Clint Murphy 00:03

Welcome to the pursuit of learning podcast. I’m your host, Clint Murphy. My goal is for each of us to grow personally, professionally, and financially, one conversation at a time. To do that, we will have conversations with subject matter experts across a variety of modalities. My job, as your host, will be to dig out those golden nuggets of wisdom that will facilitate our growth. Join me on this pursuit. My number one goal in life is to learn and I want to teach people what I learned. Today’s guest, Pedro wrote a textbook on teaching, literally a textbook, he co wrote the book, The Psychology of Great Teaching, almost everything teachers ought to know, if you’re a parent, a student, or someone who loves to learn or teach, you need to listen to this show. Pedro, the aim of the book that we’re going to be talking about today, is to discuss everything about psychology we need to know in everyday life and practice for teaching children and young people, why was this the mission you and your co authors targeted? And how can we use these techniques ourselves as adults?

Pedro De Bruyckere 01:38

Well, the reason was, before this book, we wrote two books about urban myths about learning education. And we thought, let’s do something easy. And that were famous last words, because for the past 12 years, the science of psychology has gone through a major crisis, the replication crisis, maybe you’ve heard about this, but some of the big, well known studies in psychology have been replicated, but failed to replicate. So a lot of the insights we’ve had, for the past decades, a lot of them are gone now. So we thought maybe it’s a good thing to check what is still standing and is actually standing stronger than ever, but what are the elements that are gone, so we can leave them out. So we wanted to make a kind of a practical overview of those elements that teachers but also parents can use to work with their children, with the young people they work with. But also sometimes when we discuss, for instance, resilience, that’s something that everybody can benefit from. But with the current knowledge, without the one of our frustrations actually was, when you read the book about psychology, quite often you have read 40 pages of history. And then at the end of those 40 pages, then you read, but this has been debunked. And then you are wondering, why did I read this? So we want to have an overview of what is known today? What’s the current knowledge? And what does this mean in practice,Clint Murphy 03:11

And that was one of the golden rules you had in writing this book was you wanted the psychology to be as recent as possible, partially because some of the old research had either been faked or could not be replicated. And you talked about that a little. So for our listeners who may not know what it means for a study to be replicable, and why that’s the science we want to focus on, can you get them up to speed on what we mean by replication,Pedro De Bruyckere 03:37

For instance, there is a famous study where you put a pencil in your mouth, and your cheeks go up and you feel better. And even a Nobel Prize winner as Daniel Kahneman cites the study. But the study has been replicated 13 times, it means they have done exactly the same experiment in the same way. And they’ve done it not once, not twice, but 13 times. But 13 times it failed to replicate. So now we know that first study that became famous, actually was probably a lucky shot. And now we know that when you try this, it won’t have the same effect. And for sure, in social psychology, two out of three replications actually failed. So I have a book, big textbook here from 2011, the major textbook on social psychology, a lot of the stuff in that book was failed to replicate. Now, the good news is because a lot of people put an emphasis on the negative effect, the negative implications, but then to forget that there are also studies that had a positive replication. For instance, while social psychology had a very negative result, cognitive psychology had actually a very positive result. Three out of four studies in cognitive psychology were successful replicationss. So the insights from cognitive psychology are now standing stronger than ever.

Clint Murphy 05:05

I’m no expert on this. I’ve only heard it on podcasts that so many people are incented to do original research. And that’s where the money is. That’s where the fame is. So we don’t have enough young psychologists, or other scientists, who are saying, hey, I’ll run a lab where we replicate studies. And nothing’s a winner until it’s been replicated by four or five different shops.

Pedro De Bruyckere 05:33

Yes, correct. A lot of people think that replication crisis is because of fraud. But actually, that’s fraud is just a very small reason. And most of the scientists are doing great job. But it’s much, much easier to get something new published than to have results that failed to replicate. Or even if you have an hypothesis, and it’s failed, then it’s much harder to get it published. But the good news is in psychology, now, things are changing very fast. But a couple of months ago, there was another study published, where they examined in Educational Sciences, how many of the studies in top journals between 2010 and 2020 were actually replication studies. It was 0.3%. So the good news is, Educational Sciences don’t have really a replication crisis. The reason is not because science has been done so well, but probably reasons they don’t replicate that much.

Clint Murphy 06:35

Which can be good or bad, or I mean, I would think we we want to have a high rate of replication with a high success of replication in order to rely on things.

Pedro De Bruyckere 06:47

Yeah, effort. There are examples actually, that bridge between learning and psychology. For instance, one of the more famous examples, I’ll give a good one, a positive one and a bad one. And I’ll start with the failed replication one. And that is growth mindset, you know, growth from Carol Dweck, the growth mindset theory, where people can have a growth mindset that they can learn stuff, that intelligence isn’t fixed, while thinking you’re stupid, or that you’re smart is more an example of a fixed mindset. First of all, do those mindsets exist? Yes, they exist. The question is, can you stimulate another kind of mindset? And does this have a positive effect. And then things get more nuanced. Because in 2018, the first meta analysis was published. And on average, they found Siskin colleagues, that there was only a very small effect. They also found that most of the studies that were done on growth mindset, were having a very small sample, then, and actually, Yeager and Carol Dweck actually participated in a huge replication study. So they did a big study with over 11,000 students, but on average, there was close to no effect. But again, on average, last month, I’m giving this so up to date as possible. Last month, there were two new meta analysis published, one with a small effect one with no effect. Now, the thing is, people now are sometimes claiming, okay, the growth mindset approach failed to replicate. But it’s more nuanced than that. Because we know that with certain children, and with certain people, and also certain adults, a growth mindset approach can actually have a negative effect. For instance, for instance, if you’re a teenager, and you’re a very strong performing teenager, and yesterday, you only needed two minutes to do your own work. You come in school, and your teacher says, oh, you see hard work pays off. That may be, the teenager will be will feel insulted, because you think I’m stupid or something. While and we’ve seen the same results with high performing employees, that a growth mindset approach can have a negative effect. But if the average is small, or non existing, and we know that with certain groups, we have a negative effect, then it’s also easy to conclude that with some groups, you will have a positive effect. And that’s the case for instance, with younger children and children from a lower social economic background, we see that growth mindset approach can have a significant small but significant positive effect. So now we know that the idea of growth mindset is rubbish, is wrong, but also having huge expectations and thinking that a growth mindset approach will work all of the time is actually also wrong. You have to look where can we apply it. We have to look at what is the effect and if it works, great. If it doesn’t work, please do something else.

