Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barak Kauffman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have doctor Kennon Sheldon on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sheldon is a psychologist at the University of Missouri
Speaker 1: who studies motivation, goals, and well being from both a
Speaker 1: self determination theory and a positive psychology perspective. He has
Speaker 1: authored a co authored multiple books, including Optimal Human Being
Speaker 1: an Integrated Multi Level Perspective. Doctor Sheldon has been cited
Speaker 1: more than three thousand times, and in twenty ten, he
Speaker 1: was named one of the twenty men most cited social psychologists.
Speaker 1: What honored is day to chat with you. Hey, it's
Speaker 1: great to be here. It's been a long time that
Speaker 1: I've been kind of following your work and we've never
Speaker 1: bumped into each other, so this is a great thing.
Speaker 1: I have been a long time in my reviewer work,
Speaker 1: so it feels really good when someone says that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I devoured your book Optimal Human Being. It was just
Speaker 1: the level of nerdiness that resonates with me, like I
Speaker 1: almost like crave that level, you know, integration of multiple perspectives.
Speaker 1: It was really brilliant book. So thank you for writing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. So let's go back. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to like nineteen eighty one. Okay, I was two
Speaker 1: years old and you graduated from college and you started
Speaker 1: to become interested in the topics of creativity, genius, and intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is what I started off in my career study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those topics have always been fascinating to me. The question
Speaker 1: of how to get the most out of one's own
Speaker 1: mind and one's own potentials to you know, be as
Speaker 1: creative and as insightful and as as possible. I really
Speaker 1: like to think about that. So I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: about who were the major researchers in the field at
Speaker 1: that time. Dean Simonton I think was still I think
Speaker 1: he was doing good work and then right, I didn't
Speaker 1: meet Dean until nineteen eighty six when I started PhD
Speaker 1: program at UC Davis, and he was actually the one
Speaker 1: that sponsored me. He was the only person that accepted me.
Speaker 1: I applied to seven programs and I got six rejections.
Speaker 1: But I found myself at UC Davis. Working with Dean
Speaker 1: Simonton was a great place to be. Wow. That is
Speaker 1: a great place to be. Wow. So you worked with
Speaker 1: Dean Simonton. So tell me some of the research you did.
Speaker 1: Was your PhD thesis related to genius? Actually, I should
Speaker 1: say that we didn't work together that long. I didn't
Speaker 1: really take to the historiometrical approach. You know. We were
Speaker 1: in contact, but I was kind of a drift for
Speaker 1: a while at UC Davis, and I didn't really get
Speaker 1: my feet under me until Bob Emmons was hired at
Speaker 1: UC Davis. He was the personal strife Sky, a goal researcher,
Speaker 1: and I immediately gravitated to his work when he got
Speaker 1: there in my fourth year. And then my dissertation research
Speaker 1: was a goal study related to creativity and creativity issues.
Speaker 1: Cool and you also were in a You started a
Speaker 1: rock band? Is that around that time? That was before
Speaker 1: I went back to grad school. There was about a
Speaker 1: five year period when I was trying to be a musician,
Speaker 1: kind of flyling a little bit. It turns out that
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to just find people in the musical
Speaker 1: community who are on the up and up, you know,
Speaker 1: that are mature and really ready to go. Or maybe
Speaker 1: I just you know, gave up too soon. But there
Speaker 1: were numerous band traumas and conflicts and dramas, and at
Speaker 1: some point I decided, I'm going to grad school forget this.
Speaker 1: What did that? What did you play? Keyboards? Yeah? Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that was big in the eighties. Yeah, there was the
Speaker 1: new new wave style of music back then. It's electric
Speaker 1: you know, electric keyboard, yep, synthesizers. Oh wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Do you miss those days at all? Not at all?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think back on them fondly.
Speaker 1: But there's a real sense in which life is just
Speaker 1: kind of keeps getting better and better, you know, going
Speaker 1: from I mean you know this, You go from being
Speaker 1: not really sure who you are, what you're doing, if
Speaker 1: you can be successful, and then it starts to look
Speaker 1: like maybe this is going to work out. And at
Speaker 1: this point it pretty much has worked out. And that's
Speaker 1: a very nice place to be. I'm very happy to
Speaker 1: hear that. Okay, so when did you make contact with
Speaker 1: humanistic psychology, which has been a clear source of inspiration
Speaker 1: for both of our work, you know, probably just the
Speaker 1: introduction to Personality course back at Duke University, which happened
Speaker 1: to be taught by Tim Wilson, who's now very well known.
Speaker 1: He was a post doc at that time at Duke.
Speaker 1: Now he's at UVA. But I don't think he's much
Speaker 1: of a humanistic type of guy. But he did a
Speaker 1: nice job of presenting that perspective and it always resonated
Speaker 1: with me. Hmm. Yeah. And what's interesting, though, is it
Speaker 1: resonated with you. And you've also you've done some really
Speaker 1: tremendous work on happiness, which is not was not really
Speaker 1: the major focus of the humanist psychologists, right, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of them kind of even reiled against the search
Speaker 1: for happiness. Well, so let's talk a little about how
Speaker 1: you got interested in the topic of happiness and also,
Speaker 1: you know, just like I want to ask the question,
Speaker 1: why is everyone trying so hard to be happy? Is
Speaker 1: it worth it that that pursuit? Yeah, well, those are
Speaker 1: really good questions for me. I got interested in happiness
Speaker 1: because that's what Bob Emmons was studying when he got
Speaker 1: to UC Davis. He had been a deaner student and
Speaker 1: of course at Deaner's the Guru of happiness and well being.
Speaker 1: To me, it seemed like a much easier thing to
Speaker 1: study than creativity, which I had been studying. As you know,
Speaker 1: measuring creativity is quite difficult, and there's lots of ways
Speaker 1: to do it, and you're not sure that any of
Speaker 1: them is really valid. It's a mess. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of a mess. But with a happiness there's pretty good measures.
Speaker 1: They're reliable, they're valid. The main problem with happiness is
Speaker 1: people question how important is that? Why should we care
Speaker 1: about it? And my answer to that question is we
Speaker 1: should pursue growth and development and being the best, most
Speaker 1: creative person we can be, and happiness comes along as
Speaker 1: a side effect of that. So in the field there's
Speaker 1: a lot of confusion about what well being is. What's
Speaker 1: the right definition. From my point of view, we have
Speaker 1: a big problem because the definition of happiness is becoming
Speaker 1: so big and so many things now fit under that umbrella.
Speaker 1: I once did a lit search about a year ago
Speaker 1: on the term you dimonic well being, which it's kind
Speaker 1: of this vague word to describe really any positive psychology construct,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that people are using that concept
Speaker 1: so broadly and so widely that it's to me it's
Speaker 1: threatening to make the concept of happiness almost meaningless. Happiness
Speaker 1: becomes whatever the researcher says it is, as long as
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds good good. Any old random positive
Speaker 1: psychology construct can be lumped in with the concept of
Speaker 1: happiness just by calling it a you dimonic well being measure.
Speaker 1: It's a really good point, you know, I think about.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of people in the philopositiveology have
Speaker 1: been starting to use the term well being instead of
Speaker 1: happiness as the umbrella term, you know, well being, being,
Speaker 1: well being, you know being. All these same things that
Speaker 1: you just mentioned are attributed to you demonic well being, yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes just referred to as simply well being, whereas happiness
Speaker 1: might be considered more hedonism. Yeah, I don't like that trend.
Speaker 1: We could probably go on this. But to me, subjective
Speaker 1: well being, which I can also call happiness, to me
Speaker 1: either almost interchangeable SWB is something you don't get by
Speaker 1: being narcissistic, by being self centered and selfish. A lot
Speaker 1: of my career has been dedicated to showing what brings
Speaker 1: you subjective well being, and it turns out to be
Speaker 1: all the you dimonic stuff that gets it for you.
