Shownotes:
Join me for an eye-opening chat with Todd Rose, where we dive into the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and learning. Ever wondered why the one-size-fits-all approach in schools and workplaces feels so limiting? Todd's here to explore how we can move beyond that, appreciating everyone's unique talents and paving the way for systems that truly nurture individual potential. This conversation is all about challenging the status quo and discovering how we can all thrive by being ourselves. If you're ready for a fresh take on unlocking human potential, this episode is for you.
About Our Guest:
Todd Rose is the co-founder and CEO of Populace, a nonpartisan think tank committed to ensuring that all people have the opportunity to pursue fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Prior to Populace, he was a faculty member at Harvard University where he founded the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and directed the Mind, Brain, and Education program. Todd is the best selling author of Collective Illusions, Dark Horse, and The End of Average. He lives in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Thrive Global Article:
The End of One-Size-Fits All: Shattering Collective Illusions About Learning and Working
Connect with and learn from Todd Rose:
Website – ToddRose.com
Books – Collective Illusions, Dark Horse, and The End of Average
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Hello friends. Wow. Get ready. Todd rose is someone I have had on my guest wishlist for a very long time. So I'm super excited to share this conversation. Where we're going to talk about the intersection of some of my favorite topics, neuroscience, psychology, and learning. Todd is absolutely brilliant and he makes these concepts.
We talk about very accessible. We're going to get into the importance of appreciating the unique and dynamic in each of us. We talk about challenging. The one size fits all model that we see in education and the workplace. We also talk about designing. Cultivation systems that unlock human potential.
A little bit about Todd before we jump in.
Dr. Todd rose is the co-founder and CEO of populace, a non-partisan think tank committed to ensuring that all people have the opportunity to pursue fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Before. Populace. He was a faculty member at Harvard university where he founded the laboratory for the science of individuality. And directed the mind brain and education program. Todd is the best-selling author of collective illusions, dark horse, and the end of average. I am a long time fan and follower of Todd's work. And you're going to love this episode with that here's Todd.
Welcome, Todd. Thank you for being here with us today.
Todd Rose: It's great to be here.
Lainie Rowell: I'm very excited to chat with you about your work.
You have been someone I have been looking to and following for quite a while, not to creep you out, but I am very familiar with your work and so I'm excited for this conversation. Now, this is me partly being a linear person, but also I just don't feel like there's any way to not start with your story.
So can you tell us a little bit about just the early days that whole journey, if you will.
Todd Rose: Yeah, no, I think, I think you're right. I mean, in this case, there, it, there's a through line. Yeah, so I grew up in, you know, rural America, and for me, which is sort of funny given the things that I do now school did not work.
And, and I will say, I, I definitely contributed to that not working, you know, I probably was not the easiest kid, but, as you know being in education, as you are, the way our system's structured now, if you struggle, that tends to compound, you know what I mean? You don't learn certain things, you get moved on, and then you just, it, it culminated for me I like to say I chose to drop out of school but in reality, they just kicked me out, because it was like, early in my senior year in high school, I had a 0.9 GPA, and there's no way I can graduate, so the principal called my parents and said, He's just messing around so I will say we mutually agreed that I would leave I was oblivious to like what that could actually mean for my life That's fine. It'll be fine. Shortly after that my girlfriend at the time found out she was pregnant.
We got married It ended up by the time I was 20, one we had two kids And I'd had a string of minimum wage jobs probably a dozen of them and we were on welfare and it was just not going well. And so, really out of desperation, it wasn't out of like an epiphany of like, I knew a lot, I just knew this wasn't working.
As you know, look, when you have kids, it's your life. It does change. You feel a responsibility for these innocent human beings. They didn't ask to be born. They didn't ask to be born to me as a parent and so I decided, I was like, I don't know what else to do, but my dad was the first high school graduate in our family and the first college graduate, and I watched him go back to school, and he was a mechanic and became a mechanical engineer, and I watched that change our lives, And so I thought, well, maybe that.
So I got my GED and I went to school at night at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. It was open enrollment. And we had just enough money, my parents and my in laws to pay for one year of school. And they just said, basically, if you want it badly enough, you'll figure out how to get good grades which I've never done.
And so that was the beginning, right? And, I'll say, I'm happy to keep rolling, because Weber State taught me so much that would then shape everything if you don't mind.
