats beef,
which was the complete opposite
of what I was advocating for.
So it was time to check
back in with the experts.
- After we finished filming everything,
I had this moment where I was like,
am I an asshole?
Perhaps I'm an asshole.
And I just never realized it before.
Maybe I'm just arrogant.
- One of the lessons I've learned
is to spend more time looking, studying,
for an understanding
of intellectual humility
is that you have to be
patient with the process.
If you want to change someone's mind,
the first step is to understand
where the person is coming from.
You should start not from the perspective
of I'm here to change your mind.
I'm here because I'm curious
about why you think the way you think
and why the way I think is different.
- So at the beginning of this process,
I thought I was really humble.
And then I learned that I'm
not as humble as I thought.
And now I feel like I'm adrift in the sea
and I don't know how
to think about myself.
So can we ever truly know ourselves?
- What I will say is that
the process of self-knowledge,
of achieving self-knowledge
is an ongoing process, right?
Maybe instead of pushing
to answer the question,
am I intellectually humble?
Right now, you give
yourself some space to say,
okay, do I actually have the skills
to be intellectually humble
and to sort of motivate someone else
to be intellectually humble?
Let's see.
- It's refreshing to
know that I have the skills
to be humble.
We all do.
And it's a trait that evolves.
Maybe my experience wasn't as
bad as I originally thought.
- Well, it was amazing meeting you.
Can we shake hands?
- Oh, absolutely.
I feel like I met a friend.
- Yeah.
- You don't have to agree on everything.
- I know, yeah.
- And I think that's the
problem with today's world
is that, you know, oh, you know what?
There's one that we agree
on, 99% of things, okay?
The one thing that we don't agree on,
it makes us mortal enemies.
- Yeah.
- And it's just, it's wrong.
- Yeah.
- I think the end of this conversation
sets a really good foundation for
subsequent discussions.
The fact that you
establish common ground,
the fact that you
understand and to some degree,
accept some of your arguments, right?
- So my time with Ryan didn't lead me
to change my daily diet,
but it did open my mind to
different ways of thinking.
And that's the whole point.
- Priscilla, you're a little pig.
- Oh, shit.
- Our beliefs are fallible
and realistically they should evolve.
Spending time with people
who have opposing viewpoints
than yourself can be an incredibly
humbling experience.
I entered this video with arrogance
and now I appreciate my own limitations.
And I have this newfound
openness to embracing conflict
and really listening to other people.
You can truly learn something
from every person you encounter.
- And if you want to develop better
intellectual humility,
these are the things that I found useful.
Be curious because
there's always more to learn
about any topic.
Listen, please hear others
out, even if you disagree.
Be nice because mutual
respect builds trust.
Instead of approaching the world with,
let me tell you
something, try to ask questions
or just say, tell me more.
It won't always work perfectly.
You'll still have disagreements.
But what I've learned is that it's
definitely worth trying.
You want some more?
Oh yeah, oh, we're best friends now.
Best friends.
- Between her eyes and her
forehead, she loves that.
- Yeah.