Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give
Speaker 1: you insights into the mind of brain, behavior, and creativity.
Speaker 1: Each episode will feature a guest who will stimulate your
Speaker 1: mind and give you a great understanding of yourself, others,
Speaker 1: and the world we live in. Hopefully we'll also provide
Speaker 1: a glimpse into human possibility. If you like what you
Speaker 1: hear today, please add a rating and review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to have doctor Mark Leary on the podcast. Mark
Speaker 1: is Professor of Psychology and neuroscience and director of the
Speaker 1: Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Center at Duke University. He's editor of
Speaker 1: the Handbook of Self and Identity and author of the
Speaker 1: Curse of This Self. Mark really excited to shot with
Speaker 1: you today. Great to talk with you, Scott of my heroes.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but thank you intellectual inspirations. I
Speaker 1: really have great respect for your work. You know a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions I'd like to ask you, and I
Speaker 1: want you to feel free to add any topics you'd
Speaker 1: like to discuss. Okay, first, I want to start with
Speaker 1: a really easy one, and that's what's the difference between
Speaker 1: the self and identity. I thought i'd just jump it
Speaker 1: to the deep end. Yeah, I mean self has been
Speaker 1: defined in seventeen different ways in the literature. The way
Speaker 1: I think of the self is just the cognitive apparatus
Speaker 1: that allows us to be self aware and to think
Speaker 1: about ourselves consciously. So the self, when you think of
Speaker 1: it that way, it doesn't have any content. It's just
Speaker 1: the mental apparatus that allows self awareness and self thought.
Speaker 1: Identity has content. It's what you're thinking about yourself and
Speaker 1: who you are and what you're like. So the fundamental
Speaker 1: difference is it's the processes that allow you to think
Speaker 1: about yourself versus what you happen to be thinking about yourself. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, So the self is a more general construct,
Speaker 1: well not just general, but the self is what makes
Speaker 1: the identity possible. That's the way I think about it.
Speaker 1: That's not universally agreed on. People use the word self
Speaker 1: in a lot of different ways. It's rather odd for
Speaker 1: somebody who's so associated with the self and identity literature.
Speaker 1: But I think we all to abolish use of the
Speaker 1: word self and psychology in order to communicate more clearly.
Speaker 1: But we clearly have something that needs to be defined,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's called the self where we call
Speaker 1: it something else. We have something that other animals don't
Speaker 1: have developed to this degree at all. That's correct, Absolutely correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I like that first of all, and not only identity.
Speaker 1: Is if the self is the hardware and the identity
Speaker 1: is the software, then we also have self esteem as
Speaker 1: another form of software. Imagination maybe is a software. So
Speaker 1: there are all these different apps that we can install
Speaker 1: in the self. My question to you is are there
Speaker 1: any good apps? Or should we just the ball is?
Speaker 1: You know, do we need to just transcend the self
Speaker 1: one hundred percent and call on a day like is
Speaker 1: it okay to have an identity? That's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1: Self awareness is absolutely essential for well being. We couldn't
Speaker 1: get up in the morning and plan our day. We
Speaker 1: couldn't decide whether we were good enough to try something.
Speaker 1: We really couldn't interact with people as human beings if
Speaker 1: we didn't have a concept of ourself. So you have
Speaker 1: to have self awareness, you have to have at least
Speaker 1: somewhat of an identity. But it gets us into trouble
Speaker 1: because a lot of the thoughts we have about ourselves
Speaker 1: get us into difficulties because they're too negative. We think
Speaker 1: more about the future than we need to navigate life,
Speaker 1: and so we worry about things we don't need to
Speaker 1: be worrying about. And our identities can get us into trouble.
Speaker 1: So sometimes we begin to relate to people in terms
Speaker 1: of identities. I'm a certain kind of person and you're
Speaker 1: a certain kind of person, when in fact, if those
Speaker 1: identities didn't exist, we'd get along a lot better. We
Speaker 1: divide ourselves from other people based on our identities, so
Speaker 1: it's a mixed blessing. My book was called The Curse
Speaker 1: of the Self. That was a little darker than it
Speaker 1: needed to be. It's really a double led it's a
Speaker 1: double edged sword or a mixed blessing. And I think
Speaker 1: people need to be aware of the fact that their
Speaker 1: self talk and their self awareness gets them in trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. The curse might be
Speaker 1: a little bit too dramatic. Consiia. I think that, like
Speaker 1: if a turtle could talk, turtle probably would say, it's
Speaker 1: jealous of us that we have a self. Absolutely true.
Speaker 1: So are you aware of Abraham Tesser's work? Absolutely so,
Speaker 1: oh great, he said, The self engenders quote a self
Speaker 1: zoo of self defense mechanisms. I like that phrase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the end of that article on the self zoo. Correct.
Speaker 1: I love that. Would you mind just elucidating maybe five
Speaker 1: or six of the most prominent that's been studied in
Speaker 1: social psychology of these mechanisms, Well, there are so many
Speaker 1: because they are really cognitive mechanisms that simply have self
Speaker 1: awareness of riding alongside them. That is, these cognitive mechanisms
Speaker 1: that tests are thinks of is the self zoo are
Speaker 1: more general mechanisms for decision making and navigating life. And
Speaker 1: if you simply then connect that up with our ability
Speaker 1: to think about ourselves, then you get a very large
Speaker 1: variety of cognitive processes. So he talks about people's self
Speaker 1: serving attributions, our tendency to perceive ourselves in desirable ways,
Speaker 1: to explain our behavior in ways that make us feel
Speaker 1: good about ourselves. He talks about denial of your negative characteristics.
Speaker 1: Just about anything somebody could do to distort their view
Speaker 1: of their self is included in Tesser's self Zoo. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the bottom line, ear is that we have many,
Speaker 1: many ways of protecting ourselves in a way that will
Speaker 1: maintain a feel good We like to feel good. We
Speaker 1: like to avoid pain. We like to feel good, we
Speaker 1: like to avoid pain. Well, that's the way tests are interpreted.
Speaker 1: It he interpreted all of these self defense mechanisms as
Speaker 1: ways to simply feel good about yourself and maintain self
Speaker 1: the team. They are certainly that we'd rather feel good
Speaker 1: about ourselves than bad about ourselves. But I think a
Speaker 1: lot of these defense mechanisms are really more interpersonal. They're
Speaker 1: really oriented toward other people trying to get them to
Speaker 1: perceive us in particular ways that get us what we
Speaker 1: want out of social life than just ways of fooling
Speaker 1: ourselves in our own minds. Deep down, most of us
Speaker 1: sort of know what our shortcomings are. We know that
Speaker 1: we really goofed off and failed because we goofed off,
Speaker 1: but we don't want other people to know it. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these biases are more social than they
Speaker 1: are in our own minds. Yeah, and so that's really
Speaker 1: a key piece of this puzzle that you've brought to
Speaker 1: the table with your work, prominently your work on sociometric theory,
Speaker 1: which I'm a fan. I'll say I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: your revised sociometric theory. If I may be honest, I
Speaker 1: think it's more encompassing. Well, any idea, when you come
Speaker 1: up with any idea, it's pretty half baked in its
Speaker 1: initial presentation, So you're right, it's been massaged and improved
Speaker 1: over the years, and you know, I don't know how
Speaker 1: it really stands, and it's revised version. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if any apologies for the fact that you
Speaker 1: make things better when you realize they're weak and have holes. Well,
Speaker 1: let me make clear to my listeners. You know it
Speaker 1: should not be underestimated what you've brought to the table here.
