Speaker 1: People who scol higher and openness are less vulnerable to dementia.
Speaker 1: For example, later in life, the more varied your routines
Speaker 1: and the more new ideas you expose yourself too. You know,
Speaker 1: if you keep yourself mentally on your toes, welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Christian Jared, the author, editor,
Speaker 1: and contributor to ten books spanning psychology, neuroscience, self help,
Speaker 1: and productivity. He's recognized as a chartered psychologist and Associate
Speaker 1: of the British Psychological Society and Deputy editor of Psyche,
Speaker 1: a global digital magazine that illuminates the human condition through psychology,
Speaker 1: philosophical understanding and the arts. Christian's latest book is Be
Speaker 1: Who You Want, Unlocking the Science of Personality Change. Hi Christian,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, get to me. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to have you here. We're gonna be discussing your book,
Speaker 1: Be Who you Want, Unlocking the Science of Personality Change.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, we'll start, like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. In the parable, there's a
Speaker 1: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second, looks at with their grandparents. Well, which
Speaker 1: one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. Actually, it seemed to chime,
Speaker 1: you know, really nicely with the whole topic of personality development,
Speaker 1: really because you know, the idea that we do have
Speaker 1: the potential to express different aspects of ourselves, and depending
Speaker 1: on the situations we put ourselves in and the experiences
Speaker 1: we have in life, you know, those different sides to
Speaker 1: our characters can come out. So just it's straightaway, it
Speaker 1: made me think of that, and I suppose not only
Speaker 1: are we shaped by our life experiences, but that line
Speaker 1: about is the one you feed because the research I
Speaker 1: looked into is this idea that we don't have to
Speaker 1: be passive about these things. You know, we can take
Speaker 1: some conscious control and be more deliberate about the situations
Speaker 1: we put ourselves in and the company we keep and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So it made me think of that,
Speaker 1: the idea of which sides to your character you're going
Speaker 1: to feed just from like a personal level, Like one
Speaker 1: thing that immediately I suppose popped into my head in
Speaker 1: terms of my own personality, like is I remember like
Speaker 1: earlier on in the age of Twitter, I might get
Speaker 1: bogged down for quite a long time in the Twitter
Speaker 1: spats and arguments online, and it was very tempting, you know,
Speaker 1: to engage in those kind of arguments and always try
Speaker 1: and get the last word and someone and I always
Speaker 1: ended up feeling worse at the end of those episodes,
Speaker 1: and I think it brought out, you know, definitely the
Speaker 1: poorer side of my character. So you know, I just
Speaker 1: don't do that anymore. I just do not engage in
Speaker 1: any of that kind of online arguments and spots. So again,
Speaker 1: that parable made me think of that to do with
Speaker 1: which side of your character you're going to feed and
Speaker 1: encourage on a deliberate level. Yeah. Yeah. You start the
Speaker 1: book right away with a pretty big question, which I
Speaker 1: think anybody who is in this space of psychology, of
Speaker 1: personal development of spirituality, you know, there is this core
Speaker 1: question of can we really change? You know, can we
Speaker 1: ever truly change? And to what extent can we change?
Speaker 1: And you really devote kind of the rest of the
Speaker 1: book to talking about that. But in a short answer,
Speaker 1: what's your response now, after having asked that question, written
Speaker 1: that book, you know, all the work that you do
Speaker 1: in editing a magazine about psychology, what's your short answer
Speaker 1: to can people truly change? This short answer is an
Speaker 1: overwhelming yes, is the short answer. Yeah. It's a long
Speaker 1: running debate in psychology. And obviously everyone really has their
Speaker 1: intuition about this, don't they Whether they think people can
Speaker 1: truly change deep down? But yet it raises the question
Speaker 1: about like what who are we really? You know, like
Speaker 1: how do you measure who someone is in the first place?
Speaker 1: And yeah, and how much that kind of a change.
Speaker 1: But whether it was through some of the life stories
Speaker 1: I looked into or the more formal research studies. The
Speaker 1: overwhelming answer that I came, of course, as the significant
Speaker 1: change is possible. In fact, it is probably the norm
Speaker 1: for quite a lot of change to occur. You know,
Speaker 1: how deliberate that changes or not is obviously another question,
Speaker 1: and whether or not it's changed for the better or
Speaker 1: not is another issue as well. Yeah, so you just
Speaker 1: alluded to an interesting question, which is how do we
Speaker 1: measure who we really are? And one of the more
Speaker 1: prominent theories in psychology today talks about personality, and it
Speaker 1: divides personality into five main characteristics and we'll go into
Speaker 1: those in a minute. But that's one way of slicing
Speaker 1: who we are in a loose way? Are there other
Speaker 1: psychological approaches for slicing who we are beyond personality that
Speaker 1: have much prominence. I really like the approach of the
Speaker 1: psychologist Dan McAdams and if he came across him. But
Speaker 1: my book is mostly focused on the so called kind
Speaker 1: of big five personality traits which you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: alluding to their Dan McAdams has this idea that that's
Speaker 1: kind of like the foundation of who we are, but
Speaker 1: then layer it on top of that. He has the
Speaker 1: stories that we tell about ourselves, about our lives, the
Speaker 1: stories we tell of who we are and what's happened
Speaker 1: to us. And then another level he has is our
Speaker 1: values and goals, you know, like what matters to us,
Speaker 1: what we think is important in life. I suppose our
Speaker 1: morality would come into that as well. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of three levels I think. Also, you know, some people
Speaker 1: think our relationships are a key part of who we
Speaker 1: are as well, you know, who matters to us, our identity,
Speaker 1: you know, the different roles that we take on in life.
