Dr. Mesmin Destin: How your everyday messages can change someone's life

When I was 16 years old, I was getting straight A’s at my fancy college prep school and feeling great about all the possibilities ahead of me. So one day, I walked into the office of my high school guidance counselor, and I told him about all the exciting plans that were coming together in my mind. I told him how I wanted to move to the great city of Chicago, where my brother was living at the time, and start a whole new life. I told him I wanted to go to Northwestern University and build on my strengths in something like biology or piano or psychology. It was all just a path that felt so right to me in my bones. The guidance counselor was this quirky, older, white gentleman I remember really well. In response, he looks directly at me, and he said, “Well, it’s a nice plan, a great school, but it costs a lot of money, and they don’t let a lot of people in.” And that was pretty much the end of the conversation. I walked out of that office, knowing I had a lot of other support in my life. I put the conversation to the side and kept moving forward, but it stuck with me. And I would think about it from time to time over the years and just wonder how that interaction or others like it could really affect someone, especially if they don’t have a lot of other support in their life, or they’re not sure what they might be able to do. So I kept going. I followed through with my plan. It worked out well for me. I continued on to grad school in psychology. And eventually, I found myself fixated with studying the lives and life paths of young people. And in this work, the problem I’ve come to recognize is that people are constantly made to feel smaller than they might otherwise become by the people and the systems around them. And this really matters because it holds us back from seeing and reaching who we might be. My colleagues and I have also found, however, that key messages at critical moments can keep people inspired by possibility. We've been conducting experiments for the past 15 years, testing how messages that open possibilities can change people’s lives by expanding their identities rather than shrinking them. And when I say identities, I mean all of the ideas that you have about who you are or who you might be. This includes the groups that feel really core to who you are, which we call social identity. Like your family can be a part of your identity or your race, your ethnicity, your economic status. But identity is more than just all these ideas about who we are right now. It’s also your ideas about who you might become in the future, which we call future identity. And all these different parts of identity are constantly being shaped by the environments that you find yourself in, by the things that you go through and by the messages that you take in. These messages can either shrink your identities and make you feel smaller, or they can expand your identities to bring more possibilities within reach for you to then work towards. So to make all this as clear as possible, let’s imagine together a specific 11-year-old kid. Let’s give him a name. We can use my brother’s name and call him Reggie. At the age of 11, Reggie’s moving from being a cute little kid to a preteen. He’s got good friends, loves his family, and when he gets asked that question people always seem to ask - “What do you want to do when you grow up? - he actually has a pretty solid image coming together in his mind. He is growing up in a modest apartment, but he loves beautiful homes and has an eye for how they are designed and constructed. And he likes math so he sees himself becoming an architect and designing homes all over the world. At the same time, he’s starting to learn more and more about the barriers in his way to reaching that possible future identity. Everything he’s going to have to accomplish, all of the money it takes to get there, it’s this part that we wanted to tackle in our research. So we’ve run experiments testing how kids like Reggie react or respond to messages that open or close possibilities. How does that change what they imagine for their own future identities and what they actually do? So let’s say somebody comes into Reggie’s classroom one day with a message to share. And this is just like we do in our experiments. It’s something like: Yeah, college can cost a lot of money, but there’s this thing out there called need-based financial aid. There are these resources and opportunities to help you get there. Tuition can be really low or even free if you set yourself up to get to the right places. Our experiments show that getting that message changes how Reggie responds to the question of: What do you see yourself doing later in life? All of the possibilities that probably require college, like becoming an architect, become bigger in his mind, and he becomes 30% more likely to see that for himself and give that type of response, compared to if he just gets a message saying, here’s the cost of college. End of story. What’s really interesting on top of that is that the message that opens possibilities does more than just change what Reggie imagines. It changes what he actually does to get there. Our experiments show that after getting that message, he plans to spend twice as much time on homework the following night, and he ends up seven times more likely to actually complete and turn in a real assignment the teacher hands out the very next day. So this is all when he’s just 11 years old. So let's follow this a little bit further to when he's now 15 years old. He’s in the middle of high school and still really excited about this possibility of architecture in his life because of the messages he's been getting, opening the possibilities and the things he's been doing as a result of them. At this age, he’s becoming more and more attuned to what we call different levels of status between him and other people and groups in society: Who seems to have more stuff, have nicer clothes, more expensive homes? Ultimately, he’s picking up on whose lives and identities seem to be setting them up for all this success that everybody seems to want. So what we wanted to know in our studies is how are the messages that he’s getting at this point about his own identities - who he might be now or in the future - changing the extent of what feels still worth it to keep working towards this long-term goal. So let’s say somebody comes into his high school classroom with a message to share. It could be a counselor or a teacher, again, just like we do in our experiments, but this time, it’s a message specifically about his identities. It’s something like: You may be noticing that there are some people and groups in society who seem to have more money or seem to be better set up to succeed in life, but actually, those people and groups that are seen as having less and having to work more for things, they gain some specific advantages because of that experience. That type of social position leads people to develop all sorts of strengths and skills and perspectives and connections that are really key to contributing to school and society. What we find and replicate in multiple experiments is getting that message that you might be a person with special strengths because of your identity leads Reggie to feel better about who he is and his chances in life. And this is above and beyond just some general, positive, “You can do it” type of message. It’s the specific connection between his identity and those strengths that’s especially powerful. For example, he starts to reflect, and he realizes that he has to work a lot to help to contribute to the family, and he has to take care of his brother all the time while his mom is working late. So he's become really good at time management and still getting everything done. It’s these types of realizations as a result of the message that lead him to have a significant boost in his