Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, 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. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Just
Speaker 1: a quick note that today's episode is going to be
Speaker 1: a rerun the next season of the Psychology Podcast we'll
Speaker 1: begin later this year. I haven't taken any break in
Speaker 1: five years of doing this podcast, so I thought it
Speaker 1: was about time to take a step back and think
Speaker 1: about how it can make this a better experience for
Speaker 1: you all. Until then, enjoy these episodes from our archives.
Speaker 1: So today I'm really glad to have Elene Aaron on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Elaine is a research associate at State University
Speaker 1: of New York, Stonybrook. She's the author of The Undervalued Self,
Speaker 1: along with numerous other books, including The Highly Sensitive Person,
Speaker 1: The Highly Sensitive Child, and The Highly Sensitive Person in Love.
Speaker 1: She began probing emotional and relationship problems from the nature
Speaker 1: side with her study of high sensitivity and inherited trait
Speaker 1: in twenty percent of the population. Now, Aaron turns to
Speaker 1: the nurture aspect and the critical problem of self worth.
Speaker 1: Thank you Laine for talking to me today. I'm glad
Speaker 1: to be here. Scott really nice. Yeah, I've been a
Speaker 1: long time admirer of your research from many aspects, you know,
Speaker 1: as a as a researcher and scientist, but also as
Speaker 1: someone who I would identify as highly sensitive. So thank
Speaker 1: you for you know when to start off with, thank
Speaker 1: you for all the great work you've done this topic
Speaker 1: and how much you've really transformed lots of people's lives.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Thank you. I especially like talking to
Speaker 1: highly sensitive men who'll we'll say they're high sensitive. I
Speaker 1: know that the best interviewers and writers almost all are
Speaker 1: highly sensitive. But sometimes I'll get on a radio or
Speaker 1: TV show and some men will be giving a really
Speaker 1: hard time about the research and making a lot of jokes,
Speaker 1: and then I'll just say, you know, you might be
Speaker 1: highly sensitive yourself. Most of the best interviewers are. But
Speaker 1: I've found most of men have a real complex about
Speaker 1: sensitivity because it's difficult in our culture. To be highly sensitive,
Speaker 1: and fifty percent of people who are highly sensitive or men,
Speaker 1: it's the same for men and women. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's mostly a female thing. Well, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: I didn't expect to actually start off with that, but
Speaker 1: since you w in that direction, I'd love to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that. So we do have
Speaker 1: these like masculine stereotypes, and we have this, like you know,
Speaker 1: you with like the alpha male versus beta male distinction,
Speaker 1: and it's such a and I've written about this before,
Speaker 1: how it's such an oversimplify binary distinction that is just
Speaker 1: not really in line with It doesn't really show the
Speaker 1: full possibilities of what people are capable of becoming. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can be a sort of and sensitive person, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you can be you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: to be aggressive, but you can certainly have a strong
Speaker 1: identity as well as be highly sensitive. These are not
Speaker 1: mutually incompatible things, right, No, not at all. I'd say
Speaker 1: maybe the reason for those stereotypes is that because sensitive
Speaker 1: men are looked down on, they do have low self esteem.
Speaker 1: But there's no reason to look down on them. I
Speaker 1: think of the four letters, I've now kind of adopted
Speaker 1: for describing a depth of processing being easily overstimulated. So
Speaker 1: doees being emotionally responsive and being sensitive to subtle stimuli. Well,
Speaker 1: if a person is processing things deeply and sensitive to
Speaker 1: subtle stimuli, that person should be able to come up
Speaker 1: with amazing strategies for getting their way, not always in
Speaker 1: an overtly feeling and screaming kind of way or a
Speaker 1: cool or bullying way, but watching for opportunities and making
Speaker 1: alliances and getting their way that way as kind of
Speaker 1: quiet leaders. Oh yeah, I love that. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're familiar with like Susan Kaine's research and
Speaker 1: the whole quiet revolution showing that you can absolutely be
Speaker 1: a quiet leader, and you can be a sensitive leader, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and probably the best leaders are sensitive. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a good LinkedIn article by John Hughes about why
Speaker 1: highly sensitive people make good leaders. I also have a
Speaker 1: book that I Harvard Business School that was done a
Speaker 1: flot back. Sure you said it to me. You might
Speaker 1: earn email that to you. Yeah, sure, I'll put in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Okay, good. You know, before I encountered
Speaker 1: your work in which I encountered actually really early grad school,
Speaker 1: your book high the highway sensitive person I discovered in
Speaker 1: grad school. But before I discovered it, what I thought
Speaker 1: I was, or what I thought was the dimension of
Speaker 1: personality that is represented by which now I have a
Speaker 1: great understanding of with your research. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just simply neuroticism. It painted it, you know, in a
Speaker 1: very negative There wasn't any upside to neuroticism, right, you know,
Speaker 1: like you read when you read the Big Five, you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's just what I am and my whole life. Before
Speaker 1: I encounter your work, I thought I was just in
Speaker 1: anxious mess of a human being. But you know, but
Speaker 1: I did feel, like, you know, feeling things very deeply.
Speaker 1: I have memories of being very very young as a
Speaker 1: child and just feeling just like just feeling the whole
Speaker 1: world on the back of my you know, the whole
Speaker 1: weight of the world on me at all times. And
Speaker 1: but you know, I think it's not just a framing issue,
Speaker 1: am I right? Like, It's not like you're just repackaging neuroticism.
Speaker 1: I mean you would argue there, you know, this is
Speaker 1: you have really discovered a something that may be a
Speaker 1: part of neurosalism, might be a part of it. But
Speaker 1: that it's it goes beyond it is that right, elean well,
Speaker 1: sensitivity is not actually related to neuroticism. If you partial
Speaker 1: out statistically having had a troubled childhood. Oh, interesting that
Speaker 1: the people have had in the sense, the person who
Speaker 1: has had a good enough childhood, they don't have unusual
Speaker 1: what we call neuroticism, depression, or anxiety. Now we are
Speaker 1: more emotionally responsive, So that may be a misunderstanding you
Speaker 1: had about your emotional responsiveness, because we can worry, but
Speaker 1: we can also feel great joy. We can be sad,
Speaker 1: but again we can also feel very happy. So the
Speaker 1: fact that we have stronger responses can cause people to
Speaker 1: say yes to all the negative items on a neuroticism measure,
Speaker 1: but there are no positive items that that also score
Speaker 1: high on to see I do. That's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And I liked how in your original scale because you
Speaker 1: started off with a lot of items which you then
Speaker 1: cut down for statistical reasons. But in your original scale
Speaker 1: you had a lot more you know, your items weren't
Speaker 1: all about being overwhelmed or frazzled. You had a lot
Speaker 1: more items about you know, falling involved deeply, crying easily,
Speaker 1: you know positive as well as some other positive items.