Speaker 1: So there are all these things bubbling around, and they
Speaker 1: they all do kind of interact the different levels through
Speaker 1: interacts as well. As I was reading your book and
Speaker 1: thinking about all this thought came to mind. There's a
Speaker 1: song by a band I love. The band is called DAWs.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know them. Their Americans sort
Speaker 1: of I guess rock band. But the songwriter is incredible,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a song called a little Bit of
Speaker 1: Everything and it's just a beautiful song. But as I
Speaker 1: was reading your book, I was thinking so much, like
Speaker 1: of what we are and how we act and how
Speaker 1: we behave and what happens to us and how we respond.
Speaker 1: It really it's a little bit of everything, you know.
Speaker 1: It's the situation, it's our personality, it's our values, it's
Speaker 1: our mood, it's our underlying biochemical state. It's how well
Speaker 1: did we sleep last night. It's like, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of everything, and we want to reduce it. We
Speaker 1: want to go it's this so we can pin it
Speaker 1: down and make it simple. But it certainly does not
Speaker 1: seem in any way, shape or form to be simple.
Speaker 1: That's right. I think different people have a different view
Speaker 1: on what is kind of like the ultimate aspects of
Speaker 1: who who you are? You know, once she drilled right down,
Speaker 1: you know, so if your personality does change, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, are you therefore a totally different person? Well, no,
Speaker 1: you're not. Are you completely There are aspects of you
Speaker 1: that will remain the same. You're still married to the
Speaker 1: same person, and you're still the parents of the same person.
Speaker 1: You still might believe in the same values even though
Speaker 1: your traits have changed and so on. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a little bit of everything. I agree. The Big
Speaker 1: five theory of personality provides a very useful kind of
Speaker 1: framework for thinking about a lot of these things. Those
Speaker 1: five key traits capture a lot of the differences in
Speaker 1: our behavior and the way we think, and the way
Speaker 1: we relate to other people. So it's it's a kind
Speaker 1: of a useful heuristic. I think that captures quite a
Speaker 1: lot of the variation in who we are. And it does,
Speaker 1: like I said, it interacts with those other levels, like
Speaker 1: our values and our life story, you know, the stories
Speaker 1: we tell about ourselves in both directions. You know, there's
Speaker 1: research suggesting, you know, when our values change and we
Speaker 1: change our priorities in life, that can feedback and actually
Speaker 1: change our traits, our personality rates. For example. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: interviewed not too long ago, Kevin Mitchell, who you may
Speaker 1: be familiar with. You wrote a book called Innate. It's about,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the underlying biological wiring that says
Speaker 1: our personalities are somewhat innate, we come with them. But
Speaker 1: he also doesn't argue for that's all of it. You
Speaker 1: say in the book that the current estimation is somewhere
Speaker 1: between thirty and fifty percent of the variation and personality
Speaker 1: between people stems from the genes they inherited from their parents.
Speaker 1: So we're then saying the opposite of that is fifty
Speaker 1: to seventy percent of it is beyond genetic. That a
Speaker 1: safe way of interpreting that. Yeah, it is, So there's
Speaker 1: definitely an innate aspect to it. One thing I tried
Speaker 1: to do in the book is be realistic. So I'm
Speaker 1: not arguing that, you know, you can totally change your personality,
Speaker 1: because I think, yeah, there are certain sort of hardwired
Speaker 1: dispositions that you have. I think what one kind of
Speaker 1: maybe metaphor I've found useful before is something like your
Speaker 1: bodysh ape and physical exercise. So it wouldn't matter, you know,
Speaker 1: how many how many hours I spent lifting weights at
Speaker 1: the gym. I'm never going to be a huge giant guy.
Speaker 1: Depending on how much exercise I do and the type
Speaker 1: of exercise and what I eat. There's obviously going to
Speaker 1: be quite a wide range and how my physical state's
Speaker 1: going to end up. And I think it's similar with personalities.
Speaker 1: If your genetic inheritance from your parents means, you know,
Speaker 1: you have leanings towards being an introvert, you're probably never gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, transform the other end of the scale. But
Speaker 1: depending on the choices you make in life and the
Speaker 1: routines you build in and the company you keep and
Speaker 1: the decisions you make, your relationships that you have and
Speaker 1: so on, you're definitely going to be able to shift
Speaker 1: yourself along the spectrum for sure, you know, quite considerably.
Speaker 1: In that book, Kevin Mitchell had an analogy that I like,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, we're not blank slates, but
Speaker 1: a slate doesn't have to be blank for you to
Speaker 1: write on it, you know. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: a nice way of thinking about it, like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we come with some things written. When I think how
Speaker 1: much people can change, I can't help but think about
Speaker 1: my own life. And I was, you know, at twenty four,
Speaker 1: I was a heroin addict. I was homeless, you know,
Speaker 1: I weighed a hundred pounds. I would have robbed you
Speaker 1: at gunpoint to get drugs. Fast forward, you know, last
Speaker 1: summer and my mom fell again, and I was going
Speaker 1: to the grocery store twice a week and picking up
Speaker 1: her opioid prescriptions and bringing them to her and not
Speaker 1: even thinking about it. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: change in there, and there are some underlying, as we said,
Speaker 1: some personality traits of mine that you know, I think
Speaker 1: have held a little steady during that time also, So
Speaker 1: I think this is such an interesting question. One of
Speaker 1: the points that you make is that even modest genetic
Speaker 1: influences on personality can snowball by affecting the kind of
Speaker 1: experiences you have. So we know that we come with
Speaker 1: some amount of innateness. Our experiences tend to shape a
Speaker 1: lot of the rest of it. But that innatenesce can
Speaker 1: often cause us to keep selecting the same type of
Speaker 1: experiences over and over, which then re amplify those personality traits.