Speaker 1: So I like to make a distinction between what people
Speaker 1: do and how they feel as a result. And to me,
Speaker 1: subjective well being is a positive feeling that it's not
Speaker 1: just about pleasure there, it's not just about momentary, superficial stuff.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to get that good feeling, and it's
Speaker 1: very comforting that the main way to get it is
Speaker 1: through doing virtuous, moral growth oriented types of activities. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: I definitely want to get to all that good stuff later.
Speaker 1: And we're not quite there yet in terms of what
Speaker 1: all those activities are. But yeah, I'm glad you said that.
Speaker 1: By the way, we just submitted a paper that showed
Speaker 1: that life satisfaction measures are positively correlated with narcissism. Narcissists
Speaker 1: do tend to report themselves on average as having higher
Speaker 1: subjective well being, while they don't tend to score as
Speaker 1: high on other metrics of meaning, and they score lower
Speaker 1: on metrics of meaning a purpose for instance. There does
Speaker 1: seem to be an important distinction to be made there.
Speaker 1: There could be I haven't seen that data. I usually
Speaker 1: don't find any connection between narcissism and a subjective well
Speaker 1: being measures, But it sounds like you are finding some
Speaker 1: association with life satisfaction. So yeah, I might need to
Speaker 1: think about that. Yeah. Well, I hopefully it gets published
Speaker 1: and I will would love to send you the paper.
Speaker 1: We can keep talking about it. Okay, So going back
Speaker 1: to happiness. Now, you've studied a lot about happiness. You know,
Speaker 1: you asked this question, how can we keep ourselves from
Speaker 1: the upper end of happiness set point range? You know,
Speaker 1: there is a big controversy, you know, like is happiness
Speaker 1: in your genes? Right? And then people try to reconcile
Speaker 1: by saying, well, yes, but it's really just a set point.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like what is your default? But there's
Speaker 1: still a good range that we can change. And then
Speaker 1: you are asking the question, how can we keep ourselves
Speaker 1: in the upper end? See it's funny because when I
Speaker 1: hear that question, I kind of shudder because I don't
Speaker 1: want to be kept in the upper end of happiness.
Speaker 1: Like those people who are always like trying so hard
Speaker 1: to keep themselves in that upper end are really annoying
Speaker 1: people to me. They're the kind of people that I
Speaker 1: don't want to be around. They don't seem to be
Speaker 1: authentic to me. Now am I totally unfair? Yes, well,
Speaker 1: maybe all right. So I would use myself as an example.
Speaker 1: I'm not a real e brilliant, enthusiastic person. I'm not
Speaker 1: very high on extraversion, so I would say that my
Speaker 1: set points, such as it is, is somewhat lower than
Speaker 1: many people. But I consider myself to be doing quite
Speaker 1: well in my life because I'm keeping myself in the
Speaker 1: upper end of my potential range, mainly by doing a
Speaker 1: lot of cool stuff and having a lot of good experiences.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important not to mix up. So
Speaker 1: I agree with you. We should not be trying to
Speaker 1: make ourselves happy. We should be trying to do enjoyable, interesting,
Speaker 1: meaningful things. Gotcha, And I think the problem is many
Speaker 1: you diamonic researchers think that if we say a subjective
Speaker 1: well being is a criterion that we can use to
Speaker 1: identify positive ways of being, that makes it the goal.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that at all. It's just a side effect.
Speaker 1: So circling back around. Just because you're in the top
Speaker 1: part of your range doesn't mean that you have to
Speaker 1: be an annoying person who's happy all the time. It
Speaker 1: just means that you have raised your baseline level to
Speaker 1: a higher level than you otherwise would be, but you're
Speaker 1: still going up and down around that level. So you're
Speaker 1: still having bad days, you're experiencing grief. I had a
Speaker 1: really good friend die unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and that drugged me down for a long time, and
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of adjusting to that. So it's just
Speaker 1: a question of what are you going up and down around?
Speaker 1: Are you going up and down around to three? Or
Speaker 1: have you constructed a life that's full of enough interesting,
Speaker 1: meaningful experiences that now you're going up and down around
Speaker 1: to four? Got it? That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: And so you've studied some of these things, right, So
Speaker 1: I like the idea of happiness as an epi phenomenon.
Speaker 1: I like that, But what are some of the things
Speaker 1: that you've studied helped to contribute to keeping us in
Speaker 1: that upper end of the happiest set point range. Well,
Speaker 1: there could be a lot of answers to that question,
Speaker 1: but the two main ones, I would say come out
Speaker 1: of self determination theory theory of motivation, which has been
Speaker 1: my primary focus. And in that theory, there's an important
Speaker 1: distinction between what you try to do, what are your values,
Speaker 1: what do you think is important the content of your
Speaker 1: goals and motives on the one hand, and then there's
Speaker 1: why do you try to do them on the other hand.
Speaker 1: So there's the what and the why of motivated behavior.
Speaker 1: And what I find is that parallel with Tim Kasher's
Speaker 1: work on intrinsic versus extrinsic aspirations, pursuing intrinsic values of growth, connection,
Speaker 1: contribution rather than extrinsic values of money, image status. That's
Speaker 1: one important source of happiness to be doing things that
Speaker 1: lets you be making connections to other people and making
Speaker 1: connections to your own deeper self. But then on top
Speaker 1: of that that you need to be doing them for
Speaker 1: the right reasons as well. So if you con bear
Speaker 1: with me for another second, I like to use the
Speaker 1: example of a stockbroker and a philanthropist. So a stockbroker
Speaker 1: is pursuing money pretty much, he has extrinsic goals. That is,
Speaker 1: the content of the goals involving making money. A philanthropist
Speaker 1: the content of his or her goals involved helping other
Speaker 1: people and doing good. So we would expect the philanthropist
Speaker 1: to be a happier person than the stockbroker, just based
Speaker 1: on Tim Kaster's findings and some of my own findings.
Speaker 1: But what if that philanthropist is doing that activity because
Speaker 1: he feels guilty about his inherited wealth, or he's trying
Speaker 1: to impress his liberal friends and show how much, you know,
Speaker 1: how awesome he is. That's not a good reason to
Speaker 1: be doing that activity. So the motivation would be good check,
Speaker 1: but the why of motivation not so good. That would
Speaker 1: tend to kind of cancel out the effects. So in
Speaker 1: this model, the happiest person would be the philanthropist who's
Speaker 1: doing it for the self determined reasons that's autonomous reasons.
Speaker 1: I enjoy it, I believe in it, I identify it
Speaker 1: with it. And the least happy person, and the data
Speaker 1: support this pretty cleanly, would be the stockbroker who is
Speaker 1: doing it with a feeling of pressure social comparison, wanting
Speaker 1: to outcompete other people. So if you take both the
Speaker 1: what and the why into account, you can say that
Speaker 1: the happiest person would be the one who's doing good
Speaker 1: stuff for good reasons, and the least happy would be
Speaker 1: by bad and good at bad. I don't mean in
Speaker 1: a moralistic sense, but just from the standpoint of what
Speaker 1: the data show the least happy person would be the
Speaker 1: one doing extrinsic or not so good things for not
Speaker 1: so good reasons. I'll just stop there and let's you
Speaker 1: react to that. No, I like that. I try to
Speaker 1: map on some of these terms. Like I'm not the
Speaker 1: biggest fan of the intrinsic extrinsic distinction, but you know,
Speaker 1: I like to go back to the way Maslow framed it,
Speaker 1: you know, security versus growth needs. I think you could
Speaker 1: map it onto saying that there's things that lead to growth,
Speaker 1: and those are the things that tend to make us
Speaker 1: feel happier than the things that we do to just
Speaker 1: fulfill some sort of desperate need or some whole that's
Speaker 1: within us, right, And I would agree with that, And
Speaker 1: I would just say that insecurity can lead you to
Speaker 1: do pursue goals that are not very growth promoting, but
Speaker 1: they can also lead you to do things for reasons
Speaker 1: that are not very growth promoting. So, from my point
Speaker 1: of view, ASDT breaks the insecure functioning concept down into
Speaker 1: both what are you doing and why are you doing it?