Speaker 1: That's correct, right, right, yes, And it's a flaw of
Speaker 1: the scale that it has so many negative items. It's
Speaker 1: causing some problems. At good time, I didn't know really
Speaker 1: the underlying thing behind all four characteristics, which is depth
Speaker 1: of processing, and so there aren't any questions in there
Speaker 1: about that, and the negative ones held together well. But
Speaker 1: we also were looking for items that men and women
Speaker 1: that there'd be no gender differences on, and so crying easily,
Speaker 1: for instance, was eliminated because there was a big difference
Speaker 1: in gender. So I think some of the negative ones
Speaker 1: were just also more gender and neutral. Interesting, so the
Speaker 1: more positive ones were more males or females. I think
Speaker 1: just by chance they were more female. But I think
Speaker 1: it was just we just weren't We shouldn't have let
Speaker 1: so many negative items get in there, But they were
Speaker 1: the ones that did hold together well. And the reason
Speaker 1: they're there is that they're mostly measuring over stimulation, which
Speaker 1: is what sensitive people are most aware of, usually because
Speaker 1: the people around them are most aware of it, so
Speaker 1: their emotional responsiveness they may learn to hide. They're sensitive
Speaker 1: to celties. That's not easy unless you were comparing with
Speaker 1: somebody else. Did you see that flower? Did you see
Speaker 1: that detail the painting? People often don't realize that they're
Speaker 1: more sensitive to subtlety, or don't associate it with being
Speaker 1: over stimulated at least, but it's clear that that's an
Speaker 1: important thing that happens the sense of people and that
Speaker 1: they have in common. Absolutely, and there are multiple facets
Speaker 1: of sensitivity, right, So you have the over you have
Speaker 1: these over stimulation aspect, but you also have like appreciation
Speaker 1: of beauty. I find that really interesting that statistically that
Speaker 1: that loads, which might be part of the openness to experience.
Speaker 1: To me, I got to interrupt you there, because yea,
Speaker 1: the three factors that people have identified are actually kind
Speaker 1: of artifacts. The thing that was amazing when I created
Speaker 1: that questionnaire was how many different things people would say
Speaker 1: yes to. So I did not make it as uni
Speaker 1: dimensional as I could have. Instead, I found that when
Speaker 1: people said that they were appreciated the art some music,
Speaker 1: they also tended to be easily overwhelmed when there was
Speaker 1: too much noise. So they correlate very well. But it
Speaker 1: is still possible too. I mean, from our point of view,
Speaker 1: the factor analysis showed one dimension, but yes, there were
Speaker 1: three that didn't load very high, but other people have
Speaker 1: made a big deal. So it's a little annoying to
Speaker 1: me that whole factor business. And we're now doing a
Speaker 1: study using a fancy use statistical technique called by factor analysis,
Speaker 1: which is showing that, yes, there are three factors, but
Speaker 1: there's but the important factor is the overarching single factor
Speaker 1: that holds them together. So see, I find that so interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a that's a good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could break it up and you could do this
Speaker 1: really precise factor analysis and you could show that it's
Speaker 1: like the different factors are differentially related to different Big
Speaker 1: five traits. Right but right, But the problem is that
Speaker 1: now you're not looking at sense for people anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you just think I appreciate aesthetic things, that could
Speaker 1: be a cultural thing you just take easily overstimulated by itself,
Speaker 1: that could be a neuroticism item or neurotosism factor. And
Speaker 1: one person took the sense overstimulation and related it to
Speaker 1: autism measures. Well, that's sensitivity is the opposite of autism.
Speaker 1: But you have to include those three and I think
Speaker 1: actually four aspects in order to understand in order for
Speaker 1: a person to really be highly sensitive. And as they say,
Speaker 1: the depth of processing didn't get in there at all.
Speaker 1: The aesthetic could have been the depth of processing, but
Speaker 1: they weren't worded by we need things like I like
Speaker 1: to take as long as I can to make a decision.
Speaker 1: I like to think about the meaning in life. It's
Speaker 1: important to me to have deep conversations that kind of thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so I have data on that. I'm
Speaker 1: going to stake excited all of a sudden, I'll say,
Speaker 1: I won't like seek out with you right now, but
Speaker 1: I'll share with you through email. We did a we
Speaker 1: study with Susan Kane because we're trying to create a
Speaker 1: new scale of introversion. And the two major facets of
Speaker 1: introversion that we developed was stimulation and need for deliberation
Speaker 1: and and I and we administered the HSP scale. So
Speaker 1: I can actually show you, like the need for need
Speaker 1: for deliberation and how that relates to your HSP scale.
Speaker 1: Anyway I show, I'll show you that that would be fine.
Speaker 1: I think you know that since thirty percent of highly
Speaker 1: sense the people are extroverts, you have to be really careful, yeah,
Speaker 1: not eliminating them or or just ignoring them kind of
Speaker 1: upset Susan Kane and I she came to one of
Speaker 1: my workshops and she she I felt I wasn't real
Speaker 1: happy with what she did, and she noted what I
Speaker 1: can understand because no publishers wanted to see a second
Speaker 1: highly sensed person book, but by overlapping but not you know,
Speaker 1: having that overlap and not complete duct. They are introverts
Speaker 1: who are not highly sensitive. They're highly sensive people who
Speaker 1: are not introverts. But it feels to me as though
Speaker 1: most of how she's defining introverts in high sensitivity and
Speaker 1: it works because that's how it's been for a long time,
Speaker 1: but it would work better if if you know the
Speaker 1: need for deliberation and being easily overstiend it's true for
Speaker 1: a bunch of extroverts as well. Yeah, no, look, I
Speaker 1: compualely agree. I mean it's a good point. And what
Speaker 1: we this is what's interesting is that the scale we
Speaker 1: developed is based on self report of identification with introversion.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people that maybe I HSP what
Speaker 1: they really are is hs highest HP, they're identifying as
Speaker 1: introverts because there's only a lot of them. Would Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the thirty percent of them are extroverts, thirty percent
Speaker 1: of them are introverts. And if they're taking a scale
Speaker 1: because they identify themselves as introverts, they're certainly going to
Speaker 1: you know, but so you understand, Oh, I totally understand, totally,
Speaker 1: oh totally. You know, I talk about this and you know,
Speaker 1: to to Susan's credit and uh, you know, since that
Speaker 1: the release of her book, I mean, she's been very
Speaker 1: open to hearing the latest science of this stuff, and
Speaker 1: you know, and we've we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: how these are separate dimensions of personality and we're trying
Speaker 1: to figre out what exactly is introversion, what exactly you know,
Speaker 1: what different sheets you know. So, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: an emerging line of research. It's really neat, you know,
Speaker 1: understanding like how introversion has more to do with rewards
Speaker 1: sensitivity to environmental ard you know, like the competitive rewards
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and that's not necessarily the highly
Speaker 1: sensitive person, but even within the highly sensitive person, to mean,
Speaker 1: there's different ways of being sensitive. You know, some people,
Speaker 1: you know, personality researchers would say that every single one
Speaker 1: of the Big five is actually a different form of
Speaker 1: sensitivity if you think about it right, like you have,
Speaker 1: like the extrovers introversion domain is sensitivity to environmental competitive rewards.