Speaker 1: So you know, Abraham Asa talked about the need for belonging,
Speaker 1: you also talked about the need for esteem. In a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, you've kind of linked those two together,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's still important to talk about them as
Speaker 1: separate needs. But nevertheless, it does seem to be the
Speaker 1: case that our self esteem tracks various specific interpersonal things.
Speaker 1: So our self esteem rises or falls depending on our
Speaker 1: interpersonal conditions, probably, you'd argue, more so than our own
Speaker 1: freely fluctuating internal milob Yes, I think so. For the
Speaker 1: first part of my career, I stayed away from the
Speaker 1: topic of self esteem like it was the plague, because
Speaker 1: I didn't understand it at all. I didn't understand what
Speaker 1: the mechanism was that simply made people to want to
Speaker 1: feel good about themselves for no particular reason. As you said,
Speaker 1: we want to feel good rather than bad. So I
Speaker 1: understand that. But if you posit a need for self
Speaker 1: esteem as a fundamental human need, it must have to
Speaker 1: do something really important or it wouldn't have evolved as
Speaker 1: a need. So that's what we got to thinking about.
Speaker 1: What does self esteem do? These changes that we feel
Speaker 1: about ourselves that go up and down as we've walked
Speaker 1: through life, what's their function? And the sociometer theory of
Speaker 1: self esteem suggests that it's really the internal mechanism that
Speaker 1: monitors how we're doing with other people, the degree to
Speaker 1: which they value having relationships with us and thus are
Speaker 1: going to give us certain kinds of affordances that we
Speaker 1: would like to have. So, for me, self esteem is
Speaker 1: primarily a monitor of how well social life is going
Speaker 1: for us, and when it's going badly, our negative feelings
Speaker 1: about ourselves get our attention, and then they motivate us
Speaker 1: to take steps to try to improve whatever the problem is.
Speaker 1: So you're right, As a social psychologist, I see everything
Speaker 1: in terms of social relationships and anything we're doing just
Speaker 1: in our own it doesn't serve any behavioral function or
Speaker 1: get anything for us. Yeah, we do that, but that
Speaker 1: can't be the fundamental thing that drives human behavior or
Speaker 1: else we just sit in our room all of the
Speaker 1: time and just think happy thoughts. We don't do that. Well.
Speaker 1: You know, I appreciate that I have a bunch of
Speaker 1: fault thinks of that. So one is I want to
Speaker 1: make I also want to make clear I really like
Speaker 1: this phrase relational value that you talk about, especially in
Speaker 1: a revised version. So there's different ways that we can
Speaker 1: be of value to others. So there's two fundamental sub
Speaker 1: needs of esteem, I would argue, well, and then Mitch
Speaker 1: Prinstein recently has positive them as two forms of popularity.
Speaker 1: But I think that it maps exactly onto yours as well.
Speaker 1: The need for liking and the need for status. Those
Speaker 1: are two big ways that humans have relational value to others,
Speaker 1: and therefore both can be sources of self esteem. We
Speaker 1: primarily draw our self esteem on both sources. How I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of really dramatic exceptions. You know, what
Speaker 1: about serial killers? Why do they have such high self esteem?
Speaker 1: When killing someone really will not increase your liking and
Speaker 1: probably won't increase your solid status, except for among others
Speaker 1: your two or three other serial killer friends. I think
Speaker 1: when we go to really extreme cases like serial killers,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with pathologies that sort of make the normal
Speaker 1: principles that control human behavior somewhat moot. So if you
Speaker 1: lack empathy entirely, for example, for other people, you don't
Speaker 1: recognize that empathy for other people is going to gain
Speaker 1: you relational value. You're going to have better relationships with
Speaker 1: other people the more empathy you have. But if you're
Speaker 1: a sociopath and have no empathy, then that's just kind
Speaker 1: about the window and you're not actually a functioning, normal
Speaker 1: human being anymore. I like the distinction between the liking
Speaker 1: and the status. We wrote a chapter a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago where we draw a distinction between what we
Speaker 1: call relational value, which has to do with the degree
Speaker 1: to which other people value their relationships with you as
Speaker 1: a person, and instrumental social value, which is more related
Speaker 1: to status that has to do with the actual value
Speaker 1: you bring to groups by virtue of your competencies and
Speaker 1: perhaps your leadership or your resources. And as you said,
Speaker 1: those are two different things. It's one thing to be
Speaker 1: liked and to have value as a person in a relationship,
Speaker 1: and it's another thing for other people to value having
Speaker 1: you around because you give them something that they want.
Speaker 1: They don't care about you as a person, but if
Speaker 1: you're the best member on the team, they want you
Speaker 1: to be on the team, Or if you have money
Speaker 1: to devote to the cause, they want you to be involved,
Speaker 1: or if you have competencies that help the hunting party.
Speaker 1: But those seem to be two very different ways to
Speaker 1: have value. And I wouldn't be surprised at all that
Speaker 1: self esteem is tracking both of those things. We've tended
Speaker 1: to focus on the relational part of that rather than
Speaker 1: the instrumental value that you belong to the groups of
Speaker 1: which you're a member. Okay, this is great. I really
Speaker 1: want to nerd out with you today and I almost
Speaker 1: apologized my listeners ahead of time. I hope that they
Speaker 1: find this stimulating. But I think we can make some
Speaker 1: more finer grain distinctions because you know, within the extra
Speaker 1: version demain, it seems like both of those things could
Speaker 1: be solely within the extra version demean in a sense
Speaker 1: that you know extraversion can be distinguished between two facets, assertiveness,
Speaker 1: which seems to really be tied to instrumental social value interests,
Speaker 1: and the second one is affiliation or you know, affiliation
Speaker 1: slash positive social interaction, a drive for positive social interactions,
Speaker 1: and that can be tied to your relational value one.
Speaker 1: But then there's another dimension of personality that I think
Speaker 1: is different, and that's within the agreeableness to mean, and
Speaker 1: that's compassion. So affiliation is not the same thing as
Speaker 1: compassion and wanting to connect. So actually, let's talk about
Speaker 1: three different fundamental needs. There's the wanting to connect and
Speaker 1: wanting to be liked I think is different, and then
Speaker 1: wanting to have status. I think probably all three are
Speaker 1: roots to self esteem. So all three and it seems
Speaker 1: like when we look at the narcissism construct, and I'm
Speaker 1: working on a theory right now that narcissism that the
Speaker 1: two main forms of vulnerable and grandiose can actually be
Speaker 1: mapped on to the need for liking. An addiction to
Speaker 1: the need for liking and an addiction to the need
Speaker 1: for status is the basic idea. And I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to like raise that idea to you here in public
Speaker 1: in front of fifty thousand people who are listening, you know, like,
Speaker 1: does that make sense? I have never thought of it
Speaker 1: that way, but I can see that vulnerable narcissists are
Speaker 1: more concerned about relationships and being accepted and being liked,
Speaker 1: and grandiose narcissists would be more likely to want to
Speaker 1: have status and respect and to dominate people. I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely right. One difficulty when you get to narcissism,
Speaker 1: even though I think that's perfectly right. Narcissism again is
Speaker 1: one of these sort of aberrations to require a high
Speaker 1: level of self awareness. So during the course of evolution,
Speaker 1: as these mechanisms were evolving to help monitor our social relationships,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether narcissism was relevant at that point
Speaker 1: like it is today, because you have to have a
Speaker 1: high level of cognitive self awareness, which is a much
Speaker 1: more recent evolutionary development. So anytime there's something that human
Speaker 1: beings do that probably they weren't doing for six million
Speaker 1: years of human evolution, then I think all kinds of
Speaker 1: other things come in play, and that may be built
Speaker 1: upon the basic Goald mechanisms that happened to monitor our
Speaker 1: social relationships and be accepted and to have value. But
Speaker 1: then there's all kinds of other funny stuff going on,
Speaker 1: But I think the essence of what you're saying is
Speaker 1: right on. Yeah, I like what you're seeing too. Now,
Speaker 1: are there narcissistic turtles? Are there narcissistic apes? Do we? Actually?
