Chapter 1: What is the hidden power of doubt in decision-making?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. June 5th, 1944. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, had driven unannounced to the Greenham Common Air Force Base in the United Kingdom. Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division were preparing for a historic jump. General Eisenhower wanted to boost morale.
The soldiers knew they were on a mission, but they didn't yet know the scale. The general eased their fears with a confident demeanor and friendly small talk. Where are you from? He asked one lieutenant. Michigan? Spectacular fishing there, Eisenhower said. He was about to release a short and blunt one-page memo telling troops that they were on a great crusade to liberate Europe.
He ordered them to accept nothing less than full victory. By that evening, as he made his way back home, the general confided in his driver, I hope to God I'm right. The weather forecasts were uncertain, and a slight change could lead to failure. Eisenhower returned to his cottage and wrote a message that no one was supposed to see, a statement taking full responsibility if D-Day failed.
Our landings have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops, he wrote. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. He underlined those final words for emphasis and tucked the note into his wallet.
Chapter 2: How does uncertainty affect our brain's decision-making systems?
He never needed it.
Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces supported by strong air forces began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.
A few days later, a now iconic photo was published in newspapers. Ike, surrounded by those American paratroopers. He leans in, tall and eagle-eyed. He was lauded as a hero. The general who launched the Great Crusade. He was the epitome of American decisiveness, confidence, command. Ike's failure note, as it has come to be known, was never used and remains little known.
But it revealed something profound about leadership. Behind his public confidence was massive doubt, uncertainty, and the heavy burden of a decision. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore the hidden power of doubt, not as weakness or indecision, but as a tool that helps us make better choices, build stronger relationships, and navigate an uncertain world.
When you picture a strong leader, what do you see? Someone confident, decisive, unwilling to back down. We don't think of strong leaders as hesitant, doubtful, or unsure of the right answers. Confidence and determination are admirable traits, but they also have drawbacks. Confidence can lead to overconfidence. Decisiveness can make leaders less tolerant of dissent.
Determination can blind us to risks.
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Chapter 3: What are the 'pursue,' 'protect,' and 'pause and piece together' systems?
At the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, Bidhan Parmar studies the value of doubt. He goes by Bobby, and he says that by avoiding uncertainty, we miss out on opportunities for growth. Bobby Parmar, welcome to Hidden Brain. Shankar, thanks so much for having me. Bobby, some years ago, you went on a 14-day backpacking trip to Wyoming.
I understand that you are someone who is prone to allergies. Was this backpacking trip a good idea? I'm not so sure. I am allergic to everything outdoors. And in 2017, in a fit of rebellion, I think I decided to do this 14-day backpacking trip in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. This was a group from a course called the National Outdoor Leadership School, or NOLS.
And so we were a group of 14 strangers. Some folks were younger, aspiring to leadership positions. I wanted to do this in part because it was something I had never done before. I am, as I said, allergic to everything outdoors. And this was a way of pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, literally. And there were people who wanted to spend more time outdoors.
There were avid backpackers and people like me who were brand new. Bobby's group varied widely, not just in backpacking experience, but in fitness levels. Half were pretty solid in terms of hiking and carrying a 50-pound backpack, and others were relatively new.
Chapter 4: How can stress influence our ability to make decisions?
And that first week was a huge transition for half of us. You're up pretty early, between 5.30 and 6, and you're making breakfast as a camp. Then very quickly, you're deciding the plan for the day. You're working together to say, here's where we are. This is where we're trying to get to by this evening. And then very quickly, we're off hiking and you're hiking for roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
And then you take a 15 minute break and that cycle continues until you reach base camp. How much hiking were you doing each day? Oh, geez. Each day, I'd say maybe 10 to 15 miles a day. Oh, my gosh. So how many hours of hiking was this each day? It's like eight to 10 hours a day. Good grief. Yeah.
I just went on a four-hour hike last weekend and I was just exhausted by the end of this four-hour hike. You were doing eight hours every day? Every day for 14 days. Now, we had some days that were half days and they were like optional hikes. So we would go and we would be by a lake and there would be an optional hike to summit a peak, for example.
Chapter 5: Why do we prefer decisive leaders, and what are the implications?
And some people would go and other people would stay at base camp and do laundry or go fishing, etc. So the second half of the expedition, there was a little bit more choice, but the first half was pretty daunting and grueling. Your feet would be completely calloused each evening. My goal was just to make sure that I didn't get helicoptered out of there.
Halfway through the trip, Bobby and his new friends found themselves having to make a difficult judgment call. So this was a day where we were coming out of a wooded area into a more open, grassy area. And if you can picture the scene, it's kind of wide open spaces with mountains surrounding you. We're in a valley. We're surrounded by hives. tall grasses, you know, that are kind of waist height.
And you look around and you see different levels of mountains. And so it's unclear when you're looking at the topographical map and looking at the contour lines, which exact peaks are we looking at when we try to triangulate between the map and what we see on the horizon. And we had to find this lake where we were going to camp that evening.