Speaker 1: Openness to experience would be like sensitivity to the reward
Speaker 1: value of information. Neuroticism would be threat sensitivity to threats
Speaker 1: in the environment. And you could just go one by one, right,
Speaker 1: So there's actually different forms of sensitivity. The problem is
Speaker 1: the HSP scale does not correlate with any of the
Speaker 1: Big Five. So interesting. Yeah, and I tried once to
Speaker 1: create a Big five. I tried to create an HSP
Speaker 1: scale out out of items in the Big five because
Speaker 1: somebody had done a lot of genetic research with the
Speaker 1: Big file, and I said, well, let's see if the
Speaker 1: genetics correlate with HSP scale. But they haven't given it.
Speaker 1: I said, I'll try to create an HSP scale out
Speaker 1: of the items you have given and see if it
Speaker 1: correlates with our scale, and then you can use that scale. No,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything in the Big Five that openness
Speaker 1: to experience comes close. But in some studies it's correlated,
Speaker 1: but most it's not. It correlates quite a bit when
Speaker 1: eure auticism, but not a few factor out the difficult childhood.
Speaker 1: I find that that specific finding, you know, with the
Speaker 1: interaction between contextual factors or developmental factors, because that's not
Speaker 1: really it's not we take into account that much with
Speaker 1: an in Big five research, is it? You know, the
Speaker 1: it's not and certainly ends the fact it would be
Speaker 1: affected by that for sure. And culture and environment is
Speaker 1: you know, I have a problem with the Big five
Speaker 1: and I've had it from the beginning. And a part
Speaker 1: of it is a description of introversion, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: is pretty negative. And then the thing is is it's
Speaker 1: taken It was lexically derived from the words that people
Speaker 1: used to describe other people. But I nescitivity is not
Speaker 1: an easy thing to observe, like your own cake. And
Speaker 1: observed in children that some of unhesitated before entering the
Speaker 1: room full of fancy toys, and he called them inhibited,
Speaker 1: and then the other kids were uninhibited. Well, you can
Speaker 1: see an inhibited behavior, but again you don't know the
Speaker 1: cause of it. It could be fear, it could be
Speaker 1: that the child just wants to stop and observed before entering.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's some nice research where they they
Speaker 1: looked at the adrenaline and cortisol children in that same experiment,
Speaker 1: that same experimental paradigm, and they found that children knew
Speaker 1: had secure attachments or who had been left for a
Speaker 1: half hour with a sort of babysit. A person who
Speaker 1: was response to them entered and had a more adrenaline
Speaker 1: than the uninhabited children, but then immediately settled down. A
Speaker 1: cortisol did not go up when they started playing. Now,
Speaker 1: if they had an insecure attachment or a poor caregiver,
Speaker 1: then they had the adrenaline response followed by a corsol response.
Speaker 1: They were anxious in that environment. And this whole subject
Speaker 1: has to do with differential susceptibility, which is a huge
Speaker 1: subject in developmental psychology and sort of coming into adult
Speaker 1: personality and genetics, because it just goes back to that
Speaker 1: neuroticism issue that if an individual is raised in a
Speaker 1: poor environment or put into a poor environment, those who
Speaker 1: are environmentally sensitive that's the term they're using, environmentally sensitive
Speaker 1: will be affected worse, much more negatively than individual without
Speaker 1: certain genetic markers. But the people with those same genetic
Speaker 1: markers or scoring high on the HSP scale, if they
Speaker 1: are in a good environment, or if you do an
Speaker 1: intervention to improve their emotion health or to improve the
Speaker 1: way they're being parented. They do better than other children,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty weird. Jay Belski, who's that UC Davis's
Speaker 1: kind of a bad boy in psychology, wasn't betterly bet out,
Speaker 1: but he's a he's he likes to say things that
Speaker 1: are a little outrageous. And he wrote an op ed
Speaker 1: for the New York Times when you explained this, and
Speaker 1: he said, to save money, we should not do interventions
Speaker 1: with any children except those that are highly sensitive because
Speaker 1: it's not affecting the others, right, right, But of course
Speaker 1: everyone wrote it and said this is this is racial discrimination,
Speaker 1: this is like Nazi you know. It was kind of funny,
Speaker 1: but it was also the way he put it, like
Speaker 1: we're just going to give it to these people. He
Speaker 1: could be he could have been more sensitive and how
Speaker 1: he freeses that. Yeah, but he likes to be outrageous.
Speaker 1: But it's a uh interesting observation. And Michael Plewis, who's
Speaker 1: in London, he did a study with teenage well preteen
Speaker 1: girls in disadvantaged school setting trying to prevent depression. So
Speaker 1: and he also gave the HSP scale and it turned
Speaker 1: out that They did a sort of a resiliency intervention
Speaker 1: and measured one year later when the girls were I
Speaker 1: guess starting high school or in high school, and they
Speaker 1: found that those who scored in the upper one third
Speaker 1: on HSP scale got a lot from the intervention and
Speaker 1: were not depressed. Those who scored the two thirds that
Speaker 1: scored lower did not get anything from the intervention and
Speaker 1: had the usual rated depression for girls at that age.
Speaker 1: That's pretty striking. This was part of the message of
Speaker 1: trying to get across the movies. Are not weak people
Speaker 1: at all, the same idea that you had, is it
Speaker 1: not weak people, but they are more to buy their environment,
Speaker 1: so for better and words, Yeah, right, exactly, that's the phrase,
Speaker 1: is that they use it for better end worse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the orchid dandelion hypothesis. His husband Popular media. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: Tom Boyce is working in a book on that. That's
Speaker 1: Tom Boyce's phrase, And he's UCSF and he's a brilliant researcher,
Speaker 1: and he's been studying children who are physiologically reactive. You
Speaker 1: can't give children, you know, MRI guests or even give
Speaker 1: them self report. But he's been studying this for a
Speaker 1: long time. He published the very first differential succeptibility article.
Speaker 1: He founded his surprise. He was in public health at
Speaker 1: the time. So that children who were more reactive their
Speaker 1: immune systems and their nervous systems were more reactive, had
Speaker 1: more illnesses and injuries if they were in a stressful
Speaker 1: home and school environment. But if they were in good environments,
Speaker 1: they had fewer colds than injury. That I think they're
Speaker 1: just looking at colds and flud had fewer infections and
Speaker 1: fewer injuries than other children. So that was back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven and ninety six. That's so interesting. And
Speaker 1: I think David Dobbs was also working in a book
Speaker 1: on the orcadando I and he's just a journalist, not
Speaker 1: just a journalist, but a journalist. Yeah no, right, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I know. I don't know what happened to the book.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's come out. I know he
Speaker 1: wrote an article for Atlantic. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know either. I want to return to something
Speaker 1: you said earlier, because it perplexed me a little bit.