Speaker 1: You know? Do we? I mean when I say apes,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, I mean a specific kind of
Speaker 1: you know, non human You know, do we see narcissism
Speaker 1: in other species? There's no way to know, because we
Speaker 1: can't measure their sense of grandiosity and to know whether
Speaker 1: their self us are inflated because they brought we don't
Speaker 1: have self used. We also don't have a sense of
Speaker 1: their sense of entitlements, which of course is an important
Speaker 1: part of narcissism. So I just don't think it applies
Speaker 1: unless you have highly, highly cognitively evolved animals that can
Speaker 1: have a very complex self concept in which they're evaluating
Speaker 1: themselves positively. They have a sense they deserve more than
Speaker 1: others do and that they have a right to exploit
Speaker 1: other people to get what they want. You know, in animals,
Speaker 1: you see dominant numbers of any species that run over
Speaker 1: the others and control everything, But you don't have the
Speaker 1: sense that comes out of a grandiose self view that
Speaker 1: is so interesting. Like a shark, you know, a shark
Speaker 1: who particularly likes to eat other fish. We wouldn't call
Speaker 1: it a grandiose narcis We would just call it just
Speaker 1: a more of a shark. Yes, yeah, and maybe a
Speaker 1: particularly dominant shark. They don't have a self concept and
Speaker 1: narcism is not really that's cool. So the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way I'm thinking of it, and the reason why
Speaker 1: I use the word addiction is I actually think it.
Speaker 1: You know, it ties it to the rest of all humanity.
Speaker 1: We have a tendency to take certain people and say
Speaker 1: and make it very divisive and say, oh, well, you're
Speaker 1: such a narcissist. I'm not, you know. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a little bit of that in all
Speaker 1: of us, you know. So when I say addiction, I
Speaker 1: mean power and status is inherently rewarding in our human species.
Speaker 1: It's built into all of our brains to some degree
Speaker 1: to be rewarding. Now, doctor Kellner's research has shown that
Speaker 1: the more power you get, the more of an asshole
Speaker 1: you become, or the more you seek power. He would say,
Speaker 1: and I think that Gradio's narcissism in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Is it's this fundamental system, the need for power and
Speaker 1: status or a hierarchy that has kind of been hijacked
Speaker 1: in a way that it's just you just can't you
Speaker 1: can never get enough of it. And then, in terms
Speaker 1: of vulnerable narcissism, the need for a liking system has
Speaker 1: been hijacked in some way, either through you know, childhood
Speaker 1: emotional abuse or you know, usually you get more of
Speaker 1: the abuse in childhood with the vulnerable than the grandiose,
Speaker 1: but that still hijacked this system of like you're always
Speaker 1: on the lookout first signs of potential rejection. But to me,
Speaker 1: these are abnormal alterations of a basic human personality dimension.
Speaker 1: I like that a great deal. I think that's spot on,
Speaker 1: and they're not only aberrations, but it's like the grandiose
Speaker 1: and the vulnerable narcissists are stuck in a rut. You're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, there's parts of both of those things in
Speaker 1: all of us. There's times in which, in a given
Speaker 1: particular situation, we feel too entitled, we're a bit narcissistic,
Speaker 1: or we feel like a vulnerable narcissist. The problem with
Speaker 1: both of those kinds of people is that's their main
Speaker 1: way of interacting with the world and dealing with other people.
Speaker 1: And you can't go through life being that way all
Speaker 1: the time without getting yourself into trouble. That's right, And
Speaker 1: you get yourself in trouble indifferent ways, depending on the
Speaker 1: flavor of narcisms, of vul narcissm, you get to take
Speaker 1: in trouble with yourself, whereas grandiose narcissists tend to get
Speaker 1: in trouble with others more. That's right, internalizing vers externalizing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, but both are troubled to someone or
Speaker 1: some self, whether it's your own self or so. Grannia's
Speaker 1: narcissists are very good deflecting. They're like master ninjas of
Speaker 1: deflecting everything that onto others. It's like the elf of
Speaker 1: the room. Here is the discussion of our president of
Speaker 1: the United States. Do you see any problem with our
Speaker 1: current Now I know that we're not supposed to be diagnosing.
Speaker 1: The President of the APA has said that that's not
Speaker 1: professional practice. But my question actually is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there's any problems there with our
Speaker 1: current president? Is when it comes to the self aspects,
Speaker 1: the aberrations of the self. And it's funny every interview
Speaker 1: that I've had with anyone for the last six months
Speaker 1: has somehow gotten around to that question given the things
Speaker 1: that I study. And yeah, I'm not a clinic a psychologist,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to diagnose. But as you said,
Speaker 1: this is not just a clinical diagnosis. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a continuum of narcissistic tendencies. And I think what I've
Speaker 1: started doing, rather than taking a stand and being accused
Speaker 1: of diagnosing, is simply to describe for people what the
Speaker 1: primary characteristics of a narcissist are. And once you hear those,
Speaker 1: everybody would go with Sure, the President has a great
Speaker 1: number of narcissistic tendencies in terms of having an inflated
Speaker 1: self view, a sense of entitlement, disregard for other people's
Speaker 1: well being at times, tension seeking, a big requirement for
Speaker 1: respect and loyalty, and then the dismissal of anybody who
Speaker 1: doesn't see him as positively as he sees himself. And again,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make that as any kind of
Speaker 1: a clinical diagnosis because I'm not a clinician. I'll just
Speaker 1: simply say, if you look at the descriptors of narcissism,
Speaker 1: and say does the president tend to score highly on
Speaker 1: these You'd say, well, yes he does. Okay, that was
Speaker 1: a very fair answer. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of even orders of the president who when they looked
Speaker 1: at the list of characteristics, they would say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he does score high on these things. Although they might
Speaker 1: you know, they might say well I like him, and
Speaker 1: I support him and I wish him. Well, it would
Speaker 1: be hard to say that he does not have narcissistic characteristics, right. Well,
Speaker 1: people with narcissistic high levels of narcissistic characteristics tend to
Speaker 1: be proud of those characteristics. It's not like they deny them.
Speaker 1: I did a pay article on swear I had. At
Speaker 1: the end, I said, the number one test whether or
Speaker 1: not you're a narcissist is do you think you're a narcissist? Like,
Speaker 1: are you a narcissist? Yes or no? If you say yes,
Speaker 1: you know you're probably a narcissist. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are scared of being a
Speaker 1: narcis They're like, oh my god, I'm so scared of it.
Speaker 1: Am I really? Am I really? And well they might
Speaker 1: be a vulnerable narcissist. But I was going to say,
Speaker 1: they're probably not, you know, because they have they still
Speaker 1: have the self awareness to care about it. Whereas you
Speaker 1: do tend to find, especially particularly grandiose narcissism with gradios narcissism,
Speaker 1: that they reinterpret all those characteristics as positive things like bravery. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's valiance, it's bravery. I tell the truth, I say
Speaker 1: what no one else wants to say I, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: While you're leaving all this pain in your wake with
Speaker 1: other people, you know, you still interpret every thing. And
Speaker 1: so I think grandiose narcissism is actually it involves all
Speaker 1: these mechanisms that allow you, like completely distort your image,
Speaker 1: other people's image, distort reality, to bend to this grandiose
Speaker 1: self that you have absolutely kind of scary to me,
Speaker 1: it is in the extreme view, it is scary. And
Speaker 1: it took me a while to realize that the problem
Speaker 1: is not that the person sees themselves self to positively.
