How Clearly Do You See Yourself?

MAUGHAN: “Who put a quarter in you?”

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DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth.

MAUGHAN: I’m Mike Maughan.

DUCKWORTH + MAUGHAN: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show: How accurately do we see ourselves?

DUCKWORTH: When you ask people, “Are you an average driver?  

MAUGHAN: Everyone’s a great driver.

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DUCKWORTH: Mike, we have an email from a listener named Hadji, and I’m going to read it to you.

MAUGHAN: Okay.

DUCKWORTH: It begins, “I found the ongoing discussions about the Big Five personality series fascinating.” 

MAUGHAN: Oh, nice! I mean, we went through each of the Big Five personality traits in a series recently.

DUCKWORTH: And apparently Hadji was one of the — I think we had 50,000 listeners take the survey. So Hadji says, “After taking the survey, I couldn’t help but wonder how others might rate me, if asked, and vice versa. What factors lead to the variations between an individual’s self-perception and how they’re perceived by their family, colleagues, or friends?” Terrific question, and something I have been thinking about, I think, since my very first day of graduate school.

MAUGHAN: I love this because I think we lie to ourselves all the time, probably not on purpose. But I often wonder, like, the way I perceive myself, I’m sure, is massively different than how other people perceive me.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, be specific!

MAUGHAN: I just think it’s probably true that family and close friends are both more accurate in their perception of us, but maybe also more judgy? Not because they’re judgmental, but because they have seen a broader perspective of our personality.

DUCKWORTH: So, they’d be maybe more critical, you think?

MAUGHAN: Yeah, but critical in an observant way, not necessarily, like, critical as in a negative way, right? I think it’s really hard to be honest with ourselves all the time.  

DUCKWORTH: Okay, I’ve been collecting data on self-report questionnaires, like No Stupid Questions listeners took. And by the way, by popular demand, we just kept the survey up. So if anybody wants to see what they think of their own personality traits, they can do that at freakonomics.com/bigfive. But I’ve been collecting data that is, like that survey, self-report. Answer a bunch of questions about yourself. And then you get friends or teachers or parents to answer the same exact questions, but now the pronouns are not first-person singular. They’re third person. The technical term for this in psychology is called “informant reports.” You know, “Is Mike Maughan talkative? Does Mike Maughan like to go to parties?”   

MAUGHAN: Did you know my mom once observed me talking to someone — ugh, this was not a great moment in my life, but I walked back over and she said, “Who put a quarter in you?” Because I was incredibly, maybe overly talkative.

DUCKWORTH: Were you a jukebox?  

MAUGHAN: Maybe not as solicitous of asking questions of the other person as I ought to have been, as I was taught.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, I love that expression. Had not heard it. But anyway, the question is really rich and deep. And I mentioned that I’ve been thinking about this question since my first days at graduate school. That is because in my very first study as a graduate student, I gave questionnaires to middle school students. Actually eighth grade is about the first grade where somebody can kind of reliably answer these questionnaires. Before that, kids tend to be very egocentric. So when you ask them, like, “Are you talkative?” they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, which is to compare themselves to other kids. They answer the questions, but there’s a lot of noise and not a lot of signal. But I gave these self-report questionnaires about personality, in particular self-control, to these middle schoolers, and then I also gave the same exact questionnaires in their informant report version —  so now, you know, “does this child “control themselves when they need to” et cetera — to the teachers of these kids and then also their parents. And Mike Maughan would not be surprised that when you get all the data back, one way you know how much signal there is and how much noise is whether the scores for that particular way of measuring self-control correlate with the others. And in fact, parent ratings of self-control are the least correlated with — 

MAUGHAN: Really? 

DUCKWORTH: Yeah. I mean, it’s not that there’s no correlation but they don’t predict outcomes as well as —  

MAUGHAN: Wait, wait, let me clarify. So, parents are the least able to accurately determine? 

DUCKWORTH: That would be my read of the data. 

MAUGHAN: Okay, I just wanted to make sure I was understanding. 

DUCKWORTH: It’s like, you would expect them to know the kid best, right? They’ve changed their diapers, they’ve seen them for much longer than their teachers. I mean, who doesn’t know you but your mother?