Clint Murphy 10:03

And so that speaks even more broadly than the science on the mindset in what I’m thinking about there is so often as people, we want to paint everything with one brush. So growth mindset, fixed mindset, okay, I have to apply that to everyone. This that I have to apply that to everyone, instead of saying, every human I interact with is different, I need to understand what tools I have in my toolkit, and what to apply to that individual.

Pedro De Bruyckere 10:38

Yes, but it doesn’t mean that sometimes that one brush approach for some things, some elements, it does apply. I’ll give you a positive example of replicate. And that’s for the past century, there have been huge discussions about how to learn how to read and you have to global, you have a whole language approach, where you teach children how to read like an adult, because adults don’t use different letters, they see the whole word. And sometimes they even see old chunks of words together. And they try to recognize this as an adult. On the other side, we have a phonics approach. And that is where you learn how to the decode letters to form words. Now, there have been huge reading wars, they are actually called the reading words between the whole language approach and the phonics matters. Now, what we’ve known from replication of studies again, and again and again, phonics, when, but again, and again, people start doubting it. And but we know that only a few strong children will learn how to read with a whole language approach. But almost everybody will learn how to read, with the phonics method. And there you have an example of a one brush approach that actually works almost all the time. Did you notice that I always say, almost all of the time, because in education, in learning, there is nothing that works all the time. I’m always very suspicious when somebody says this is a miracle solution. Because, well, miracles, miracles do exist. If a child reads a sentence for the very first time. To me, that’s a miracle. But the miracle that something works all the time, it’s a very broad brush, phonics, and it works for almost every child. But you will always find an exception probably.

Clint Murphy 12:43

And I think you and I are aligned, I like to have that approach in almost all aspects of life to remove absolutes, because there is there are very few things that are absolute Pedro. And so when we’re looking at the research that we’re using to go into what we’ll talk about today, some important things for the listeners to know that they might not right now, is correlation, causation and then you added a third that I’d never heard, which was correlation caused by distorting factors. So can you take us through those three, and we’ll dive in. I understand. Okay, so let’s apply that. Let’s dive into some of the studies. So the first one let’s talk about is nature versus nurture argument, there are certain things we know for certain, based on identical non identical twin research, can you share some of those findings and what they mean for us with respect to learning and teaching?

Pedro De Bruyckere 13:20

Okay, quite often you can, if you see a newspaper talking about study that you see, for instance, watching a lot of television makes you fat, or makes sure that you learn less. And you have two separate facts, children who watch a lot of television, and you we see that sometimes people who are watching a lot of television are becoming more fat, and they do less good in school. Okay, we have those elements. Now, that is a correlation. And that correlation has been proven again and again. But now you can wonder, what is the direction? What is cause? And what is the result? For instance, are young people who are bored in school who don’t want to learn, well, they will watch more the computer or television? Or is it because they watch too much television or are playing too many computer games so they don’t have time enough to study? Same with sports? For instance, is it true that people who are watching too many television shows, they won’t have time enough left to do sports? Or, and that makse them more fat and less energetic and things like that. Or is it because they have eaten too much fast food and so they don’t feel like doing sports. So they stay at home and then watch television. So while a lot of people will think because they watch television, they become more fat, and they won’t learn that much. And just gave him a couple of reasons why it could be the opposite direction. But in this case, we know it’s much more complicated. And that’s the third example because we also know that introduce other elements. For instance, social economic status, we have parents, families that have a lower educational level for the parents, who have a lower income. And we’ve seen that, for instance, if you have to do two or three jobs to make means, if you don’t have time enough to spend time with your children, so it’s easy for them to be put before television or on the computer to or the iPad to watch some series, but also doing sports, is sometimes quite expensive. But also, eating fast food is quite often less expensive than healthy food. In this case, maybe those two elements that showed a correlation are actually both caused by the other factor, the social economic status, and maybe we didn’t see two things that were caused by each other, but two symptoms of an underlying issue. And what makes it very difficult for scientists is trying to discover what is really happening and what is really causing things. And that’s why we often use that gold standard in a lot of research, randomized control trials. And why do we do this, then we take two groups randomized divided into groups, so that other elements don’t play a role. But also this kind of research sometimes has limitation. Because then we know this can have an effect because we are pinpointing on one approach one element, but in life, most of the time, things interact. Because then you know, one cause, but maybe you won’t see the interaction between different elements. Well, I’ll start off with something that will get a lot of people depressed, and then I’ll give them hope again, so bear with me. But there have been a lot of studies where they looked about how much of the variation between grades between students are based on your genetic background. And the studies that are mentioned in the book, give or take 55% 58%. Yesterday, actually, there was a new study published, who actually even mentioned 68% of the variation between children and grades was based on genetics. When I explained this to my students, I always say, if you have a bad grade, blame your parents. But actually, that’s not true. Because while people have a huge look at that enormous percentage, if you look at how much of our body is made out of water, then it’s 55%. That’s for men. It’s 50% for women, and did you notice how much difference you can make with the rest of the percentages? And that’s also the case, when we are discussing, for instance, grades and intelligence and things like that. We know it’s always both nature and nurture, interacting with each other. And there is a very interesting law,not law, rule, the better the circumstances is, if you have the best teachers, the best parents, the best colleagues, the environment is top notch, then the influence of your genetics will be bigger, but the worse the environment is then if you have not that good teachers, if you have a bad home situation, bad colleagues, evil boss, then the environment will have a bigger role. So knowing this, knowing this mechanism, if we have people not performing well, because of the circumstances, it’s for us a very important reason to change the circumstances, because it’s not that they are doing less well, because genetically, they weren’t fit to it fit for it. But the environment plays a bigger role in bad situations.

Clint Murphy 19:33

So all else equal, your nature is going to drive things. But if you’re in a situation where all else isn’t equal, which is often the case, the child that’s in the worst situation, will be more negatively impacted educationally and performance wise than the child who’s in a good situation.

Pedro De Bruyckere 19:57

Correct. And Sigfried Engelmann once said that the time that is being spent in school, for children coming from a low socioeconomic background is twice as important as for children coming from a better background, because school then has to compensate for the lack in vocabulary. That has been proven again and again, for lack of prior knowledge that’s needed to understand stuff. So then we need the best teachers for those children. But quite often, the opposite is the case. Bear in mind, a lot of teachers are doing a great job. But we have differences. And quite often what we see is that in poor schools, there is often a bigger turnover of teachers. So we have a lot of young teachers starting, and we know, already for a couple of decades, and that has been replicated in a couple of studies with data that if you’re less experienced, as a teacher, you have less effect on your children.