Speaker 1: I think it's what you're saying there, right. Yeah. For example,
Speaker 1: so someone who scores highly in neuroticism, which means they
Speaker 1: have emotional you know, instability, prone to worry and stress
Speaker 1: and what have you. High scorers in neuroticism and more
Speaker 1: likely you know, to get into arguments, more likely to
Speaker 1: have difficult relationships, that kind of thing, and you can
Speaker 1: see how that is then going to escalate, isn't It's
Speaker 1: going to amplify it, just as you said, And so
Speaker 1: similar with another one of the traits, agreeability. So if
Speaker 1: you're low agreeability, you know, you find it hard to
Speaker 1: trust other people, you see the worst in them, you're
Speaker 1: not very empathic. Again, you could probably gonna end up
Speaker 1: with more conflict in your life and so on, and
Speaker 1: that's just going to feed those tendencies. So I think
Speaker 1: a lot about making deliberate positive personality changes is about
Speaker 1: short circuiting some of these feedback loops if you can
Speaker 1: deliberately sometimes as well as finding more constructive outlets for
Speaker 1: some of you innite dispositions as well. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of some research you quoted in the book. The
Speaker 1: book is chock full of lots of great research, but
Speaker 1: one of the findings, and we've talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show in the past, but I think it's so
Speaker 1: interesting is you talk about loneliness and you say that
Speaker 1: people who are lonely have a tendency to show reduced
Speaker 1: extraversion and agreeableness, you know, at the end of the study,
Speaker 1: so they start a study, they identify as lonely and
Speaker 1: their traits for extra version and agreeableness are lower at
Speaker 1: the end. And the other is that loneliness tends to
Speaker 1: make us highly sensitive to social slights and rejection, which
Speaker 1: we can see how that amplifies itself. So I'm lonely,
Speaker 1: I'm prone to interpret anything anyone does as a slight,
Speaker 1: even if it's not, which then drives me further into
Speaker 1: my shell, which makes me more sensitive to social slights.
Speaker 1: And I see this in all aspects of life. There's
Speaker 1: sort of the upward and the downward spiral. So I'm
Speaker 1: describing some of the downward spirals that can happen with loneliness.
Speaker 1: Can you think of, you know, based on some of
Speaker 1: the things you have in the book, an example of
Speaker 1: an upward spiral that we might engage in across any
Speaker 1: of the personality traits. Mood interacts with the expression of
Speaker 1: our personality traits very strongly. So whatever your baseline personality
Speaker 1: tends to be, there's research suggesting that when we're feeling
Speaker 1: happier and when we're with people who we trust and
Speaker 1: who make us feel authentic and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: when we're in that kind of situation. Then, like I say,
Speaker 1: whatever our baseline personality traits, we tend to act more extroverted.
Speaker 1: Agreeableness goes up a lot of these kind of more
Speaker 1: positive personality traits. So there's this technique or exercise. A
Speaker 1: team of British researchers came up whether they called the
Speaker 1: situation selection strategy, which is really just about being more mindful.
Speaker 1: Like they had one group of volunteers who before the weekend,
Speaker 1: they had them rehearse saying to themselves this weekend, when
Speaker 1: I'm choosing what activities to do, I'm going to think
Speaker 1: about what activities make me feel good. You know, what
Speaker 1: company makes me feel good, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And then they assessed them after the weekend compared to
Speaker 1: the control group, and it worked. By just being more
Speaker 1: conscious of the decisions they made over what to do
Speaker 1: that weekend rather than just following their usual routines or
Speaker 1: just being passive about it, you know, it lifted their mood.
