Sam Johnson: Dread And Decision Making - January 26, 2026
episodePreviously titled “Sam Johnson: Dead And Decision Making - January 26, 2026” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 5, 2026
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What is dread and how does it affect our lives?
Exploring both interstellar and interpersonal space-time continuums. The Last Show with David Cooper. We spend our lives waiting with dread for test results, for job offers, for health updates, even bad news. And it turns out the waiting itself is often the worst part. Dread can hijack our choices, our patience, and our sense of control. It can affect how we make decisions. I'm here with someone who's researched this. His name is Sam Johnson. He's a cognitive science professor at the University of Waterloo. Sam, welcome to the show. Great to be here, David. Thanks. I just gave a crude overview of what I think dread is. But when you go and study this stuff, you've got to like really define it. And you're a cognitive scientist.
How does waiting for bad news impact our decision-making?
What do you mean when you say dread? Is it anxiety? Is it fear? Is it stress? Is it something more specific than that?
It's all of the above, actually, David. So the way that we think about dread is any kind of negative feelings that you have about things that haven't happened yet. So we can separate out that definition, though, which is kind of the way that we think about this, from what we're actually doing when we measure it. And when we're measuring this, what we're really doing is seeing, OK, for people who are going to expect to be financially worse off in the next year, To what extent does that affect their current well-being? For people who think that they're going to be better off in the next year, to what extent does that affect their current well-being? And it turns out that thinking that you're going to be financially worse off in the next year is a much bigger deal than thinking that you're going to be financially better off in the next year.
Interesting. And it has no bearing on what your finances will be. It's just that stage when you could have bad news, this dread stage.
What does cognitive science say about the nature of dread?
What does it do to our well-being?
Well, we know that it can produce kind of negative emotional consequences in the present time. So when we're dreading something that's going to happen in the future, we can start to ruminate about that thing, we can focus on that thing, and it can crowd out other thoughts that we might be having in the meantime. But I think what the research is really showing is less about what are the kind of negative consequences consequences in the moment, but more about the way that shapes the decisions that we make about the future.
So how does a period of dread ahead of me shape how I'm going to decide things in the future? That is really interesting.
Yeah, so two main things that we found. So the first thing has to do with risk, and the second thing has to do with time. So the thing to do with risk is that people vary in the extent to which dread is a more powerful emotion than savoring. Savoring is kind of the opposite, where you are looking forward to things that can happen, to positive things that can happen in the future. For some people, dread is just a much more powerful emotion than savoring. And for those people, they tend to avoid taking risks where the risk is something that they'd have to take A decision that I have to make now about something that's going to happen in the future. So the risk could be resolved in the future.
How does dread influence our perception of risk?
So give me a more specific example of how, let's say I'm going to I'm waiting next year for some financial outcome. It could go very badly. How and maybe I do I need to take risks? Is that OK? What would be a specific example?
Yeah, so if you think about the type of person who is really focused on financial risks, those types of people might be very unlikely to start businesses, for example, because it's the type of thing where it's going to be potentially months or years before you find out what the outcome is going to be. And when you're kind of ruminating or focusing on those sorts of negative emotions about the present, then it makes you think, okay, maybe this risk isn't something that I want to take. Whereas people who have a more balanced attitude where they think, okay, there's some positive things that might happen from starting this business.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is dread and how does it affect our lives?
0:02–0:50
2
How does waiting for bad news impact our decision-making?
0:50–1:51
3
What does cognitive science say about the nature of dread?
1:51–3:09
4
How does dread influence our perception of risk?
3:09–4:18
5
In what ways does dread affect our patience and decision-making?
4:18–5:25
6
What are the emotional consequences of anticipating negative outcomes?
5:25–6:35
7
Can mindfulness help us manage feelings of dread?
6:35–7:44
8
Is there a positive side to experiencing dread?
7:44–9:34
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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