Clint Murphy 21:03

So the more time you have in the chair, the on average that are you are going to perform as a teacher,Pedro De Bruyckere 21:09

It’s in the beginning, that’s in the first three years, we see a growth in how well you’re teaching. Oh, is there a plateau then at some point? There is, well, there, we see that the studies differ, sometimes there’s a plateau and some teachers will actually become a bit less well, because sometimes life can, life can add drops in if you’re having bigger concerns, and maybe you’re having a burnout that you become less effective. But still, we know that experience can play an important role. And for sure, what we see is sometimes you have teachers who have only one year of experience, two years of experience, we know that they’re less effective. And quite often they are in schools that are more challenging,Clint Murphy 21:56

You get enough experience, you get enough tenure, and you’re able to transfer within the district. If you go to a higher performing school, it’s easier, less stress. And now there’s openings for new students to come in.

Pedro De Bruyckere 22:10

Yeah, well, and what we’ve seen in this example, and that’s what we’ve tried to do in our book, we started off with the nature nurture, discussion, remember, and then you combine it with insights from Educational Sciences, insights from societally, so Java, Social Sciences, and then if you combine this, you’ll get a bigger picture. And you can understand better the mechanisms that can cause things that actually a lot of people know, but you can understand them by combining these insights.

Clint Murphy 22:43

The One of the lines that jumped out at me when you were talking about nature versus nurture, and we may get ourselves into a little trouble on this line is, “it is inborn ability that sets the maximum and minimum limits, but it is environment that determines the level to which a child will develop between those limits.” Can you take us through what you mean by that Pedro and a statement I’ve been hearing that might tie into that. I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about this idea of nurturing a child’s nature. So finding out what the nature is and then nurturing it. Can we tie all that together?

Pedro De Bruyckere 23:20

Yeh, well, and all of you but we do mentioned in our book, because sometimes it’s still applied is that you have the lowest amount of performance that you can expect from a child. For instance, I’ll give an example. Serena Williams, great tennis player, if she didn’t have parents that put so much effort in playing tennis, then maybe she would be closer to the lowest amount of performance that nature would have given her for playing tennis. And maybe she would never have practiced, but suddenly she would be playing in school and people think you’ve got talent for this. But in the case of Serena Williams and Venus Williams, her parents, her father, did everything in his power to bring them as close as possible to the maximum amount of nature that was in their bodies to achieve great things. But now we know it’s actually even more complicated. That was the that was in all of you. Now we know that it’s more a kind of a transaction. Because what we often see is that for instance, a teacher or a parent notices that the child has some talent for playing music, and they play something on the piano or they sing something and they say, oh, you’re good, and they start stimulating the singing or the playing the piano, the music, talent and then because the child is getting stimulated, then other people start giving also more input and other people are trying to do better their best to stimulate the child So you get a constant interaction between transaction, between environment and nature, making it better and better. So that’s why sometimes people tend to think we need to try a lot of things with children to find out what how far we can bring them. And sometimes then a big danger. If you say, nurturing nature, I do think, but that’s an opinion, that’s not the same as the science I’ve been discussing that do you think a lot of children and young people, even adults have a bigger potential, then a lot of people think because quite often, they weren’t stimulated, or they didn’t have any experience in a certain field. And if they never have had a starting point where they were, they could discover that they are good at something. And nobody helped them to discover this, but also nobody is stimulated. If they find out, ah, this is something I’m good at, then you don’t get the results that Venus Williams, or Serena Williams have delivered.

Clint Murphy 26:05

That’s so powerful right there. And not all of us will ever be, or not many of us will ever be as Serena Williams, to tennis at whatever, whatever it is, we’re a champion at or we’re good at. But so many of us and I agree with you, I think the vast majority of the population has so much more potential within them they’ve untapped. And I don’t mean that to say that they haven’t tried, or they don’t I just mean they haven’t had the right conditions, the right teaching, the right love and care and chances to show what they’re capable of which must be why self development, life coaches, etc, etc, are so popular because people are trying later in life to get what they didn’t get in that first 20 years of their life. And that ties to your third factor, self determination. Can you tie self determination into nature, nurture, and how that comes into it Pedro?

Pedro De Bruyckere 27:04

Yep, for instance, you can be really good at doing maths. And your parents and your school wants you to be math champion, but you hate math, you hate doing maths, this could be the case. I have to admit, true story, as a child, I won prizes for painting. And I stopped painting. And everybody asked me why, you were best of class in arts. But I hated it because every single painting that I made, felt to me as a failure. And quite often people think something you’re good at, you like doing it. But there are also people who, for instance, great singers, who have such a huge stage fright, that they don’t want to sing on stage. And I also know people now we have to add examples of frustration, or fright. But I also know people, yes, I am good at this but I don’t care. And sometimes we forget that third element. And sometimes there’s a discussion, actually, because in psychology, and philosophy, some scientists argue if the self actually exists, but that’s very philosophical, I have to admit. So then you get to discretion if the self determination or the self deciding what you want to do, if that’s true, really yourself, or if this also, nature or nurture, popping up in an indirect way. Could be the case. But still, I do think people should be allowed, even if they are very talented in something to say, Yeah, okay, but I won’t do itClint Murphy 28:52

And 100%. And I have two young boys and you know, you well, they’re not that young anymore, 14 and 11. And, sure, when they were really little, I wanted them to be hockey players, because I played hockey my whole life. And you know, if you’re gonna play a sport, I want you to play my sport, and but at the end of the day, and it ties in a lot to what we’ve been talking about is let them try a lot of different sports. And then look at, well, what are those two or three that you were really good at? And what was the one or two that you love? And now we know, okay, you love basketball, you really love playing it. You’re pretty good at it. Like you’re okay, let’s get you the coaching and the training and support you so you can be the best in the one that you demonstrated some aptitude for and you seem to love. And so then they get that pride because one of the things Pedro and correct me if I’m wrong on this. I feel like as we approach adulthood, if we had some of those sports or activities in our childhood, where we learned over the course of time to go from beginner and we’re going to talk about this later to a level of expert, we can then have that mindset, whether it’s growth mindset or not. But we can have that thought process that says, I know that I can start at zero and get to 100 if I apply myself, does that makes some sense?