Speaker 1: You said that autism was the opposite of HSB. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would have thought, yeah, yeah, please, I'll listen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because What autistic children have problem with is processing information
Speaker 1: at all. It doesn't get distinguished, it doesn't get sorted out,
Speaker 1: so a light bulb is as interesting as the face
Speaker 1: in front of them. They don't queue into social stimuli,
Speaker 1: especially now the sensitive person. The opposite is very tuned
Speaker 1: in socially, and it's processing information carefully so that it
Speaker 1: knows where to put its attention. For instance, with the
Speaker 1: genetics that we associate with sensitivity, they make very good
Speaker 1: gamblers because they're paying very close attention to the odds
Speaker 1: and they don't want to lose, and they do want
Speaker 1: to win because they have stronger emotional responses. I doubt
Speaker 1: very much if you put an autistic person into a
Speaker 1: gambling situation that they would be very successful, because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to calculate the odds. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe they wouldn't. I can't say for sure, because there
Speaker 1: are always these autistic children who are particularly skilled in something,
Speaker 1: and they might be good at counting cards or something.
Speaker 1: But for the most part their opposites, because of the
Speaker 1: way they process information, both get over stimulated, but for
Speaker 1: different reasons. The sense of the person's overstimulated because they're
Speaker 1: processing things so carefully, and the autistic person's overstimulated because
Speaker 1: they're unable to sort it out and show some of
Speaker 1: it some of it away. It's like everything's coming in equally. Well,
Speaker 1: that's really that's really interesting. I never thought of it
Speaker 1: that way, like, because I always you hear a lot
Speaker 1: in the autistic community that the research community that sensory
Speaker 1: processing sensitivity is a characteristic of people with autism. But
Speaker 1: that's that's the You added some additional nuance there to that, right,
Speaker 1: because to my mind, the research suggests these four letters,
Speaker 1: the oes, and also the fMRI research suggests it, and
Speaker 1: the genetics research is right on the cusp. Now, we
Speaker 1: just had one study associating it with the shorter LEO
Speaker 1: the serotonin transported gene. But we now have a bunch
Speaker 1: of studies that are going to come out, and you know,
Speaker 1: not come out. We're going to know the results in
Speaker 1: a few months, but they'll have to be written up
Speaker 1: and published before we could talk about them. But we
Speaker 1: do have one study that was done in Denmark that
Speaker 1: did find that relationship. The reason that's important is because
Speaker 1: it opens up a whole lot of other research that's
Speaker 1: been done on that shorter leal that then we can say, well,
Speaker 1: it just being like that and like that, and like that,
Speaker 1: some of it already overlaps. There's an FMR study fMRI
Speaker 1: study that got the same results as we did, was
Speaker 1: shortly o versus the HSP scale yielded the same results
Speaker 1: in a particular research design. So that will be pretty
Speaker 1: interesting when that happens. But you mentioned different kinds of sensitivity,
Speaker 1: like thinking about the Big Five that way, and we
Speaker 1: know that dopamine leels are also involved, and people in
Speaker 1: China did a massive study and found that there were
Speaker 1: seven dope mean of leos that predicted the HSP scale.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they also tried I believe the
Speaker 1: Big Five. What they said was frustrating that although we
Speaker 1: know personality traits are innate genetically caused, they don't correlate
Speaker 1: well with any genes. The Big Five does not, So
Speaker 1: they decided to use the HSP scale, which they felt
Speaker 1: it was more deeply rooted in the nervous system, and
Speaker 1: there they got the kinds of correlations they expected from
Speaker 1: between the personality major and genes. So we have dopamine genes,
Speaker 1: seratonin genes, probably some other genes, I'm sure, so it
Speaker 1: might very well be that if you have more one
Speaker 1: set of genes than the other, you know that your
Speaker 1: sensitivity might be different, Like some people might have better
Speaker 1: social sensitivity and some people might have a keener you know,
Speaker 1: non human sensitivity, you know, sensive subtleties in their physical environment.
Speaker 1: And there's differ in sensitivity to too, music, you know,
Speaker 1: to all the artistic skills and people. Sometimes people are
Speaker 1: very sensitive to sense of smell, and not every single
Speaker 1: one of those are highly sensitive in the broader sense,
Speaker 1: but many are. So sometimes I think it's like being
Speaker 1: dealt a bunch of cards and if you have if
Speaker 1: you're strong in one suit, you're highly sensitive, But the
Speaker 1: cards within that suit vary a lot. And so I
Speaker 1: haven't gone into the kinds of sensitivity very much. It
Speaker 1: just seems right, I don't. I think finding genetic variation
Speaker 1: that would probably be easier than trying to do kinds
Speaker 1: of sensitivity at this point. Really, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think behave like the behavioral research would be might be
Speaker 1: easier than oh gosh, the genes research. It's hard to
Speaker 1: wrap it, it's hard to find replications. It is. But
Speaker 1: the problem is is that I think that the genes
Speaker 1: when we can figure them out better, right, are going
Speaker 1: to be more accurate. And if I make up a
Speaker 1: cast of five different kinds of sensitivity and give it
Speaker 1: to a thousand people, there's going to be people who
Speaker 1: score high on each of those, because that actually means
Speaker 1: that there are five types of sensitivity. Right, I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, And I mean certainly like you could
Speaker 1: be you could check off that you get very frazzle
Speaker 1: and overwhelmed by lights and sounds and sense, but you
Speaker 1: could also not be very sensitive to people like you
Speaker 1: could not have high compassion at all. Right, so they
Speaker 1: can pull apart. Well, you know, it's hard to say
Speaker 1: because we did a study fMRI study, you know, functional
Speaker 1: magnetic resins imagery, and we found that with just eighteen subjects,
Speaker 1: those who scored high on the HSP scale showed remarkable
Speaker 1: differences in their and the activation in the parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that are associated with empathy. Wow. So I'm
Speaker 1: just not sure that there are different types of sensitivity
Speaker 1: as I defined sensitivity, right, because because this is this
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing study that and some of the parts
Speaker 1: of it have been replicated, so I'm pretty clear about that.
Speaker 1: So the mirror neurals are more active and the insula
Speaker 1: is more active, which is sometimes called the seated consciousness. Right,
Speaker 1: and certain certain other areas that just doesn't There wasn't
Speaker 1: very much variance among these people scored high on the
Speaker 1: HSP scale, at least in this area they had high
Speaker 1: levels of empathy. Well, I find that really interesting. When
Speaker 1: I look at your HSP correlation with the agreeables agreeableness
Speaker 1: di mension of the Big five, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: see a statistical correlation there though. But that's not necessarily empathy.
Speaker 1: So well, no, because if you look at agreeableness, to me,
Speaker 1: it's about dominance and submission. Like you you agree with people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look at the items, well, that's about being nice.