Speaker 1: They spent more time feeling good and then and this
Speaker 1: manifested in the expression of their personality traits, feeling more extroverted,
Speaker 1: more agreeable than so on. Quite a lot of the
Speaker 1: exercises in my book as well, are about encouraging positive
Speaker 1: trade change or about boosting confidence as well. So there's
Speaker 1: another one of the traits we haven't mentioned, which is
Speaker 1: openness to experience, a willingness to try out new things,
Speaker 1: see things in a new way, you know, be more
Speaker 1: open to other arguments and perspectives, whether in politics or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. And there's a whole load of
Speaker 1: research suggesting that, for example, doing more crossword puzzles and
Speaker 1: things like that and Sudoku and brain training access sizes
Speaker 1: leads to increases in openness, probably because it's confidence building,
Speaker 1: so you say about that kind of upward spiral. If
Speaker 1: you feel more confident in yourself, you're more willing to
Speaker 1: try out new things and be more minded. Similarly, physical exercise,
Speaker 1: getting physically fitter seems to increase people's trait openness to experience. Again,
Speaker 1: psychologists think that's because of a confidence issue. Again, if
Speaker 1: you're more confident in yourself mentally and your mental abilities,
Speaker 1: and more confident physically, it encourages you to be more minded,
Speaker 1: more adventurous. And I guess almost like the opposite of
Speaker 1: what you're saying with the loneliness in a less defensive
Speaker 1: kind of mindset. I suppose what you were saying there
Speaker 1: makes intuitive sense to me about our mood having impact
Speaker 1: on our personality, because every time I've taken a personality test,
Speaker 1: I end up feeling annoyed by it. And the reason
Speaker 1: I feel annoyed by it is some of them are like,
Speaker 1: would you rather go to a party or read a book?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, that really depends. Sometimes I'm in
Speaker 1: the mood to go to a party, and sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: in the mood to read a book. Like so much
Speaker 1: of it to me seemed to be like, well, that
Speaker 1: really depends on mood. That mood is a big indicator
Speaker 1: and a big mover there. How much research is there
Speaker 1: that we know about the impacts that personality have on
Speaker 1: mood and mood has on personality, and psychologically speaking, how
Speaker 1: is mood defined? What is it? So mood is meant
Speaker 1: to be kind of your temporary state in terms of
Speaker 1: how you feel in the moment, So personality has meant
Speaker 1: to play out over the longer term. You know, if
Speaker 1: I was to play the role of a perspective of
Speaker 1: a personality researcher, now they would say to you, well,
Speaker 1: that question about would you rather read a book or
Speaker 1: go to a party. If they asked you that question
Speaker 1: once a week for a year, you know, like talied
Speaker 1: up your answers. If you're an introvert, you would say
Speaker 1: read a book more often, whereas an out and out extrovert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of weeks they would say they want
Speaker 1: to read a book. Were measured over that kind of
Speaker 1: time span, they would more often say they want to
Speaker 1: go to a party. So it's partly an issue of
Speaker 1: time frames. And yeah, mood is just your kind of
Speaker 1: state in the moment, whether it's more positive or more
Speaker 1: negative valanced, it would be the technical time, is it
Speaker 1: positively balanced or negatively. There have been these cool studies
Speaker 1: where they've had volunteers carry around these kind of smartphones,
Speaker 1: you know, where they take these little questionnaires as they
Speaker 1: go about their daily lives, and they kind of beap
Speaker 1: several times a day as they go about their lives,
Speaker 1: and they ask them, you know, what are you doing,
Speaker 1: who are you with, what's your mood like right now?
Speaker 1: And then they get them to fill out a little
Speaker 1: mini personality test, and exactly as you're saying, the same
Speaker 1: individual scores their own personality differently depending on the mood
Speaker 1: they're in. So the kind of thing that you find
Speaker 1: is actually regardless of whether someone's an introvert or an extrovert.
Speaker 1: The kind of thing you find is that when people
Speaker 1: are in a social situation and enjoying it, then they
Speaker 1: tend to rate their personality more positively. You know, they
Speaker 1: will rate their agreeableness higher, emotional stability higher, the extra
Speaker 1: version higher. That's why there's quite a few times in
Speaker 1: the book where I really encourage people. I suppose, whatever
Speaker 1: their leanings, whether they're an introvert or an extrovert, I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot to be said for having, you know,
Speaker 1: at least some healthy social connection in your life. The
Speaker 1: research does seem to suggest, whatever you're kind of leanings
Speaker 1: on the intro version extra version scale, Tony much everybody
Speaker 1: does get a healthy kick out of happy social times,
Speaker 1: you know, with friends. Yeah. You say in the book
Speaker 1: that perhaps more than any of the other personality traits,
Speaker 1: extra version and introversion are shaped by habit. So we
Speaker 1: can become more or less introverted based on I guess
Speaker 1: how much we engage in social activity. Yeah, and finding
Speaker 1: you know, if you can. It's not always easy, but
Speaker 1: you know, finding your niche. So socializing with people that
Speaker 1: you know you you don't yell with, you don't click with,
Speaker 1: is going to leave you grumpy. You know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be feeling grumpy and you're gonna you're going to want
Speaker 1: to withdraw. Yeah, it's not like any old socializing will do.
Speaker 1: But if you can try and find your kind of
Speaker 1: people and doing the kind of activity that you like,
Speaker 1: then you'll probably find Yeah, you start to come out
Speaker 1: of your shell and you start to act more extroverted.
Speaker 1: Real quick, let's just run through what the five main
Speaker 1: personality traits are so that as we continue to talk
Speaker 1: about them, listeners have that reference. You want to run
Speaker 1: through them real quick. Yeah. So there's openness to experience,
Speaker 1: which we touched on before, conscientiousness which is how self
Speaker 1: disciplined you are and orderly and ambitious. There's extra version,
Speaker 1: which we've been mentioning, agreeableness, which is how warm and
Speaker 1: friendly you are and how trusting of other people. And
Speaker 1: then there's neuroticism, which is basically, if you're high in neuroticism,
Speaker 1: then you're low in emotional stability. Some people call it
Speaker 1: resilience as well. You know, so the opposite of high
Speaker 1: newroticism would be emotional resilience. So those are the big five.
Speaker 1: Some people say there's the dark triad as well, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard of, the narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism
Speaker 1: as well. So there's those three. I do work with
Speaker 1: Chris who's our editor and producer, so I am familiar
Speaker 1: with the dark Tria. Just just kidding everybody. Chris is lovely. Um,
Speaker 1: so okay, So we've nailed down the five main treats.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I found really interesting in
Speaker 1: the book was talking about how, broadly speaking it's not
Speaker 1: going to be for everybody, but broadly speaking, the way
Speaker 1: aging changes some of these personality traits in fairly predictable ways.