Pedro De Bruyckere 30:19

Well, actually, if you have the self determination theory by Deci Ryan, which is one of the most important and motivational theories or theories on motivation. And there, you see that we have three elements, we have autonomy, often misunderstood, actually, we have a relation, but also competence. The fact that you experienced that you are able to do something, that you are competent in a domain motivates. And it’s very important for everybody, but for children for sure, that they experience to become competent in something. And this can be sport, but this can be reading, too, it can be a lot of things, but having this kind of success experience. And it doesn’t need to be excelling in something. But just experiencing that you’ve learned something. Quite often, we made a mistake for the past decades, and because it’s fun, you will be learning. But when if you look at the research, learning something can be fun. And we see that their direction is more often that learning leads to wellbeing and motivation, then vice versa. Because you can feel so good that you don’t want to do anything anymore for the rest of the day. So but then it’s important, and that’s a study that was published in May of last year, review study. And for me a very eye opening study on motivation, is that if you look at the oldest kind of motivation, and this relationship, and it’s important, it’s key that the child or the student, but also the adult perceives the performance. Because quite often, for instance, if you’re a teacher or trainer or a coach, quite often you see that the student has grown, that an athlete has grown, that a colleague has grown. But if the person themself is himself or herself, whatever, doesn’t see the growth, doesn’t see the success, doesn’t see that he or she has become better at it. It won’t motivate because motivation is in the perceived performance.

Clint Murphy 32:37

So the more we can, even even I’m thinking as a high hockey coach, the more we can show the children, here’s where you were a month ago, here’s what you’re doing now. Maybe on video, even look at your skating. Look how it’s changed. Look how your shots improved. Now they have the perception oh, in that one month, I did improve. What can I do in that second month,Pedro De Bruyckere 33:04

For instance? And now you say, but is that? Isn’t that a growth mindset? Actually, it’s much more pragmatic. It’s much more showing success, showing that they have grown and showing they have become more competent. And competence is one of the elements that can motivate.

Clint Murphy 33:23

Okay, and how does competence motivate?

Pedro De Bruyckere 33:26

If and that has been doing the rounds for since Vygotsky, with the zone of proximal development and the flow theory, if an exercise is too easy for you, it’s not a challenge, it won’t motivate. But if it’s too difficult, then people will say we’ll give up. But if it’s a challenge, where you have to do a bit of effort, but because of the effort you can achieve something. So you have experience or you will show like you just explained that you achieved something that is you became more competent, that can motivate you.

Clint Murphy 34:08

Interesting, and so we want to find that balance of not to the Goldilocks approach, not too easy, not too hard, just hard enough to stimulate challenge and growth. And then I believe we talk about it somewhere else in the book when it comes to learning, though, we have the concept of overload, where if it’s too difficult we kind of wipe out the memory and is that in when we get to which I know I wanted to get to fluid versus crystallized intelligence. Does that tie in to that?

Pedro De Bruyckere 34:47

But now you’re combining a couple of things together. For the listener. I’ll make it a bit more easy. One of the basic theories nowadays on learning is the cognitive load theory by John Speller. And the basic idea, I’ll explain it very briefly. And we have a working memory, which has a limited capacity. We have a long term memory, where we can, we don’t know the limits of, but a working memory can only allows three or four elements at the same time. And if too much information is being processed, but you will recognize you can sometimes feel okay, and full stop talking, it’s becoming too much, you maybe you have that feeling already, when I’m talking sorry for that. And, and we know that, for instance, if you have a smartphone and you have bleeps taking away your attention, taking space, from your limited capacity of your working memory, we know you will learn less. And we also know if you’re depressed. That’s actually one of the things that we know from clinical psychological research. Quite often, people who have depression, have not three or four elements in their working memory, but only have space for one or two or three, one or two, allowing less possibilities to be learning something. Now, for us, it’s very important that we try to maximize the positive float of the working memory. How can you do this, for instance, years ago, when our second son had to learn the tables of multiplication, he didn’t want to. And my wife says, Pedro, you’re the expert, fix this. And I went to a door with our son, Emil, and asked him, can you open the door, which he did. And then I said, Try to imagine that you can’t remember how to open the door. So every time you come to the door, you start banging the door, you try with your head, you try with your feet, and after 10 minutes by accident, you will open the door, then you can only hope for one thing that was not the second door, because it would start over again. Now you have to learn those staples of multiplications. But pretty soon, pretty soon, you will have to make more complex modifications. But if you spent your time doing those multiplications, the basic ones, you won’t be able to more complex calculations. Now, if I translate this to the cognitive load theory, by putting those multiplications in your long term memory, that you can recognize them straightaway, which doesn’t put a load that is not needed on your working memory, you leave space for new things to learn. And this ties in with what you were mentioning with fluid and crystallized intelligence. By becoming older, we know more, we have more prior knowledge. And the more prior knowledge you have, the more you can actually learn new stuff from your environment, because you can connect it to something you already know. And quite often people ask people like me scientists, yeah, do children and adults learn in a different way? And actually, the answer is yes and no. Because the mechanism connecting elements to your prior knowledge, that’s the same for everybody. The system of putting stuff in your long term memory, and getting things, retrieve things back from your working memory. That is something that’s happening with everybody, young and old. But the difference is that the older we get, the more things we know, the more prior knowledge we have. So this compensates. And this explains why sometimes it seems that people are learning in a different way.

Clint Murphy 38:49

And so something that jumps out at me there, when you think of Charlie Munger, or Shane Parrish from Farnam Street, they talk about this concept of having a mental latticework. And I’ve never fully understood it. So it’s okay, I’m learning new things. But what do they mean about slotting or tying that into your lattice work? And are they essentially saying, if you’re going to learn something, get it into your long term memory and tie it to what’s already there?

Pedro De Bruyckere 39:20

Yeah, actually, if we look at one of the most effective study methods. In 2013, the Laski and colleagues made a huge review study of the best and most effective study methods. Actually, just one, just the fun fact, there is one study method if you use that one, it’s the worst one, you know, less after studying them before studying.

Clint Murphy 39:43

Let’s go with that one first. What’s that one?

Pedro De Bruyckere 39:45

it’s highlighting. And why is this? Because when you highlight something, then you tell your brain where to find it. It tells your brain youu don’t have to remember it, because you can find it back because you’ve highlighted it.

Clint Murphy 39:59

Okay, so do not use highlighters.

