Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU, Dr. Edward Hirt discusses mental depletion and its effect on motivation, social identity, and self-esteem. In this debut episode, he’ll walk us through what these notions mean in relation to saturation.

“If we're doing effortful assignments and we have to read all this stuff for tomorrow's class or work on a paper, I might say my brain is fried. I can't do anymore. I'm just totally spent.” -Dr Hirt

Transcript

“If we're doing effortful assignments and we have to read all this stuff for tomorrow's class or work on a paper, I might say my brain is fried. I can't do anymore. I'm just totally spent.” -Dr Hirt

Carolyn Hadlock:

Today on the Beautiful Thinkers Podcast, IU edition I've got 3 students with me who are here to interview Dr. Hirt, who is the professor of psychological and brain sciences at IU, as well as the founder of the Hirt Lab. We would like to start with saying welcome to the show, Dr. Hirt.

Dr. Hirt:

Thank you for having me.

Carolyn Hadlock:

We wanted to set the stage and ask how would you define saturation in today's day and age?

Dr Hirt:

Certainly, with the influx of media and so many different types of media we have at our fingertips, the question is how much do we want to have? Because if it's so readily accessible, we can have it presumably at any time and anywhere. But the question is do we feel like we're being controlled by it as opposed to being in control of how much we consume? I think that's the challenge so many of us feel throughout our days and it makes us feel we're being slaves to our social media, our email and to all the things that impinge on our time and our attention.

Carolyn Hadlock:

That's exactly where we're coming at it from. We're very aligned. One of the reasons I think the students chose you was because you study mental depletion, and that's the best definition of what we're after here. We wanted to have you talk a little bit about the idea of mental depletion versus physical depletion through the lens of all media that is coming into us every day.

Dr Hirt:

Yeah. Let me give you a little history on the whole mental depletion thing. Because I think it's interesting and the way you have framed it is very important because when the concept was introduced, it was about 20 years ago in our field where this topic became hot and interesting. There was this presentation of the idea that we feel this sense that we have very limited mental resources. That there will be moments after we expend our resources doing something that requires effort. They typically framed it in terms of something that requires self-control, so you're trying to stop yourself from doing something that you're attracted to.

For example, I'm on a diet and I really want to eat that donut, or there's a spread out and I don't want to break my diet, but it's looming there, and so I'm having a lot of difficulty holding back. I'm feeling like this is really effortful to me. That I feel depleted. I will feel like I am not at my best, that I need to take a break, that I am in some way spent. I think as students, we often talked about this where if we're doing effortful assignments and we have to read all this stuff for tomorrow's class or work on a paper and stuff, I might say my brain is fried. I can't do anymore. I'm just totally spent. What is that? We gave it a label, and so that's what we mean by that mental depletion where we really feel like I can no longer perform effectively. I need a break.

Mina:

Just to call back to what you're saying about your brain being fried and the correlation between physical and mental depletion. It's funny how you can sit on your butt all day, not doing anything physical, but you're still so mentally drained. Can you just talk about how has social media reframed the idea of effort?

Dr Hirt:

The thing that we began with is how much of our sense of depletion is a function of how we frame things? Because I think some activities that we do, we frame as work. This is something I have to do. This is something that's tedious. This is something that I frame as something that is effortful. I could take a similar activity which may take the same amount of physical or less physical activity or whatever, and I might frame it as a pastime, a hobby, something that's pleasurable, something that's even a leisure activity. For example, one of the things that we used to always talk about how do people, if they're feeling depletion, decide to take a break? Some people feel like they have to take a nap. I want to rest. I want to just veg out on the couch and watch TV. Other people go and exercise. What the hell is up with that? Literally, I am fatigued mentally, so what am I going to do? I'm going to fatigue myself physically and see that as a respite. See that as a break.

We were just so intrigued by that idea of what people consider to be effort and depleting as opposed to things that potentially are rejuvenating and pleasurable and something that I don't have problems doing. I could do them forever kind of thing and stuff. It's just interesting how that's so variable for different people. Because again, we knew some people who would be like, "I would never go for a run as something that's pleasurable. I see the treadmill as an activity that I got to do as my cardio or that's a work. I can't wait for it to be over,". As opposed to somebody who finds it like, "Oh yeah, I'm clearing my head. I see this as something that actually is a respite." It's just interesting to think that so much of it is in our head and how we frame things.

Carolyn Hadlock:
Initially, I thought you were saying that it would actually support your case that mental and physical depletion are different. But you're talking about mental to mental, it's not necessarily which is super interesting. It's all about how you frame it.