Speaker 1: I mean, because if you kept that in your own head,
Speaker 1: you could be an internal narcissist and it wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: to anybody. It's the sense of entitlement and disregard for
Speaker 1: other people that goes along with seeing yourself so positively
Speaker 1: that creates the problem. I really like that you know
Speaker 1: this model, this framework that you have of relational via
Speaker 1: versus what was the other one called when the instrumental
Speaker 1: social value. It's such a good will you send me
Speaker 1: that paper when we get off. When we up, I
Speaker 1: thought I've read everything you've written, so I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: there's something I didn't read. But this is in that
Speaker 1: Handbook of Status that came out a couple of years
Speaker 1: there's a Handbook of Status. Yes, yes, that's a thing,
Speaker 1: or the Psychology of Social Status. It's an edited book. Wow, Chang,
Speaker 1: Tracy and Anderson. I'm sure that's the beach reading for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you said that was edited by Change Chang, Tracy
Speaker 1: and Tracy. Now they have done I'm glad you've actually
Speaker 1: mentioned their names because they've done some really cool work
Speaker 1: on hubristic versus authentic pride, and I think that that
Speaker 1: relates a lot to our discussions we're talking about here today.
Speaker 1: So hubristic pride, I think we could tie to this
Speaker 1: grandiose narcissism a bit. Now, authentic pride is something different,
Speaker 1: and some could argue I'm a fan of the late Kernis,
Speaker 1: who passed away way too soon, and I really like
Speaker 1: his idea of optimal self esteem. I think there might
Speaker 1: be a link here between optimal self esteem and authentic pride.
Speaker 1: Do you agree? I had not thought about that, but
Speaker 1: I can see that that it is okay to feel
Speaker 1: good about yourself for something that's socially valued, and that's
Speaker 1: sort of optimal self esteem, and that's authentic pride. Yes,
Speaker 1: I did something well and I feel good about it.
Speaker 1: It's not a thing wrong with that. Where it goes
Speaker 1: off the cliff is when you when you take that
Speaker 1: one good thing you did that won the game or
Speaker 1: I had not the award or whatever it is, and
Speaker 1: you generalize that into believing not only are you good
Speaker 1: at that thing, but you're a special person overall. That's
Speaker 1: when it becomes ubristic pride. That's when it begins to
Speaker 1: bleed into narcissism. That's when your self esteem is more
Speaker 1: inflated that it should be. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: some people begin to feel badly about being proud of
Speaker 1: their accomplishments. But there's nothing wrong with being feeling good
Speaker 1: about the things that you do. That's nature's way of
Speaker 1: telling you to keep on doing good. Then you're valued
Speaker 1: by other people so momentary they call authentic pride. I
Speaker 1: never liked that term because that implied there's some kind
Speaker 1: of inauthentic pride. But what they mean there is it's
Speaker 1: pride about an actual accomplishment, not just a general sense
Speaker 1: that you're as a human being. Yeah, I've seen the
Speaker 1: phrase you sometimes I like, and that's genuine pride. Even
Speaker 1: then makes it sound like there's some disingenuine ride heuristic
Speaker 1: pride is genuine and just misplaced overgeneralized. I see what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah, so Trump is is actually authentic. He's
Speaker 1: an authentic jerk. That's a good I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about we're working on some work on authenticity right now.
Speaker 1: That sort of makes that point, you know. The gumnistic
Speaker 1: psychologists say that we all should always be authentic, and
Speaker 1: it's an important virtue to be an authentic person. But
Speaker 1: we each have negative characteristics. So the question is should
Speaker 1: I behave authentically with the awful parts of myself? I
Speaker 1: would say no, that you don't want a world in
Speaker 1: which everybody's being authentic. That would be terrible to act
Speaker 1: consistently with your darker nature and your negative attitudes and
Speaker 1: your base motives. No, you have to override that you
Speaker 1: don't want to be authentic. That's hilarious. I'm as you
Speaker 1: probably can tell them. Big fan of the humanistic psychologists.
Speaker 1: I mentioned MASL earlier in this in this podcast, and
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, sometimes they were too overly optimistic,
Speaker 1: particular Carl Rogers. You know, he really saw the best,
Speaker 1: and I think that's actually to his credit. You know,
Speaker 1: he really saw the best in all his patients, but
Speaker 1: he really maybe downplayed evil a little bit too much,
Speaker 1: as in saying, you know, it's evil is a thing
Speaker 1: in some people and at certain times, under certain circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, it's something maybe something we're all capable of,
Speaker 1: but it is something that that does exist. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a very minority, but it does. But this question
Speaker 1: of authenticity is really interesting to me, and I definitely
Speaker 1: don't No one has all the answers for this stuff.
Speaker 1: But I created and I've been validating a scale I
Speaker 1: called the Whole Person's Scale, where I literally take some
Speaker 1: of these humanistic ideas and I just put it into
Speaker 1: the scale, Like I am, a fully functioning human is
Speaker 1: one of the items on the scale of another item
Speaker 1: is I feel whole and then I feel empty is
Speaker 1: the reverse coded version of it. But another item on
Speaker 1: there is I accept all sides of myself, even my
Speaker 1: dark aspects. So there's there's this, I think, something that's
Speaker 1: very valuable from these human psychologists, this acceptance aspect. Now,
Speaker 1: acceptance doesn't mean, Carl Rogers said, you know, the first
Speaker 1: step to changing yourself is accepting yourself. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: still good for in terms in your search for authenticity
Speaker 1: to really, you know, not do what grandiose narcisists do,
Speaker 1: which is deflect everything or you know, and not to
Speaker 1: have experiential avoidance as the act approach would talk about.
Speaker 1: But maybe a good first step is to becoming a
Speaker 1: full person really is to accept this kind of these
Speaker 1: gnalledge sides of yourself and say, yeah, that's part of
Speaker 1: my that's who I am as well. But this is
Speaker 1: another interesting question. Can you accept this stuff but not
Speaker 1: integrate it and not make it part of yourself. The
Speaker 1: thing is we have more of a choice than people
Speaker 1: realize in terms of what we want to integrate into ourselves,
Speaker 1: even though it might be a part of our constitution. Right, Well, yes,
Speaker 1: but I see I would say it a little differently.
Speaker 1: I think that people have to accept all parts of
Speaker 1: themselves and have to be honest to themselves about their
Speaker 1: good and their best best aspects, and those bad aspects
Speaker 1: are integrated into their view of their self. They may
Speaker 1: want to change them, they can work on them. So
Speaker 1: in that sense, they're sort of authentic in their own mind.
Speaker 1: They're not denying anything. They know they're good and they're bad.
Speaker 1: Where the authenticity is the thing breaks down for me
Speaker 1: is that we should not act on all parts of ourselves.