Pedro De Bruyckere 40:02

No, you can use highlighters to structure a text. But it doesn’t mean you’ve learned a thing actually didn’t learn anything. I’ll give now the examples of very effective study methods. And it answers your question. For instance, try to come up with concrete examples. Working with concrete examples. What does this mean? It means that you have to try to imagine, how does this look in real life. But that’s actually again, tying in something new with something you already know, from your daily life. Another example, retrieval practice, what is retrieval practice, that’s actually top notch effective study method, you read a couple of pages in your course or you manual, you close the manual, or the course or your textbook, and you take an empty sheet of paper, and try to write down as much as possible of what you remember. Okay, that’s retrieving that’s practicing, getting stuff back from the long term memory. And then after you’ve done this, you open your book, again, you open your manual, again, textbook again, and you try to compare what you’ve written down, and what’s actually in the stuff you need to study. And while doing this, you are checking what’s in your long term memory and trying to connect those elements, again, to the stuff that you need to learn. Another example, dual coding, maybe you’ve heard about dual coding, it’s combining images with words, and also very effective. But for instance, drawing elements, trying to draw the connections between things, drawing to situations that could explain what you need to learn, again, is combining stuff you already know, to the new stuff. And those were all examples of very effective study methods. There’s one part and that’s if you’re talking about learning, there are two elements that are resulting in remembering stuff. One is thinking, and if you listen to all the pieces of advice, I’ve just given you a couple of minutes, for the past five minutes. It’s all about thinking. Retrieval practice is thinking, trying to find out concrete examples. It’s thinking, drawing stuff, it’s thinking, or highlighting is not thinking at all. So you won’t learn. The second element is repetition. And repetition is actually making the connections in your brain stronger, is practicing the line between the working memory and long term memory. But there is, know something and it has been replicated since 1885. In 1885, Ebbinghaus found out the speed in which we forget stuff. For instance, he learned nonsense words by heart. And after 20 minutes, he could remember less than 60%. And later, and we actually did this study, we did a replication of the study a couple of years ago with exactly the same results. But based on this insight, we know that repetition, but not regular repetition, but spaced repetition, that is repetition with bigger spaces between the repitition. For instance, you learn something today, you will repeat it tomorrow, but then you leave a day blank. And then after two days, you have another repetition. And then after three days or four days, you have another repetition. That will help again to remember stuff.

Clint Murphy 43:34

So if we want to add something to our latticework and have it be permanently in the lattice work, when we’re studying it, as we learn it, as we read it, we’re coming up with concrete examples in our own mind, how does that tie into thing, I already know. And so we’re active learning. And then the next day, we do it again. And then two days later, we do it again. And so we do it over the course of a month, until it’s now one of those things that’s cemented in the long term memory that when we learn a new concept, we’ll attach it to that. So the problem some of us have, even me because I may read 50 books a year and Charlie may say, well, instead of reading 50, read five 10 times and get the material in there so it’s cemented.

Pedro De Bruyckere 44:19

Yeah, well, I don’t think you’ll need to read them 10 times. But what you could do, I’ll make it a bit more easy on you, still be hard. But while reading this not 50 but 25 books or 30 books, but a couple of days after you’ve read a book, try to write down yourself as retrieval practice the key elements that you think are the essence of the book, and then check if you didn’t forget a key element again, and then maybe a month later, do it again. And that’s not the same as rereading it, now rereading stuff can be always you’ll discover new stuff that you overlooked or maybe you already have now new prior knowledge from other books or other podcasts that gives you new insights for reading books. So I’m not against rereading stuff. But if you want to cement it, maybe you can do it also in another way, with retrieval practice.

Clint Murphy 45:15

It was one of the reasons I came up with the podcast, Pedro was because I get to read the book, as I’m reading it, I write down questions, oh, what do I want to learn about this, this, this and this, and then I have a conversation with you, dive deeper into that material. And then I reread it to write material to promote it. So I feel like okay, now I’ve gotten to, we’ve got a podcast on air, and I’ve touched that material four or five times. And so some of it is more cemented in there. But I still find when I listened back to the podcast two months later, when it gets published, oh, hey, that was something really interesting. I should have included that in what I wrote. So that’s me losing that I read it. I talked to you about it. And then I listened. And it seems new to me. It’s Oh, hey, that’s an exciting moment.

Pedro De Bruyckere 46:04

Yeah, well, actually, in every step you’ve just discussed, there was a lot of thinking involved, there is a kind of the element of repetition is involved, you see the different steps that repeat elements. But writing questions down is a very good, good technique. For instance, one of the piece of advice I often give to my own students, try to come up with your own questions about the course, write them down on flashcards, or use Quizlet. But know that writing down those questions is one of the first steps in learning. Because coming up with an important, with a question, you need a lot of thinking power to come up with a good question. And then you write down the answer on the other side, and you end up with a stack of flashcards. And the good thing is, if you then just pick a question from the stack, because the stack is getting bigger, you will have spaced repetition, by definition,Clint Murphy 46:59

Gotcha. See work through five to 10 a day, by the time you get back to the first one. And you know, you’re reminding me of when my youngest or even the oldest, when they were little and school said, hey, they’re not reading well enough. And they give you it’s like, okay, well, they give you the stack of flashcards of words, they should know and just sit down with them every night at bedtime and say, hey, let’s work through the cards together. It’s amazing how quickly they go from zero to knowing the entire stack, just by working that stack every night or every couple of nights. Or now if I go back, I wouldn’t do it every single night, I’d do it a night, then the next night, then two nights, then, you know,Pedro De Bruyckere 47:39

Depending on the work. But actually, if you look a lot of the techniques that I’ve just been discussing with you, if you look at Duolingo, very popular app, but a lot of the techniques that I’ve just been mentioning, are inside that app. If you look at an app, like Quizlet, we know from research from Basler, and colleagues from 2014, that a simple algorithm based on Amazon, actually based on the similar algorithms that have been used, people who bought this also bought this, what they used were, they change it to people who made this mistake, also made this mistake. So they personalized the reputation based on the mistakes and based on the profiles of people. And if you have a similar profile, you will get similar repitition. But if you have a different profile, you will get a different repitition. And the effect on learning was huge. So that’s why I know certain tools, online tools can help learning. And that’s an example of a tool of an algorithm that combines insights from 1885 and from the 60s with modern technology.

Andrew McConnell 48:54

That’s wonderful. It’s next time I learn well, not next time, the first time I want to learn another language, it’s going to be Duolingo when I retire and start to travel the world for sure.

Pedro De Bruyckere 49:05

I don’t have any shares in the company. Just as a disclaimer, I’m not connected to any of those apps that I’ve just mentioned.

Clint Murphy 49:12

And now I am a big fan. I’ve heard the founder of Duolingo, who had founded another company that I think touched on learning before it on a podcast a couple times and a fabulous listen to the amount of work that goes into the app behind the scenes and what they do.

Pedro De Bruyckere 49:32

What for me is the interesting part is that I recognize a lot of stuff from research. And sometimes people always try to find the holy grail, a new way of learning. Well, what I see in Duolingo are often very old didactics but didactics, sometimes people think they are bad because they’re old, but those didactics are actually examples. Now going back to the start of this conversation of insights from cognitive psychology that have been successfully replicated again and again.