Lainie Rowell: Please, please.
Todd Rose: Okay, great, so at Weber, here, here's the thing, you know you're on the clock, if I don't figure out how to make it work, I have to go back to, like, which just didn't work, I, it was so bad, and so all I knew was that the way I had done things in the past didn't work, and so I was paying a lot of attention.
I knew a lot more about myself. Not, not great, but I was making choices that were closer to who I was, the kinds of classes I would take, the kinds of professors I would engage with. I started learning what didn't work. But there's this like really, really pivotal moment for me.
I'd been there for about a year. I was actually doing okay, just out of like brute force, I have to make this work and I'm sitting in a, a big history class in an auditorium, which didn't work very well for me, but I couldn't get out of it and I was complaining to my, my buddy Steve about this just does not work.
I've got to figure out how to pay attention and do okay. And he said, oh, this is nothing compared to, he was in the honors program, he told me, and I didn't even know what that was, but he starts explaining that he is, oh, I wish it was just lectures, he's like, in the honors program, there's no lectures, there's just 10 to 12 students, you sit around in a circle, and you, you talk, and he's like, there are no tests, you just have to write things, and he's like, I don't think there are right answers, He said, all we do is debate.
And I was like, this sounds so amazing. Like, I, I honestly, I honestly thought that can't be how education is. He was like, no, this is, so I, as soon as class was over, I made a beeline to the honors program, which was the top of the hill on the second floor of the library had its own floor. I went right in, went up to the secretary, a woman named Marilyn Diamond.
And I said, I want to be in the honors program. And she said, great, let's have you meet with the director, see if I can get you in. They did. I sit down with him, and he's so nice, and he's like, hey, we're really proud of the honors program, I'm excited that you're excited, here's just formality, let's just go through, let's fill this out together, and we'll get you going.
But pretty soon we get to the, so, so what was your high school GPA? , I said .9, and I'm not kidding, his response, he actually said, what .9? Like I had left off the most important number there, and, and, it's in that moment, it dawns on me, that was impulsive, what am I doing?
This is really embarrassing. And I said, well, 0.9, and I was gonna say a bunch of stuff, but then he just kind of, he was really nice, I will say, very kind about it, he, but he said, I'm sorry, you can't be in the honors program. And so I was humiliated. And so I'm gathering my stuff as fast as possible and I'm going to just get out of there.
Like go crawl into a hole, leave, and I go out the door and Marilyn Diamond, the secretary, her desk is just right outside the door and one of those life changing moments I rush out and she actually just grabs my arm, gently, as I'm walking past. And she said, Hey, I overheard the conversation. If you want this, don't take no for an answer.
And it didn't dawn on me that that was an option, right? So she tells me to sit down on the couch and I did. And it felt like an entire day. It was just a couple of hours probably. She's like, just wait. And the director had to go teach a class. He's like, what are you doing? You know? So funny. He comes back.
And he says, all right, come, come in here. And he said, why do you want to be in the honors program? Because on paper, it doesn't make any sense. So I explained what I'd learned about myself in the year and in college, and that I actually thought this was a really, really good fit. And he said, well, you know what?
I can't let you in, you know, permanently, but what we can do is create a provisional acceptance. And he said, I want you to pick one class and if you do well, I'll let you pick another, and we'll go from there. So I did, and it turned out to be , I mean, just perfect, the best fit, like it was such a good fit to who I was.
And flash forward, I ended up graduating from Weber State with a 3. 97 GPA as the honor student of the year. And it was amazing. And I, I tell you this story for a couple of reasons, one, it does tee up a lot of things that we'll talk about in a minute, but there's two things that I think are really important to that story.
One is, the profound importance of fit, because we often think that people are just talented, or smart, and especially kids, when you're in these standardized environments, and they don't go well, you just assume it's you. Why wouldn't I assume it's me? Some kids are doing just fine. Some kids are doing really well.
So it must be me. But just to live that, to feel the difference between an environment that didn't fit my individuality very well and one that was just perfect for me. And just what it unlocked in terms of not just my ability and my potential, but my confidence in myself was just, I never forgot that and that will play a role as we'll talk about, but there's a second piece that I think is critical because we'll talk a lot about individuality, which I think is really, really important.