MAUGHAN: Yeah, is it that we all think our kids are the best?

DUCKWORTH: I can’t remember whether the averages were higher, because that’s one way you would know. Like, “Oh, the parents are rating these kids, like, four out of five, and then teachers are rating them, like, two out of five,” or something like that. But they just didn’t relate to other things very well and I found that over and over again. And one parent mailed back the survey and instead of checking off the boxes, like, “very much like my child,” you know, “not at all like my child” — they wrote in the margin, “How am I supposed to answer this question? I only have one kid. I have no idea how they compare to others.” And I do think that one of the reasons why parents struggle is because, you know, they want to think their son is the next Tom Brady or something, but they also just have a very limited frame of reference — compared to teachers, right, who see, I don’t know, dozens of kids a year, sometimes hundreds, and then hundreds of kids, if not thousands, over the course of their career.

MAUGHAN: Well, and it’s hard to judge yourself often — going to Hadji’s question — because, I mean, it’s the first time I’ve ever been a fifth grader or the first time I’ve ever been new at this company. I don’t even know how to rate myself against everybody else. It’s sort of like when they ask you at the hospital, “Rate your pain on a scale of one to 10,” “Well, I don’t want to say that I’m a 10. I don’t know what it’s like to give birth. It’s so hard to compare, right?

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, it is. And It used to be, like, “How’s your pain?” And then words would come out of people’s mouths, but you’re like, “What?” It’s better to say, like, “Okay, scale from one to 10.” But “What is a six?” So, now the better scales that your doctor can ask you are scales where the number comes with a description: “cannot walk up a flight of stairs,” you know, “five.” “Cannot pick up a half gallon of milk; seven,” “Cannot get out of bed.” By the way, they still aren’t perfect. This is called the vignette approach, but to this day there’s always a little bit of signal and there’s also this kind of noise that comes from a stoic person. Jason’s grandfather, who was affectionately known as “Pa Ted” — I don’t even know what his real name was.

MAUGHAN: Wait, pothead? 

DUCKWORTH: I can’t believe — maybe his name was Ted, and it was, like, “Pa Ted.”

MAUGHAN: Oh, “Pa Ted.” It sounded a lot like a marijuana user, “pothead.”

DUCKWORTH: Oh yes! He drank vodka, but no marijuana, so far as we know. And Pa Ted had this like just this extremely high pain threshold. There was these stories of his, like, breaking a bone and still doing thing — like, so even with the little vignettes that are supposed to help you with these reference points, like, I think one of the main lessons of measuring personality or anything else is that my six and your six are not the same six, even when we add words and descriptions. I think you’ve put your finger on one of the many reasons why when somebody else rates us and we rate ourselves, those ratings aren’t always going to line up. They may have different standards than we do. 

MAUGHAN: You’ve mentioned that parents have a lack of ability, maybe, to see as objectively. Are there people or groups to whom we can turn that help us gain a better sense of who we are? Like, in my world, we often would do these 360 degree feedback surveys and that’s where your manager, your direct reports, and your peers all give feedback on a set list of questions, and that’s meant to give a well-rounded view of you as a person and maybe point out blind spots or areas that are going well.

DUCKWORTH: I learned this lesson my very first year of graduate school when I was collecting that data from parents and teachers and then the students themselves. In general, 360 is good because even though the parents have their biases and they struggle with knowing what an average fifth grader is like, and even though the teachers may also have biases — like rules of thumb about what girls are like or what boys are like.   And then also there’s this problem called halo bias, where if a person has one positive characteristic, like they have a good sense of humor, you tend to attribute other things, like, “They must be smart, they’re probably a good athlete, I bet they have a lot of friends,” right?  But here’s the thing about 360 assessment, and here’s why it’s a good thing. It’s called the principle of aggregation. And it’s so non-intuitive, and it’s so powerful and it’s so important. When you take all these imperfect signals — so everybody has a little signal, but they have a lot of noise — when you just average them together, what happens is not what you would think. Instead of getting more noise, you actually get a lot of signal. Because the noise kind of, like, cancels out. And so 360 assessment is essentially what I did in my first year of graduate school. I just averaged together all the ratings, and even though each one was imperfect, their collective signal was a lot stronger than any one element alone. So, I think employers should keep doing 360s. I think that’s also something we should do when we hire people, right? Like, don’t call one reference! 