Speaker 1: Some people who endorse authenticity would say, you always want
Speaker 1: to behave consistently with who you really are, your actual traits,
Speaker 1: and be consistent with that, And I would say, no,
Speaker 1: you've you've got to resist acting consistently with the parts
Speaker 1: of yourself you're bad. That means you have to know
Speaker 1: they're there and you have to accept them as part
Speaker 1: of you, and you want to change them, will work
Speaker 1: on them and not be bad. That's great, But just
Speaker 1: don't be authentically all the time if it's going to
Speaker 1: hurt other people. Well, this is It's interesting because I
Speaker 1: think it's good to make a distinction between part well,
Speaker 1: you said parts of yourselves. There's parts of your biology
Speaker 1: and then but that doesn't have to be part of yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: we're back into where we started at the very beginning
Speaker 1: about what we mean by self there, so let's use
Speaker 1: the word somehow view of yourself or your identity. I
Speaker 1: would say that my bad parts of myself are part
Speaker 1: of my identity to the extent that i'd recognize that
Speaker 1: they are really me. Because we all know people who
Speaker 1: do bad things and say, well, that wasn't really me,
Speaker 1: I can say, yes, it was you. It really was.
Speaker 1: Now you might want to change that, but it is you.
Speaker 1: Accepted at you, and then work on it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to say, well, you know, I abused my partner,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't really me. That's not really what I'm like. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is what you're like, so accept it and then
Speaker 1: work on it. Yeah. No, I tell you here you
Speaker 1: how can we link this to the evolutionary psychologist emerging
Speaker 1: view of sells as modules. You know, I'm not completely
Speaker 1: convinced by that by that approach, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring it up here to see how it links to
Speaker 1: your own work and if you've thought about it, like
Speaker 1: Rick Robert Kurzman, as some does, has written a book
Speaker 1: like everyone else is a hypocrite. But you yes, I
Speaker 1: like that book a lot. Well, I like the book too.
Speaker 1: I think that it downplays the role of the of
Speaker 1: the executive, of the central executive, Like I think that
Speaker 1: approach ignores that we do have something called the lateral
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex. You know that they can inhibit some of
Speaker 1: these things. We're not just like these automatons they could
Speaker 1: just walk around like, oh, I actively this sub self
Speaker 1: automatically because I see this stimulus. Oh I like, we're
Speaker 1: not like these ADHD modules. Yeah, well, I really the
Speaker 1: word sub self always throws me because it sounds like it's,
Speaker 1: you know, a part of yourself and in those senses
Speaker 1: that it's part of you as a functioning organism. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it is. But I think that the point
Speaker 1: that he makes is that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things going on in the brain that are three our reactions,
Speaker 1: our behaviors, and our thoughts and our emotion that we
Speaker 1: are not consciously aware of. I mean, and everybody would
Speaker 1: met there's a lot of non conscious things happening, and
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily integrated it's not that we don't have
Speaker 1: an executive that control conscious parts of ourselves. Things that
Speaker 1: we're conscious of we can control. But I think his
Speaker 1: argument is there's a lot of stuff that's just excluding
Speaker 1: out of us and behaviorally that we can't easily control
Speaker 1: because we can't catch it in action because it's happening
Speaker 1: so non consciously. And I'm sort of persuaded by that
Speaker 1: that there's just a lot of things and they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily well integrated. He talks about them like apps on
Speaker 1: the phone, where your weather app and your map's app
Speaker 1: and your news app, when they use some of the
Speaker 1: same architecture, but they don't have to be consistent with
Speaker 1: each other or coordinated all, and they're just performing different functions. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean there's not conscious parts of ourselves that
Speaker 1: we regulate very deliberately, but there's a lot of non
Speaker 1: conscious things going on as well. Well. That is certainly true.
Speaker 1: But it's also is true that we can actively and
Speaker 1: willfully try to have a harmonia self well, but only
Speaker 1: self that's harmonious in terms of the things that you're
Speaker 1: actually conscious of. That's right, that's right. So if I
Speaker 1: have some non conscious reactions I'm not aware of that
Speaker 1: make me determine that I get angry in certain kinds
Speaker 1: of situations. And I know I'm getting angry in those situations,
Speaker 1: but I don't have any idea why. It's much more
Speaker 1: difficult for me to integrate whatever that process is within
Speaker 1: my harmonious view of my conscious view of myself. So
Speaker 1: I don't disagree. It's just it's awfully hard to pull
Speaker 1: the content of things in that you're not consciously aware of. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes trouble with your definition of self and
Speaker 1: understanding then what is not self? Well, again, that goes
Speaker 1: back to definition of self. If you go back to
Speaker 1: my original thing, we're just talking about a cognitive apparatus
Speaker 1: that has no content. And so maybe the way I
Speaker 1: better say it is that there's an awful lot of
Speaker 1: things affecting your behavior that you have no conscious awareness of.
Speaker 1: They're not part of your mental self, they are part
Speaker 1: of you biologically. There's all kinds of crazy things happening
Speaker 1: in our brains. But I'm not willing to say that
Speaker 1: everything that's happening in our brain is part of ourself
Speaker 1: good except except in the most because in that case,
Speaker 1: then all animals do have selves. New babies have selves,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to go there. The self has
Speaker 1: to deal with conscious processes or it becomes meaningless psychology.
Speaker 1: That's the only definition of self. Like I said, there's
Speaker 1: seven different definitions, so there's are conscious. This is important.
Speaker 1: So these things that Kurtzman's talking about, these modules, that
Speaker 1: they're not self. Most of them are not. So they
Speaker 1: when they become conscious, they might be part of self,
Speaker 1: but they're not self. Well, that's really important because people,
Speaker 1: some embolish colleges that Kendrick have used the phrase set.
Speaker 1: They have called those things those modules sub cells. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm trying to clarify this because I think
Speaker 1: there's confusion in the field between the stuff. Okay, I
Speaker 1: like your distinction between conscious and unconscious. We could still
Speaker 1: so I acknowledge. I do fully acknowledge there are these
Speaker 1: all these apps running in the background. Robert Wright was
Speaker 1: on my podcast recently and he was discussing his new book,
Speaker 1: Why Buddhism Is True. And I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: read his book yet, but you would love it. I
Speaker 1: see the Buddha behind you on the bookshelf there, but
Speaker 1: you really would love it. He does a really masterful
Speaker 1: job of integrating evolutionary psychology and those ideas with what
Speaker 1: Buddhism can offer you, what meditation can offer you. It
Speaker 1: offers you this opportunity to not be so ruled by
Speaker 1: all these evolutionary drives and instincts that have evolved in
Speaker 1: another time and place far a long time ago, to
Speaker 1: maybe serve different purposes and to be adapted for different
Speaker 1: reasons than they are helpful today. So yeah, and I
Speaker 1: would think I think that's true. And I also think
Speaker 1: that as people learn to meditate, they are as controlled
Speaker 1: with all of their random self thought a sort of
Speaker 1: leading them in crazy directions. They begin to recognize how
Speaker 1: scattered and out of control their mind is, and that
Speaker 1: they're following thoughts that don't have any validity. So it
Speaker 1: kind of worked at both ends of the continuum. Some
Speaker 1: of the most basic motives and values that evolved in
Speaker 1: the past. Become aware of those things arising up even
Speaker 1: though you don't want them to. But it also makes
Speaker 1: you aware of all of these highly conceptualized self use
Speaker 1: plans and ideas and worries that are controlling your behavior.
Speaker 1: That if you're not quiet in your own mind and
Speaker 1: watch them. You're not even going to be aware of them.
