Look at you knowing stuff.

I'm Angela Duckworth.

I'm Stephen Dubner, and you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, where do intrusive thoughts come from?

Oh, no, now I have this unwanted thought.

Oh, wait, no, I thought about it again.

Also, how can you become a more

confident person? I would be confident if I succeeded. But I can't succeed without the confidence.

Angela, we have a listener question today from one Chris Leavenberg, and I think you are going to

love this question. Okay, I'm ready for it. Chris writes toberg, and I think you are going to love this question.

Okay, I'm ready for it.

Chris writes to say, I was talking with a friend recently, and he admitted that he sometimes

had awful thoughts, such as slapping a stranger on the street to see what sort of reaction

he'd get, or at a pool party, he'd get an urge to push a stranger in the pool. So I want to be friends

with Chris's friend. I have to say this sounds fun. Chris continues, this friend is the most

gentle, good-natured person I know. So I was surprised that he had these thoughts. I admitted to him

that I've always had those thoughts too, but I thought I was the only one. It doesn't necessarily

always involve other people. Sometimes standing at a red light, I think about running into

oncoming traffic or jumping off a tall structure, and I have zero suicidal tendencies.

I'm wondering if this is something more common than I imagined. Is there a psychological basis for violent fantasies that we have no apparent motivation to enact? If the two of us normally gentle and kind people, Chris concludes, have been harboring these strange thoughts. It makes me wonder if many people are, and if so, why?

So interesting. These thoughts are what are called intrusive thoughts. That's the clinical term

from psychotherapy. And it's been studied in the context of obsessive-compulsive disorder,

...