self-esteem compared to if he didn’t get that message. But it's not just that empty self-esteem. What’s again interesting is that he becomes more inspired, and he becomes almost 10% more likely to continue working and persisting every time he runs into difficulty in a challenging school task or assignment compared to if he didn’t get that message. And that increase in persistence pays off over time. It’s connected to his grades staying high or improving throughout high school, which is very different from the normal trajectory of most students’ grades slowly going down a little bit as high school goes on. So that shift keeps his goals within reach for longer. And it takes us to four years later. He’s now 19 years old. He kept going on in school because of these messages building up his identities and the things that he did as a result of them, and he finds himself in this exciting and scary new world of college. He’s feeling a little bit uncertain. As he looks around, he’s hearing other students use words he’s never heard before, with confidence. They’re talking about their trips to Europe and all over the world. So he’s really looking for some kind of message about how his identities are seen in this new environment. So let’s say he’s in the dining hall one day early on. He doesn't know a lot of people yet, so he overhears a group of older students sitting nearby. And they happen to be older students coming from a wide range of backgrounds. And he hears them talking about the financial aid they’re receiving and how they feel supported at the university. He hears some of them saying they realize they’re from homes and neighborhoods that aren’t the same as many of the wealthy students who seem to be around, but it’s turning out to help them. They know a little bit more about how to handle the tough situations that come up during college. They know a little bit more about real-world issues and topics. He hears them say they realize they’re bringing more into the classroom because of their identities and where they’re coming from, and that it's being recognized. Getting that message, hearing from your peers or the institution that your identities are valued leads Reggie to feel like he’s going to figure out how to succeed in his classes and get the most out of college. Our experiments show that getting that message at the right time bolsters him so much that he then engages in college in ways that throughout his first year lead his grades to improve compared to if he didn’t get that message. So much so that he ends his first year with grades that are just as high as students coming from those wealthy backgrounds and well-known private schools, reducing the disparity between him and those other students by over 60%. These are robust effects that we find in experiments where we randomly assign students to receive these messages or not. But there's a wrinkle in all of this. All of these messages, they help so much. They keep somebody seeing and reaching towards tough goals that can pay off in life. But it can take a lot from you to constantly persist and overcome barriers. And as Reggie reaches his dream job at a top architecture firm or in whatever field he discovers along the way, he realizes that he’s feeling kind of stressed all the time. He's even getting physically ill a little bit more often. This is because to make it this far, he's had to be extraordinarily vigilant and persistent. He’s had to overcome barriers in schools and workplaces that aren’t designed for people without a lot of family wealth. He’s had to deal with constant experiences of prejudice and discrimination in settings that aren’t used to seeing someone like him succeed. We published a review of dozens of academic articles and empirical studies showing that this type of experience takes a toll on the physical health of people like Reggie and leads him to have an increase in inflammation in the body, which is normally a natural response to something like a threat from a virus, but it becomes harmful, and over time leads him to have an increased risk of heart disease, cancer, other chronic long-term illness, compared to if he weren’t striving in this way. So in the end, is it even all worth it? Well, I do think that it is because our experiments in collaboration with health research labs show that there are ways for him to work towards these goals and maintain his health at the same time. Let’s go back to when he’s in college overhearing that group of students talking. And say he actually is able to jump over, to connect and make that new group of friends. Or he’s able to join some community or organization like many that we work on that’s established to help him form deep and meaningful bonds with people who may have some shared identities and experiences and backgrounds that they explore together. He’s able to also hold on to connections in the places that he calls home with the people that he calls family and with the culture that matters to him. All of these social connections and relationships are essential for physical health. We’ve run experiments in collaboration with health research labs, where we randomly assign young people to get a message that encourages them and shows them how to cultivate and maintain these types of relationships while they’re striving for these goals taking them to new places, compared to a message only focused on achievement. And what we find is when we bring these participants back into the lab, that over the course of the year, that increased emphasis on connection and relationships leads to a decrease in inflammation of 25%. So by not only expanding his identities but also keeping them connected to close relationships, Reggie's able to find achievement and health at the same time. Now, my actual brother Reggie had a very different life path than the imaginary 11-year-old kid that we just followed. His life ended when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver almost exactly 10 years ago. He was just a couple of years older than I am now. I really looked up to the life that he was able to build. It was full of joy and community and success, doing what he loved. But he had to find all of that despite not receiving any of these messages we’ve been talking about in schools, building up his identities or opening possibilities. I never had the chance to ask him how he felt about all of that, if there were any possibilities he felt like he let go of, or if it all just seemed harder than it needed to be to find his way. What if these schools and systems that we’re in as we’re growing up actually supported everyone’s vision and potential? What if they actually encouraged people to see that there is a path to the goals that they’re working towards and that there are ways that the circumstances of their lives - whatever they may be - are setting them up for success as they see it, building up their identities rather than shrinking them. These types of messages can be embedded in the ways that we teach important and challenging topics in areas like science, language, math, the arts, history. They can be central to out-of-school activities like mentoring programs and enrichment programs. These messages can be backed up by the policies that are necessary to make the financial resources that you need to reach these goals actually available for every kid without taking on crippling debt. In the meantime, as we continue to push for the systemic changes that would be necessary to make these types of messages just feel common, we also each have power as individuals. I’m thinking about you as parents, as coworkers, as leaders, as friends taking the time to show someone that you see who they are, you see who they could be, and that there is a path to the life that they’re imagining for themselves. That message from you could lead someone to hold on to what keeps them going for just one more day. Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers)