I ate an avocado in 2018. Why aren't I a vigorous, healthy person now in 2021?

I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, how effective is talk therapy really?

This calls into question everything that Angela Duckworth and all her colleagues have ever said.

Also, is it normal to feel like there are multiple different versions of you?

Yes, I am large. I contain multitudes. So, Angela, I contain multitudes.

So, Angela, I have a question you're going to hate today.

I can't wait to hear it.

So there's a new working paper by a trio of economists. It's called The Comparative Impact of Cash Transfers and a psychotherapy program on psychological and economic well-being.

In other words, what is more helpful for a population?

Giving them psychotherapy or giving them money?

Okay. What they find?

Well, they find.

So I should say this was a project in rural Kenya.

They write that one year after the interventions, cash transfer recipients had higher

consumption, asset holdings, and revenue, as well as higher levels of psychological well-being

than control households, meaning the ones that didn't get cash. In contrast,

the psychotherapy program had no measurable effects on either psychological or economic outcomes,

both for individuals with poor mental health at baseline and others. The effects of the

combined treatments are similar to those of the cash transfer alone.

In other words, psychotherapy, for this population at least, didn't help at all, giving people

money help them on psychological dimensions as well as economic dimensions.

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