But we often, if we're not careful And think of that as like selfishness or isolation or whatever, right? Like individualism. But for me and this Marilyn Diamond thing is like, I worked really, really hard. I put the work in and I'm proud of what I accomplished. But let's be honest, if there's no Marilyn Diamond, this is a different story.
A couple years ago, I got asked back to Weber State, I got an award, for whatever, and I'm there, and it turns out Marilyn's retiring that year. And I thought, what a great opportunity to tell some version of this story, with her in the audience. So I did, and it was great, and the dean who's kind of emceeing, he says, Well, Marilyn, you want to come up and say a few words?
I thought, this is amazing. She comes up, she gives me a hug, she grabs the mic, and she said, You know, it's a really nice story, Todd I don't remember it. And, I thought she was saying, like, you're lying, like it didn't happen. But what it really was, was that everybody had a Marilyn Diamond story.
It was just the way she was as a person. So, what was funny to me, and I think that the takeaway is like, how much we depend on each other, and how much we can do for each other. Because, for me, it was literally life changing, and for her, it was so inconsequential, she didn't even remember it. And I think that's how supporting each other really works.
We tend to think that it's going to be this heavy lift, but once you start to realize, you're part of other people's context, and the things you can do if you're thinking about it right can have life changing effects on other people, and really not be that big of a lift for you.
Lainie Rowell: I really make the connection to, I work deeply in gratitude and thinking of the definition of gratitude is noticing the good, but also acknowledging that often it comes from sources beyond ourselves.
And I appreciate that you're teasing out individuality versus individualism. It's not saying like, we're only out for ourselves, but honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic and I appreciate that. And I just want to go back to the part of your story where you're talking about at the university, you've got someone, your friend who has been kind of progressed automatically into this program for honors, and he sounds like did not appreciate it, didn't like it, like, you know.
Todd Rose: No, in fact, in fact, he ended up washing out of it.
Lainie Rowell: And I'm not surprised, and I think this is something that we see in education, is that certain individuals who like to perform a certain way will do well in certain contexts.
I tend to think about I have a child, I'm taking them both down by not naming which one, but like very much into, they both like to please, so don't get me wrong, but whose motivation for doing well academically has been to please others, and just, I want to get the A, and I want to do well for others.
But the motivation hasn't necessarily been intrinsic, like, I want to learn. And when you don't have that, and you're getting into this honors, where it's a very innovative approach to honors, by the way, so kudos to Weber State, because I don't know that that's how a lot of honors programs were working, because that's very different from what the K 12 experienced.
Todd Rose: And they have, and they have most honors programs are rigidly like standardized tests, grades, it's about prestige. I will say that one of the things I'm most proud of is because of my achievements at Harvard and beyond Weber State changed their honors program permanently. So they actually have interviews.
It's about explaining the fit and it's not about test scores and grades, which I love.
Lainie Rowell: I love that too. And so, yes, and let's not leave out that part of the story because I think that's interesting that you had the 0.9 GPA and It wasn't a fit at the time. You weren't motivated at the time. Is that fair to say?
Todd Rose: That's definitely fair to say.
Lainie Rowell: And so I relate to this and I was one of my children who, for a good portion of my K 12 experience, I just cared about making good grades for my family and for the teachers and this is what I'm supposed to do, so I'll do it. And then I got put into a different education experience where things were very different and I was like, oh, I don't know if I can do this.
And I did not thrive and then I thought, well, that's who I am. I don't thrive anymore. And it took me a really long time. It wasn't actually until I did scrape by to get into college. But it wasn't actually until college that I actually started to love learning again. And it wasn't until almost the very end of college.
But so fast forward in your really inspiring story, you end up getting your doctorate at Harvard.
Todd Rose: Yeah. Yeah. It was funny, at Weber State, I was getting fascinated about individuality mainly out of like, it was a good explanation for my own experience, but at the time there was this rise of what was called the science of individuality, which was a new approach to science in general, which was getting away from aggregate data groups and, and being able to truly study individuals.
And that was so fascinating to me. It was rooted in complex systems instead of just statistics, and I was like, this is amazing, and I was reading up on it, and I read about this scholar, Kurt Fischer, and I was like, whoa, wow, this is amazing, I wanna work with this guy, and at the time, I was reading papers by him, and it said he was at the University of Denver, and I was like, hey, that's like eight hours.
That would be doable. So I got really excited and it turned out my advisor at Weber State knew him and he was like, Oh, this is gonna be so great. You guys are gonna, you have similar backstories. You're gonna love it. So we start talking and it turns out Kurt has moved on to Harvard, which I didn't even know where Harvard was.
I honestly didn't. It just was not even part of the world for me. But I was like, well, I really want to be a part of this. And so, I thought, well that's too bad. Like, it's too bad that he's at Harvard, cause obviously I'm not gonna get into Harvard, but luckily I did and packed up everything we had in a minivan and drove across country and ended up in Cambridge and had a really interesting and bumpy experience, it's like a whole nother country, basically, but had a wonderful education and then I graduated and then I was fortunate, Kurt Fischer had founded the My Unbranded Education Program at Harvard, the first interdisciplinary program in the world that integrated neuroscience, psychology, and learning.
Applied. And one of the things I was most proud of is when he retired, I became the director of that program and was a faculty member, maybe 10 to 12 years at Harvard, and then I left right before the pandemic.
Lainie Rowell: Well, so that's just like so close to my heart because I was a psychology major, went in to be education and have a new fascination with neuroscience, so those all coming together is really a beautiful place to be, right?
And, and I want to say that one of the ways that I came across your work is I do work in universal design for learning, a good portion of my work is professional learning and a lot of times it's for educators and that's one of the things that I'm trying to to move the needle on because we are all so unique and dynamic and you'll hear me use that phrase which I get from one of my besties, Dr Katie Novak because to me it's not enough just to say unique, it's the dynamic that we're constantly changing and your story is so clear that in a different context with different motivation you're thriving compared to in a system that was not serving you well that you were not excited to be in and gladly left as soon as you could.
Todd Rose: Right?
Lainie Rowell: Until you came back.
Todd Rose: You're really hitting on something important and I love that, and Katie's brilliant, obviously. The unique and dynamic because this is all part of it, we're distinct not only in our composition at any given time, but we change systematically depending on the context we're in, and we change over time.
Which is funny, right? Because we often don't take that into account, and especially in education now, look, the idea of, like, mass educating the public is one of the greatest accomplishments in human history, and back in the day when we did that, when we started that, you know, over 100 years ago, there was only one way to do that.
It was either everyone would get a one size fits all education, or rich kids would get bespoke education and the rest of us would get nothing. That was really the bargain. And so if we were having this conversation 100 years ago, I would have been the biggest champion of mass standardized education there was.
Not because it was the best way to do it, because it was the only way to do it. And what I think people have to appreciate now, and I think if we can get there, we're going to be able to get somewhere really great in education, which is That was never optimal, it was just practical, but things have changed so substantially for the better.
Our technology has changed, our understanding of human dynamics, human uniqueness, has changed, right? Such that we can do something about it. It's actually not impossible to give every single child in this country a phenomenal individualized education. That is doable. And, you know, one of the things that is my biggest pet peeve, if you don't mind, just so I can be frustrated by it, is even as we recognize kids, their distinctiveness, we often, and this will get back to the universal design for learning, we often still keep putting in these kids in these environments that are standardized.
We give them standardized learning materials. And then as a cop out, we tell teachers to differentiate their instruction. Like, that's ridiculous. Come on. Like, how about we expect the stuff that we pay for to be flexible and responsive to the known human differences that you will see in every learning environment?
And that, I think, is the genius of Universal Design for Learning, which is, it doesn't capture all human uniqueness, but there are dimensions of how we process information, how we engage, and how we actually demonstrate knowledge that you know in advance. people will differ on. And if you know it in advance, and it's not so idiosyncratic that like, you can design for it.
So, it's like, why not expect that these environments are designed as flexibly as possible, that then supports the human to human relationship, the teacher, the student, the student, the student, that is the actual core of great learning. And so, it's like, we're sort of stuck right now because we have all this capability, but we've got a mindset that is still, like, a hundred years old.
And so, I think that the good news is, is that we're on the cusp of something pretty profound, and I think education is going to look extremely different in the not too distant future.
Lainie Rowell: I agree. And I do appreciate you bringing up technology. Couple things I wanted to process through with you.