Speaker 1: Can you share a little bit about that. So they
Speaker 1: call this the maturity principle, and it's it's quite a
Speaker 1: positive story on the whole. Yeah, so the older we
Speaker 1: get this is what it meant about. You asked me
Speaker 1: earlier about two people change. We can expect to change
Speaker 1: as we get older, and generally speaking, we become less
Speaker 1: neurotic as we get older. We get more chilled out
Speaker 1: as we get older, which is on average, which is
Speaker 1: quite comforting. I think, you know, less prone to worry
Speaker 1: and and less prone to negative emotions and so on.
Speaker 1: The older we get. On average, counscientiousness is a bit different,
Speaker 1: so that one tends to increase up to kind of
Speaker 1: around midlife, and then it decreases into older age. One's
Speaker 1: kind of theory for that is they called it the
Speaker 1: ADULTI Vita effect. Late in life, but later in life
Speaker 1: people have fewer responsibilities if they're retired and their kids
Speaker 1: are growing up and some one, so they become less
Speaker 1: conscientious because they have fewer things to worry and worry
Speaker 1: about is the idea. Openness to experience is another one
Speaker 1: that it mostly goes up through life, but then again
Speaker 1: it tends to decline later in life as people get
Speaker 1: more set in their ways and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know. So you see, older people will tend to
Speaker 1: have a more conservative outlook, preferring things to be done
Speaker 1: the traditional way, and on average, of course, this isn't
Speaker 1: true for everyone, but you know, they'll prefer their usual
Speaker 1: routines and some one. Agreeableness is another nice one that
Speaker 1: tends to increase through life. I think we see that again,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a stereotype. Older people will tend
Speaker 1: to be warmer and more chatting and accepting. Extra Version
Speaker 1: is one that Again some of the studies are contradictory.
Speaker 1: Some say extra version kind of goes up through life. Again,
Speaker 1: it's another one of these sort of positive maturity principle
Speaker 1: things in terms are becoming more sociability, I suppose, and
Speaker 1: and chatty. Some studies find dips like in midlife when
Speaker 1: people become parents and things like that for practical reasons.
Speaker 1: If you're stuck at home, you know, with childcare and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and you have juggling lots of
Speaker 1: responsibilities in life, there's less scope for socializing and adventure
Speaker 1: and that that that kind of thing. These are some
Speaker 1: of the kind of average tendencies you see. Yeah, of
Speaker 1: course the lifespan. Yeah, that openness to experience decreasing as
Speaker 1: people age is something I really see in people as
Speaker 1: they get older. And it's one of my key anti
Speaker 1: aging strategies for myself because I notice it. I feel
Speaker 1: it in myself like wanting to do less, and I
Speaker 1: just keep kind of pushing against it because I'm like
Speaker 1: that sort of ossification strikes me as something I see
Speaker 1: in older people a lot, and it's one that I
Speaker 1: want to try and at least counter in a sane way. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great idea. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: some studies showing interesting links between openness to experience as
Speaker 1: a personality trait and health outcomes later in life. People
Speaker 1: who score higher and openness are less vulnerable to dementia.
Speaker 1: For example, later in life, the more varia your routines
Speaker 1: and the more new ideas you expose yourself too, you know,
Speaker 1: if you keep yourself mentally on your toes, I guess
Speaker 1: it all helps build up cognitive reserve. You know, they
Speaker 1: call it cognitive reserve, this kind of spare capacity that
Speaker 1: helps build your resilience to dementia later in life. So yes,
Speaker 1: it's a great policy to have. My partner's mom has
Speaker 1: late stage Alzheimer's. My dad has late stage Alzheimer's, and
Speaker 1: I can look at him. I didn't know Jenny's mom
Speaker 1: much before she was diagnosed, but I certainly know my dad,
Speaker 1: and I can sort of see what you're saying. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is what caused his Alzheimer's. I'm
Speaker 1: not making that leap, but he certainly his life was
Speaker 1: very let's just say small you know, he did sort
Speaker 1: of the same exact things over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: the same activities. You know, it was just small. I
Speaker 1: can see how that in his case may have been
Speaker 1: a contributing factor and be something in my case that
Speaker 1: I want to be on the lookout for. There was
Speaker 1: another really interesting study that you talked about, and you said,
Speaker 1: the longest ever personality study, published in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: involved a comparison of participants personalities at age fourteen and
Speaker 1: then again at age seventy seven, and it failed to
Speaker 1: find much correlation between the two times. That's kind of stunning. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One way of thinking about it, I think is to
Speaker 1: imagine having a class reunion, you know, with your classmates
Speaker 1: when you were at school when you're a teenager. Imagine
Speaker 1: having a reunion in your seventies when they followed up
Speaker 1: with these participants and yeah, how sixty year reunion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much do you think your friends from your class
Speaker 1: when you're a teenager. Would you think you would still
Speaker 1: see aspects of their personality that you remember from when
Speaker 1: you're at school, um or would they have changed completely?
Speaker 1: And on the basis of this study anyway, they had
Speaker 1: access to the personality ratings of these kids, which I
Speaker 1: think we're done by their teach is when they're at school.
Speaker 1: And then they had these same individuals complete personality tests
Speaker 1: in their seventies and they couldn't find a correlation between
Speaker 1: the two. There is the caveat that the measures had changed.