MAUGHAN: Right! Oh my gosh. 

DUCKWORTH: Such a rookie error. I make it all the time though.

MAUGHAN: Well also don’t just call the references that they give you.

DUCKWORTH: You know what question that Luis von Ahn, who was the last chair of the board that my nonprofit Character Lab had — the question that he likes to ask when he’s doing reference checks: would you hire that person again? That’s a great question, because at the end of the day, it says so much. Do you think that your close friends, if they filled out the Big Five personality inventory, — let’s say you averaged together like eight friends — do you think that if the scores came out differently for the eight friends who know you best, would you think that that is better evidence of who you really are than your own ratings? 

MAUGHAN: Like, they came out differently than my scores, not differently than each other.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah. And by the way, when you take these ratings, they very often like don’t line up perfectly. But let’s take the average of them, right? Let’s use the principle of aggregation. And let’s get the “Mike Maughan friend score.” And say they thought you were, like, really high in openness to experience and you thought you were lower than they thought. Like, who would you believe? 

MAUGHAN: I think that I would want to believe them because I would think that maybe I’m engaged in — I don’t know what it’s even called, but a self-perception bias? Is that a thing?

DUCKWORTH: Sometimes it’s called self-serving bias.

MAUGHAN: Well, ‘cause I think to some extent we answer these things aspirationally, or we all have selective memory or we have a willingness to kind of glorify the past, forget the things that were hard or bad. And I wonder if in our own taking of these questionnaires we tend to focus on the most proximate experiences that are coloring things, or, you know, I’m thinking of my best self when maybe they’re thinking of my whole self.

DUCKWORTH: Like, everyone who takes PSYC 0001, you know, Intro Psych, is taught that we can be biased to say we’re better than average, right? And we often teach these introductory psychology students that when you ask people, like, “Are you an average driver? Are you better than average? Worse than average?”

MAUGHAN: Everyone’s a great driver.

DUCKWORTH: Except for me, by the way. I would raise my hand and be like, “I’m a terrible, terrible driver.”

MAUGHAN: You don’t drive.  

DUCKWORTH: Yes, then again, I’m not really a driver. Okay, fair enough. But everybody can’t be better than average, so you must be deluding yourself. Well, a few years ago, there was this meta-analysis, so these scientists took all of the data that had been gathered that they could get on, like, self-report personality scores, like the ones that we’ve been collecting on No Stupid Questions from our listeners, and then informant report about that person. And if there really is this strong self-serving bias, the average scores for positive traits like conscientiousness or agreeableness, they should be higher for self-report than for informant report. So, I read this, and I was really surprised. What they found from, you know, over 30,000 data points across 150 samples is that there is really not much difference between the average scores of people’s self-report Big Five personality and informant report. So there wasn’t strong evidence. There was one exception, which we can talk about, but in general, they’re like, “Nah, maybe people are not as prone to self-serving bias as we teach in PSYC 0001.” 

MAUGHAN: Interesting. Is that true maybe just of rating your personality versus other factors? Because I, I would imagine there are other areas that we are pretty self-deluded.

DUCKWORTH: I don’t know. This study was only on personality, but it’s a good question. You know, the Big Five — as you recall, it’s extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and then neuroticism. Most people have a lean — they would like to be more agreeable. They would like to be more conscientious. They’re not exactly neutral. But in general, this big, big meta-analysis says, “If there is a self-serving bias for personality, it’s not nearly as big as we thought it was.” There was only one of the Big Five where — 

MAUGHAN: Which is which one? 

DUCKWORTH: It’s the one that our listeners are the highest in. So the average score for Big Five openness to experience — I mean, you won’t be surprised, that is really high for our listeners. I think that’s the kind of person who likes to listen to a podcast called No Stupid Questions. And on that particular Big Five personality trait, we tend to rate ourselves a little higher in that than — actually, it turns out really only than strangers. We don’t show much self-serving bias when it comes to personality. Mike, you and I would love to hear our listeners’ thoughts on self-perception Do you think you see yourself the same way others see you? Why or why not? Record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email us at NSQ@freakonomics.com. Maybe we’ll play it on a future episode of the show. And if you like the show and want to support us, the very best thing you can do is to tell a friend. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your favorite podcast app.

