680. Can Universities Win Back Our Trust?

**Stephen Dubner** (0:07)
Last week on the show, we heard from the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Daniel Diermeier, who operates under a framework that originated at the University of Chicago. It's known as institutional neutrality.

**Daniel Diermeier** (0:18)
Which means that universities, university leaders will not take positions on policy issues or political issues unless they directly affect the core function of the university.

**Stephen Dubner** (0:30)
This week, we will hear from Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Beilock runs Dartmouth using a similar framework.

**Sian Beilock** (0:39)
Yeah, I mean, I knew it as the Calvin Report. I didn't know it as institutional neutrality, but I was faculty and then in the administration at Chicago for 12 years.

**Stephen Dubner** (0:49)
So Beilock and Diermeier have that in common, a belief in institutional neutrality and time served at the University of Chicago.
There's one big difference. Diermeier trained as a political scientist with a focus on institutions. You can hear this when he talks.

**Daniel Diermeier** (1:05)
And what you learn there is that the details really matter. Setting things up the right way can make a big difference, and you have to be very, very conscious on that.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:15)
Beilock, meanwhile, trained as a psychologist with a focus on why people choke under pressure. And you can hear that when she talks.

**Sian Beilock** (1:23)
From my research, we know that you worry a lot, not necessarily when you're doing the scary thing, but when that scary thing is out there, the what ifs.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:31)
Beilock and Dartmouth, like just about every university today, are dealing with a lot of scary things. For instance, a steep drop in public trust.

**Sian Beilock** (1:40)
I look at the data and what we're seeing is that counter to previous decades right now, seven out of 10 Americans, for example, think higher education is going the wrong direction.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:51)
And she has no trouble believing those numbers because she thinks universities have earned that distrust.

**Sian Beilock** (1:57)
We talk about the high cost and the debt of student loans, but one thing that's often not talked about is among four-year institutions a little under 60 percent of students graduate. I don't know if you'd hear lots of university presidents talk about this, but I think the universities have some of the responsibility there.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:15)
But what other responsibilities does a university have?

**Sian Beilock** (2:19)
We're not a political organization, we're not a social advocacy organization, we have a very clear mission. When people trust in that mission, they trust you.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:29)
Today on Freakonomics Radio, Sian Beilock tries to go from choke to clutch. Our full conversation starts now.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:47)
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:02)
All right, please just start with your name and what you do.

**Sian Beilock** (3:06)
My name is Sian Beilock. I am the president of Dartmouth and a cognitive scientist.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:12)
And do you want to just explain why your name is Sian and not Sean or something? It's spelled S-I-A-N. Can you just explain the story behind that?

**Sian Beilock** (3:21)
It actually is supposed to be Sean, but my parents named me Sian. They were watching a PBS documentary with an actress, Sean Phillips, and they thought it was Sian, so here I am.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:32)
Because she spelled it like that?

**Sian Beilock** (3:33)
Yes, but she was Sean, but they didn't know that.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:36)
Got it. You were a college athlete, correct, soccer?

**Sian Beilock** (3:39)
I played soccer in the Olympic development growing up, and then I played lacrosse at UCSD.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:44)
Let's talk about your research on choking, which is how I came to know you initially. Why did that topic interest you, first of all? Was it a firsthand interest?

**Sian Beilock** (3:52)
Yes, I did. I was doing me search. I was interested in why I sometimes didn't play as well under pressure or didn't test as well in the pressure-filled situation as when I was not in that stressful environment.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:06)
What did you learn?

**Sian Beilock** (4:07)
A lot of what we found is that counterintuitively, we perform poorly under pressure or choke when we start trying to control too much of what we're doing instead of letting it go on autopilot. Oftentimes, when we're worried about a situation or its consequences, we think that controlling every step of what we're doing is going to lead to a better outcome, but it actually disrupts more automatic processes that would run off better without conscious attention.