Speaker 1: I think back when they had these ratings from when
Speaker 1: these people were teenagers. You know, the personality quiz that
Speaker 1: that was used then it was different from the one
Speaker 1: later on, and that kind of thing. So there are
Speaker 1: some caveats, but it gives you pause for thought, doesn't
Speaker 1: it as well for anyone who's in a long term
Speaker 1: marriage that kind of thing, Like, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: person that you marry, you're going to be the same
Speaker 1: person in several decades of time. You're going to be
Speaker 1: married to the same person or someone who's very very different.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean a lot of the research I
Speaker 1: uncovered suggests considerable changes take place and maybe we should
Speaker 1: expect that. Talk to me about what social investment theory is.
Speaker 1: So this is the idea of another factor in life
Speaker 1: that shapes personality traits is the roles that we take on.
Speaker 1: So find that for example, when people win a promotion
Speaker 1: at work, for example, you look at their personality over
Speaker 1: the coming months or years, you'll see an uptick in conscientiousness,
Speaker 1: for example, after someone hurts one a job promotion, or
Speaker 1: in young people when they take on their first job
Speaker 1: again you see a kind of uptick in conscientiousness. Conversely,
Speaker 1: when people lose their job as it happens, you see,
Speaker 1: you know, you see the opposite, you see conscientiousness go down.
Speaker 1: But social investment theory is really all about this idea
Speaker 1: that the roles we take on in life and the
Speaker 1: demands that are placed on us depending on what our
Speaker 1: roles are, to some extent shape personalities of see. A
Speaker 1: lot of the time that that's most concrete is in
Speaker 1: terms of our paid employment and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but obviously it applies to other roles that we take
Speaker 1: on in life as well. A lot of the research
Speaker 1: has been done on when people take a certain career path.
Speaker 1: There have been studies like, for example, looking at when
Speaker 1: people join the military or something like that, more extreme examples,
Speaker 1: and again you get some of the personality trade changes
Speaker 1: that you might expect. So resilience will go up when people, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, join the military, and conscientiousness will will go
Speaker 1: up and that kind of thing. And I would expect
Speaker 1: to see it more prominently and work simply because of
Speaker 1: how much time we spend their right, It's such a
Speaker 1: significant portion of our lives, you know, besides sleep, it
Speaker 1: might be the single biggest activity that we spend time with.
Speaker 1: So I would expect to see it more prominently. There,
Speaker 1: I'm jumping around a little bit here, But there was
Speaker 1: so many fascinating things in the book, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about the idea of ego depletion, because ego
Speaker 1: depletion the idea is that the more visions that I
Speaker 1: have to make, or the more I have to think,
Speaker 1: or the more I have to exercise my willpower, the
Speaker 1: harder that gets over time, that I basically wear that
Speaker 1: muscle out. Is that a safe way of describing what
Speaker 1: ego depletion theory was? Yeah, this is I think Roy Baumeister. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he likens willpower to a muscle. Yeah, the more we
Speaker 1: use it, he suggests, we actually use up kind of
Speaker 1: glucose like energy and our body exerting willpower. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, the more you use it in one situation,
Speaker 1: the less you have left over for another. And sometimes
Speaker 1: in very different contexts. If your willpower is drained because
Speaker 1: you've been concentrating on a boring spreadsheet at work all day,
Speaker 1: he would argue, that's going to leave you with lower
Speaker 1: reserves of willpower to resist getting a beer out of
Speaker 1: the fridge when you get home, or something like that
Speaker 1: is what he would say. And so that theory has
Speaker 1: been a pretty popular theory and makes sense on its surface.
Speaker 1: It even seems to correlate a little bit to some
Speaker 1: of my experience, which basically says, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: more tired, it's harder to resist temptation. But then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's some really contrary findings. Share those
Speaker 1: with us. Yeah, you're right, it's contested at the moment.
Speaker 1: I don't know who's coming out on top. But for example,
Speaker 1: there are some findings I know, there was one out
Speaker 1: of India where people in India have a different attitude
Speaker 1: to willpower Apparently, you know, a lot of large sections
Speaker 1: of the population do where they have this relief kind
Speaker 1: of like the harder you work and the more effort
Speaker 1: you put in, it almost like charges you up like
Speaker 1: a dynamo on a bike, kind of on an old
Speaker 1: fashioned bike. Analogy. So they've done some cross cultural studies
Speaker 1: and they just didn't find the ego depletion in the
Speaker 1: volunteers from India who have these beliefs if anything there
Speaker 1: will power kind of became enhanced the more effort for
Speaker 1: work that they did, or the more they resisted temptation
Speaker 1: in one situation and so on. So, Yeah, through a
Speaker 1: bit of a spanner in the ego gletion theory, findings
Speaker 1: like like that one that some of what it oils
Speaker 1: down to is our own beliefs about willpower. If you
Speaker 1: believe it's a limited resource that you have, like fuel,
Speaker 1: then actually that is the way it will work for you.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if you have a more positive
Speaker 1: attitude to these things and you think you've got a
Speaker 1: kind of more limitless supply, or even you see it
Speaker 1: more like, I suppose something you can build up through practice,
Speaker 1: enhance it, I suppose through use. If that's what you believe,
Speaker 1: that's more likely you have to be how it will
Speaker 1: manifest in you. So those are some of the findings
Speaker 1: that have come out recently. They have somewhat complicated the picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a few thoughts on that. I mean, first, anytime I
Speaker 1: can get somebody to use the word spanner in my podcast.