Dr Hirt:

That's why I think it's really interesting as we think about consuming social media as effortful. But part of it is am I deciding to do this, and do I see this as enjoyable and pleasant and something I want to do as opposed to feeling, as we said earlier, controlled by it? I can't get away from it. I feel like I have to do it. I feel like it's overwhelming me. Now it feels much more worklike and something I want to get away from as opposed to something I feel like I want to do and want to continue enjoying.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Can you guys relate to that?

Mina:

Totally.

Wyatt:

Most definitely.

Cat: For sure.

Mina:
It's so interesting in regard to framing —needing this frame of a perfect identity or a perfect life. I feel like social media really exacerbates that notion because you can hide behind a screen, so I want to bring up your idea of framing with identity in general. You talk about needing these things to feed your identity, whether that's when you get depleted from things that feed it online or you can do things that feed it in the physical world. How do you think people can bridge the gap between the perception of their online self-versus their offline self and who they really are as a person?

Dr Hirt:

I think part of it is to think about how we even cultivate that online self or online identity because that's a huge part of it. We know that people are very strategic and choose to present photos and information and share things that they are willing to make public and to do the identity work that they want to do and cultivate in their social media whatever, responses and likes and things that they upload. I think there's a lot of effortfulness to that. But then I think the thing that we think more about is the idea of us reacting to the stuff that we're exposed to. Because again, we judge ourselves relative to what we see from everybody else. Everybody else seems to be having more fun than us or doing more wonderful activities or seems to be happier in their life, or they have more responses and likes and comments than I do to my uploads and my photos and things I share.

Why am I not as popular as them? Or what's wrong with me? Et cetera. That's a whole different element, but obviously all that negotiation of that, both in terms of cultivating it and then evaluating it always against what you see from other people and how they respond to things that you post, all things that again, are effortful things that are fatiguing for many people. It is a job in some ways that many of us feel like we have and are constantly working at as opposed to some people who just post stuff and don't think about... They're not working that hard at that. I don't think there's many of us that don't evaluate ourselves relative to what we see. I don't think that's very much a normal human activity of being completely impervious to that. God bless somebody who is, but I don't think most of us could say that we're in that camp.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yes, if we're telling the truth. That's actually a really good segue because I know Wyatt had a question for you that pertains perfectly to that.

Wyatt:

We talked a lot about mental depletion and the ways that it can affect someone. My question for you is in what ways do mental health and mental depletion correlate? Could they can be considered one and the same or are they two completely different things?

Dr Hirt:

I would really say they're two completely different things because we think of mental depletion as a state that happens as we are utilizing whatever body of mental resources we have. That the presumption with the whole mental depletion framework is that we have some limitations to our mental system. We can't do everything and we can't go forever. At some point we are going to tax that system, fatigue that system to the point where we need to take a break. We need to replenish. We need to rest the system and give ourselves the ability to regroup. I think drawing that analogy to the physical system, again, giving our muscles a chance to rest and relax and replenish. That is just true of anybody. Although, there is some sense that maybe it is something we could work at and improve those resources so we don't get as fatigued as rapidly maybe.

But I will tell you there hasn't been a lot of work on that because I think people have been more interested in the consequences of depletion than exactly how we get to that experience. That is an interesting thing if we wanted to go there and think about whether that is something you could work at and get better at. But at least conceptually it makes sense that if you really work at things, just like if you work at physical, maybe you can increase your strength and endurance— that you would have more mental endurance to be able to do things. But the thing is getting depleted is something that has many ramifications for mental health, and that's where a lot of people in our field have been very interested. Because the important consequence that I think most of us consider to be associated with depletion is that when we're in that depleted state and we need rest, if we still have to keep going or we still have to do things while we are depleted, somehow our performance is going to be compromised.

When we think of a lot of the things that we have to do in our lives, what kind of things are we going to see that people do more of when they're depleted? For example, people will say really inappropriate things to other people because they're not guarding themselves and thinking about others' feelings. That they will be more prejudiced. They will be more aggressive. We think of people's behavior in terms of how tolerant they are when somebody else cuts them off in traffic or somebody doesn't pay attention to them when they're waiting in line. That they might get more aggressive, or they might insult somebody or fly off the handle. Because again, those are things that require us to control ourselves, to exert self-control and to be more disciplined. Those things won't happen as well when people are depleted as when they're not.

