[MUSIC] In the first study, we took a high school in New Jersey. And we asked all the students to tell us about situations in their life where they had to use self control. And it was actually really fun to read, [LAUGH] because they're teenagers and they've got these very interesting rich lives. >> [LAUGH] >> And then, we asked them, how did you deal with that situation? And it's just a text box, right, we didn't say anything, then we coded all the data, right? So we actually read everything, and then we had multiple coders read each expression and then try to code it into one of these five categories. And then, when the coders disagreed, which was a considerable, it was a minority of the cases, but still, then they had to talk to each other and figure out which strategy to assign it to. And what we found is that really kids, teenagers, spontaneously mentioned using all five kinds of strategies, right? Not every teenager mentioned five, but across all the teenagers in this high school, they talk about just not doing it, rethinking situation, paying attention in different ways. And then, the top two bars there are situational strategies. So we wanted to think about this from a kind of common sense point of view. And you're all sitting here in lectures. When I teach undergraduates and when I hire undergraduates to my lab, I ask them to sit in the front, actually. I mean, in this class, you're basically all in the front, right? But if you're in this course, I mean, if you're going to sit in the nosebleed section, I say to my undergraduates, that's what your professor's going to look like, a little dot on the stage, right? If you sit in the first few rows, they're going to be really big, right? And they're kind of going to see if you're sleeping, so put yourself in a situation, where going off task in class is going to be hard. And I used this myself when I was in college, I had to take this required course on ancient Chinese bronze pottery. And basically, the professor would get up and read his book, which wasn't well written. So he'd just get up and read the book, and I would fall asleep. And then I was like, you know what this is terrible, because it is the only opportunity I have to be in class, I want to do well. So I sat in the front row, right in front of him, because I knew that the social norms would be to strong and I would not actually go to sleep right in front of him. I also caffeinated myself and all the other things that we did. There's also a course selecting yourself into social situations that you think you're going to be more self-controlled in, right, like go and hang out with people who are doing what you want to do. By the way, I think this is the best reason to go to map, right, just select yourself in terms of people who are nice, and productive, and understand, I mean, it will make you better, which I think actually probably does happen. So we were doing a focus group in Harlem in New York, and we were asking ten 10th graders to talk to 5th graders in pairs about their experience in school. And the tenth graders gave advise to the fifth grader, and one fifth grader said kind of very soberly to the fifth grader, it was two girls, said, you should really pick your friends carefully and not just the ones who are popular or that you want to have fun with, because who your friends are is really going to shape who you are. And if I'd only known that when I was your age, I mean, this 15 year self or whatever, it was just interesting to hear the wisdom coming out of this teenager's mouth. And I think she's exactly right, the effects of peers on your behavior are, of course, overwhelmingly documented in all kinds of studies, not just when you're a teenager. But anyway, when people just conform to what everyone else is doing, because we're all social creatures. Here are suggestions from our high school study, verbatim, from what teenagers said in terms of situation selection. Lock myself in a room without my phone so that it doesn't become a distraction. Go to the library as being a quiet and controlled environment would make me focus, right? So that's kids coming up with situation selection on their own. Having chosen where you're going to be, right, you can modify your situation. >> [LAUGH] >> And
