How Everyday Interactions Shape Your Future | Mesmin Destin | TED

When I was 16 years old,

I was getting straight As 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 looked 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 really 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 has 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’re 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 lower, 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 percent 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 seem 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 to which it still feels 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, 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 percent 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 coming 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 percent.

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 levels of 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, 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.

Or 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 when we bring these participants back into the lab

is that over the course of a year,

that increased emphasis on connection and relationships

leads to a decrease in inflammation of 25 percent.

So by not only expanding his identities

but also keeping them connected to close relationships,

Reggie is 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 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'd 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 encourage 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 and cheers)