One, technology is giving us opportunities to scale that universal design in ways that just were not there, definitely not a hundred years ago. And it's so interesting when you just take a step back and you think, Oh, wow, like our system's only a hundred years old in the grand scheme of things it's just so recent but it's incredibly hard to adapt the system, but we can, we can. And another thing I wanted to say you are so good at acknowledging how amazing teachers are and they're in a tough situation with the system that they're put in, this very resilient system but universal design for learning is upstream it ultimately is what has to be the way that our system is designed because otherwise we are just playing whack a mole trying to differentiate downstream, when we can already assume variability, we can already assume, I know that I'm going to have some kids who are really gifted in understanding scientific concepts, but reading is going to be the barrier.
I know that I have some kids that are going to understand a piece of literature in a way that I can't even understand, but if I ask them to just write it versus put it into art or articulate it verbally. I'm not going to get what's inside of them, right?
Todd Rose: Well, and I think that, one of the unfortunate consequences of having a standardized system for a hundred years, is there's other ideas that kind of came in through like eugenics and some of the darker things which have such a well dark view of human potential and capability and so they give you the bell curve they give you the like only some kids are capable and so what we've had as a result is a zero sum system of education that is really it's just a selection mechanism right it's like let's give everyone some basic experience And then we can't give everyone everything so let's figure out who deserves more resources. And look, if those assumptions were correct, that's a reasonably fair way to do it, right? If we're living in scarcity, if not everyone has potential, then a selection system makes sense. None of those things are true now, none. The I idea of a bell curve is the most nonsensical thing on the planet when it comes to people.
It's demonstrably false. This will sound like a bumper sticker slogan, but I think one of the most important assumptions in modern education and the workplace has to do with human potential. To put it bluntly, I think it is objectively true that every human being is capable of excellence of some kind, which means they have something meaningful to contribute to society.
They do. And we've learned, despite all my colleagues who love IQ tests and other things, notwithstanding, because of the complexity, because of the distinctiveness, the uniqueness, and the dynamics of human beings, you don't know in advance what any one person is capable of. You just don't. You can pretend you can force them into your little world, but it's not how it works.
And so I believe that the major change to education now is that it is not a selection system anymore. It is a cultivation system. And when you realize that the goal of education is the cultivation of every child's God given potential, if you just think of it that way, then it starts to make a ton of sense why it would be unacceptable to do anything other than universal design for learning.
Because anything short of that flexibility is an arbitrary obstacle to the cultivation of some child's potential. Right? It also then leads naturally to, well, why wouldn't we use bell curve tests? It's because they're just, they're just comparative. We're going to use mastery based assessments, right?
Once you just get over that hump of like, oh, no, everybody's got something to offer, our job is to cultivate their full potential, then a lot of this other stuff you and I are talking about it just makes a lot of sense for people.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and I have a book coming to mind.
Katie gets twice the love in this episode, but George Couros and Katie Novak wrote the book, Innovate Inside the Box. And this is where I think our amazing teachers can get creative. And yes, there are going to be some constraints that they can, you know, advocate. I don't want this, but maybe they don't always have the choice.
But there's still a lot of things I feel like we as educators have the ability to make a change.
Todd Rose: I do not envy the place that educators are in right now. So, you know, my background, my interests now are in, this will just sound wonky, but paradigm shifts.
This is where we're at, we're in a paradigm crisis. The fundamental assumptions of society are up for grabs, and it can go bad, it can go better and so we work to actually shift, like, what can democracies deliver on? What can our society do that it doesn't do now? And in education, the transformation of this institution is what's taking place right now.
We can talk about why I think that's the case, but like the trick , is you're not going to just close down shop and open up five years later under new management. You have to literally like transform this institution while you're still participating in it. And that means that there's no more important constituency than teachers.
And I think that teachers have a really important role for parents in that they can signal that this is valuable. That things like mastery based learning, like flexible time, flexible design, that it's actually valuable, that it's good for learning. Because all of our research shows parents look to teachers to know about that, and then they look to local and regional employers to tell them whether the outcomes are okay.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I want to connect it to that too, because, to me, this is a system that is so incredibly resilient, it's also the system that Virtually everyone goes through, and I think this feeds the workplace in some of the ways that I would love it if the workplace was more universally designed, if the workplace was more focused on cultivation versus selection, and so I think there's some opportunities there, and I've heard you talk about this before, the principles of scientific management.