Still to come on No Stupid Questions: What’s the difference between self-perception and self-awareness?

DUCKWORTH: You don’t want to have somebody who’s like, “I’m great. You know, I don’t have to work on anything, because I’m without weaknesses.” 

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Now, back to Mike and Angela’s conversation about self perception.

MAUGHAN: So Ange, I will just say on a personal level at work, I’ve found that when I’m working with individuals who I would at least deem relatively self-aware, then the teamwork works much better. Everyone’s able to flow together much better. We are able to coordinate more strongly. We make better decisions because people are aware of where they can contribute, but also that they have limitations, and they need other people to contribute as well. When I’ve been working with individuals who lack the same level of self-awareness regarding strengths or weaknesses, it just never functions as well.

DUCKWORTH: You know, self-awareness is one of those things that is a bit of a catch-22. It’s like, “I’m going to study self-awareness! First I’m going to give people questionnaires about how self-aware they are.” And you’re like, “Oh, wait, I can’t do that.” It’s hard. It’s like a slippery fish, but we all have that intuition. 

MAUGHAN: A slippery fish.

DUCKWORTH: I don’t know why, but I — I say that all the time. 

MAUGHAN: It’s the best analogy. I don’t know why I don’t use that myself.  

DUCKWORTH: Fish are so slippery!

MAUGHAN: Can I just say, I don’t like fishing because you have to touch the fish. I think it’s really gross. 

DUCKWORTH: It is gross. I don’t like fishing for so many reasons, but touching the fish is definitely one of them. 

MAUGHAN: I have a lot of friends who love fishing — even ice fishing — and I keep thinking to myself, if you’re out ice fishing, and you pull out a fish, and it’s icy and cold, so you have to touch the fish, but you can’t really wash your hands.

DUCKWORTH: It’s a cold, slippery fish.

MAUGHAN: I just think it’s gross. 

DUCKWORTH: Either way, neither of us are going to go ‘cause we are self-aware about that. I mean, self-awareness is something just intuitively we know people vary on because it’s so obvious to others when a person lacks it, right? Like, the person who thinks they’ve got a great sense of humor, or like, the person who doesn’t know that they have bad breath. Or I think about this sometimes when someone’s talking really loudly, and I’m sure this happens when I’m talking really loudly.

MAUGHAN: Or a close talker.

DUCKWORTH: The close talker. Often the spitter.

MAUGHAN: Oh, gross.

DUCKWORTH:   I was just at a — what was I at? It was like a reception for something. And I was like hovering around the hot table where there was, like, the deep fried whatever. And wow, like, the close talker. He was also a spitter. And also a loud talker. And I’m not sure that gentleman had much self-awareness.

MAUGHAN: Yeah, and I think the kindest thing we can often do is give feedback. So you’re talking about a close-talking spitter who was loud. It’s a great trifecta. I have a really, really dear friend and close colleague who is a close talker. And I have never, I admit in this moment, given the feedback. But when I am talking to this person, I am literally backing up much of the time, and they are advancing. And so I am not able to maintain space between this individual when we talk. But I also realize I’ve never had the courage or kindness to address that in a way that this person who is maybe not self-aware would benefit from.

DUCKWORTH: I’m going to tell you about — some years ago, Paul DePodesta called me, and — 

MAUGHAN: Oh, he’s awesome. 

DUCKWORTH: I mean, this is how much I know about sports, I was like, “Who are you?” I’m sure I had heard of him. I read Michael Lewis’s book, Moneyball, but I think he was the executive — right? — who sort of first had the idea if you actually calculate statistics, and you aren’t biased by just picking the person who looks like they’d be a good baseball player because they’re so tall and good looking and look like Robert Redford or something —  that you do better on average, right?

MAUGHAN: So he and Billy Beane — if you’ve read the book, Moneyball — 

DUCKWORTH: Oh, Billy Beane. I saw the movie with Brad Pitt. 

MAUGHAN: Yeah, so Brad Pitt plays the role of Billy Beane.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, he’s the general manager or the coach or something, right? 