Speaker 1: I am happy because you say ranch here, but I
Speaker 1: love that word. It's a great word. Secondly, it makes
Speaker 1: me think a little bit about some of the studies
Speaker 1: on stress that say, if you believe stress is harmful
Speaker 1: for you, it becomes more harmful for you if you don't.
Speaker 1: And then the last thing is it makes me think
Speaker 1: about one of the criticisms with a lot of the
Speaker 1: ecology movement is that it's done on what we would call,
Speaker 1: you know, weird people, western educated. I don't remember all
Speaker 1: the acronyms, but you know, there's so much of it's
Speaker 1: done on say like white college students as an example.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting to see you go to a
Speaker 1: different cultural context and you find something very different, which
Speaker 1: does really speak to the extent to which our beliefs,
Speaker 1: what we actually believe and and what our culture tells
Speaker 1: us to believe, drives a fair amount of what we experience.
Speaker 1: I'm often shocked by how profound that sometimes can be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think psychology has got a lot of catching up
Speaker 1: to do in this respect. You know, I've been writing
Speaker 1: up reporting new psychology findings for I think over twenty
Speaker 1: years now, and it's amazing how many involved white undergrads,
Speaker 1: especially psychology undergrads in the US or British universities or
Speaker 1: European universities. So do anything I would say about on
Speaker 1: this topic of willpower and what have you is there
Speaker 1: are some pretty cool studies. I found it useful myself anyway.
Speaker 1: You know, that suggests people who more successful at resisting temptation.
Speaker 1: These are high scorers and conscientiousness, and they do a
Speaker 1: better job at resisting temptation and achieve more of their goals. Actually,
Speaker 1: the willpower question is almost like a red herring, because
Speaker 1: it's not that they are better exerting willpower. They seem
Speaker 1: to be really canny at kind of avoiding temptation in
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, their daily routines and and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They seem to steer themselves away from
Speaker 1: the harmful obstacles to what they want to achieve. It's
Speaker 1: not so much that they've got this kind of ironclad warpower.
Speaker 1: That's something I try and think of for myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of being a bit more strategic about dodging
Speaker 1: temptations in the first place. As a recovering alcoholic, I
Speaker 1: am very familiar with that idea. Right, the less of
Speaker 1: it you're around, the better chance you have. That's not
Speaker 1: to say you can't get sober being around it. The
Speaker 1: second time I got sober, I was around a lot
Speaker 1: of thinking. But as they say old the colloquialism from
Speaker 1: a a was if you hang around a barbershop long enough,
Speaker 1: sooner or later, you're probably going to get a haircut.
Speaker 1: You know, the same basic idea. I'd like to hit
Speaker 1: a couple of things from recent Psyche articles. Um, although
Speaker 1: I want to say just a couple of quick things
Speaker 1: about your book for people. You've got ten rules for
Speaker 1: personal reinvention that I think are really great. I wish
Speaker 1: we had more time to get to them, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them really come down to, like you said,
Speaker 1: believing that you can make a change and also being
Speaker 1: realistic about how much you can change. I mean, I
Speaker 1: summarized ten rules into two, but those were sort of
Speaker 1: the two big things that that stood out to me.
Speaker 1: Would you concur yeah, I think so. There are some
Speaker 1: findings that wishing to change your personality without being prepared
Speaker 1: to do anything about it is it almost harmful. It
Speaker 1: almost kind of backfires. Just desiring to change but then
Speaker 1: not having a plan for how you're going to achieve
Speaker 1: that change kind of backfires properly because of of frustration
Speaker 1: that you're kind to then experience because you don't have
Speaker 1: a plan. So when it comes to being realistic, I
Speaker 1: think people do need to be honest with themselves about
Speaker 1: how much are they willing to disrupt the way they
Speaker 1: currently do things. That's such a great point, right, which
Speaker 1: is that we often times will keep thinking, well, I
Speaker 1: really wish I could be or do X, you know,
Speaker 1: but without really thinking about what it would take to
Speaker 1: be or do X, and so we feel bad about
Speaker 1: ourselves because we're not doing it. But if we were
Speaker 1: to actually really look at what it would take and
Speaker 1: then go, am I willing to do that? And we
Speaker 1: might go no, I'm not, in which case then we
Speaker 1: can sort of set it aside. The example I always
Speaker 1: uses when I started this podcast at the same time
Speaker 1: was like, I really want to be in a band again.
Speaker 1: I really want to be in a band again, And
Speaker 1: I was feeling bad because I wasn't making that happen.
Speaker 1: When I finally looked at my life in the structure
Speaker 1: and the time, I went, there's no way that both
Speaker 1: these things are going to occur, and so I'm going
Speaker 1: to pick this one. And then I was just able
Speaker 1: to let that one go. And boy did it reduce
Speaker 1: a certain amount of psychic stress on me of you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, thinking I should make a change, but
Speaker 1: not being in a position to do it, or having
Speaker 1: to plan to do it, being realistic about how much
Speaker 1: change is going to be possible, bearing in mind how
Speaker 1: far you're willing to go, Yeah, to make changes in
Speaker 1: your life with you know, changing your routine. That could
Speaker 1: be changed, getting a new job, it could be changing
Speaker 1: your relationships, moving house, you know, living in a different place.