I mean, that's what influenced a lot of things, right?
Todd Rose: Yeah, it's rare that when you look back and say, man, who did this to us? That it's, like, one dude, right? Frederick Taylor in the late 20s, early 30s. He's obsessed with the idea that one of the problems in society is we had a lot of waste.
That wasn't wrong. He was right. And that we could be better off if we were more efficient. Also correct. But he believes in this very top down, like this idea that everybody has autonomy and capabilities and potential, he just thought was ridiculous. And the scientific management is probably the most important idea that we all live under that no one knows about.
This is the guy literally that invented the concept of a manager. His proposal was I can give us more stuff by making us more efficient. If you become a cog quite literally, let's divide up labor, the workers, just do what you're told and do it well and do it fast and have managers that plan everything and then we'll all have more stuff.
Which, by the way, he was correct. We got a lot more stuff that way, but we sort of lost our soul. Right? And at the end of the day, what's the point of life? It's not just more stuff. It's the joy. It's the psychological abundance. It's whatever you want to call it, right? Flourishing, self actualization.
But that always depended on things like autonomy and self direction and the ability to pursue fulfilling lives, not just do what you're told. And so that idea of scientific management, it transforms work. And then not surprisingly, what happens in, in the business world will eventually trickle down into education, because if we're all having factories and we're having, you know, standardized systems, then what's the point of education except for to feed that?
And so you see that creep in and things like bells, you know, and rotating through classes and all, okay, fine, whatever. But the idea is we're still like, We're still stuck with that, right? Work is sort of this devil's bargain that like, okay, it's not meant to be enjoyed, you just go do it so they can go find fulfillment somewhere else, but at my think tank, Populace, we have more private opinion data on the American public than anybody else.
And I say private opinion because no one's telling the truth about what they think right now. And so you've got to have methods to get around that. And some of the most interesting things to me, of all the work we've done have to do with the transformation of the workplace in terms of what people really want out of work now, and then also what they want out of education.
And people don't want a better mousetrap. They don't want more of the same. They want pretty profoundly different things. So, for example, at work, the trade off priorities for people are about being able to do work that has a positive impact on other people, to, to be able to show up as yourself, right? That craving for authenticity, which to me is just the expression of your individuality. And yeah, they want to get paid a decent wage. They want, you know, all the normal things, but there's this aspect of they don't need work to be everything, but they do now expect work to be a positive force for the life they want to live.
Same with education. If I could tell you like the one line to sum up what's going on in education in America today is that people want different, not better. And so they want a different purpose for this system. Again, they don't want the selection system anymore. They just don't. They believe their kids have something to offer.
They believe other people's kids do. And they are expecting that this thing actually cultivate that. And it's just that gap between what they want and the reality of the system as it is right now that is causing such a lack of confidence and trust in the System.
Lainie Rowell: When you're talking about your work at Populace, I want you to just quickly explain, because I think the methodology is really interesting, how you get to the private opinion. Because your most recent book, Collective Illusion, talking about, how we are beings of conformity, and so we tend to say things that we think, you'll say it better, so I'm going to stop talking, but you know, kind of, how do you see all that?
Todd Rose: Collective illusions are just basically social phenomena where A majority of people in a group end up going along with something they don't privately agree with just because they incorrectly think most everybody else in the group likes it or believes it, right?
So, as a result, entire groups end up doing something that most nobody wanted to do. Now, we've actually known about these things for a long time. You think about, like, the Emperor's New Clothes, is a, Cautionary tale of that, right? Everyone just keeps going along with this naked emperor, right?
Like, whatever. But the scientific study of it is about a hundred years old. And up until ten years ago, you could have counted on one hand the number of societal Influencing Collective Illusions that existed. But since the rise of social media, for reasons I'll explain, like they're just out of control.
Like if you name anything that matters in American society today, it's a 50 50. Like it's a coin toss whether you are even right about what the majority believes. It's shocking. And so the underlying reason for this is, as you mentioned, all human beings have a conformity bias. We all do. We are not a lone wolf species.
We're a pack species, right? And all that means is, all else equal, you'd rather be with your group, not against your group. This is a survival thing, right? It also is how we get culture and social learning. So we don't have to learn everything the hard way. So there's some benefit to conformity within reason.