Speaker 1: And I think that can be useful and for some
Speaker 1: kinds of research questions. Absolutely, I really like the distinction
Speaker 1: between what why, and I also like the how part
Speaker 1: as well. Right, so you know, what are this How
Speaker 1: do we self regulate ourselves and make sure these things
Speaker 1: aren't getting in the way of reaching these higher level
Speaker 1: or growth oriented goals. There's something that a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know. Well, some people might not even heard
Speaker 1: of self determination theory. Let's not assume anything here, would
Speaker 1: you mind just giving a brief overview of self determination
Speaker 1: theory and then we can get to some of the
Speaker 1: deeper nuances of it. Okay, I'll try to do this
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. At DC back in the early nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: was an industrial organizational psychologist who had the radical idea
Speaker 1: that rewards like pay and money, instead of reinforcing behavior,
Speaker 1: might actually punish it. And he discovered what's called the
Speaker 1: undermining effect. That you can give people, say a dollar
Speaker 1: for each puzzle they solve, and then leave them alone
Speaker 1: with the puzzles, and they don't want to solve any
Speaker 1: more puzzles compared to people who were just told to
Speaker 1: do it for fun, do it for the fun of it.
Speaker 1: So that was the undermining effect, and really the entire
Speaker 1: theory SDT is built on that. Trying to explain that effect,
Speaker 1: and the explanation turned out to be people have a
Speaker 1: need for autonomy. They need to feel like they're doing
Speaker 1: what they want to be doing for their own reasons.
Speaker 1: And when some authority comes along or some boss or
Speaker 1: teacher and tries to kind of bribe us to get
Speaker 1: us to do what they want us to do by
Speaker 1: offering us rewards or praise or the threat of criticism,
Speaker 1: that thwarts the need for autonomy and sort of spoils
Speaker 1: that activity for us, undermining the intrinsic motivation that we
Speaker 1: started out. So STT has gone on to build a
Speaker 1: lot of different kinds of themes and variations on that
Speaker 1: basic idea, but they're all roughly consistent that we want
Speaker 1: to be doing what is interesting and meaningful to us.
Speaker 1: That the environment gets us away from that. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways of media, consumer advertising, the ways
Speaker 1: that authorities try to control us and coerce us. So
Speaker 1: it's a quest for self determination that's at the core
Speaker 1: of the theory. That's great, and so there are basic
Speaker 1: needs that are part of self determination theory as well, right,
Speaker 1: the need for relatedness and competence and autonomy. Now, how
Speaker 1: do those needs interact with the intrinsic extrinsic part. The
Speaker 1: original thought was that thwarting the need for autonomy would
Speaker 1: undermine intrinsic motivation, but then it turned out that feeling
Speaker 1: incompetent will also do it, and that fits right in
Speaker 1: with Chicksima High's flow theory. Chicks and High said, we
Speaker 1: need to have a balance between the challenge of the
Speaker 1: task and the skill and our skills, so that the
Speaker 1: skills match the challenge and we can stay in the
Speaker 1: flow zone and feel competent in doing the task. It's
Speaker 1: pretty clear that that also is important for maintaining intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1: And then if you're building a theory of basic needs,
Speaker 1: you really can't leave out relatedness or belonginess or connectedness,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. So that's where the
Speaker 1: theory ended up. It's resistant going beyond those three just
Speaker 1: because of a parsimony perspective. I'm sure as you know,
Speaker 1: it's tempting to say, what about a need for this
Speaker 1: and this and this and this and that can get
Speaker 1: out of hand pretty quickly. So ideally you have some
Speaker 1: kind of a way of testing and comparing the candidate
Speaker 1: needs to figure out which ones really are most important,
Speaker 1: and which ones might be just a rephrasing in some
Speaker 1: sense of one of the existing ones. Well, as you know,
Speaker 1: I do believe it's not a complete model of needs.
Speaker 1: But even without just taking my own thinking about this
Speaker 1: out of the picture, your own work has shown there's
Speaker 1: two additional kind ofate needs that really ought to be
Speaker 1: part of the theory, the need for security and the
Speaker 1: need for self esteem. Aren't I right that your work
Speaker 1: has shown that both of those two are really important
Speaker 1: as well? I would agree with you that there's sort
Speaker 1: of a two level thing going on where security is important.
Speaker 1: It seems to be mainly a deficit need. It becomes
Speaker 1: important when it's taken away, whereas SDT is more of
Speaker 1: a positive experiences that you need, but it also has
Speaker 1: a deficit perspective, So you know, I might put security
Speaker 1: in a different category there. I'm not sure what DC
Speaker 1: and Ryan would say self esteem is. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: tricky because it's a feeling that it's great to have,
Speaker 1: but if you're going after it, that's not such a
Speaker 1: great position to be in. Jenny Crocker has done some
Speaker 1: important work showing that self esteem striving tends to work
Speaker 1: against itself tends to backfire in the end. Self esteem
Speaker 1: striving is a lot like extrinsic values what Tim Kasher studies.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about getting status, getting ahead, looking good,
Speaker 1: or it can be about that, So it's more of
Speaker 1: a mixed case self esteem striving. Yeah, the thinking about
Speaker 1: us a lot. You know, I externally don't have all
Speaker 1: the answers, but I think that it's worth debating. You
Speaker 1: couldn't want to make the case that if you strive
Speaker 1: for belonging that's not really healthy either. Like, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have a constant need to
Speaker 1: belong and it comes from a place of deprivation and neediness,
Speaker 1: and people don't respond well. If people are signaling that's
Speaker 1: absolutely true. I think you have to make a distinction
Speaker 1: between chronic and acute deprivation. So if it's Friday night
Speaker 1: and I, you know, kind of hanging up by myself
Speaker 1: and I'd like to find some other folks to hang
Speaker 1: out with, and I pick up the phone and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. That's not coming out of deprivation.
Speaker 1: That's just reaching out to satisfy a need. But if
Speaker 1: you're in a place where you feel lonely, and that's
Speaker 1: a chronic feeling. I think you're right that people do
Speaker 1: pick up on that that you're needy and you're trying
Speaker 1: to use them as a way to satisfy your need,
Speaker 1: and they don't respond as well to it. I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think that's why there's value in distinguishing healthy
Speaker 1: and healthy avert manifestations of these things, But that doesn't
Speaker 1: argue against the value of adding So, for instance, I
Speaker 1: think I could make a case that a healthy self
Speaker 1: esteem is actually an essential core part of being human,
Speaker 1: of having autonomy, of having growth, And to me, I
Speaker 1: would just define that simply as having self respect for yourself,
Speaker 1: having confidence. To me, it's not the same as competence.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about basically the self liking for self competence model,
Speaker 1: like liking yourself to me, seems to be essential. So
Speaker 1: in a healthy way. Then there's an unhealthy modifestation of
Speaker 1: that what you see with narcissism, which you see with
Speaker 1: those who have an addiction to esteem, but I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about that. It seems like any one of these
Speaker 1: self deformation theory things could have a healthy or unhealthy version,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't argue against the inclusion of these other things. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that could be and I see what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: think that DC and Ryan would argue that pursuing self
Speaker 1: esteem directly is likely to fail in its aim. But
Speaker 1: it maybe it comes down to an empirical question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just more research and distinguishing between these I think it's
Speaker 1: a really important distinction though, you know, between the healthy
Speaker 1: and unhealthy flavors of each of these needs and how
Speaker 1: we regulate these needs. Yeah, well, I remember what I
Speaker 1: was going to say a second ago. DC and Ryan
Speaker 1: would say that self esteem is an outcome of getting
Speaker 1: the big three needs met, and that's an empirical question
Speaker 1: that could be studied. But why would you are liking
Speaker 1: of yourself even come into question unless you were around
Speaker 1: people that didn't respect you and didn't take you seriously,
Speaker 1: So that would be absence of need of relatedness needs
Speaker 1: that or if you weren't doing what was important and
Speaker 1: meaningful to you, if you were doing things that you
Speaker 1: felt controlled and coerced into doing, you might also not
Speaker 1: really respect yourself. You know, this is a question. Like
Speaker 1: I could talk all day about this topic. It's so
Speaker 1: rich and exciting to me because I see these things
Speaker 1: kind of building off each other in ways. The fundamental
Speaker 1: need for belonging is intimately, as Mark Leary has shown,
Speaker 1: is intimately tied to the self esteem. They're like multiple
Speaker 1: things that can lead to higher feelings of self esteem.