Speaker 1: They're about well, I mean they are sort of about
Speaker 1: being nice, but they're not about compassion. For the extra
Speaker 1: version dimension I thought was more about the dominance. But well,
Speaker 1: the agreeable this is more about submission. Maybe you're right, Actually,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know that's true. That's a I've never
Speaker 1: thought of it that way before. I have to look
Speaker 1: again at the items. I mean, that's always the question
Speaker 1: in any measure is what are the actual items? Because
Speaker 1: people think that for instances the I S B S
Speaker 1: scale of Carver. And what's the thing, you know, Shire, No, yeah, Shire,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe. I mean everybody's using that BI S BIS.
Speaker 1: The BIS is totally wrong. It has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with Grays BIS system, the behavior inhibition system. Nobody listens
Speaker 1: to it. That's a shame. I don't know much about
Speaker 1: that scale. But I love Gray's theory. I love the theory. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too. But he said that behavior inhibition system
Speaker 1: is a positive check system. It can't be just responsive
Speaker 1: to threat because you don't know ahead of time whether
Speaker 1: something is a threat or not. And if you were
Speaker 1: born with a system that responds to everything, you know,
Speaker 1: if a strong BIS means responding to everything as a threat,
Speaker 1: or being more likely to see everything as a threat,
Speaker 1: then you would miss opportunities. Now, what he says is
Speaker 1: the BIS mediates between the the as and the fear system,
Speaker 1: the five five system, and it tells you whether to
Speaker 1: go forward or to not go for it, which is
Speaker 1: quite different than covers measure, which is all about being
Speaker 1: sensitive to threat only. I so it picked up on
Speaker 1: all kinds of neuroticism stuff and people love it because
Speaker 1: oh look, the Behavioral Activation System people are so so
Speaker 1: lovely and the BIS people are such a mess, and
Speaker 1: so of course very sensitive to those kinds of results,
Speaker 1: those kinds of assumptions which have been around, as you know,
Speaker 1: for a long time. Oh yeah, for sure. And as
Speaker 1: we're having this conversation, I'm crunching some numbers on the
Speaker 1: spot of the study we did. So Coliny, my colleague
Speaker 1: colinedy Young created a new scale, the Big Five that
Speaker 1: actually what's compactive, like within agreeableness, it's what's up compassion
Speaker 1: versus politeness. So some of the kind of items and
Speaker 1: capassion are things like feel others emotions. So that certainly
Speaker 1: does sound like empathy to me, and choir about others
Speaker 1: well being sympathize with others feelings. So so I'm actually
Speaker 1: we guess to keep talking, but in the background we
Speaker 1: run the correlation between your HSP scale and that aspect
Speaker 1: of the Big Five. So, hey, I've never done this before.
Speaker 1: I've never in real time done a data analysis while
Speaker 1: i was having a review, so like a good at it.
Speaker 1: So in that in that data set you have the
Speaker 1: HSP scale and that correct. Oh that's interesting, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So okay, so I'm going to be running that in
Speaker 1: the background. I love. Yeah, I know, I'm such a
Speaker 1: nerd actually, I mean so, I mean it's great, like
Speaker 1: this conversation allows us to dive into a sort of
Speaker 1: deeper level of discussion. Then you know, you probably get
Speaker 1: asked the same questions over and over and over again. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: the politeness thing you would you would think would correlate
Speaker 1: with the HSP sill only because low self esteem tempts
Speaker 1: to correlate with the HSP scale. Why well, because when
Speaker 1: you're twenty percent of population, everybody thinks you're sick. Oh
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. It's hard to have high
Speaker 1: self este really good point if you're racing the family
Speaker 1: where you're saying, oh is fired. Yeah, I have the results.
Speaker 1: So this is a sample of four hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: three people, very diverse population, and I found a statistically
Speaker 1: significant positive correlation point two two two at p levels
Speaker 1: point zero or zero between the capassion aspect and your
Speaker 1: HSP scale. So yeah, I don't think anyone's ever looked
Speaker 1: at that, the new Big five aspect scale. So that
Speaker 1: actually teased apartment. So let me tell you, let me
Speaker 1: look at politeness, let me look at politeness. Now maybe
Speaker 1: we could find like a disassociation, so let me just
Speaker 1: for that it. Let me just run the okay, So okay,
Speaker 1: So it turns out that the politous aspect is also
Speaker 1: positively correlated with your yeah sense of time. We'll play
Speaker 1: one five three, So yeah, both politeness and but then
Speaker 1: see if the whole scale correlates, because you may have
Speaker 1: a sample that's more diverse than right sample. So the
Speaker 1: whole you mean the whole agreeableness to mean, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it could be that when you break it down,
Speaker 1: its correlated with both, but if you take the whole thing,
Speaker 1: it's not sure. Okay, so let me do that right now, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is zero point two one six, So so
Speaker 1: there is something going on there. And and so I
Speaker 1: kind of stand corrected in a way because I never
Speaker 1: thought to run this analysis. So I'm glad we had
Speaker 1: this conversation because I, well, I can't correct it because
Speaker 1: I said that I didn't think the HSP scale in
Speaker 1: our studies had correlated significantly, right, right, big five? Apparently
Speaker 1: that's correlate with agreeableness in your Yeah, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to see if that replicates the openness to experience to Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just sticking the whole Big five right now? Why not? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so the highest here's the whole Big five profile. It's
Speaker 1: zero point five five three positive recorded with withdrawal aspect
Speaker 1: of neuroticism, which like it's a it's an emotional withdrawal.
Speaker 1: And I can send you the beefast. You can see
Speaker 1: the items later if you want to sell items, Like
Speaker 1: what about the overall correlation with the five factors? Do
Speaker 1: you have that? Yeah? So, yeah, absolutely, I was just
Speaker 1: I was going through the aspects, but let me but
Speaker 1: I can I can go through, would you like? The
Speaker 1: aspects of the aspects of neuroticism again are kind of
Speaker 1: muddy by that by the interaction and needing to partial
Speaker 1: out the trouble childhood things. Yeah, so that's hard to Yeah,
Speaker 1: without being I can't. I can certainly I parcel that
Speaker 1: out right now, but you don't have those kinds of questions.
Speaker 1: But let me just go through some of the aspects
Speaker 1: that it offers, some finer, more finer nuanced. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so both neurotus is the mastecs, volatility and withdrawal or
Speaker 1: positively correlated point five five three one point four twenty six.
Speaker 1: Industrious within the conscientious to mean it's negatively correlated with industriousness,
Speaker 1: which is like ambition, So that's kind of interesting. It's
Speaker 1: possitively correlated with orderliness though, so there's adult there's a
Speaker 1: dissociation within the conscientiousness to mean that it is positively
Speaker 1: orally but negatively with industriousness. Yeah. I always thought it
Speaker 1: would be correlated with conscientious I thought would be the strongest,
Speaker 1: and it didn't. So that explained it, because they've got that.
Speaker 1: That's strange thing to put conscientiousness is being started to
Speaker 1: achieve and oriented. I know that the competition and I
Speaker 1: joke that, you know sense that people are not too
Speaker 1: fond of competition because they don't compete when they know
Speaker 1: they're going to lose, and when they know they're going
Speaker 1: to win, they don't think of it is competible, right, right?
