Between teaching for 25 years and having a whole bunch of kids, I spent a lot of time around young people.

I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to motivate them.

Then I met today's guest, David Yeager, and I realized, like most people, I've been doing it all wrong.

If you can tap into that desire for status and respect, then I think we can unleash this powerful source of intelligence and this powerful

source for good in our culture.

Welcome to people I mostlyire with Steve Levitt.

David Yeager is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin,

and he spent his career trying to understand how the adolescent mind works.

His randomized experiments have led to stunning results with implications for both schools and parents.

He's documented his research in his book 10 to 25, The Science of Motivating Young People.

But before we get into these successes, I asked David to talk about a few examples of programs

that followed the conventional wisdom about how to motivate kids and why they failed so

badly.

About 13 years ago, Disney teamed up with a health insurance company and some other people to create an attraction to try to promote healthy habits at Epcot.

And their idea was that they would have the kids walk in and see their like avatar on the screen and it's usually kind of an overweight kid.

And then you see heroes that are fit and trim.

Callie Stenix, I think was one of the characters.

Willpower was one of the heroes, too.

Willpower.

I love that name.

Yeah.

From the gate, it's implying that if you do jumping jacks and have self-control,

...