Speaker 1: They're multiple indicators, you know, or if self esteem is
Speaker 1: an outcome, which is how Leary likes to look at it,
Speaker 1: there are multiple things that feed into that. It does
Speaker 1: seem like if there is an overall not self esteem,
Speaker 1: but I think there is a fundament overall need for
Speaker 1: esteem and Maslow abram Aso, you know, positive the need
Speaker 1: for esteam and his his self actuization framework. If you
Speaker 1: view the need for esteem as something that includes not
Speaker 1: just how you feel about yourself, but this steam you
Speaker 1: get from others, that's not in the relatedness or competence purely.
Speaker 1: That's not in there the esteem that you're getting from others. Like,
Speaker 1: let's not deny just how good it feels to be
Speaker 1: respected by others for your competence, not just to have
Speaker 1: the competence. Yeah, I see what you're saying, and I agree.
Speaker 1: We could go back and forth on this. It's kind
Speaker 1: of me it is it is, I mean, to me,
Speaker 1: the whole light, the problem with self esteem is yourself
Speaker 1: is an object that you want to feel good about
Speaker 1: that object. It might be taking you out of the moment,
Speaker 1: taking you out of flow, might reflect some problematic interpersonal
Speaker 1: experiences in the past or in the present. Why do
Speaker 1: you even need to think about how good you feel
Speaker 1: about yourself? If you know you're getting good connection, you're
Speaker 1: doing well, you're doing what you want. And I don't
Speaker 1: really think about my self esteem very much. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't have to. Maybe I've been you know, things are
Speaker 1: working out well enough for me that that just doesn't
Speaker 1: come up. But that's part of the point. If it
Speaker 1: comes up, doesn't that mean that there's something going on
Speaker 1: that is non optimal, which means it's a deficit response. Perhaps, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great point, and maybe just like a way
Speaker 1: of resolving that, which is my kind of preferred situation,
Speaker 1: is to make this distinction between deprivation needs and growth needs,
Speaker 1: as massively did, Like I really love that distinction, and
Speaker 1: I would actually argue that relatedness is a deprivation need
Speaker 1: though like I would argue, belonging belongs, belonging, you know,
Speaker 1: belongs in the camp of deprivation, whereas what the kind
Speaker 1: of more growth oriented forms of relatedness that Maso was
Speaker 1: talking about. It was not relatedness. It was like universal
Speaker 1: sort of benefit to the good of society or loving
Speaker 1: for the He called it being love, loving for the
Speaker 1: being of others, regardless of whether it's your mother or
Speaker 1: your partner, or that you belong and a certain group.
Speaker 1: I would actually argue that the need for belonging is
Speaker 1: actually deprivation. Do you see what I'm saying. I do
Speaker 1: see what you mean. If you think of it as
Speaker 1: like group acceptance and I'm a thirteen year old and
Speaker 1: you know cool kids like me or now, the way
Speaker 1: STT thinks about relatedness, I do think they it's seen
Speaker 1: as a deeper thing. It's kind of like the distinction
Speaker 1: between the need for affiliation and the need for intimacy.
Speaker 1: From a motive disposition, theo affiliation is be accepted, be
Speaker 1: fit in intimacy is go deeper. In STT, the relatedness
Speaker 1: is supposedly aligned with the deeper part, but it's true
Speaker 1: you could go even deeper. And personally, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that there's something different. There's just more elaboration of that
Speaker 1: same experience of feeling connected and close to somebody that
Speaker 1: you appreciate. They appreciate you. You're sharing something meaningful, That's
Speaker 1: what it's about. So you know, I'm thinking of like
Speaker 1: George Valen's work on He wrote this book called Spiritual
Speaker 1: Evolution and argue there's likefferent stages of evolution of love.
Speaker 1: There's first is like the belonging. Then there's kind of
Speaker 1: like the intimacy, but then there really is a third,
Speaker 1: which is it's kind of a love for all of humankind.
Speaker 1: And I just don't see that really talked about enough.
Speaker 1: I guess in the needs literature. Yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: what you mean. What I would want to do is
Speaker 1: figure out how to measure it and then do the
Speaker 1: studies to compare it to the existing needs and find
Speaker 1: out does it predict additional variants and maybe it would
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I have that data set. Should I run
Speaker 1: it right now? I've been known on the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: to run studies on the spot. I've done that with
Speaker 1: a I've done that before with like, yes, I am
Speaker 1: that nerdy, It's true, Okay, I actually did collect this
Speaker 1: data set. I've been trying to come up with a
Speaker 1: new test of self actualization that I could validate, and
Speaker 1: some of these kinds of more love for humankind is
Speaker 1: included on the scale, but I also included measures of
Speaker 1: self determination therey. So I'm literally, let's see, let's really
Speaker 1: put in the dependent variable like work satisfaction. I've never
Speaker 1: run this analysis is actually well, see, that's one of
Speaker 1: the questions, what's the criterion? Yeah, what's the criterion? Exactly?
Speaker 1: That's why I like subjective well being because it's relatively
Speaker 1: value free. It's just how do you feel? Are you satisfied?
Speaker 1: I got it? I have that. Let's do it. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have subjective well being is the dependent but at
Speaker 1: measure going to put in let's call it democratic character structure.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's one of the closest. So I have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch. I have sixteen sub scales on the self
Speaker 1: actuation test. It seems like democratic charac structure might be
Speaker 1: the closest thing to what I'm talking about, where you're
Speaker 1: basically kind of like treating everyone as though they have
Speaker 1: value to me. That's a form of love, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Okay, I'm going to put that in,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to put in the relatedness from the
Speaker 1: didn't you create the scale? The satisfaction dissatisfaction SDT scale,
Speaker 1: the one with the Hilbert John Hilbert. It divides need
Speaker 1: for relatedness comportable autonomy. And I'm literally putting into this
Speaker 1: progression of scale you created. Okay, so I'll put in this.
Speaker 1: Should I put the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction one or
Speaker 1: the overall? Right now, I'll put in satisfaction just for now, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. I'm gonna run it. Wow, democratic character
Speaker 1: structure is no longer significant. Relatedness is Wow. Related is
Speaker 1: the predictor there? Wow. The STT thing would be that
Speaker 1: relatedness mediates its effects. Okay, the needs are always mediators,
Speaker 1: or very typically they're mediators. But I mean, I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the end that you have there? It's
Speaker 1: pretty large. It's almost a thousand. Okay. For instance, I
Speaker 1: don't think that was the fairest test. Like I included
Speaker 1: a subject I think is more relevant, which I call humanitarianism,
Speaker 1: is what I'm labeling. I think that's more of what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. And I found that both the relatedness
Speaker 1: satisfaction and humanitarian independently predict life satisfaction. So it's not
Speaker 1: the same thing. Can't be reduced to it No, maybe
Speaker 1: not yep, So okay, I did. I did find that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the suggestive that this is possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit tricky doing this kind of test
Speaker 1: because a you have to agree that SWB is the
Speaker 1: appropriate criterion, right, and a lot of people don't, as
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. But be just predicting independent
Speaker 1: variants in subjective well being, you're going to find more
Speaker 1: than just as self determination theories three needs. So it
Speaker 1: becomes a question of trade off between parsimony and completeness.
Speaker 1: If you were going to pick go with just three,
Speaker 1: which would they be or maybe just five? You know
Speaker 1: you could answer those questions right right now for sure.