Clint Murphy 50:09

Yeah, I love that. And something you talked about when you were talking about Duolingo is this idea of profiles. And so it’d be remiss if I don’t jump us back to in the book, you talk about personalities, and we need to understand the difference between typologies like Myers Briggs and Dimensions and so you know, we talked about painting everyone with a brush, which typologies tend to do, oh, you’re a J so you’re entirely disorganized? Well, no, in my everyday life, I don’t like to have lists. But when I’m at work, I have lists. So take us through typologies versus dimensions. And we can dive into that fun stuff.

Pedro De Bruyckere 50:47

Oh, yeah, that’s fun stuff. Actually, that was something that also was mentioned. And we discussed in depth than the typology stuff in our second urban myths book about learning and education, because it’s a very popular myth. And we are using technologies in companies but also in schools. And it’s an abstraction of reality. Because take Myers Briggs, you’ll end up with a couple of combinations of different letters. And it’s almost like a horoscope because every combination makes you feel good. But if you look at real validated instruments, then we don’t end up with 16 types of personalities, or 16 groups of people. We’ll end up with a lot of more, because people are more different. And for instance, the Big Five, there are five dimensions, and everybody is somewhere between introvert and extrovert, and everybody is somewhere between more neurotic and being more open minded. And because they’re all scales, but large scales where you are between two end poles, the two end poles, we’ll end up with a lot of different people. And people are much more different. Now, the Big Five is still used a lot. But nowadays, some people say maybe we need another dimension. And we in psychological research, Hexaco is now often used. But the basic idea is that we don’t have types, we don’t have that kind of person, because there are more nuances and dimensions give us more space for that kind of nuance. And it’s something funny, because when I start talking with people about things like typologies, or learning styles, which, which is also kind of typology, then say yeah, but if I read stuff like that, I recognize myself. Yeah, that’s why I made the comparison with the horoscope. In the horoscope, you will recognize yourself too. But then I asked, Do you think that you were only for instance, when we were discussing learning styles, three types of people or 16 types of people? And then they start yeah, but it’s more complicated than that. Yeah. And that’s true. It is more complicated than that. So for us in science, doing psychological research, for instance, it’s more instinct to know, if somebody is more neurotic, is there a bigger chance that this or that will happen? Or, for instance, what is the link between openness and creativity? What is the link between openness and being a good teacher or a worst teacher? And then it’s not just yes or no, he’s neurotic or not neurotic, because you have met a lot of people yourself, I guess. And you will have noticed that some people are more introverted. And the other four are still introvert, but not that much. And other people are a hidden introverts, you really have to learn how to know them to discover that they never share something about themselves. while they talk a lot. So there are a lot of different elements. And recognizing those differences is why we don’t have that much of psychological evidence for typology, and much more evidence supporting dimensions And so when we think about these dimensions, and personality, are we able to move along these dimensions and in essence, change our personality? And if so, what are some of the things we can do to do that, Pedro? Okay, that’s the question. Can you change your partner or not? Can you change is yeah, the good news is we know that if you look at the definitions, a temperament you can change, it can’t change that much. Sorry for that. So the temperament is the fixed part, but personality, well, it can be developed. And sometimes because of situations, it can be taught in parts. But then we come again, to something we’ve been discussing in this conversation already nature, nurture, and with everything, also, with personality. There are elements that are really based in genetics, for instance, we know that there is a huge part in openness that goes back to what you got from your mom and your dad, when they had a great time, I hope. And, but also, in part, it’s nurture and stimulating, for instance, by giving them enough chances to be open to new experiences, by showing them that they learned something from it, or by giving them an environment where it’s safe to express their own emotions, that are examples where you can have a good influence on this kind of thinking, or this kind of development. So the thing is, that because people and children differ so much, because we are discussing dimensions, sometimes those approaches can be very different. Because if you are just a little bit introverted, you will have or if you’re genetically inclined to be a little bit introvert, it will be a different person approach is, then if you are a huge introvert by definition, giving, needing much more help to open up about yourself. And I’m not talking that’s something that we don’t discuss on book because we have to remain with our own expertise, traumatic traumatic events can have a huge impact on your personality to and on your life. But then you need really specialists in this field. And we are both, Caspar Elisa and I, we are the people working the majority of the people, while you really have experts when things go wrong,Clint Murphy 57:12

This one jumped out at me because I look at a lot of young adults, you come out of school, you have a certain level of intelligence, you’ve now done a certain level of education and you get a job. But then your EQ, your executive functioning, to some degree, your your personality or temperament, they hold you back from climbing the ladder and taking those next steps. And for example, for me, that was my monkey mind negative self talk, impatience, low EQ. And so it’s taken the last decade of deliberate practice daily, whether it’s meditation or mindset, or to say, okay, how am I going to go from being this person to this person?

Pedro De Bruyckere 57:57

Well, there is, one of the most to me, but that’s, again, an opinion. But one of the most depressing things I’ve learned of doing all this research and reading all this research is, the older you get, the bigger the influence nature has. And this may surprise a lot of people. But actually, the reason is not that hard to understand. Because what is happening when we are young, everybody tries to teach us stuff. We’re in school, where people try to help us develop, our parents try to help us to develop, we go to the Boy Scouts, or the Girl Scouts will help us develop, we go to classes, music classes, we go to sports club, and we know that in that period of your life, you are surrounded by people trying to help you to grow, but then you start living your life. And yes, I know, people can do some professional development in their jobs. But quite often, it has more to do with tasks that you need to apply. And it’s much less about growing and developing yourself. I’m not now making a big statement that everybody should do life coaching or things like that, because sometimes I don’t know if everything that life coaches are doing is so much evidence based. I think there are huge differences. I know from research in some countries, but I don’t know where everybody is listening to this podcast. So I’m afraid to say it’s everywhere. But I know examples of studies that showed that there are huge differences between what life coaches do, but the amount of manpower or woman power or people power being put in to the development of children is huge compared to what you will have later on in your Life. So that’s why that nature is the amount of nature’s is becoming bigger.