MAUGHAN: He’s the general manager, I believe, and then Jonah Hill plays the role of Paul DePodesta. But Paul did not give permission for his name to be used in the movie, so they name Jonah Hill something else. But Jonah Hill plays the character based on Paul DePodesta’s role as kind of the statistician-mathematician. 

DUCKWORTH: I see. Okay, that’s actually very helpful. My point is that Paul DePodesta called me about grit. I think he had just some curiosity. It was only one conversation. We didn’t talk after this, but I think he was thinking like a lot of people in sports are thinking, which is, you know, “How do I pick the next player? And how do I get this team to be a championship team?” And I remember toward the end of the conversation, I said, “I also have curiosity, and I want to know, as an observer of human performance, what you think are the important characteristics of someone who is a world-class performer.” And I remember that he said that he thought grit was one of them. I was like, “Okay, check.” I believe that he said the second one was some kind of impulse control. Like, really being able to manage yourself off the field. You know, you’ve got temptations, you’ve got vices like we all do, and I think he was telling me about young baseball players who, you know, just kids suddenly with a lot of money and attention and that ends up being an Achilles heel for some of them. But he said there were three, and I was like, “Okay, well, I study grit and I study self-control, like, “What’s the third one?” And he said, “self-awareness.” He said, “For example, if you ask baseball players to rate their own fielding ability, some baseball players will have a completely delusional sense of their own skills. Some people have a self-serving bias in spades. And then he said, “But some amount of self-delusion, like, a little bit of swagger” — not too much, because you don’t want to have somebody who’s like, “I’m great. You know, I don’t have to work on anything, because I’m without weaknesses.” But a little swagger could be helpful, especially in professional sports. So, I just think this question of self-awareness is so interesting because I do think it can be an Achilles heel when you don’t know that you’re a close talker or that you have a terrible sense of humor or that you think you have no problem with planning ahead and everybody who works with you is, like, “You have a serious problem with planning ahead.” But maybe at the same time, just a little swagger can also be an edge.

MAUGHAN: I mean, I think you have to have a little bit of swagger to believe that you can accomplish some of these really great things. But, as you’re saying I think, combining that with a genuine self-awareness of what it takes to get there is really important.

DUCKWORTH: Let me tell you about a homework assignment that I used to give my graduate students when I taught a class called Research Methods and Statistics. 

MAUGHAN: Sounds riveting.

DUCKWORTH: It was amazing. It was a real page-turner. So, one of the first assignments they get is to take a questionnaire. And then they have to find some informants — some friends, family members who know them well — and they get them to take a questionnaire, not about themselves, but about the target students, so now you have informant reports and self-reports. I didn’t have them calculate any statistics. This was just for them to understand what it was like to take a questionnaire, for other people to take questionnaires. And then they were simply supposed to have a conversation with at least one of their informants about the discrepancies. In some cases, there was this kind of, “Hey, I must lack some kind of self-awareness because all these people say I’m a good communicator. I never would have thought about myself that way,” So oftentimes there’s this kind of like, “Wow, I wasn’t self-aware of my strengths.” But the other thing that comes out — and I think this to me is maybe the most important thing — is that very often what the student realized is that the scores reflected the context or the situations in which that person always saw you. Like in my professional life, I think my students see me as very confident, very alpha, like, “Angela Duckworth is Professor Angela Duckworth, and she’s in charge.” In my home — my students would never guess — I am nothing like the Angela at the front of the lecture hall.

MAUGHAN: I was going to say, I’ve seen you in your home and with your family, and it is beautiful, but different. 

DUCKWORTH: So different! My voice is different. 

MAUGHAN: Yes! When you talk to Jason it’s, “Hi, lovey!”