But for conforming to work, you actually have to know what your group thinks. Because then what are you conforming to? And this is where we get in trouble. So, your brain for how awesome as it is, it's actually not terribly smart. Because, here's how your brain estimates group consensus. This is no kidding.
Your brain assumes the loudest voices, repeated the most, are the majority. So, let's just focus on social media for a second. So on what was called Twitter, or on X, Pew Research has shown 80 percent of all content is created by 10 percent of the users. And it turns out those 10 percent aren't even remotely representative of the general public.
They are extreme on almost every social issue. So you can see the problem. If 10 percent of people hold an idea, but you think it's 80%, unless you're willing to go against your group, you're gonna either say nothing at all, or you might even lie about what you think to go along with the group. But if enough people stop talking, they start self silencing, then the only voices anybody hears from are these fringes and The Results of Collective Illusion. So, this is where we're at today. We have research on this, but so do a lot of people, that consistently, somewhere between 52-60 percent of Americans, admit to self silencing. Admit! Those are the people who will admit it! That they're, oh yeah, I'm not, I don't, I can't tell the truth about my opinions on most things, like, and so, how does a democracy function if we can't be honest with each other?
We knew for the things we want to do in terms of paradigm shifts, we had to have an accurate understanding of, what do people really want? And it was funny, we started into the private opinion stuff right after the 2016 election, because it was like, well, I mean, whatever you think of that, that was not what anyone thought was about to happen.
And, so, it turned out that there's all kinds of methodologies in academia. For how you get around, say social pressure, complex trade-offs. It's just they weren't widely applied because they, they take a level of sort of expertise. They're, because it's not just polling. They're expensive to do and they're time consuming.
But, from our standpoint, it was like, but if no one's telling the truth, what choice do you have, right? You, you need to do this. So we started doing that and to your point, how do you get to private opinion? Every method that works offers some combination of anonymity and plausible deniability.
Like, that's the key. Here's what's interesting. So we have a couple of methods that we use. We have one coming out in about a month called the Social Pressure Index that literally is measuring across the entire landscape of American culture where are we flat out lying to each other?
Not just self sciencing. We are lying. And what's the truth. These kind of methods, the one I'll talk about right now that, that is, we've done a lot in education is, you can't have everything. This is the funny thing. Like, in education, there's not enough time and money to have everything. So it's not enough to say, do you want social emotional learning?
It's not the right question. Lots of people will say yes to that. What will you sacrifice for it? So it's about trade offs. So we have this methodology we've used called conjoined analysis, which is widely used. In fact, here's my, you know, iPhone. Apple uses that methodology to decide what combination of features and price point go into an iPhone, right?
Because if I say, do you want an OLED screen? Of course, you're going to say yes. But do you want that if it costs $300 more? Do you want it more than you want more memory? Like, those are trade offs. So, Conjoint, instead of saying, Do you want X for education? What we do is we build all these attributes that everything in education could be.
So the last one we did was like, 60 some odd trade off priorities. From outcomes, to processes, to assessments, to what they learn, to who decides. And it's kind of cool. If you take this instrument, and You're never just point blank asked one thing. It will be like, hey, we're thinking about the future of education, like if you're making a choice for your child or for whatever, and you're shown two education or school A, school B.
And it just randomly grabs five of the attributes from the pool of say 60, and that's what school A has. School B has randomly grabs five other ones. That's all you know. Okay, if those were your two choices, which one is a better education to you? And then you do it again, and again, and again, and unbeknownst to you, you're literally trading off every attribute against every other attribute.
Why that works so well is, let's say I'm like, oh, I know I'm not supposed to say, college prep should be the goal, but college prep will show up with other things you care about, it'll show up with other things you don't, so you can't really game it, and we were the first to apply that socially the New York Times ran a front page thing on, eventually showing it's the best predictor of elections, that methodology, so now everybody likes it, which is great but it's into that space. We always do it where you, we can develop a model of like, what are your trade off priorities personally, for education?
And then we always do it again with you saying, what do you think most Americans would say? So now we know what you want, and we know what you think everybody wants. And, it's just ridiculous. When you look at the American public's trade off priorities for K 12, in private, it is all the things we've been talking about.