Clint Murphy 1:00:05

And so is that also one of the reasons why when you think of finance, money, people on social media, they always talk about the concept that your network is your net worth. And I talk about that from a holistic angle, my network is my net worth of growth, of learning, of development. Because the people that I surround myself with, if none of them are learning, and none of them are deciding, I want to grow, I want to be more, I want to be better, I want to keep improving, then I’m not going to be doing those things. And that ties to your nature, to some extent, is create an environment of people, friends who want to grow with you.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:00:51

Yes. And then it still remains the question how you deal with it. Because if you, I’m not saying you do this, at all, I think it’s the opposite. But you can look at this as a vulture picking the elements of the others, then maybe you will grow in a richness, and you will have economic growth, but maybe you will be closer to nature, because maybe you were born as a vulture. And well, if you accept to be challenged, if you accept, to say, I’m open to new experiences, to other points of view, if you actually try to fight confirmation bias, again, it could be nature, because you were born with this tendency to be challenged. But still, if maybe somebody has taught you. And we know that it’s something that can be taught, to be challenged to look, if you are convinced about something that you are even more severe for yourself for the stuff you really believe in that you say, I’ll have to check this double, because I’m such a strong believer, then there is a big chance that you will learn a lot.

Clint Murphy 1:02:09

Yeah. And those are three of the attributes that I’ve always said you should surround yourself with. Friends and people who push you, challenge you and support you. And so if you have friends who do that, that’s your circle, then your ability to learn is just such a fun part of life. Let’s flip the direction a little, we talked about some ways that we can learn. So we talked about some of the best tips and tricks for that. What about creativity? You were young, you were a painter, so many people think I’m not creative. Like I thought that, you know, I always got picked on because I couldn’t draw as well as my siblings. So I thought, well, maybe I’m just not creative. But you say, Well, no, there are ways that we can foster creativity in people. So if someone were designing a practice to foster creativity, what are four or five things that you’d want them to zone in on in that?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:03:04

Well, the first thing is something you should really, really shouldn’t do. Because if you don’t want to end up without any creative idea. Don’t brainstorm, don’t use brainstorming, because it’s the worst practice you can get. And this has been proven again, and again, it’s better if you do want to use brainstorming techniques. First, let everybody involved work by themselves trying to get with a solution, and then compare solutions, you’ll end up with a more creative result than when you’re starting brainstorming.

Clint Murphy 1:03:40

Can I ask a question on that one?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:03:42

Yeah, of course,

Clint Murphy 1:03:43

Being a CFO as an example, I may be on a leadership retreat or a team planning session. And your team throws out, Hey, we should brainstorm this. How do I respond in a way that’s respectful while getting us on to the path to say, hey, like, that’s going to lead to us having the worst idea together? What’s the right way to reframe it?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:04:05

I would say that’s a great idea. But I’ve learned from research, and some of the references are in our first book, and part also, the psychology book is to become more effective is first let us work all by ourselves, get up with ideas, and then we’ll bring all the ideas together. So it forced us to keep an open mind that we don’t pick the idea from somebody straight away without having other options on the table. And then everybody is still being approached with respect. But still, you will end up with something more powerful. A second element is and that this will surprise a lot of people, but have a good knowledge base on the things you want to be greater than, and why is what is creativity, creativity is often making new combinations of things you already know. But if you have a limited knowledge base, then you won’t make a lot of new combinations, because you won’t be able to. So stimulating an atmosphere where you can learn new stuff, it will help your creativity. A third element that could help is a safe environment where people are allowed to make mistakes. And maybe you’ll end up with an idea that will end up to be a real stupid idea. But it’s a good thing nobody says it to you straight away, because maybe from that stupid idea, a great idea will be born. But it’s not an atmosphere where everything can be on the table for a second. Another thing that may surprise you is limitations. Because if something is too open, if something if there is too much freedom, actually, you are making it yourself much, much harder to come up with something more creative. Because in the limitations, is there in is a challenge. Okay, for instance, I want to what I’ve done a recording an album, a music album, last summer. And the challenge was for the band, we won’t invite any other musicians than the five people in this room. Because in previous music albums, we invite a lot of horn players and violinists. But now, we really need to do it by herself, that was introducing a severe limitation. But it forced us to come up with other kinds of parts, more creative parts, too, because we knew that we couldn’t solve it by oh, this will be a saxophone part. Because we knew there wouldn’t be one.

Clint Murphy 1:07:02

So it forced you to stretch within the bounds that you let yourself plan.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:07:08

Boundaries are so important to become to come up with something creative,Clint Murphy 1:07:14

Which would be the opposite of what you would think in advance.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:07:19

Yeah, I know that a lot of the pieces of advice I’ve given to you now are often regarded as the opposite of what people want to do when they want to become more creative. Because learning about stuff, people think, no, you can’t be creative, because you’ve learned how to do it. Yeah, but because the knowledge you have, you’ll be able to do more. And because I’m not here to block my book. And if you want to learn more about creativity, there is a good book by Sawyer, who gives a great overview about all things related to science and creativity, the science behind creativity. And then we know for instance, Ken Robinson, who was died last year, claimed schools kill creativity. And that was one of the most famous TED Talks ever. But we did the fact check. And Ken Robinson used such a very distinct, limited definition of creativity. And in this very limited view on creativity, he was correct. But every other theory, every other definition of creativity, actually showed that one of the most powerful elements to become more creative is knowing more about the field, you want to be creative in. Because did you notice that you’re always creative in something, for instance, I’m lucky, like I have just acknowledged that I’m a musician, I’m a guitar player. For me, it’s much easier to be creative in guitar playing than being creative as a plumber, because I know nothing about plumbing. And so if we have a leak in our bathroom, I won’t come up with a creative, good solution.

Clint Murphy 1:09:16

You’re making me think of because I’m an accountant by day or a finance person as a CFO. And when we’re talking about business problems that we’re often if I come up with a solution to something, people will say, Oh, that’s a pretty creative solution. But in my mind, all I’m doing is taking 20 years of knowledge of Accounting and Finance and saying, well, what if I take this from over here and that from over there and this concept, and I just tie them together? Maybe it’s creative, but to me it just feels like problem solving with my job with my knowledge base.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:09:56

Yes, but maybe by introducing some challenges for yourself. And quite often, if you have a difficult case, there are boundaries because of the case, then you will get more challenged and become more creative in that situation, then you will have the experience. So this was a tough one, fun, because you were stimulated, stimulated to become more creative in a field, you already have enough knowledge aboutClint Murphy 1:10:23

And you’re right, the reason it has to be a creative solution more often than not, is because of the number of constraints, hey, we want to achieve this, but we can’t do this, and here’s our resources and you start to work your way down the list constraint, constraint, constraint, okay, well, we can, that’s really going to, it’s going to lock us in, but it’s going to also open us up because we know what the boundaries are. And now we can be creative within those boundaries.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:10:50

And for me, this is, for instance, example that when I’m speaking with students who say, you know, I never can find an original idea. Another technique that I say, pick two words, for instance, somebody says cat, and somebody says, economics. Those two words are not that related. But then I say, Okay, now you have two words that aren’t related. Try to find the connection, will do the similarities between those two words. And it forces them to learn to look at different ways of the two concepts. But they are also constrained by the boundaries of you have to stick with those two words. And you have to pick two words they know. Because if you say, cat, and for instance, quantum computing, if you don’t know anything about quantum computing, you won’t end up with some connections, because you don’t have the knowledge to make connections.