I guess if we think of being in a civilized society, it does take some control of our impulses to do things for other people and to be egalitarian. Being depleted probably makes us behave more in line with self-interest and not really doing the thing that we would say we would like to do. Does that mean that their mental health will be poor? Only if they reflect on the fact that they're doing that a lot because they're depleted... You know what I mean? It's like suddenly you realize I'm not the person I want to be, or I'm getting a lot of negative responses from other people because, again, I'm not behaving in the manner expected of me. I'm not living up to others' goals and expectations of me. That presumably could have some negative consequences downstream.

Mina:

I find it very common that when kids our age come home from a long day of school or work, it's very easy to just lay in bed and escape into your phone. What do you think about having so much accessibility to this digital space?

Dr Hirt:

That's great because it really gets at an interesting construct, which is that of what do we do when we're fatigued? We typically fall back on things that are the easiest or what we would call our default. As you said, what's the default in this day and age? It's to go to your phone. We have our phones with us 24/7. We have it with us all the time, and so the easiest thing is just use this as a means of filling dead time. If we're sitting in a waiting room, what are we doing? We're on our phone. We're going to check our phone because it's something to do. The TV could be on, and that could be another thing that we could do. But we could do all kinds of things, and people have other choices that they could do. But typically, we have to think about them as viable options and choose them over the default.

Cat:

We're super interested in your work. We are specifically interested in it because it's made up of students, undergrads and graduates. I'm wondering how that tailors your research, and if there are some specific studies that you've done that relate to our topic of being saturated in this media space?

Dr Hirt:

Well, I got here... I'm showing my age here. I got here to Indiana University in the early nineties. I've had a lab here for literally 30 years now, and it's changed. Obviously, it's hard to do... You're not doing the same work you did years ago because the field changes and the questions you're interested in change. But I've had always a longstanding interest in what motivates people and why some people can be super effective at things and why it's such a struggle for others.

How that differs both within individuals, but also in activities that we're doing. You might have no trouble working really hard at this. But something else, it's just like, "I just can't get myself to do this," or, "I just am really frustrated with this, and I want to quit," versus, "I'll persist at something." That has always just been a longstanding interest. This concept of depletion certainly was one that fit into that. We try to understand one of the root causes as to why people are disappointed with their performance or can't live up to what they expect and hope to achieve, and what might be some ways of counteracting that.

Mina:

Dr. Hirt, what sparked your interest in the idea of depletion? Do you have something that you went through in your life or an experience that made you want to investigate this topic?

Dr Hirt:

The idea that you say there's a real-life thing? Yes. I will admit that this was something. Again, I'll allude back to that relationship I have with Josh that we talked a lot about this experience. That was what got us started in working on this question, and he was the original grad student who started it with me, was this experience where you go up to somebody and you say, "Wow, you look really tired today." You go, "Wow." Then you start reflecting on yourself and going, "Am I?" It's like all of a sudden you start selectively remembering things that have happened to you in the past few hours or last day that's like, "Yeah, I didn't really sleep that well and I haven't eaten in a while," or, "This kind of thing happened," or whatever. It's like, "Yeah, maybe I am."

Then somebody else could go, "You look really energetic today." It's like I could do probably the same thing and instead of say, "Yeah, I had a good day. I had fun with my dog today and stuff like that. This good thing happened; I got good news about stuff, so I am energized and ready to take on the world. It seemed like it's so subjective, and so the idea was is there a reality that we are fatigued and feeling like mental fatigue, or how much of this is literally something we have in our heads? We just played around with that idea.

Everybody was treating it as a real thing from our perspective. What helped us get some notoriety in here was we were able to show that you can have people do the exact same thing. For some people, they're really fatigued by it. Other people feel like, no, I can keep going on. We could really manipulate that by just giving them different cues in the situation to say, "Wow, you're doing a lot better than most people," or, "You seem to be relatively followed behind what most people accomplish in this unit of time," and stuff. It's like, "Oh, yeah. I'm really..." You're tired out. Or, "No, no, I'm really good.

Just simple things like that can create energy in you and the ability to persist versus being like, "No, no. Got to stop. I'm done. This isn't working out. I'm tired and fatigued by this,". Is it boredom? Is it accomplishment? That may be part of it. But we actually found that the reported mental fatigue that people had and the amount of energy and how much they felt like they could keep doing and how their performance could really be changed by those simple kinds of things. It's like they did the exact same thing for the exact amount of time. The amount of actual expenditure is the same, and yet they can feel very, very different.

Mina:

I feel like that's something that we see a lot on social media specifically. You can easily be affected... Your mood can be affected by the things that you're seeing, or maybe if someone is posting a very exciting thing, maybe you start to feel like I need to go do something that'll give me that feeling.