And we weren't sure if the lake was above us or below us or in which direction we had to go. And as you're looking at the topographical map, trying to say, OK, it says that there's a peak here. Which peak are we looking at? What's the highest peak? And it's very hard to get a sense of where your bearings are when you're looking at those topographical maps. And we were tired and confused.
And I just wanted to get in my sleeping bag and go to bed.
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Chapter 6: How do experts and novices use doubt differently?
So the group has to make a decision. You're not quite sure what to do. What do you end up doing? So I'm exhausted and I basically say, look, you know, leaders are supposed to be decisive. I think we should move down the mountain. And people pick up their bags and they start to follow me. At first, I was like, look, I'm excited to get back into my sleeping bag. Things are great.
But then all of a sudden, the terrain started to look different than what we were expecting. There didn't seem to be any water sources nearby. And so, yeah, we started to feel a little bit like maybe we are going in the wrong direction. But it was easier to keep moving than it was to admit that I was wrong. So you go two hours, you discover that you are not where you want to be.
What does the group do? Thankfully, everyone was pretty understanding and we're all relatively new to reading maps and orienting in the outdoors. And there was some grumbling, but we look back at the map. We try to orient ourselves again and we realize that the lake was above us the whole time. It was at a higher elevation, which is counterintuitive, right?
You think water flows downhill, the lake should be below us. So we packed up our stuff again after reexamining the map and trudged an extra couple of hours back to base camp.
Chapter 7: What strategies can we use to lean into doubt for better decisions?
We did finally make it, but I know that I felt really bad about leading everyone in the wrong direction.
One thing I've noticed when I have lost my way, Bobby, is that if I miss my exit on the highway, for example, and I know that I have to go to the next exit and turn around and come back, that whole journey is just excruciating for me because every second as I'm driving the wrong direction, I know I'm going to have to come back and go the other direction. And every step feels like it's painful.
That must have been your experience as well. Oh, my head was bowed as I was walking behind the group the whole time. So I'm wondering, as you were heading back, retracing your steps, climbing back uphill up this mountainside, did you have a chance to reflect on how you had gone wrong, Bobby?
I think it started the reflection that took several months and several years after to really figure out what was going on in that moment. Why was it that I was so eager to be over the decision and to be moving in the right direction?
And I think so much of it was discomfort with the uncertainty, with hearing these dissenting opinions and wanting so much to be in my sleeping bag in a comfortable spot. In that moment, uncertainty was an obstacle. It wasn't a resource. I mean, I can put myself in your shoes. Everyone around you is hungry or tired. You're being bitten by mosquitoes. You don't know which way you're going.
You're trying to get to the sleeping bag. You don't know whether to go up or down. And just making a decision, any decision, feels better than being indecisive. Yeah, that's right. When we come back, how to know when doubt and uncertainty can be our friends.
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Chapter 8: How can we improve our ability to give and receive feedback?
You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. As we go through life, all of us are going to face forks in the road. Those can pop up in our personal lives and at work. They can rear up in emergency situations. People might turn to you and say, what should we do? How should we respond? Which way should we go?
And seeing their stress and panic and sensing your own stress and panic, you might be tempted to find a way to quickly soothe the distress. A quick decision can feel reassuring. It can make the fear subside. But at the University of Virginia, Bobby Parmar says there are times when reassurance is not our friend.
Bobby, your story of your mistake during the hike illustrates a common quirk of the mind, which is that we hate to sit with uncertainty. Talk about why this might be the case. You know, when we're in school, we learn that being smart means getting the right answer. People like to be what I call right answer getters. Certainty makes us feel really great, right?
It feels like we have agency and we have control over our lives. But there are also some serious downsides to certainty. It can make us really overconfident. It can get us to ignore competing perspectives. We can underestimate risks. Hmm. Hmm. I'm also reflecting on the fact that sometimes when we are in a state of uncertainty, the uncertainty itself feels aversive.
It feels like I don't know which way to go. I feel confused. I feel distressed. And there's a part of us that actually just wants to suppress that distress. Yes, for sure. Many of us do experience uncertainty or doubt as this aversive feeling.
And neuroscience suggests that that's because the parts of the brain that are related to understanding uncertainty or doubt are related to the parts of the brain where we experience kind of aversive feelings. They're very close together. So I'm curious about what exactly does go on in the brain when we are faced with these difficult choices like you were with a map that day.
You say that there is a trio of interconnected systems in the brain that regulate our behavior in different types of situations. And these systems work together to influence how we experience uncertainty. Tell me about what you call the pursue system, a part of the brain that involves the prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum.
Yeah, this is what others have called the mesolimbic pathway or our reward system. We anticipate something in the future or something further away from us being enjoyable, desirable, pleasurable. And it works primarily through a neuromodulator called dopamine. Dopamine makes anticipation feel good.
And so we exert energy to get up and go after that valuable future state or further state of affairs. So on the side of the mountain, exhausted after seven days of hiking, you're dreaming about being in your sleeping bag. You're dreaming about sitting by the campfire and not having to hike another 10 hours. That is my happy place.
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