Clint Murphy 1:11:53

The So let’s do a direction switch and do a final question on the book for something fun for the audience. What are some errors in reasoning that all of us often do and what are three or four of your favorite ones that we should have our eyes out for so we don’t make common mistakes?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:12:14

One we alread discussed, don’t mix up correlation with causation. Another one we briefly mentioned, is confirmation bias. It’s one of the most popular advice we have that we tend to look for things that confirm what we already know and that we believe in. And a critical person is actually looking at more falsification of what he or she thinks, but also, one of the things that stopped me a lot. If you read something, for instance, you read a book by Kahneman or you read a book by Carol Dweck, or by Howard Gardner, or by Piaget, try to look what was done afterwards. Because quite often, people are surprised by the novelty, are surprised by the new insight. But because we tend to look at new stuff, it’s very important to check if later on, it’s still standing. For instance, Howard Gardner, who came up with multiple intelligence. In 2016, he himself wrote about his own theory on multiple intelligence. You know, what it’s often not used in the way that I described it. Two and I’m quoting the person who coined the multiple intelligence, actually I never really researched my theory. And the third element is I only used intelligence to get published. The same thing. For instance, everybody is quoting Maslow, with the pyramid of needs hierarchy of needs. First, there is no pyramid in any of the works by Maslow. No, none. Second element is that he himself there’s a hierarchy not a pyramid, but hierarchy of needs in the whereby Maslow, but he himself described later on, that he couldn’t understand that every copy, everybody copied his theory without being critical, because he himself was convinced that it was incorrect. And it’s true, it’s incorrect. But actually, the person himself already knew. So if you’re really liking a theory, if you really think this is it, do read everything also, later, if the scientist has debunked it himself, but also read what other people write about it. And quite often, there are elements of truth in it, but it’s almost always more nuanced.

Clint Murphy 1:14:52

That is, that’s a let’s finish up on that one. And Pedro, where can our listeners find youPedro De Bruyckere 1:15:00

Well, I live in Belgium, but that’s a big trip. But online on Twitter, if it still exists when this is broadcast, you can find me there. I have a website, theeconomyofmeaning.com. And every single day, I’ll try to describe and give you information about a new study that was performed, not by me, sometimes by me, but by a lot of people and try to show what you have to learn about this. And there are the books, the two urban myths books that I co authored with Paul and Casper. There is one book, The Ingredients of Great Teaching. That’s a very practical book on teaching. And the latest book that we just have been discussing is The Psychology of Great Teaching. But actually, there is a lot about how to educate your children, as a parent also in the book.

Clint Murphy 1:15:52

Yes, it was a phenomenal read as a parent. And do you have a quick minute for a final four questions?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:15:58

Let’s do it.

Clint Murphy 1:16:00

All right. So what one book for you that was a life changerPedro De Bruyckere 1:16:03

50 myths about Psychology for me, the stepping stone to do my job. But I’ll get back to you. I’ll give you the reference to include it. Because I just can’t.

Clint Murphy 1:16:15

Yea, we’ll get it in the show notes. So 50 Myths about Psychology. And you’ve wrote two books about myths. And you’ve wrote a book about the psychology of teaching. So that got you on the path to really question things.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:16:28

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology by Scott Lilienfeld. It’s a great book.

Clint Murphy 1:16:34

I love it. And what are you reading right now? So we jump on the bookshelf? What’s the number one on the list?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:16:40

Well, it’s something completely different, it arrived two days ago, because I’m still also musician. This is a book by Trevor Horn, about adventures in modern recording, and it’s about how you record some of the most famous songs of the 1980s.

Clint Murphy 1:16:56

Oh, interesting. So you’re going in a different direction on that one. And then if you look at the last 12 months for you, what is one thing that you’ve spent less than $1,000 that you thought, Oh, I wish I’d bought that sooner?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:17:11

Oh, good question. The truth is, well, if I answered myself, I’ve been starting collecting vinyl records again, and the slow pace of listening to music on vinyl, because you have to turn over the LP player it gives me kind of ease. But if I would ask the children in this room, invested a lot in a new Wi Fi, and they say it changed their life.

Clint Murphy 1:17:46

Yes, we got some Wi Fi booster. So they’re not dropping their Roblox I love it. Okay, so the show is about growth. And for you, what’s one mindset shift habit or behavior that you’ve changed in the last 12 months that’s had a positive impact on your life?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:18:06

Well, I was raised by my grandparents and parents in part, and my grandmother had a candy store. So I’m the kid who was growing up in a candy store, literally, and I’ve stopped eating candy last summer, I’ve lost 10 kilos.

Clint Murphy 1:18:23

Oh, wow. For our American listeners, it’s 22 pounds. That’s impressive Pedro, you had candy. Sugar is not. It’s it might not be the causation. But it’s definitely highly correlated with not being great for us.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:18:38

So that’s element of growth. For me.

Clint Murphy 1:18:41

And Pedro, so we had a pretty wide ranging conversation, given the topic, is there anything that we missed that you want to get across to the listeners today?

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:18:51

Well, I think the main elements when we started off, I explained that a lot of classic psychological research has been has failed to replicate. But do remember, like what we’ve just been discussing about cognitive psychology, how people learn, what you can do to learn, that is actually a result of successful replications. So for me, the replication crisis has meant that psychology as a science has been growing a lot. Maybe sometimes crisis does mean growth.

Clint Murphy 1:19:26

It’s a beautiful way to wrap it up. Thank you, and appreciate you joining me on the pursuit of learning. And for those listeners, I might have wrote about a couple flawed learning concepts on Twitter, which is how I was introduced to Pedro. So when I promote this episode, I will report evidence based research. Pedro, thank you for joining me.

Pedro De Bruyckere 1:19:47

My pleasure.

Clint Murphy 1:19:50

Thank you for joining us on the pursuit of learning, make sure to hit the subscribe button and head over to our website, the pursuit of learning.com where you will find our show notes, transcripts and more. If you like what you see, sign up for our mailing list. Until next time, your host in learning Clint Murphy