Speaker 1: Do it? And they're good at it? Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: And then with the introversed next person to me and
Speaker 1: the interesting you know, fee the correlations are are are
Speaker 1: kind of weak, so negative with the enthusiasm negative it
Speaker 1: is significant negative point one eighty seven. But as we know,
Speaker 1: that's not I mean, that's not as high as the
Speaker 1: neuroticism ones and negative with assertiveness negative point two eight zero.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of the openness to experience to
Speaker 1: mean and I think this is interesting. It's not correlated
Speaker 1: at all with the intellect component, which has things like
Speaker 1: I like I Q related kind of questions, but it
Speaker 1: is strongly point four zero six, so just as high
Speaker 1: as the neuroticism with the openness dimension. Because this this
Speaker 1: this scale splits. Yeah, this scale splits the I the
Speaker 1: i Q part from the appreciation of beauty and of
Speaker 1: reflection and daydreaming. Right, So yeah, that's not a lot
Speaker 1: of that exactly, Great, that's yeah. So that's that's shows
Speaker 1: that there's a distinction between quick thinking and deep thinking exactly.
Speaker 1: And your scale correlates with deep thinking, not quick thinking. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, I don't know whether you have to
Speaker 1: look at the items in the intellectual scale. No, they're
Speaker 1: like that there. They say things like I answered I
Speaker 1: saw problems quickly. I mean, they're literally that kind of
Speaker 1: that's they don't ask them if you solve them accurately.
Speaker 1: Well put it in this culture, but a bad decision
Speaker 1: made quickly is admired more than a good decision that
Speaker 1: took a long time to make. You know, we want
Speaker 1: our president to be, you know, not to think too
Speaker 1: long about things. You wanted to be a decider to
Speaker 1: take action. Then they will take the wrong action. Well,
Speaker 1: at least he was able to make decisions. Well, some
Speaker 1: of the items do have accuracy a little bit. So
Speaker 1: I am quick to understand things. So I guess that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean like you do understand it. I guess that
Speaker 1: could be like intelligence. Yeah, have difficulty understanding abstract ideas,
Speaker 1: which is reverse coded, you know, so I like I
Speaker 1: I so, yes, it really is. That's more I accumulated.
Speaker 1: And I think you've said even in your own research,
Speaker 1: you didn't find much of a correlation between right, you
Speaker 1: only did one one measure of it. But and I've
Speaker 1: been very hesitant to go into that because people who
Speaker 1: study gifted children say that they're almost one hundred percent
Speaker 1: highly sensitive. And I just I just don't know what
Speaker 1: to make of that. And one thing that I wonder
Speaker 1: about again is whether sens the people on a hole
Speaker 1: for a poorly on IQ test because of lack of confidence,
Speaker 1: you know, stereotype threat kind of thing. Well, that was
Speaker 1: certainly my case a huge test anxiety, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you you know it's in my Q test,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, your identity and yeah, you can do it.
Speaker 1: But I really like that split between openness and intellect
Speaker 1: and the your HSP scale. I really like that finding.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should publish that. Should I publish that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well let's think you've got some interesting results there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, except for the correlation with in which
Speaker 1: as i'd say, you can pull yeah apart, nobody's found
Speaker 1: much except a little bit with openness of experience, and
Speaker 1: you can see if some of these scales cancel each
Speaker 1: other out and effect. Yeah. No, absolutely, just scale point
Speaker 1: of view. Absolutely, So I have I don't want to
Speaker 1: take up much more your time, maybe fifteen minutes more
Speaker 1: or so tops, but it's I didn't expect to go
Speaker 1: in this direction. So I have like a thousand more questions,
Speaker 1: and don't worry, we won't go through them. But let
Speaker 1: me just try to, like on the spot here pick
Speaker 1: out the ones that I absolutely think would be essential
Speaker 1: to discuss. So, something I think is interesting is you
Speaker 1: talk about how a lot of HSPs actually are also
Speaker 1: high sensation seekers, and that could seem to some as
Speaker 1: a paradox, right, But you're saying it's not necessarily a paradox, No,
Speaker 1: Because what I had to do with Zuckerman's HSP scale
Speaker 1: was take out the impulsive risk taking items, and so
Speaker 1: I had to revise it to take out the danger basically,
Speaker 1: because what sense that people are not is impulsive. They're
Speaker 1: not going to do things that are dangerous, but they
Speaker 1: could be highly curious and wanting a variety in their lives.
Speaker 1: So I had to tweak his scale, and I never
Speaker 1: published this. It's so many things to do, I know,
Speaker 1: I know so. And the reason for this is that
Speaker 1: if the BAS and the BIS are separate systems, and
Speaker 1: you could be high on both of them, and that
Speaker 1: that's what I found, is you can be high on
Speaker 1: both of them if you think of the BAS as
Speaker 1: high sensation. Sure, the opposite of sensitivity is not being
Speaker 1: not interested in sensation. Is the opposite of sensitivity is
Speaker 1: being impulsive, not thinking, not doing any depth of processing
Speaker 1: before you do something. Right, If I talked about that
Speaker 1: intellectual problem, I solve problems quickly, And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but is it accurate? Because one study of interversion extraversion
Speaker 1: one time ago found that introverts wanted to take more
Speaker 1: time to solve the problems, and they were more often
Speaker 1: right because of this. So going back to your question, Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's very interesting because these people have a very
Speaker 1: hard time. Well, they're often in the media, they're often
Speaker 1: journalists and going around and meeting new people all the
Speaker 1: time because they love variety, and yet they also get
Speaker 1: over stimulated, so it's like one fots on the guests
Speaker 1: and one foots on the brake. And they've also often
Speaker 1: been labeled as self destructive because they do more than
Speaker 1: they can handle, but it's because they're so attractive to
Speaker 1: variety and new things. So it's an interesting combination. And
Speaker 1: there are quite a few, and there's somebody Tracy Cooper,
Speaker 1: who's writing a book on it, and oh really Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's certainly a very interesting feeling. And these people are
Speaker 1: harder to identify as HSPs from our stereotypes because they're
Speaker 1: often engaged. I mean, I knew one who did hang
Speaker 1: gliding and one is a policeman. You know, they don't think, well,
Speaker 1: why would a matrice you do that? Well, they use
Speaker 1: their sensitivity to be safe at these things, but they
Speaker 1: loved the excitement of it. In terms of you know
Speaker 1: they're safe when they do it, but they like the novelty.
Speaker 1: As a policeman member, he said that he's he likes
Speaker 1: to be out on the street because he can send
Speaker 1: when something's going to happen. Yeah. Maybe because you're so sensitive,
Speaker 1: maybe you even need a greater sort of threshold to
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm just like putting this out there,
Speaker 1: like there. You know, you might be like so sensitive
Speaker 1: that when you encounter something that's enjoyable or thrill seeking,
Speaker 1: you actually get a heightened experience from it than other people. Right.