Speaker 1: So just like relatedness is part of it, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's the umbrella. I guess what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: just I think autonomy doesn't go far enough as it
Speaker 1: is like autonomy to me, the umbrella of autonomy really
Speaker 1: is authenticity, whereas the umbrella of relatedness is love. And
Speaker 1: under both of those umbrellas we have one facet, which
Speaker 1: is so I guess that's how I'm conceptualizing it, and
Speaker 1: it's just is I don't know if I'm making any
Speaker 1: sense to you how I'm thinking about it, it does
Speaker 1: make sense to go to sort of the purest, most
Speaker 1: intense version at the construct. Yeah, I think authenticity has problems.
Speaker 1: It's not really clear what it means. But some people
Speaker 1: say the same thing about autonomy can be kind of
Speaker 1: hard to define. So yeah, so cool. This has turned
Speaker 1: out to be a lot of fun for me intellectually.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we've lost all our listeners at
Speaker 1: this point. I hope, gosh, we have it. I hope
Speaker 1: they're enjoying this us trying to kind of make sense
Speaker 1: of things. But let me move on because I would
Speaker 1: love to highlight more of your wonderful research and specifically, like,
Speaker 1: it's funny when I think of you, I don't think
Speaker 1: like the self determination guy. That's not what I think of.
Speaker 1: You have your own unique spin on this, which is
Speaker 1: self concordance theory, which you develop. So I think we
Speaker 1: really should dive into self concourse because to me, that
Speaker 1: is more you like, that's more self to me. Self
Speaker 1: coord theory is what's more self concordant with Ken Sheldon
Speaker 1: than self determination theory in general? Am I right? Okay? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that that's okay. So, because I studied personal
Speaker 1: strivings back in graduate school, which is what people write
Speaker 1: down on a blank sheet of paper that they say
Speaker 1: they're striving to do, I'm very interested in goals. And
Speaker 1: when I first got to Rochester as a post doc,
Speaker 1: Rich Ryan didn't like goal constructs, not even sure why
Speaker 1: he brought me there actually, because he saw a goal
Speaker 1: as an external control that the person has brought in
Speaker 1: side themselves to beat themselves up with, right, And I
Speaker 1: saw a goal as a standard that you use to
Speaker 1: regulate your behavior to try to make positive changes. So
Speaker 1: I had that perspective on goals as a positive thing.
Speaker 1: So when I first got to Rochester and I asked
Speaker 1: people to rate, why are you pursuing these goals that
Speaker 1: you just wrote down on this blank sheet of paper.
Speaker 1: You would think that they would say, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: they're meaningful, they're interesting, they're enjoyable. But a lot of
Speaker 1: people were saying, no, I don't enjoy it and re
Speaker 1: believe in it. I just kind of have to do it.
Speaker 1: So I had to puzzle over that finding a lot.
Speaker 1: Because the goals were self determined in a nominal sense.
Speaker 1: The person thought them up and wrote them down, but
Speaker 1: they didn't seem to be self determined from a phenomenological
Speaker 1: feeling sense, and in order to figure that out, came
Speaker 1: up with this idea that's really not that new. But
Speaker 1: the idea is that we're stuck up here in our
Speaker 1: conscious worlds in what we would now call system two,
Speaker 1: trying to think of what to do, and we don't
Speaker 1: have very concrete direct access to system one, the world
Speaker 1: of implicit motives and potentials and growth impulses, so we
Speaker 1: can very easily confuse ourselves consciously into pursuing things that
Speaker 1: don't fit us at a deeper level. And so the
Speaker 1: self concordance idea is an attempt to help people identify
Speaker 1: which of their goals are really are them, And it
Speaker 1: turns out that they're the ones that they have a
Speaker 1: lot of intrinsic motivation for, a lot of identified motivation
Speaker 1: for I use these self determination measures to get at
Speaker 1: the self concordance question. You know, it's just trying to
Speaker 1: find out if the goals reach all the way into
Speaker 1: you or not. Do they connect with a core, developing,
Speaker 1: growing self or are they something that's only gotten partly
Speaker 1: shoved into you by the environment. Perhaps that you think
Speaker 1: is what you're doing, but really you need to hopefully
Speaker 1: get some deeper insight and maybe change what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I love that. So what are some of these characteristics
Speaker 1: of fit? Like if we could think of, like design
Speaker 1: an artificial intellgo system that had like the optimal fit
Speaker 1: to a task, we it would include your satisfaction and
Speaker 1: basic needs, your talents, your capacity, Like what is the
Speaker 1: total list of things here we're talking about? It could
Speaker 1: be a very long list. And then there's more research
Speaker 1: by twenty fourteen review article called Becoming Oneself The Vital
Speaker 1: Role of self concordant Goal Pursuit basically said, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a mystery what's in there that the goals need
Speaker 1: to fit with? You know, it could be self actualization needs,
Speaker 1: you know, could be some other deep needs as it
Speaker 1: could be just the fact that if you ever somehow
Speaker 1: found yourself in front of a piano, and maybe you
Speaker 1: never have before, you would find that you could play
Speaker 1: by year, and you had all this talent that you
Speaker 1: didn't even know about. So it would be potentials and
Speaker 1: talents and values and interests that resonate deeply with the person,
Speaker 1: so on as many levels as possible is that the ideal, like,
Speaker 1: how does your work relate to harmonious for subsessive passion,
Speaker 1: for instance, the Doloruns work. Is there a good congruence
Speaker 1: there between how you're thinking about how viron's thinking about
Speaker 1: a harmonious passion? Yeah, I think there is. That. It's
Speaker 1: definitely a positive correlation between self concordant motivation to do
Speaker 1: X and having harmonious passion to do it, whereas obsessive
Speaker 1: passion is more about what set you would call it interjection.
Speaker 1: You know, you're kind of making yourself do it, you're
Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with it, you're compulsive about it. So
Speaker 1: they are similar. The difference is that Valorian sees those
Speaker 1: personality styles to some extent, not really about goals, although
Speaker 1: could adapt them to goals. The thing I love about
Speaker 1: his idea is that it was the first time that
Speaker 1: anybody ever asked, can intrinsic motivation be maladaptive? Right? And
Speaker 1: if you look around, it's pretty clear that it can
Speaker 1: people who are addicted to social media, to violent video gaming,
Speaker 1: lots of other things. But self termination theory didn't really
Speaker 1: have a way to talk about that. It just said
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation good, but here's a case where obsessive passion,
Speaker 1: you really love to do it, but you can't stop
Speaker 1: doing it. And so the absence of a stop rule
Speaker 1: is something that STT didn't really address before Bob valorand
Speaker 1: came along. Cool. Cool. So going back to let's say
Speaker 1: we found something that is very self concordant and harmonious,
Speaker 1: so we took both those boxes. What else should we
Speaker 1: take into consideration, not just the self accordance but also
Speaker 1: the content of the goals? Is that right? Is that
Speaker 1: something else that we should take into account? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean that would go back to the stockbroker versus the
Speaker 1: philanthropist example. And I'm not meaning to pick on stockbrokers,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of easy to understand. Yeah, so you'd
Speaker 1: be best off if you were able to be self
Speaker 1: concordant as a philanthropist, and maybe not quite as well
Speaker 1: off according to the data. Again, I'm not making a
Speaker 1: moral judgment if you felt self concordant in pursuing monetary
Speaker 1: or extrinsic type goals. Okay, so let's talk about you know, like,
Speaker 1: give me that list there again of the goals that
Speaker 1: you have found, the type of goals, What are the
Speaker 1: categories conceptually that are most correlated with happiness. Well, this
Speaker 1: really goes back to Tim Kasser's work. I was there
Speaker 1: when he was developing this way of thinking about things.
Speaker 1: He was coming out of the values tradition, Schwartz values,
Speaker 1: real Kee, and so forth. And they were the first
Speaker 1: to ask the question are some values healthier than others?