Speaker 1: You can't then control them in a harmonious way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that you're talking about, Like rumination can be
Speaker 1: very detrimental. And my colleagues have been taking in eu
Speaker 1: scientific approach and of distinguishing between the brain air's associated rumination,
Speaker 1: the braina air a sysial with more creative imagination. I
Speaker 1: would hate for the creative imagination to go away if
Speaker 1: we got rid of the self, because it would go
Speaker 1: away if we get so I don't think we want
Speaker 1: to get rid of the self completely. Oh no, you
Speaker 1: said it's a curse. Well, I said it's a that's
Speaker 1: like you come up with a revised one here in
Speaker 1: the podcast. Is self aware. All of the achievements of
Speaker 1: human civilization that we consider uniquely human required self awareness.
Speaker 1: Whether we're talking about health care, or religion or philosophy, government,
Speaker 1: all of that requires self awareness. If you ask the question,
Speaker 1: why are human beings so different than all other animals?
Speaker 1: The other animals are living in a state of nature,
Speaker 1: just like they've lived for millions of years, and we've
Speaker 1: created this crazy environment around this. All of that is
Speaker 1: traceable to our ability to think consciously about ourselves and
Speaker 1: to make plans and to coordinate and to consider options.
Speaker 1: So no, we don't want to get rid of the self.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't have air conditioning, and I live in the South,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't have flush toilets, so we wouldn't have cars,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to go live in a tree.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you said that we need self awareness.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that thank you. Who So, my mentor
Speaker 1: in grad school, Jerome Singer, has this idea called positive
Speaker 1: constructive daydreaming, which is very conducive to creativity and flourishing.
Speaker 1: So you need the self for that. It was self
Speaker 1: aworder self awareness. So good. I like this. So self
Speaker 1: esteem is one particularly evolved function of the self. Can
Speaker 1: I phrase it that way? It's one. Maybe imagination is
Speaker 1: another evolved function, but self esteem is a particularly evalve
Speaker 1: function that you're already really evolved to track, you know,
Speaker 1: interpersonal value of I would even say it a little
Speaker 1: differently because my hunch is that the beginnings of the
Speaker 1: evolution of self esteem were before we had a conscious
Speaker 1: ability to think about ourselves. Because I get the sense
Speaker 1: that animals have positive and negative feelings when they're accepted
Speaker 1: and rejected. For social animal, they have emotional responses and
Speaker 1: behavioral reactions when they're being in versus excluded by other
Speaker 1: members of their species. So I think that basic mechanism
Speaker 1: for monitoring your social relationships was already there, But then
Speaker 1: once we became self aware, came able to think about
Speaker 1: ourselves consciously, then it became what we think of it
Speaker 1: self esteem. Today, I can actually think about my good
Speaker 1: and bad parts by these people are rejected or why
Speaker 1: I failed, and it affected my views of class. But
Speaker 1: the basic mechanism, I think we're there before that. That
Speaker 1: is so interesting because the need for belonging we share
Speaker 1: that with other animals. And can we say that the
Speaker 1: need for esteem we shared with other animals to some
Speaker 1: rudimentary degree, like sure, like hierarchy and some sort of
Speaker 1: social status. You see that with alpha you know, chimps
Speaker 1: and stuff. So that's goind to exist as well, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the status side and the inclusion side. I mean, even
Speaker 1: if it's a status thing, I still have to be
Speaker 1: able to get along with the other members of my troop.
Speaker 1: If I'm a chimpanzee, they can't kick me out because
Speaker 1: they kicked me out, I'm not going to make it
Speaker 1: so I have to behave myself and play by all
Speaker 1: of the rules of the group. Even when status is
Speaker 1: not involved. Acceptance and belonging is still going to be
Speaker 1: important for social animals. Don't drive me out of the pack. Gotcha,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. I read in the Need for Belonging
Speaker 1: article you wrote with Roy Baummeinster, which is one of
Speaker 1: my I mean, it's one of the most highly cited
Speaker 1: papers of all time. So for me to just say
Speaker 1: I like that paper would be the understatement of the century.
Speaker 1: And I want to add it is It's been cited
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount, and I think about two thirds of
Speaker 1: the citations were unnecessary. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is people will say human beings have a desire for
Speaker 1: social acceptance and belonging, and then they cite baum Meister
Speaker 1: and Leary nineteen ninety five, which strikes me a little
Speaker 1: bit like a biologist saying mammals have a need for
Speaker 1: oxygen and then citing somebody. It's so obvious. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: And to be fair to Maslow, if someone's just citing
Speaker 1: that sentence, they probably should say Maslow or Andler. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Alfred Adler Okay, good. I really like you brought up
Speaker 1: because Maslow read adwear a lot and was influenced by
Speaker 1: him a lot, and also AdWords ideas about power. Can
Speaker 1: we talk about some of AdWords ideas about power? We can?
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about them, but okay, then I'll
Speaker 1: table that. But yeah, so that's really interesting if they're
Speaker 1: citing you know, more fleshed out theory and data. I
Speaker 1: think your paper it's very very worthy of citing, and
Speaker 1: it really brought to the foreground in the field of
Speaker 1: this for research, stimulate research on this topic. I'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about something related to all this that you've
Speaker 1: also studied that I'm fascinated with, and that's self presentation strategies.
Speaker 1: And let's pick one. Imposter syndrome. Now, you've kind of
Speaker 1: found that it's not all what it may seem to
Speaker 1: be in the sense that people who have imposter syndrome impositive,
Speaker 1: it might not be exactly the way they present it
Speaker 1: to be. That's correct, because most people when they talk
Speaker 1: about the impostor syndrome, they describe it people who are
Speaker 1: afraid of being found out to be as incompetent as
Speaker 1: they believe they are. They think other people have overestimated
Speaker 1: their abilities, and so they say they walk around feeling
Speaker 1: like an impostor. The irony is that these people who
Speaker 1: supposedly are afraid to be found out to be lacking,
Speaker 1: readily admit to other people, I'm not as good as
Speaker 1: you think I am. Well, that doesn't gel. I mean,
Speaker 1: if people are afraid of being found out as an impostor,
Speaker 1: you don't walk around and say to other people, I'm
Speaker 1: not as good as you think I am. So what
Speaker 1: we found is the possibility that the thing that we
Speaker 1: normally think of as the apostor syndrome is a self
Speaker 1: presentational strategy. It's an effort to lower other people's expectations
Speaker 1: of you so that they won't be disappointed, so that
Speaker 1: you won't let them down, so they won't expect too much,
Speaker 1: so you won't fail in a sense, because if I
Speaker 1: don't have any expectation of you, then you know, no
Speaker 1: matter what you do, I'm not going to conspect the failure.
Speaker 1: So it's more complicated. I'm not saying there are not
Speaker 1: people who walk around out feeling like an impostor and
Speaker 1: don't tell anybody that's true. But in the literature they
Speaker 1: don't distinguish that from people who walk around saying I
Speaker 1: feel like so much of an impostor I'm not as
Speaker 1: good as you think I am. So there's a self presentation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and people attracts low self esteem. Yes, So again we
Speaker 1: bring in the interpersonal It's still consistent with this theory.
Speaker 1: It's part of this overarching framework that you know, if
Speaker 1: you don't expect to be of much relational value to others,
Speaker 1: you may be more likely to have higher imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I ran that study, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to share this with you for the first time on
Speaker 1: the Psychology podcast. I was very curious whether vulnerable narcisism
Speaker 1: would track imposter syndrome. And I found a correlation of
Speaker 1: point seven to eight. Oh my goodness between the two
Speaker 1: not the same thing. Then yeah, well, well I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's a see because I also found a
Speaker 1: very strong croistwein vulnerable narcissism and authenticity measures, you know,
Speaker 1: the twelve item authenticity scale measure. So self alienation is
Speaker 1: one of the facets of the authenticity scale. So there's
Speaker 1: something going on here with you know, the system of
Speaker 1: things where you're very very unsure self a very you
Speaker 1: know uncertain, A very uncertain self tracks a lot of
Speaker 1: things of self presentation strategies, including imposter syndrome. Do you
Speaker 1: know of any other self present strategies like imposter syndrome that?