Dr Hirt:

A lot of it is dictated by what we're confronted with and how much other information we use as a context in which to judge those things. I think we look at what other people are doing and experiencing and that makes us feel like where I should be and what I should be feeling and what I should be doing

Carolyn Hadlock:

Or relativity like, "Oh my gosh, their life is terrible. My life's not so bad." It can go up or down. That's one of the things we were talking about earlier. It just reminded me of how we use the word digest. What are you digesting? We use the words media diet, we use the words detox. It is an interesting phenomena that we are literally ingesting these things and then responding to them.

Mina:

Just to bring it to present day, what's going on in Israel right now. We were talking about earlier how we don't even want to go on social media right now because while it can make us feel like look at us, we're safe. That's not happening where we're living. At the same time, it's extremely depressing and distressing because we can't really do anything about it.

Dr Hirt:

One of the big aspects of depletion is... Emotion regulation is the biggest one though I think that we all have to deal with because we want to be happy all the time. That's what we're told, "We should be happy. We should be pursuing happiness," and so the idea for many people is only post happy things. No one wants to know about your problems. We should be doing that all the time, and we should really try to suppress or avoid anything which will make us feel bad.

Anything that'll make us have to deal with stuff that's ugly. As you said, there are a lot of people who don't want to deal with some of these things because it makes me depressed that there are these things happening in the world that I can do nothing about, or these people are being harmed and they're civilians and it's kids. I feel helpless. But at the same time, should we only want to be happy? Should we be trying to regulate those emotions or is that part of the human experience? Have we bought this idea that we shouldn't have the range of emotions, we shouldn't have negative emotions ever? Is that some of the kind of thing that's really problematic that social media has played into?

Carolyn Hadlock:

I also wonder, Dr. Hirt, I watch this generation and these students and I feel like they were really raised on this idea of actions and activities. Like, "You got to do something." Whereas I would say my generation was more about how you thought about something. I'm just curious, do you see that delineation or do you think there's something to that for this generation?

Dr Hirt:

Certainly one of the things that we've seen in our field is that people don't want to just... A lot of times they think of us as eggheaded academics. That we're interested in theories and ideas. But it's like, "What is the bottom line? What does this mean in real life? Show me how it really applies to real life, or show me what I can do, and again, what kind of things I can do to solve problems? I think that's been a positive thing in the sense of just pushing people to have to be more pragmatic in thinking about that. But I think sometimes we jump to that without necessarily understanding things completely. It feels like we want to go to that so quickly that at some point it may be premature, and it may not be the best thing. I think there's a balance there that I think we may have swung the pendulum a little bit so much in that that's the stuff that's valued. That's seen as good, and the other stuff is seen as a waste of time.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Or complacency.

Dr Hirt:

There is a place for both of them. That has been a challenge, but I have appreciated that in the students I have today that I don't feel was as obvious in previous decades. That people want to know that and want to ask that kind of question about how we then apply that.

“One thing our field has embraced, which is fascinating; people didn’t study this for years, is the emotion of awe.” - Dr. Hirt.

Carolyn Hadlock:

The last thing I would ask you that I always ask everybody is how would you define beautiful thinking?

Dr Hirt:

It's trite to say beauty's in the eye of the beholder, so there's no objective thing of that. But there's satisfaction when something is considered beautiful that has a constellation of emotions that cannot be matched by anything else. One thing our field has embraced, which is fascinating; people didn't study this for years, is the emotion of awe. We knew about it, but nobody actually talked about it or was interested in it. But when you talk about what inspires awe in you, and you think about those things and it is so amazing.

There's a lot of consensus on it, but there's differences. But the thing is when people feel that, it's all encompassing. It really is transcendent to people. When people say, "A beautiful nature scene will do this for me." Or for many of us, we love animals. Seeing a puppy or a little anything, a zoo animal or something like that. I love red pandas. If I see a little red panda thing, it makes your day. It's just so like... God. Whether you go to religious things and to say, "God is amazing to make a creature like this." Or whether you just feel like there are things that are wonderful in the world that kind of help you navigate all the bullshit. If we could bottle that and have that when we need it. It's like yeah, I think we could have a pretty satisfying life.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. This episode was created and produced at the IU Media School as part of The Beautiful Thinkers Podcast, IU Edition. To follow along this season, check out The Beautiful Thinkers on Instagram and TikTok. A special thanks to Natalie Engels for our music, and the students who researched and recorded the episode, Mina Denny, Cat DeSantis, and Wyatt Paul.