Speaker 1: The more things you keep the same around you, the
Speaker 1: more likely you also are going to stay the same
Speaker 1: after all. Yeah, yeah, in your rules for change, that's
Speaker 1: a big one, right. You talk about environment. You also
Speaker 1: talk about you're more likely to succeed with the help
Speaker 1: of others, which is obviously a key piece. All Right,
Speaker 1: So I want to pivot because I know you've got
Speaker 1: a hard stuff. But there was a recent article in
Speaker 1: your magazine Psyche. You didn't write it, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about it because it's something that's been
Speaker 1: spinning around in my mind and I hadn't seen anybody
Speaker 1: articulated until recently, which was really an article that talked
Speaker 1: about trauma and are we starting to overuse that word?
Speaker 1: Are we starting to overdiagnose it? And the woman as
Speaker 1: her name, I don't know how to pronounce it, Ahna Guha,
Speaker 1: but she really talks about starting to notice the difference
Speaker 1: between trauma and distress, and I was just kind of curious.
Speaker 1: I know, you see a lot of articles, you see
Speaker 1: a lot of research. You know, you're kind of a
Speaker 1: bird's eye view of all this. What's your thought on
Speaker 1: where we are with the trauma discussion? Because the feeling
Speaker 1: I've been starting to feel in my gut a little
Speaker 1: is sort of what she's saying, like, It's great that
Speaker 1: we've recognized the role of trauma, but are we starting
Speaker 1: to overdiagnose? What are your thoughts? I think she was
Speaker 1: flagging up that if you thought to use the term
Speaker 1: too loosely, to apply it all over the place to
Speaker 1: any kind of bad experience or difficult experience, you know,
Speaker 1: you rob it of its true meaning. In psychiatric terms,
Speaker 1: you know, post traumatic stress is extremely serious condition and
Speaker 1: it comes with a sway of very very difficult symptoms
Speaker 1: like flashbacks and that kind of thing, and that kind
Speaker 1: of reliving. The traumatic occasion can be triggered even in
Speaker 1: context where you're actually safe, you know, which is a
Speaker 1: terrible experience to you know, keep going through. I think yeah,
Speaker 1: And the point I think she's making is it's just
Speaker 1: getting banded around so much. There has been a realization
Speaker 1: that you don't have to have been in a life
Speaker 1: threatening situation to experience trauma or traumatic reaction, because traditionally,
Speaker 1: I think it was thought it has to be you know,
Speaker 1: your life had to be threatened. So there has been
Speaker 1: a kind of broadening, but she's worried about it becoming
Speaker 1: open ended, where it's just becoming used for any old
Speaker 1: you know, you have an argument with your boss, and
Speaker 1: you know, the idea, oh, I'm traumatized because I had
Speaker 1: an argument with my boss, or some people called me
Speaker 1: some names on the train to work, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so traumatized. So she's worried about it losing its
Speaker 1: specificity if we use it too loosely, and I think
Speaker 1: that has been going on to some Then the point
Speaker 1: that she made that I really liked was she says
Speaker 1: it's possible to acknowledge note and soothe distress without needing
Speaker 1: to legitimize it by assigning at the trauma label, and
Speaker 1: that if we do too much of this assigning of
Speaker 1: trauma to things that maybe aren't quote unquote trauma, and
Speaker 1: I know it's there's no clear line that we actually
Speaker 1: decrease our psychological flexibility and resiliency. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was another sort of interesting point with it. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like we had, you know, for a long time,
Speaker 1: we were all about capital T trauma right like the
Speaker 1: you know, rape or war or and then we started
Speaker 1: talking about lowercase T trauma like you know, childhood emotional neglect,
Speaker 1: things like that. It almost seems like we're trailing into
Speaker 1: like you know, super miniature tea, you know, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better way to say it. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. Again, it's just something I've
Speaker 1: been feeling as I do reading and talking to people,
Speaker 1: and her article just sort of helped crystallize some things
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, Well, because I think language matters, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: You know, the terms we use matter, and people who
Speaker 1: have been through a genuine trauma, it only helps them
Speaker 1: for the term to be thrown about in a loose fashion.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that aren't difficult experiences, as you say,
Speaker 1: at the kind of sub trauma level, of course, there are,
Speaker 1: you know, and you you want to help those people too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By immediately going for the t words for any difficult experience,
Speaker 1: I think no one benefits from that. Yep. And back
Speaker 1: to the point we made earlier about what you believe
Speaker 1: about something, whether you believe willpower is a depletable resource
Speaker 1: or whether you believe it ramps up what we believe
Speaker 1: about what happens to us and the stories we tell.
Speaker 1: And that's a whole Another part of your book we
Speaker 1: didn't really get a chance to get into, is so
Speaker 1: important and so in that way, language matters, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I love the work you do.
Speaker 1: Your book is wonderful. It's out in paperback. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. And your online magazines is that what you
Speaker 1: would call it? An online magazine? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: That a good word for it. YEA psyche is so
Speaker 1: good to You're an editor there and a writer, and
Speaker 1: there's so many great articles that always cause me to think,
Speaker 1: and so I know we're out of time. I admire
Speaker 1: your work, Christian, and I'm so happy we've got a
Speaker 1: chance to talk with you. Oh, thank you very much, Eric,
Speaker 1: I already appreciates it, And thank you for your kind
Speaker 1: words about the book and Psyche Magazine. Yeah, we published
Speaker 1: yet Psyche Magazine. Every week we publish a new guide.
Speaker 1: Some of them are clinical guides that help people address
Speaker 1: mental health problems or difficulties. And we have kind of
Speaker 1: life skills guides about you know, the endeavor of lifelong learning.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I hope some of your listeners will check
Speaker 1: out Psyche Magazine. And thanks Eric, thanks so much. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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