Speaker 1: And the first thing they looked at was materialistic values
Speaker 1: versus others, and they found that people who strongly placed
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on materialism were not as high
Speaker 1: as well being. And then the category became generalized to
Speaker 1: include not just money values, but also appearance values, status values, popularity, image.
Speaker 1: Those all hang together as a factor, and from the
Speaker 1: Maslow point of view, they're all kind of based in insecurity,
Speaker 1: whereas the intrinsic values include connection, intimacy, contribution, service, personal growth,
Speaker 1: so they're not all social. They also involve getting the
Speaker 1: most out of yourself. But they all hang on a
Speaker 1: second factor. So you get a pretty solid two factor structure.
Speaker 1: When you look at most data that has a bunch
Speaker 1: of different types of values in it beautiful And you know,
Speaker 1: I love that two factor structure. You know it's security
Speaker 1: and growth or however, you want to label those factors.
Speaker 1: I love that, and you can tell I'm so appreciative
Speaker 1: of this conversation. I've been like following you work for
Speaker 1: so long that this is like I'm like a kid
Speaker 1: in a candy shop right now. I hope you understand
Speaker 1: like that I'm able to ask you these questions so well,
Speaker 1: there's not that many people that I run into who
Speaker 1: want to ask me these questions, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I doubt that. But so, look, how can we link
Speaker 1: the Schwartz I'm glad that you mentioned the Swartz vial.
Speaker 1: It's going to be trying to think of how that
Speaker 1: maps on to You wrote this cool paper on the
Speaker 1: structure of gold contents across fifteen different cultures. I thought
Speaker 1: that was a really brilliant paper, Like, how does that
Speaker 1: structure map on to the Schwartz values? Do they map
Speaker 1: on nicely? Can you actually tell me which of the
Speaker 1: Schwartz values would go in one camp or the other?
Speaker 1: I guess I'm asking, to be honest, I'm not totally
Speaker 1: prepared to talk about that. I was a more of
Speaker 1: a minor author on that paper. Oh, no problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing about the Schwartz model is it didn't try
Speaker 1: to cross that line that positive psychology crosses to say
Speaker 1: which one is quote better versus not so good? Right,
Speaker 1: And that's what Tim was Casher was willing to try
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, So, I mean Schwartz would just take
Speaker 1: a matching perspective and he would say, doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: value is what I think is important, just whether you're
Speaker 1: kind of moving towards it or expressing it. And Tim
Speaker 1: would come along and say, well, it matters what the
Speaker 1: value actually is, not just whether you're successful at enacting it.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what Schwartz would say about that now,
Speaker 1: And that's what you're saying. I mean, it's funny you say,
Speaker 1: Tim Casser, but I think that's like that's your argument.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a self concordance theory sort of argument.
Speaker 1: And that's so cool. You just got to learn today
Speaker 1: that you studied with Tim Kaster. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. I don't want to
Speaker 1: take any credit for the Oh, of course intrinsic extrinsic
Speaker 1: value distinction, because that was him. But of course I
Speaker 1: was there when he was coming up with it, and
Speaker 1: we did work even back then, So I feel some
Speaker 1: ownership of that distinction as well totally. And I think
Speaker 1: that this self co coord theory, though, does make a
Speaker 1: stand in a sense. On certain you don't use the
Speaker 1: word values, but that's what you're taught. I mean, these
Speaker 1: things are values. Like if we just concretely here talk
Speaker 1: about the four major categories in Schwartz's values model, we
Speaker 1: have self transcendence, self enhancement, conservation, and openness to change.
Speaker 1: It seems to me like the two out of those
Speaker 1: four that are most conducive to growth are self transcendence
Speaker 1: and openness to change. Yes, now, why can't we make
Speaker 1: that argument and say, look, you know it does matter
Speaker 1: what the value is, Like I have all this data,
Speaker 1: for instance, showing that the dark triad of personality. I'm
Speaker 1: actually trying to publish this right now. We're sending this
Speaker 1: out soon in my colleagues. The dark triad, which compsus
Speaker 1: like psychopathicy, narcissism, and machandelions, that is so strongly associated
Speaker 1: with self enhancement values and wholly uncorrelated with the growth
Speaker 1: whole measures like lots of measures of growth even like
Speaker 1: just to the just you just take the riff personal
Speaker 1: growth subscale zero correlation with the dark triad. So maybe
Speaker 1: a proader question is how much can we garner our
Speaker 1: values through science. The thing that changed when positive psychology
Speaker 1: came along was it became more acceptable to talk about
Speaker 1: the roots of thriving and growth and to start to
Speaker 1: make value judgments about what people were up to. But
Speaker 1: what I try to tell people is it's not a
Speaker 1: value judgment, it's just what the data saying. So I'm
Speaker 1: not saying if you're a narcissist or a making a
Speaker 1: Elianus that you shouldn't do that, but I would say, well,
Speaker 1: the data shows that that's not going to do so
Speaker 1: much for you. I am on the same page as you,
Speaker 1: same page, But I don't understand why we can't look
Speaker 1: at it from like the same perspective of a doctor.
Speaker 1: You know, you go to a doctor and you want
Speaker 1: to lower heart disease. What the doctor is telling you
Speaker 1: our recommendations that are based on scientific findings of what
Speaker 1: behaviors in life. We know that eating lots and lots
Speaker 1: of pizza is statistically less probable to fix your heart
Speaker 1: disease than needing celery stuf excelled. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm just making that up, but I'm saying it seems that,
Speaker 1: you know, if the science shows that's the case, then
Speaker 1: that's what the doctor says. So why can't we be
Speaker 1: doctors too? In the same spirit, you know, why can't
Speaker 1: we be psychological doctors? Because what psychologist is? Do you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying? Though I totally agree with you,
Speaker 1: but I think you take an additional step when you
Speaker 1: go beyond each salary to endorse a certain type of
Speaker 1: value and not a different value. I mean, this stuff
Speaker 1: gets really politicized. I published one paper where I compared
Speaker 1: the values of Republicans and Democrats. And this was a
Speaker 1: data collected after the two thousand and four election, back
Speaker 1: when there was this idea that the Republicans were the
Speaker 1: family values party. And the finding was that Republicans and
Speaker 1: Democrats consistently differed on two values. The Republicans were lower
Speaker 1: in community service values and higher in materialism values. I
Speaker 1: had a hard time getting that published because it starts,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was afraid that I was going
Speaker 1: to end up on Rush Limbaugh, you know, being one
Speaker 1: of his punching bags or something. So that's that's different
Speaker 1: from telling people they should eat celery. I do hear
Speaker 1: you're saying. But I understand that these things do get politicized,
Speaker 1: so that makes it tricky. I agree, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: But if we remove politics from it, like in the discussion,
Speaker 1: you know, and we just talk about humanity, like what
Speaker 1: are the human values? You know, I wonder if we
Speaker 1: can I wonder if we could rise above politics, like
Speaker 1: Maso talks all the time about be values versus you know,
Speaker 1: being values, the values that come along with being itself existence.
Speaker 1: That's the level which I wish we had these discussions. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I agree. And the paper I just mentioned this is
Speaker 1: the only one I've ever published that mentioned politics explicitly.
Speaker 1: Usually I would stay away from that, but that that
Speaker 1: election election just irritated me so much I couldn't help myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we can ask which activities, which goals, which motivations
Speaker 1: are associated with particular positive outcomes, and just put that
Speaker 1: out there and let people make of it what they will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, it is because it does get tricky,
Speaker 1: and I am at the very least, I think it's
Speaker 1: great to just have open honest dialogue about it, you know,
Speaker 1: at the very least. And what are the scientific finding
Speaker 1: show how are certain people choosing to know their lives?
Speaker 1: Are there certain ways of being that are more conducive
Speaker 1: to happiness and others? These are important questions for science
Speaker 1: as well as that people are individuals are interested in
Speaker 1: So your work has contributed to that, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to talk about another interesting paper of yours,
Speaker 1: which is it's in my top ten favorite papers of yours.