Speaker 1: What are some other in that class? Well, people typically
Speaker 1: talk about different strategies in terms of what's the image
Speaker 1: that you're trying to project. The strategy of exemplification, for example,
Speaker 1: would be wanting to be seen as somebody who's sort
Speaker 1: of upstanding and responsible and moral and conscientious. So it's
Speaker 1: an effort to it's an effort to be seen as
Speaker 1: a conscientious, upstanding person. Self promotion as a strateg is
Speaker 1: an effort to go through life being seen as competent.
Speaker 1: In ratiation, I don't like that term for this, but
Speaker 1: the strategy of ingratiation is going through life trying to
Speaker 1: be seen as a likable person. So on almost any
Speaker 1: dimension you can think of, there are times in which
Speaker 1: people want to be perceived in that particular way, including
Speaker 1: in negative ways. Sometimes you want to be perceived as
Speaker 1: helpless so other people will help you, or as intimidating
Speaker 1: so that people leave you alone. So I mean, so
Speaker 1: much of life, so much of the consequences and outcomes
Speaker 1: we receive in life have to do with how we're
Speaker 1: perceived by other people, So we manage our oppression get
Speaker 1: what want. So this seems like vulnerable narcisism is more
Speaker 1: tied to ingratiation, I would argue, and self handicapping is
Speaker 1: another one I just thought of that I think is
Speaker 1: probably more vulnerable. But then grandiose is more the image
Speaker 1: projection of you know. So, I think that there's these
Speaker 1: two main classes of self presentage strategies. Ones that inflate
Speaker 1: the maintain and inflated image of self and those that
Speaker 1: maybe not maintain a negative Well, I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: wants to maintain a lower image of themselves, but they
Speaker 1: want to. What they really want to do is avoid
Speaker 1: They're trying to avoid something they're trying to avoid, like success.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's almost like vulnerable narcissists are are
Speaker 1: ashamed or have shame for being great, even though they
Speaker 1: want to be great sometimes and sometimes it's to avoid responsibility.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a dependency coming through where I want other
Speaker 1: people to be there for me and to support me
Speaker 1: and to help me, so that there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of supplication that's involved. That's so interesting. Well, you said, like,
Speaker 1: what's the image you're trying to project? And I'm trying
Speaker 1: to for me, it's very clear with grandiose narcisism what
Speaker 1: the image they're trying to project is. But what is
Speaker 1: the image that vulnerable narcissts are trying to project. I
Speaker 1: think as a combination, I'm not threatening. I need a
Speaker 1: certain amount of help. It's not that I'm incompetent as
Speaker 1: a s but I want other people to be around
Speaker 1: or some so interesting. And that's why we find in
Speaker 1: the attachment literature we find a strong correlation between vulnerable
Speaker 1: narcisism and both avoidance and anxious attachment, and gradiot narcisses
Speaker 1: is actually not crurrelated with those insecure forms of attachment. Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: so this all makes sense. Everything we talked about today
Speaker 1: kind of we came up with it. We came up
Speaker 1: with an integrated, integrated theory of the self today. Well,
Speaker 1: and all of my interests in all of this started
Speaker 1: with self presentation in grad school. It was an awareness
Speaker 1: that's so much social behavior. No matter what else we're doing,
Speaker 1: it's not that we go through life just trying to
Speaker 1: make impressions on other people. But no matter what else
Speaker 1: we're doing, we keep an eye on how are other
Speaker 1: people going to regard us in this interaction and is
Speaker 1: that going to facilitate or impede whatever my goals are?
Speaker 1: And so you know, we're never indifferent to how we're
Speaker 1: perceived by other people. Sometimes we're not thinking consciously about it,
Speaker 1: but at any given moment, we all know something can
Speaker 1: go badly wrong where we look like a fool, we
Speaker 1: look at moral people question our judgment, and then all
Speaker 1: the kind of defenses come up. So that awareness of
Speaker 1: the social image and its importance is what led me
Speaker 1: into the interest in belonging, because so much of a
Speaker 1: belonging is facilitated by being perceived as a certain kind
Speaker 1: of person. That's what moved me into the sociometer thing,
Speaker 1: what moved me into the curse of the self initially
Speaker 1: because people were too worried what other people thought of them.
Speaker 1: So I have really always seen these internal self processes
Speaker 1: as working in the service of our social interactions and
Speaker 1: relationship makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about religion
Speaker 1: and morality for a second. Sure, it's a topic I
Speaker 1: know you're interested in, what, yes, how well tell me
Speaker 1: in what ways are you interested in that topic and
Speaker 1: its relationship to the self. Well, I'm sort of. I'm
Speaker 1: interested to some extent in the fact that religion and
Speaker 1: morality seem to have emerged in part to help to
Speaker 1: control excessive self centeredness of the ills of society and
Speaker 1: the ills of group living occur when people become so
Speaker 1: focused on themselves that they disregard the well being of
Speaker 1: other people. And if it's in your own tribe or
Speaker 1: clan or group, that's going to be disastrous. Something has
Speaker 1: to keep us from being excessively selfish and excessively egoistic.
Speaker 1: And so you know, if left our own devices, if
Speaker 1: it didn't backfire, we would all just want to take
Speaker 1: everything we could possibly get. We would all be sort
Speaker 1: of entitled and narcissistic. Something pulls us back, and it
Speaker 1: tends to be things that are in the domains that
Speaker 1: we think of as morality. So if you say, why
Speaker 1: do we have morality and religion, I think it's to
Speaker 1: control excessive selfishness At the most broad level. Who invented
Speaker 1: that using evolution? Well, well, evolutionary psychologists certainly say that
Speaker 1: some of the most basic moral codes, and even among
Speaker 1: other animals, you get things where you get the sense
Speaker 1: that they balance their own self interests against the rest
Speaker 1: of the group. Because if I take all the meat,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're attacked, you're killed or thrown out.
Speaker 1: You've got to sort of go along with your other
Speaker 1: members of your group. But I think, even more in
Speaker 1: a more modern sense, how do we met people not
Speaker 1: to take advantage of others, not to kill others for
Speaker 1: their own needs, or to take their land, take their food,
Speaker 1: take their cattle. Something has to lead us not to
Speaker 1: be so selfish that we just create harm everywhere we go.
Speaker 1: I see most of the ills of modern society is
Speaker 1: fundamentally problems of excessive selfishness. Whether you're all crime and
Speaker 1: greed and murder and rape and plunder and theft, are
Speaker 1: all just be believing that my interests and what I
Speaker 1: want are more important your interests. And religion and morality originally,
Speaker 1: setting aside all the dogmatic stuff in religion was there
Speaker 1: to say you can't do that. There's certain rules about
Speaker 1: fairness and lack of harm, and treating other people well
Speaker 1: and keeping an eye on others help their regulate that
Speaker 1: inherent selfishness in every organs. That is so interesting I
Speaker 1: think you're quite right. Excessive selfishness. Well, you know, my
Speaker 1: colleagues here at pen in the criminology department just recently
Speaker 1: developed a new selfishness scale and we found it was
Speaker 1: almost perfectly correlated with the Dark Triad measure, you know,
Speaker 1: the confluence of narcissism, psychopathy, and machamalianism. And I would argue,
Speaker 1: we just collected data that are relevant to that issue,
Speaker 1: because I believe that the thing that makes the three
Speaker 1: things in the Dark Triad cohere is selfishness. That's the
Speaker 1: thing that all three of those have in common, despite
Speaker 1: their differences, because they also share lack of empathy, for example.