Speaker 1: I think so, because the research of brain research and
Speaker 1: life sense that people are having positive experiences that are
Speaker 1: stronger as well as negative exactly the reason for the
Speaker 1: differential susceptibility. That a kid in a good environment is
Speaker 1: soaking up support, sucking up interesting, you know, stimulating and
Speaker 1: enriching experiences, soaking up all this which gives them confidence
Speaker 1: and social skills and all of that. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a great study of the short leel of Reeseius
Speaker 1: monkeys and Stephen sum Me. Now in my age, I
Speaker 1: guess he's got all these recus monkeys and he used
Speaker 1: to call them up tight and laid back and the
Speaker 1: uptight ones. It turns out I have the shorter veel.
Speaker 1: But he he agrees now that the quote uptight ones
Speaker 1: are actually highly sensitive because he has taken them and
Speaker 1: put them with taken them away from their mothers not
Speaker 1: too good, and put them with very skilled mothers. And
Speaker 1: then they become the leaders of their troops. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: So and they're leaders through, like I said, through alliances
Speaker 1: and through clever observation, not through banging each other on
Speaker 1: the head. Right, So I know you have a lot
Speaker 1: more questions. Yeah, I want to get into just a
Speaker 1: couple of questions on your on weve that you've studied
Speaker 1: with highly sensitive people involved. You can have different combinations, right,
Speaker 1: you can have two really high sensitive people, but you
Speaker 1: can also be with a partner. You can be highly
Speaker 1: sensed to be the partner who's not really highly sensitive.
Speaker 1: That must be really frustrating maybe for both people, right,
Speaker 1: could be. Well, we did one study my husband. We
Speaker 1: were going to a conference close relationship, so we wanted
Speaker 1: me to go with an Israel and so I said,
Speaker 1: well what would you like to study? And I said,
Speaker 1: well that's a look at boredom. I said, I think
Speaker 1: kind of sense that people may be more more easily
Speaker 1: bored in their relationships, and so we found yes, they're
Speaker 1: more easy for but they're when they're easy, when they're
Speaker 1: bored in their relationships, they're not more to satisfy. Their
Speaker 1: relationship is still satisfying, which looks to me like they've
Speaker 1: just accepted the storiction that that it's hard to find
Speaker 1: a deep conversation and in a deep conversation and relationship,
Speaker 1: I mean that's two thirds three corps the time you're
Speaker 1: figuring out who's going to make dinner or that when's
Speaker 1: the car going to be taken in, and you know
Speaker 1: what you're going to it's hard to have these conversations.
Speaker 1: So I think the problem with HSB non HSP combinations,
Speaker 1: and I've written about this a lot on Higher Sensitive
Speaker 1: person Loves. There's going to be about the conflict. But
Speaker 1: once you understand that some of these conflicts are based
Speaker 1: on temperament which cannot be changed. Once you accept the differences,
Speaker 1: you can get quite creative and making use of each
Speaker 1: other's abilities. Yeah, and it's not highly sensitive and not
Speaker 1: highly sensitive relies on me in many ways for my sensitivity,
Speaker 1: and I rely on him for his nonsensitivity and the
Speaker 1: sensitive over stimulated as I do. Sometimes it's frustrating that
Speaker 1: there's certain kind of places that he wants to go
Speaker 1: with me, but he doesn't in the sense of being
Speaker 1: able to ask me. He can understand me, but he
Speaker 1: can't ask me, or he can't. I'm sorry he can't
Speaker 1: tribute as much. But that's okay. I'm used to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you would still say he's he still is compassionate. Oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I have to be so careful about the meaning of
Speaker 1: the words exactly exactly. He has other meanings and sensitive
Speaker 1: to my needs extremely exactly exactly. I wanted to make
Speaker 1: that and in fact I joked that when quote sensitive
Speaker 1: people are tired and overstimulated, they can be very mean,
Speaker 1: very insensitive, because they just o, no, I can't do anymore.
Speaker 1: I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and also picky because if
Speaker 1: you're sensitive to people wrapping their keys, their coughing toos
Speaker 1: out or chewing with their mouth up, I mean, we
Speaker 1: can get pretty irritated about those things. Sometimes when the
Speaker 1: nonsense a person doesn't fascinating, and you've gone into different
Speaker 1: kinds of research or not different, but you started to
Speaker 1: study the identity and and and and the self the
Speaker 1: idea of having a true self worth. I'd love to
Speaker 1: know how you like what is true self work? I know,
Speaker 1: I know, and literally in five minutes, the last five minutes.
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe you could come on some other time
Speaker 1: and we could just talk about the self war stuff.
Speaker 1: Would you be down with that, like like mid midnight,
Speaker 1: like a six months from now or something. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but maybe just for the five for the last five minutes,
Speaker 1: just to wet people's appetite so they can read your
Speaker 1: waiter's book on the topic. See. I think that all
Speaker 1: social animals when they're with other animals, when they're in
Speaker 1: the group, are doing two things. They're ranking and they're ranking.
Speaker 1: If you watch herd of horses, for instance, a group
Speaker 1: of horses and a pasture, if you bring a care
Speaker 1: to the fence, one horse is going to get that care,
Speaker 1: and if anybody else tries to get it to turn
Speaker 1: around and bite them and kick them. The alpha mayor
Speaker 1: the alpha guilding usually suddenly down a bunch test. But uh,
Speaker 1: and but at the same time, if you watch them
Speaker 1: certain horses or friends, they'd like to stand together and
Speaker 1: swap flives off each other and they just hang out together.
Speaker 1: And so we see friendships, and we see ranking, and
Speaker 1: we see this in human beings. But if you are
Speaker 1: in ranking mode, if you're if you're at the moment,
Speaker 1: this is what's being stimulated in you, or this is
Speaker 1: the environment that you're in. You're you're competing for a
Speaker 1: job or you're competing for promotion, and you're looking around
Speaker 1: the other people and you think in that way, and
Speaker 1: you know, in a tournament of some kind something like that.
Speaker 1: So when you're ranking, the questions is where do you
Speaker 1: rank yourself? Right and interestingly with animals, and I think
Speaker 1: it's partly true for humans too, is that to be safe,
Speaker 1: it's a good idea to have an overall sense of
Speaker 1: your rank. You know, we know that, well, a person
Speaker 1: could be good at tennis but not be good at math,
Speaker 1: and it might be really good at this, and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be good at that. But people still have a
Speaker 1: sense of their overall self worth. And it's some kind
Speaker 1: of additive thing and it's very instinctual. Because animals are saate,
Speaker 1: they're going to decide whether the fight or not for
Speaker 1: that carrot, they'd better know how strong they are, how
Speaker 1: strong the other one is, you know, and what a
Speaker 1: strength well, they have a whole sense, well, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: good today, I'm as young as that horse. I can
Speaker 1: really buy it, I can really kick I'm going to
Speaker 1: try it. And the other horses probably have tried it
Speaker 1: a few times, and they have an overall sense of
Speaker 1: themselves as not as strong as the alpha there. So
Speaker 1: we do have this sense of over all self esteem
Speaker 1: when we're in linking mode. It's largely your relevant. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting that if you ask people to make a
Speaker 1: list of the people who make them feel good to
Speaker 1: be with the people who make them feel bad to
Speaker 1: be with people are you feel good? Are the people
Speaker 1: with whom you link, and there's very little thinking going on.