Speaker 1: I know, I sound like a fangirl right now. Are
Speaker 1: a fanboy however you want to call whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call me, But that's maybe not a phrase that's
Speaker 1: used that often in science. But this paper you wrote
Speaker 1: where you tested Carl Rogers's notion of the organismic valuing process,
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about Carl Rogers because
Speaker 1: I always loved Carl Rodgers' motion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The
Speaker 1: idea is that people have an ability to tell what
Speaker 1: are the most growth relevant choices to make, but often
Speaker 1: not in touch with that ability, and so one of
Speaker 1: the things that Rogers would try to do with his
Speaker 1: clients would be to give them unconditional positive regard and
Speaker 1: get them into a safe, open state of mind where
Speaker 1: they could regain contact with this sort of deep implicit
Speaker 1: knowledge of the organismic valuing process. And it's a very
Speaker 1: kind of New Age term difficult thing to prove. And
Speaker 1: the way we tried to prove that there really is
Speaker 1: such a thing was just too very simple method of
Speaker 1: ask people to rate what's important to them, and then
Speaker 1: ask them to do it again, maybe just a few
Speaker 1: minutes later, or a couple days later, or a week later.
Speaker 1: And what you would expect is that the repeated measures
Speaker 1: of values would get the same results. It would just
Speaker 1: be test retest. But what we found was that there
Speaker 1: was a biased shift towards the more intrinsic growth relevant
Speaker 1: values over time that if people changed, tended to be
Speaker 1: towards what Casher calls the intrinsic values. We saw that
Speaker 1: as at least some kind of evidence for the existence
Speaker 1: of this valuing process, whether you call it a bias
Speaker 1: towards growth or you know, an ability to grow. It
Speaker 1: seems to be a real thing. But let me just
Speaker 1: do a quick follow up. It's contingent, it might not
Speaker 1: be active, and there are circumstances where it can go
Speaker 1: the other way. So I've studied the effects of law
Speaker 1: school on law students, and one of our findings is
Speaker 1: that their values tend to go the other way. They
Speaker 1: tend to become more extrinsic over time, which is not
Speaker 1: the usual trajectory, but it reflects the influence of what
Speaker 1: my collaborator thinks is very toxic educational culture. So it's there,
Speaker 1: but you might not necessarily figure out how to get
Speaker 1: in touch with it. The OVP. I love it, And
Speaker 1: you're also highlighting the importance of the culture, the society,
Speaker 1: the environment in bringing out telling us to listen to
Speaker 1: it or not giving us the kind of autonomy, so
Speaker 1: to speak, to listen to it. Yes, so I really
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, So thanks for explaining that, and I
Speaker 1: thank you for testing a very old idea that like
Speaker 1: no one else has seemed to care about in the field,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like me and you're the only ones
Speaker 1: that have ever used the word organismic value process in
Speaker 1: the field of positive psychology, Like how did you become
Speaker 1: interested in that? Well, you know, I just read old
Speaker 1: books by Carl Rogers. I actually kind of like him,
Speaker 1: maybe as much or or even more as Maslow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean too like them both. Yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: don't need to compare, but they're both awesome. And as
Speaker 1: you know, one of the problems in positive psychology has
Speaker 1: been the attempt to distance itself from humanistic psychology, which
Speaker 1: came before, and I think that that's been to the
Speaker 1: loss of the field. Positive psychologists not just reinventing all
Speaker 1: this stuff. What it's trying to do is be more
Speaker 1: scientific about some of these concepts that I'm in favor of.
Speaker 1: But the marketing aspect of positive psychology sometimes is a
Speaker 1: bit off putting. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more any But you wrote an article in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Humistic Psychology where you argue that humanistic psychlogy
Speaker 1: and positive psychology could make a very happy marriage, right yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a direct code of yours. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I agree. So I'm trying to think what's where I
Speaker 1: shiftween self concording goals and personal projects like Brian Little's work.
Speaker 1: Did you interact with Brian Little at all? I really
Speaker 1: like him a lot, and yeah, you know, I know,
Speaker 1: and we used to talk quite a bit an email
Speaker 1: and various things. I haven't seen him in quite a
Speaker 1: while now, but he'd probably disagree with this. But to me,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what you call an idiographic goal.
Speaker 1: So idiographic means the person writes it down on a
Speaker 1: blank sheet of paper, and that to me was a
Speaker 1: major advance and personality psychology back in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Instead of giving people a questionnaire and forcing them to
Speaker 1: respond to what you think is important, let them tell
Speaker 1: you what they think is important. So there were several
Speaker 1: goal constructs that came out at about the same time.
Speaker 1: The person is striving the current concern, the life task,
Speaker 1: and the personal project. So to me, it's all kind
Speaker 1: of it's a little interchangeable whether you call it a striving,
Speaker 1: a project or a concern, although there are some differences
Speaker 1: based on the timeframe potentially, Whereas Brian thought of the
Speaker 1: project as a kind of a more special thing that
Speaker 1: was related to the context in certain ways, which I
Speaker 1: won't I never quite got, so I won't try to
Speaker 1: explain them. But to me, you know, it's it's really
Speaker 1: you're letting the person tell you what they're trying to do,
Speaker 1: and that's the important thing. Okay, how does that relate
Speaker 1: to you know, the importance of having self consistency versus
Speaker 1: psychological authenticity, because personal projects is very much in the
Speaker 1: spirit that we can diverge from our personality. You know
Speaker 1: that we can like have these free traits, as he
Speaker 1: calls it. Yeah, yes, So do you see how I'm
Speaker 1: trying to reconcile that because it's not actually self concordance.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't happen right self content And this
Speaker 1: is actually a debate that he and I had quite
Speaker 1: a bit. He would tell these stories about free traits,
Speaker 1: that he was able to set a project that went
Speaker 1: against his traits. Although Brian is he seems to be
Speaker 1: incredibly extroverted. Maybe he is, I'm not sure. He feels
Speaker 1: like when he goes and gives a talk or in
Speaker 1: a group of people that it's very stressful for him,
Speaker 1: as if he's really an intense introvert. So he says
Speaker 1: that he has the projects of being very glib, very
Speaker 1: out there, but it takes a big physiological toll on him.
Speaker 1: But yet he is free to diverge from his own
Speaker 1: traits via his goals. And I agree with that that
Speaker 1: we can set goals to become different people. The question
Speaker 1: is are those goals self concordant enough that you're ultimately
Speaker 1: going in a direction which is going to be good
Speaker 1: for you, or are you laboring under some delusion that
Speaker 1: you should be a certain way that's getting you to
Speaker 1: act very different from who you know normally would be,
Speaker 1: and maybe you're just stressing yourself out for no good reason. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is so great to be able to reconcile this.
Speaker 1: So you like, I feel like we're on the verge
Speaker 1: of actually reconciling this. We want to reconcile this for
Speaker 1: such a long time. Okay, So in your book you
Speaker 1: talk about why it's important to modify aspects of your
Speaker 1: personality that are getting in the way of your higher
Speaker 1: level goals. Now you do talk about that. So maybe
Speaker 1: the simple reconciliation here is that we can create personal
Speaker 1: projects in the service of our growth as a whole
Speaker 1: person in the sense that they take us they diverge
Speaker 1: from traits that we don't like about ourselves. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: would that a good reconciliation? Yeah, I think so, because
Speaker 1: a trait, by definition, is sort of a habit or
Speaker 1: behavioral predisposition, but it doesn't imply goals or values, you know.
Speaker 1: So a person high in the trade of neuroticism is
Speaker 1: a great example. Should they be true to their trait
Speaker 1: and just let themselves worry and stress or should they
Speaker 1: maybe set goals, try to be more mindful, learn how
Speaker 1: to relax, learn how not to overreact to things. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think setting goals to change traits that are getting
Speaker 1: in your way is a great thing to do. The
Speaker 1: hard thing to know is I mean, in the case
Speaker 1: of neuroticism, Yeah, it's probably not too much value in that,
Speaker 1: although even there there's theories. The hard thing to do
Speaker 1: is to know whether that's really the right thing for
Speaker 1: you versus right now, you've just been led to a
Speaker 1: false conclusion and maybe the only way to do it
Speaker 1: is to try it and find out right. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: the point is just too you should also be flexible
Speaker 1: in knowing when to change goals, So wouldn't that be it.