It's individualized, not standardized. In fact, every individualized attribute ranks higher than every single standardized attribute in America now. When you ask about the purpose, it's like people want to be prepared for college, but they don't want it to be the purpose. It's about prep for careers and meaningful work for kids.
And it's really pretty remarkable. Mastery learning, not standardized assessments, bell curve assessments. Okay, great. Everything you'd hope for, you'd want flexible learning environments. When you ask them what they think most people will say, You get a completely different picture. You get something that looks exactly like the system we have.
They think that the number one trade off priority for people for K 12 is college prep. It's just not true. So we're operating under these illusions. And that, that might sound, okay, well it's just an illusion, well the problem is in education, I can't solve that myself, right? Unless I go to private school, it's sort of like, if no one else wants it, why am I going to agitate for it?
It'll never change. So we all want something different, we don't think we all want something different, so we're all ticked off, right? So we do a lot of work shattering those illusions, using pop culture. television, movies, where you just seed the private opinion in the backgrounds of things that people watch, and you can, you can have quite an effect.
But, I'll just say, the good news is, the fact that these illusions exist, history shows us if you can shatter them, you can unlock change at a scale and a pace that would seem unimaginable otherwise.
Lainie Rowell: I think it's so fascinating how, especially because kind of what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that we're potentially closer together and more in alignment in areas than we think we are, but we don't want to speak out because we feel like we're the minority, but we're actually the silent majority.
Todd Rose: It is shocking, and I'm not just trying to have good things to say. So we have studied private opinion on everything from K 12, higher ed, the workplace, criminal justice, health care, broader culture stuff, our views of success in the American dream, our aspirations for the country, you name it, right?
Yeah, we are divided on a few things, but you will be shocked in private how much common ground we have. The problem is, we just don't think that's true. We genuinely believe that we're in this minority. When we are a silent majority, and so the problem is, is it becomes self fulfilling, right? You're sitting in a society going, I don't want this, but I am pretty sure everyone around me...
Imagine if you thought that most everyone in your neighborhood would steal from you if they could. How would that change how you treat them? You know what I mean? How you engage. This is true in our most fundamental principles, our values, our aspirations for life, for our country. We are walking around, with so much in common, but we believe we are so far apart, and so we behave that way.
Lainie Rowell: And our brains, trying to be efficient, are making these assumptions. We just need to stop assuming we know what people are thinking and feeling and be more curious. Ask the question.
Todd Rose: That's it. That's it.
Social media and our broader technologies have led to a place where you can no longer trust your brain to tell you what your group thinks anymore. And that's never going to change. The good news is, the easy way out of this is a deep commitment to tolerance. Pluralism, right? Knowing that, that every time we try to silence someone we disagree with, we are contributing to these illusions.
And at some point, we have to know better. And we have to know that the only people that don't want you to speak up are people who know they are in the minority. Because it is the only tool they have to win. Because if you really believe that most people agreed with you, all you would want is for people to be able to speak freely.
Right? So, just know, if I had one call to the audience is, we can get somewhere pretty amazing as a society. We're not in decline. We're a young country. We're going through our adolescent phase, right? Little identity crisis. Every one of us has a role to play. And it will sound so simple, but I promise you, you will be amazed where we can go together if you do this basic thing.
We've got to find the moral courage to be honest with each other about what we believe. Doesn't mean we're right. We could be terribly wrong. So we can do this respectfully, but you, you owe it to each other to be honest about your views. And we have to find the civic courage to make it safe for other people to do the same thing.
If we do that, these illusions will shatter, our shared values will be revealed, and those will help guide where we go together as a society, including in education.
Lainie Rowell: Moral courage, civic courage, and intellectual humility.
Todd Rose: Absolutely.
Lainie Rowell: I love that. Okay, I'm so sad to end this conversation, but I gotta let you go.
What's the best way for people to connect with you?
Todd Rose: So you can find me online, ToddRose.com. All of our research is at Populace.Org but just Google. It comes up.
Lainie Rowell: Amazing. This has been super enlightening for me, and I'm really familiar with your work. I hope others will check out Collective Illusions, your most recent book.
There's also Dark Horse, the book before that, and The End of Average, where I became a super fan. So, Todd, thank you for this time, and thank you all for listening.
Todd Rose: Thank you.