Speaker 1: But I think that abject selfishness lies at the core
Speaker 1: of those three things. I like this, and you said
Speaker 1: abject selfishness. Now, I think we can actually distinguish, and
Speaker 1: Maslow did and what's his name, the Saints Eric from
Speaker 1: distinguished the healthy selfishness. So I think it's actually an
Speaker 1: important distinction being between healthy selfishness and abject selfishness or
Speaker 1: the kind the kind that is associated with Dark triad. Yes,
Speaker 1: And the way I think of the healthiness thing is
Speaker 1: there's a normative level of selfishness that we all accept
Speaker 1: with each other, you're going to pay your own rent
Speaker 1: before you give all your money away. We all know
Speaker 1: we're going to look at other people, are going to
Speaker 1: look out for themselves primarily first. So there's a normative
Speaker 1: level we all accept. It's perfectly okay to be interested
Speaker 1: in yourself before you're interested in other people. It's when
Speaker 1: you step over that line then you're into that abject
Speaker 1: to selfishness thing. But yes, you're right, there's an optimal, normal, healthy,
Speaker 1: normative level of selfishness, right. You know, study of great
Speaker 1: people of moral courage, like really really high levels, you
Speaker 1: find they are masters at balancing self interest with other interests. Now,
Speaker 1: of that, but there are other interests, there are other
Speaker 1: things they do are they've they've made it so that's
Speaker 1: so well aligned with what they're intrinsically motivated to do.
Speaker 1: And I think that's an important distinction from the kind
Speaker 1: of self serving self enhancement you get from narcissists. So
Speaker 1: we actually found what we did a factor analysis of
Speaker 1: grandiose and vulnerable. We found that self self sacrificing self
Speaker 1: enhancement loaded about equally on both factors. It's something that
Speaker 1: seems to be in common amongst multiple forms of narcissism
Speaker 1: is that they use, you know, helping these grandiose I'm
Speaker 1: the best at helping, you know, like they use, but
Speaker 1: it's not coming from a real genuine place of wanting
Speaker 1: to really help a person. It's coming from a place
Speaker 1: of primarily serving that self esteem function. So this all
Speaker 1: makes sense, This all makes sense. Lastly, I want to
Speaker 1: just ask you what are some tips ways that people
Speaker 1: can transcend their ego in the ways, you know, not
Speaker 1: getting rid of the self Like I really like the
Speaker 1: model of the quiet ego. I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: aware of the emerging research on the quiet ego, some
Speaker 1: really good research on that topic. So how can we
Speaker 1: have more of a quiet ego? I would ask? Well,
Speaker 1: And in fact, Kirk Brown, you know who developed the
Speaker 1: mindfulness scale, and I just edited the book on hypo
Speaker 1: egoic Phenomena. That quiet ego term came from a conference
Speaker 1: in flag Staff at Arizona a number of years ago.
Speaker 1: It's a great term. I like the word hypogoing a
Speaker 1: low level of ego. We all have to be self focused,
Speaker 1: we have to be concerned with ourselves, but how do
Speaker 1: we keep it at a minimal level where we're able
Speaker 1: to function well as human beings, but it doesn't impose
Speaker 1: on everybody else. And that and my view, that's one
Speaker 1: of the primary challenges of life for everybody. How do
Speaker 1: I pursue what I want in a way that's not
Speaker 1: excessively self preoccupied and going. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: have any any great tips for the average person in
Speaker 1: terms of how do you balance that? How do you
Speaker 1: have a quiet ego except to concentrate on it and
Speaker 1: realize when your own self interest, your own ego, your
Speaker 1: own self preoccupation is creating problems for you or others,
Speaker 1: and then you just sort of monitor it and control it.
Speaker 1: There's that executive function coming in saying I don't have
Speaker 1: to run over other people to achieve my goals in life.
Speaker 1: What are some practices people can do? Have you ever
Speaker 1: thought about ring a self help book? Well, the book
Speaker 1: I'm working on right now is called Toward a Less
Speaker 1: Egoic World, and it's not a self help book exactly,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of an expersay on the impact of
Speaker 1: excessive egoic thought and selfishness on societal problems. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how self helpy it's going to be. I'm
Speaker 1: only about a quarter of the way through throwing junk
Speaker 1: down on pages, so it's going to be a while.
Speaker 1: But I've given a lot of thought to this because
Speaker 1: I think so many problems in personal life and in
Speaker 1: social life are egoic problems. And what do we do
Speaker 1: to tone people back a little bit? The first just
Speaker 1: simply make people aware that this is a problem, and
Speaker 1: if we can we can minimize that, then some of
Speaker 1: these problems will well be reduced somewhat. You're not going
Speaker 1: to get rid of them. I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of solutions right now. You mentioned Buddhism before. I'm not
Speaker 1: a Buddhist, but I do meditate it. I found that
Speaker 1: meditation is a good way to sort of reduce the
Speaker 1: self awareness to some extent, the self preoccupation I don't
Speaker 1: think I have. I don't think I watch out for
Speaker 1: myself less than I used to. But I don't push
Speaker 1: my own interest when it's not in mind other people's
Speaker 1: best interests as much as I used to because I'm aware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the awareness aspect is huge, and I think that because
Speaker 1: the self awareness aspect can be so beneficial, I do think,
Speaker 1: you know, there's further evidence that's for their evidence for
Speaker 1: suggesting we should make this distinction between what evolution's psychologists
Speaker 1: call sub selves and the what social psychologists call the self. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that there can be kind of a you know anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's helpful. What's the word you use
Speaker 1: that you like better than quite ego ecoic hypo egoing
Speaker 1: hyphenated h y p o hyphen e g o I C.
Speaker 1: That's not as sexy, No, but it's more likely to
Speaker 1: get published in a journal. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally
Speaker 1: respect that. And it's not and we're not talking about egotism,
Speaker 1: and we're not talking about egoism. We're talking about egoic egoicism,
Speaker 1: which is a sort of a selfish self preoccupation, because
Speaker 1: you can you can be very low in egotism and
Speaker 1: still be very self preoccupied, Like a highly depressed person
Speaker 1: is highly egoic, even though they might have negative, very
Speaker 1: negative self view. Vulnerable vulnerable narcissism is yes, is egoic, Yes,
Speaker 1: very egoic, even though it's not egotistical in the general
Speaker 1: sense of the word. So this phrase incorporates both forms
Speaker 1: of narcissism. Then yes, good, good, I really like that. Oh, well, well, Mark,
Speaker 1: I just want to say this has been such an
Speaker 1: honor for me to be able to I've wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about a lot of these issues with you for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and I thought what better way
Speaker 1: than for everyone to hear you know and great fun.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody else is really interested in
Speaker 1: our ramblings, but I have certainly enjoyed it a great deal,
Speaker 1: both here we have to say and for you to
Speaker 1: force me to think about what I think. Thanks Mark, Well,
Speaker 1: I look for fair enough by vice versa vice versa. Well,
Speaker 1: I look forward to reading your new book when it
Speaker 1: comes out, and to continue reading your work. So thank you.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it. Thanks so much, Scott. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Also, please add a reading and review of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a
Speaker 1: great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time
Speaker 1: for more on the mind of brain, behavior and creativity.