Speaker 1: That's something else that you'd argue in your book, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not just important to set the goals or to
Speaker 1: have the content the goals, but also to know when
Speaker 1: to fold them. Yeah, And I don't study that so much.
Speaker 1: That's for Carson Roche and Mike Schier have studied that,
Speaker 1: And I think it's a really important question knowing when
Speaker 1: to fold it, because how to tell the difference between
Speaker 1: copping out versus legitimately changing your focus. Like if you
Speaker 1: give up too soon, you say, Okay, I'm giving up
Speaker 1: on this. You know it's not working, it's not for me.
Speaker 1: The really hard thing to know is whether you are
Speaker 1: making an adaptive change that makes sense versus you should
Speaker 1: keep going even though it may not feel very great
Speaker 1: at the moment, but instead you're going to let yourself
Speaker 1: off the hook. It's really hard to tell that difference.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, that's one of these things. We don't
Speaker 1: really have a good measuring instrument to precisely let someone
Speaker 1: know whether it's one or the other. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: I would just go back to listen to your organismic
Speaker 1: valuing process. That would probably be my What I'd say is,
Speaker 1: you know, to constantly be listening to it, like, don't
Speaker 1: get out of touch with it. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: can be easier said than done. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we need a good point. It can be helpful to
Speaker 1: have techniques, you know, the mindfullest meditation, I think is
Speaker 1: a great one to learn to recognize these little impulses
Speaker 1: or reactions on the fringes of consciousness, as William James
Speaker 1: would say, and let them in to your conscious awareness
Speaker 1: and try to figure out what they're telling you. Going
Speaker 1: with your gut is something you can make a conscious
Speaker 1: effort to try to do. But again, you know what
Speaker 1: if you think your gut is telling you that you
Speaker 1: have to do something that's going to hurt people or
Speaker 1: might be immral, but I mean, it's just really hard
Speaker 1: to really know. I think I mean is that the
Speaker 1: whole process or the point of becoming fully human is
Speaker 1: being open to all your experience and trusting the satiality
Speaker 1: of your experience. Like to me, that just seems like
Speaker 1: that's just part of personality integration. Is being able to
Speaker 1: trust yourself at such a deep level that you can
Speaker 1: feel when you're making doing something bad for yourself, you
Speaker 1: really trust it that you're making the poor decision. We
Speaker 1: have an article under review almost Impressed. I hope that
Speaker 1: uses that idea. Instead of having people list goals first
Speaker 1: and then rate how self concordant they are, now we're
Speaker 1: having them rate the potential self concordance of a bunch
Speaker 1: of candidate goals and then picking a subset of that
Speaker 1: list of candidates, and that the finding is that people
Speaker 1: are more likely to pick healthy intrinsic goals if they
Speaker 1: got the chance to rate the self concordance of those
Speaker 1: goals beforehand. So I'll say that a different way. You're
Speaker 1: looking at a list of goals, What should I do?
Speaker 1: You don't know? How do you tell? You're saying, listen
Speaker 1: to your OVP, your valuing process. I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds good, but how can you get it to
Speaker 1: give you a readout that you can hear well. One
Speaker 1: way to do it is to think in advance about
Speaker 1: how enjoyable it's going to be, how much you're going
Speaker 1: to believe in doing that goal, how much pressure or
Speaker 1: guilt you're going to feel in pursuing that goal. Just
Speaker 1: having the chance to think about your potential motivation we've
Speaker 1: discovered as an experimental manipulation versus not getting that chance,
Speaker 1: it leads people to pick or intrinsic well being promoting goals.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's clear, but yeah it is.
Speaker 1: I love it. Could you send me that paper when
Speaker 1: it's yeah, that sounds I love that. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: include one of those activities in my book as an
Speaker 1: activity for the reader. I really like that. There's something
Speaker 1: similar to it in Sonya's book, The How of Happiness.
Speaker 1: She calls it assessing the fit of an activity with personality,
Speaker 1: with your personality. So you might take a look at
Speaker 1: that as well. Absolutely, I will. I guess I'm just
Speaker 1: wondering when we talk about the content of the goals
Speaker 1: are important. It's not a simple distinction between extrinsic and
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation. There are some forms of extrinsic motivation that
Speaker 1: are growth oriented. Isn't that correct? That like kind of
Speaker 1: a major point of the relative autonomy sectrum. Yes, but
Speaker 1: I would mend it this way. The relative autonomy spectrum
Speaker 1: has to do with the why of behavior, no matter
Speaker 1: what it is, Whereas I think you're talking more about
Speaker 1: the what the content of the values. So you may
Speaker 1: not agree with this distinction, but it's an important one
Speaker 1: in SDT. So the why has to do with why
Speaker 1: are you doing it? And the finding is that whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing, you know, you're brushing your teeth, you're going
Speaker 1: to the gym, you're writing a paper, you can be
Speaker 1: that behavior can be located somewhere on a continuum between.
Speaker 1: At one extreme, I love it, it's fascinating. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: choose to be doing anything else. To the other extreme,
Speaker 1: I have to I don't want to be doing it,
Speaker 1: but I'm forced to do it. But between those two
Speaker 1: extremes there's gradations, So the continuum is about those gradations.
Speaker 1: And in the middle, pretty close to the dividing point
Speaker 1: between autonomous and control is self esteem motivation, which we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. Doing it because I want to feel
Speaker 1: good about myself. That's it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I need to feel good about myself. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: into my my ego. But that one just barely falls
Speaker 1: on the autonomous side. So it's actually not a bad
Speaker 1: form of motivation, despite what Jenny Crocker would say, or
Speaker 1: it's not as bad, but it's not as not as
Speaker 1: healthy as as the ones closer to the autonomous extremes.
Speaker 1: They tell me, like the best and the best is
Speaker 1: the word is of motivation and stt would say, that's
Speaker 1: the growth motivation, and I know that's what you're concerned with,
Speaker 1: and you think, maybe it doesn't capture that, and maybe
Speaker 1: it doesn't. But when it was proposed back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: it was a radical idea that a creature would do
Speaker 1: something just because there one and two and was interested.
Speaker 1: I'd like to do it. I didn't fit with reinforcement theory.
Speaker 1: It didn't fit the drive theory, and really that is
Speaker 1: how the theory thinks about it. Follow your intrinsic motivation,
Speaker 1: that's your growth and pulse telling you what to do. No,
Speaker 1: I want to be very clear, I owe huge debt
Speaker 1: to self defamation. They're not debt, but you know, a
Speaker 1: huge what everyone I'm trying to say, I really appreciate
Speaker 1: and respect how foundational it is I want to do.
Speaker 1: Want to make that clear. So I'll leave you today
Speaker 1: with one last question. The good life well being or
Speaker 1: well doing well doing? To be sure, absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: the goal is not to be happy, but it's really
Speaker 1: awesome that if we try to be the best, most open, inclusive,
Speaker 1: creative person we can be, we get happiness as a
Speaker 1: side effect. But as soon as we make that the
Speaker 1: goal itself, it undermines itself. That seems to be the finding.
Speaker 1: I love it. Hey, thanks so much for tagging with
Speaker 1: me today and for the great work you've done for
Speaker 1: the field. Thank you. It's really been fun conversation. I
Speaker 1: hope we haven't boggled everybody too much with all these
Speaker 1: nerdage distinctions. For those who've made it to the end
Speaker 1: of this episode. Please let me know, drop me a
Speaker 1: line or write in the comments and let us know
Speaker 1: what you thought of the episode. So thanks again, Thank
Speaker 1: you Scott. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
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