DUCKWORTH: I know! It’s, like, a half octave higher. And I’m a different Angela, like — my parents, before my father passed away and before my mom moved into the senior living home where she is now, they had our childhood home for many years. Probably for too many years. And when the girls were young, and Jason and I would drive back to visit my parents in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, it was almost like as we turned onto North Woodleigh Drive, there would be this, like, metamorphosis, and I would become teenage Angela. And we would get out of the car, and I would turn on the TV, and I would, like, splay myself starfish-style in front of  the TV on the wall-to-wall carpeting because, yes, it is New Jersey, and we all have wall-to-wall carpeting there, which I love. And, you know, I’d just sort of like sit there while other people would take care of lunch and make sure the car was unpacked, and do things that were industrious. And I would just sit there and watch TV and, like, wait for my mom or Jason to call me into the kitchen for lunch. And then, you know, on the ride back, I would transform back into the Angela I had to be, which is “Angela the responsible mother.”

MAUGHAN: My family, who I love and am very close with, they do not see me in a professional setting.  

DUCKWORTH: So, what’s the Mike Maughan they see? 

MAUGHAN: I just don’t think they’ve ever seen me negotiate a big deal or run this big process. So, I think that’s where it’s really interesting to me to think through other people’s perception versus my self-perception. They may or may not be aligned, but it doesn’t mean that either one is wrong. It’s just all context-based. And it’s not like I’m trying to be a different person in each context. I want to be a consistent human. They see different elements of my personality come out in various environments.

DUCKWORTH: I know NSQ co-host Mike Maughan, and I’ve also seen Mike Maughan in charge of a very large event, where everybody’s basically, like, running to you with problems and asking you to make decisions. I’ve never seen you as part of the Maughan family. Like, you’ve told me stories and I’ve also seen you a little bit in your friend group, but what would you say I would see, if I could see Mike Maughan within the Mike Maughan family situation? 

MAUGHAN: Well, I’m the fifth child and fourth boy, and I think that, just naturally based on birth order — and I don’t know how much science there is to birth order versus just anecdotal stuff — but I’m not the alpha, for sure. I mean, if you’re getting into a car with either parent and you’re not driving, the parent of course gets the front seat. But outside of that, the oldest brother or older sister gets the front seat. I take a backseat in the family a little bit because — 

DUCKWORTH: Quite literally and figuratively.

MAUGHAN: Literally and figuratively. But I think that’s maybe just inherent in being the younger brother.  

DUCKWORTH: Well, you don’t have to tell me why. I just want a snapshot of who you are. So, not alpha.

MAUGHAN: Not within the family, no. But I don’t know that we have, like, a big alpha in the family either, though. 

DUCKWORTH: Well, the thing is this. You know, the reasons why we are different in different situations, I’m sure, are complex, but the fact that we are different. So, one of my favorite quotes comes from one of my favorite philosophers. He is named Michel de Montaigne. I will not try to give you the true French expression, but there’s this one line that I’ll find for you because I love it that much. In the original French: “Et se trouve autant de différences de nous à nous-mêmes, que de nous à autre.” And I’m kind of updating the French because I just read it in the modern version of the original French. But the translation is that “There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.” And let me say what Montaigne argued in this essay. He said, when I think about human behavior, when I think about human nature, the mistake that we often make is that when we think of other people, we just think of them kind of monolithically. Like, who is this person and what is their character? And what we are blind to is how much variability there is in that same person. There are multiple Mike Maughans. I mean, he didn’t say that, but if I apply it to our current conversation. And there are multiple Angelas. So, I think this idea of multiple selves — that we are as unlike ourselves, because we have so many versions of ourself, than we are unlike other people — I think is beautiful and profound. And I think Montaigne is right. I think we ignore that when we make judgments about other people.

MAUGHAN: I love that line, “That we’re as different from ourselves as we are from other people” because of these multiple selves. Can I share with you one trick that I have learned, at least in terms of understanding my own self-delusion in an attempt to develop better self-perception?

DUCKWORTH: Yes, please.

MAUGHAN: This came from an article I read in The New York Times. But it was just the idea of, “ask yourself not ‘why?’ but ‘what?'” It’s this idea of not asking yourself, “Why do I feel so terrible?” Or, “Why do I feel so good?” But rather, like, “What are the situations that make me feel terrible, and what do they have in common?” And so that switch from “what, not why” — maybe there’s science to it, maybe there’s not, I have no idea. But on a personal level, I have found it to be a very useful trick to just sort of help myself understand why I feel the way I feel because I’m asking “What?” not “Why?”