Speaker 1: People who make you feel bad are the people with
Speaker 1: whom you rank yourself. Even people who rank themselves lower
Speaker 1: than you, You don't respect them, So it's not that
Speaker 1: pleasant to be around them if that's that's what they're
Speaker 1: going to be constantly bringing up. I remember having a
Speaker 1: long time ago a friend who was constantly saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you're so much better at that than I am, and
Speaker 1: I found it not comfortable. Why would I want to
Speaker 1: be friends of somebody who thinks I'm sumuch better that
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be flattering. I guess maybe it's not
Speaker 1: agreeableness aspect that you're talking about or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot as agreeful really ranking. So my point
Speaker 1: about it was that it's hard to know your true
Speaker 1: self worth if you're I really was going into the
Speaker 1: fact that people who who are troubled in other ways
Speaker 1: tend to have low self worth because they're constantly in
Speaker 1: ranking mode. They're not linking as much as they're ranking.
Speaker 1: They go into a party and they start thinking about
Speaker 1: who's who's better than them and who's not as soon
Speaker 1: they're comparing in that way rather than charging in instining
Speaker 1: to link. And I don't think that's so much about
Speaker 1: extraversion introversion at all. I think it's I think it's well,
Speaker 1: there are those correlations of extraversion and kind of assertiveness,
Speaker 1: but I think again those could be teased out because
Speaker 1: the I kind of think their hoticism has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with ranking, because there's one guy who studied
Speaker 1: depression and animals, and he thinks that depression is our
Speaker 1: instinctive response to being defeated, that what we need to
Speaker 1: do is crawl off and don't try it again. Just
Speaker 1: feel bad about ourselves and have low energy and low
Speaker 1: initiatives and feel defeated, and then we won't get hurt
Speaker 1: because if we just charge back into the fray again,
Speaker 1: we're going to get hurt more. In terms of like
Speaker 1: animals that are in a cage together, the one that's
Speaker 1: defeated had better go crawl off or he's going to
Speaker 1: get beaten up. So depression is a lot about feeling
Speaker 1: defeated and hopefully correct. Yeah, that makes of course, anxiety
Speaker 1: is about am I going to be accepted or rejected?
Speaker 1: Can I do this? Or am I going to look
Speaker 1: like a failure? So what is true self worth? What
Speaker 1: is true self worth? True self worth would be having.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think the self worth in a
Speaker 1: ranking situation is established because other people liking you. You
Speaker 1: feel your sense of self worth from people's loving it
Speaker 1: or caring for you, wanting to be around you. And
Speaker 1: I define linking as being attracted to someone, wanting to
Speaker 1: be around them and wanting to help them if you can. So, boy,
Speaker 1: if people are treating you that way, you have self worth.
Speaker 1: So I like how you no, I like how you're
Speaker 1: bringing in, Like the environment matters. You don't know, you
Speaker 1: don't always hear that when people talk, well, how do
Speaker 1: you establish your self worth if it hasn't been through
Speaker 1: social interactions? Well so wouldn't Some people argue that, like
Speaker 1: a stable sense of self worth should be independent of
Speaker 1: how people treat you well, not how people you will
Speaker 1: treat you now. But if your sense of self worth
Speaker 1: surely comes from your history with people, rightchildhood or thank
Speaker 1: somebody have given you such a strong sense of stuff.
Speaker 1: But being around some of who doesn't like hardly affects you.
Speaker 1: That's like a secure attachment style. Most of that is
Speaker 1: established early on, but still social. I mean, we can't
Speaker 1: have any identity without without social interaction, gotcha. Yeah, speaking
Speaker 1: as a social psychogist, now, I know, so you are
Speaker 1: one of I would say, one of the best social
Speaker 1: psychologists of all time. But you know, we're quite a pair.
Speaker 1: You know. If you guys are good huddle you guys
Speaker 1: are and you guys did you meet in nineteen sixty seven?
Speaker 1: Is that when you guys met? Yeah, I find it's
Speaker 1: so touching, like you know, just from like a personal perspective, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw a picture of you guys, like very early
Speaker 1: in your career. He's like got this big hair, and
Speaker 1: you felt did you followed over that big hair that
Speaker 1: was the sixties? And yeah, he was a pretty crazy guy.
Speaker 1: And you guys have just been such a you know,
Speaker 1: amazing team. And you did all this work on love
Speaker 1: and you found, you know, you did this great thirty
Speaker 1: six questions and found that you could actually create create
Speaker 1: love in the laboratory by having people becoming more intimately
Speaker 1: each other. So with all that said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: end this whole interview today with one question I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, which comes from the list of thirty six.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make you fall in love with me.
Speaker 1: I just want to tell you, I just want to
Speaker 1: I picked out one question from your list of thirty
Speaker 1: six questions that you found, so we'll have fun with this.
Speaker 1: Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would
Speaker 1: you want as a dinner guest. That's funny because I've
Speaker 1: actually thought about that question because I keep changing my mind.
Speaker 1: I think think of all the questions as to what
Speaker 1: I thought about the most. Is that good? Is that good?
Speaker 1: Then that I asked you that one? Or bad? Well?
Speaker 1: In confusing Yeah, I wrote up a paper calls a
Speaker 1: table for for Mike dinner with Carl You and Martin
Speaker 1: Uber and Mari shimas Joki. So right there, I couldn't
Speaker 1: decide right. The one that comes up with me today
Speaker 1: was I would like to have dinner with Jesus. Wow,
Speaker 1: because I think he is the most confusing. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't know what this person was like. But then
Speaker 1: I think, no, I'd like to have dinner with Ludhas
Speaker 1: maybe Mohammad, because you know, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: spiritual interests in these people get so warped by over
Speaker 1: the years by just like you know, you're playing gossip
Speaker 1: and you know, somebody says something and well, no, he
Speaker 1: said that. Oh no, he said that and pretty soon
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what he actually said. So
Speaker 1: I'd like to meet some of these people. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: why just pick one? You know, I think all those
Speaker 1: are fight I think when when your husband was asked once,
Speaker 1: I think he said Socrates was Socrates? Yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: because he's really really loved Socrates. I would love to
Speaker 1: see Socrates and Jesus have a conversation. That would be fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be great. Hey, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time. I know this this interview is a little
Speaker 1: longer than some of my other interviews, but I think
Speaker 1: we covered a lot of ground. And thanks for being
Speaker 1: so generous and talking to me today. That's fine. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Scott, Thank you, bye bye bye. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening 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
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