DUCKWORTH: I want to end with this story, because we were recently talking about Danny Kahneman. So I mentioned to you recently that there was a service at Princeton — a sort of celebration, I should say — of his life and that many people who had worked with him came up one by one and spoke. But the first person who spoke was Barbara Tversky. And Barbara Tversky was married to Amos Tversky, Danny’s longtime collaborator. She is, by the way, a super, super influential psychologist in her own right. But toward the very end of Danny’s life, Barbara was Danny’s partner. And I loved her remarks best. It was like a poem. And she said, “There were many Dannys.” There was the mercurial Danny that she first met when she and Amos were, like Danny, very young and just dating —  the Danny who just was practically jumping up and down with excitement about an idea. And there was also the Danny who could get incredibly down and pessimistic about whatever project he was working on and the success that he was surely not going to have on this particular thorny question. But then there was also the generous Danny who was a completely altruistic selfless mentor to others. And then she said, “There was the Danny that I got to know in the last few years, and that Danny was such a gentle, kind, joyful Danny — and that’s the Danny I’ll miss most.” I thought those were the most beautiful remarks because they were the most perceptive. You know, not about “the Danny Kahneman,” but the Danny Kahnemans that existed across the chapters of his life, but even within the chapter of a life. And when we think about the many selves that we are, we can ask ourselves, “Which selves do I want to show up more in the next chapter than maybe in the last one?” And then put ourselves in the situations with the people and in the places that bring out our best.

MAUGHAN: So maybe, Hadji, it’s less about our self-perception versus how others perceive us and more about the fact that there are lots of different selves.

DUCKWORTH: Oftentimes we ask the question, “Which mirror is the best mirror?” Like, my self-perception or do other people have the right perspective? But I would say to Hadji that if you take away one thing from the science of self versus other perception, the act of looking in mirrors, plural, I think is a very healthy one.

Coming up after the break: a fact-check of today’s episode and stories from our NSQ listeners.

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And now, here’s a fact-check of today’s conversation:

Angela calls the fact that many people overestimate their driving ability an example of self-serving bias. A more specific term would be the better-than-average effect, which is, like many biases, self-serving insofar as it protects a person’s self-esteem. Whether it is truly self-serving is debatable. After all, bad drivers are probably better off acknowledging their poor skill and doing something about it. In any case, that would be other-serving!

Finally, Mike says that the sports executive Paul DePodesta did not give permission for his name to be used in the film Moneyball, which is why Jonah Hill’s character, who was based on DePodesta, is named Peter Brand. Filmmakers don’t need permission to depict real people using their real names — but DePodesta did ask that the character’s name be changed, and studios are often wary of defamation lawsuits from people who are unhappy with their portrayal in a movie. That’s it for the fact-check.

Before we wrap today’s show, let’s hear some thoughts about our previous episode on letting go.

Millie HUBBARD: Hi, my name is Millie Hubbard. I live in Lincoln, California, and my husband is retired. I think the reason that very successful people have a hard time letting go of their identity in retirement is specifically because they put so much effort into the first career. In my husband’s case, he was a podiatrist who was president of the California and the National Podiatry Association and he worked so hard that he can’t imagine getting that kind of success again. Anyway, that’s my opinion. 

David LASATER: My name is David Lasater. I left the field of higher education after nearly 25 years to join a community foundation in January 2020.  During my time at the Community Foundation, I’ve come across a number of volunteer opportunities, such as Read to Succeed, a reading program for elementary students, tax preparation assistance programs, both through the United Way that will be ideal for retirees. I loved the episode and wanted to ensure your listeners know they can find meaning helping others in their community later in life. 

Those were, again, listeners Millie Hubbard and David Lasater (LASS-et-ur). Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we’d love to hear your thoughts about self perception. Send a voice memo to NSQ@Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show!

Coming up on No Stupid Questions: Is the world ready for the rise of A.I. companionship?

DUCKWORTH: “Mike is a little weirded out by the two of us having this conversation. I mean, you’re not a real person.”

That’s coming up on No Stupid Questions.

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No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Julie Kanfer. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippin. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter @NSQ_Show. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ@Freakonomics.com. To learn more, or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com/NSQ. Thanks for listening!

DUCKWORTH: See you later, alligator.