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. He 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 today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Roy Balmeister on the podcast. Doctor
Speaker 1: Balmeister is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of
Speaker 1: Queensland and is among the most prolific and most frequently
Speaker 1: cited psychologists in the world, with over six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty publications. His forty books include the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller Willpower. His research covers self and identity, self regulation,
Speaker 1: interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexual reality and
Speaker 1: gender aggression, self esteem, meaning consciousness, free will, and self presentation.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, he received the William James Award for
Speaker 1: a Lifetime Achievement in Psychological Science, the Association for Psychological
Speaker 1: Science's highest honor, and his latest book, co authored with
Speaker 1: John Tierney, is called the power of bad, how the
Speaker 1: negativity effect rules us, and how we can rule it.
Speaker 1: Roy always great to chat with you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: You're a veteran of the show. Glad to be back, Scott.
Speaker 1: I always fund to time with you. Indeed, it is
Speaker 1: quite an honor to talk to one of the most
Speaker 1: legendary social psychologists on this planet about current issues. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought we could kind of keep this conversation relevant
Speaker 1: to the state of the world that we're living in
Speaker 1: right now and all this scare and let's not beat
Speaker 1: around the bush. We're seeing a lot of bad in
Speaker 1: the media these days, that's for sure, and it's always true.
Speaker 1: Now they at least have some legitimate things to complain about,
Speaker 1: you know, most of the time, it's kind of surprising that,
Speaker 1: you know, life objectively gets better and better and the
Speaker 1: media keep telling us about you know, we're about to
Speaker 1: fall off a cliff. So yeah, with this Corona virus scare,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are falling off a cliff, so
Speaker 1: to speak. So there is some reason to to have fears. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: well we're not saying there's nothing bad in the world,
Speaker 1: and there certainly is as right now, what the point
Speaker 1: of our book was is that the human mind has
Speaker 1: a natural tendency to overreact to bad things and to
Speaker 1: overstate how bad they are. So it's quite possible and
Speaker 1: probably true. I would say that both things are going on. Yes,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus is bad, and yes it probably sounds worse
Speaker 1: than it is. So some of the negative reaction is
Speaker 1: justified and appropriate, and some of it is probably exaggerated.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure, but that would be that
Speaker 1: would fit the general path. Yeah. Well, let's go back
Speaker 1: a second to the two thousand and one classic paper
Speaker 1: Bad is stronger than Good. Just to read some of
Speaker 1: the abstract bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have
Speaker 1: more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed
Speaker 1: more thoroughly than good. Hardly any exceptions indicating greater power
Speaker 1: of good can be found. That's incredible, you really it
Speaker 1: was hard for you to find any exceptions. It was
Speaker 1: to us too. And you know when I started noticing
Speaker 1: the pattern, and this is start of the way I work,
Speaker 1: because I read a lot of stuff and look for
Speaker 1: things that reminded me of things. I started seeing this
Speaker 1: pattern that bad was stronger, and I said, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's do a review, and let's find where it reverses,
Speaker 1: because that'll make the theory much more interesting. And I
Speaker 1: will also explain why bad is stronger, because we could say, well,
Speaker 1: if bad is stronger and these things and not in those,
Speaker 1: than something about these explain the power bad rather than those.
Speaker 1: The problem is we just couldn't find the exceptions, and
Speaker 1: one place after another we had a bunch of pet
Speaker 1: theories ourselves. There are four of us on the paper.
Speaker 1: We each had our own theory about You're like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe bad is worse in the past, but the future
Speaker 1: good would be. You know, you're being more drawn by
Speaker 1: the future good than the future bad. But no, a
Speaker 1: future bad thing affects you more than a future good thing.
Speaker 1: So all our little pet theories were dashed in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it more exciting because it's such a
Speaker 1: universal pattern. We somehow stumbled on one of the basic
Speaker 1: properties of the human mind. But as I said, it
Speaker 1: made the theory less less interesting and complex. You know,
Speaker 1: you'd like to have a fancy idea with lots of
Speaker 1: well designed exceptions and so on. Sure, wow, well that
Speaker 1: is pretty dramatic. Now how has that research held up
Speaker 1: since then? This is now twenty twenty. Yes, well, when
Speaker 1: I got started writing the book, I said, well, let's
Speaker 1: I said, well, we'll read all the papers that have
Speaker 1: cited it. At the time it was just a couple thousand.
Speaker 1: That's now almost seven thousand papers have cited it. But
Speaker 1: pretty much they just say here it is. Again. There
Speaker 1: are a few people who tried to find exceptions, and
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in those, but you know, they're pretty
Speaker 1: feeble and they don't hold up that well. It just
Speaker 1: seems to extend into one thing after another. So it's
Speaker 1: rare for paper to be cited that much without some
Speaker 1: people finding contrary exceptions. There's some interesting recent work sort
Speaker 1: of trying to address why it might be true beyond
Speaker 1: the idea that it it just makes evolutionary sense to
Speaker 1: watch out for the bad things. First. You know Uncle
Speaker 1: Bach and his group, which shown in many things. You know,
Speaker 1: hitting the middle is good. So there's one way to
Speaker 1: be good. To be you can just have the right amount.
Speaker 1: In two ways to be bad, you can have too
Speaker 1: much or not enough. So too much and not enough
Speaker 1: those would be qualitatively different and might explain, you know,
Speaker 1: some other greater power of bead or something like that.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting extension of it. But again, nobody's
Speaker 1: come along to say there contrary findings or other patterns.
Speaker 1: That's super interesting. Yeah, the the negative, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it seems like if it's not enough, it seems like
Speaker 1: that's more relative than too much. There's some things I
Speaker 1: feel like are kind of objectively bad regardless of our
Speaker 1: position to others, you know, like an appending sort of death,
Speaker 1: like a cancer diagnosed something. But but the not enough,
Speaker 1: you know, people could be like, oh, I don't have
Speaker 1: enough money and that's really bad, but that's usually like
Speaker 1: relative to others. Is there any is there any? Is
Speaker 1: there any truth to what I'm saying? Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: having well, too much money isn't usually a problem that
Speaker 1: people can play about, right, That's right. I like that,
Speaker 1: and it's on my own research and personality traits self control,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to be a problem with having too
Speaker 1: much or intelligence having too much. So a lot of things,
Speaker 1: you know, more is just better. But I'm looking outside.
Speaker 1: Look at the temperature. You know, the temperature can be
Speaker 1: just right, which is sort of in fair and hights
Speaker 1: somewhere between fifty and ninety. And then there's two cold,
Speaker 1: which is one kind of problem, and too hot, which
Speaker 1: is another kind of problem. And those problems manifest themselves
Speaker 1: in different ways, and you have to deal with them differently. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you put on more clothes and it's too cold, and
Speaker 1: take them off and it's too hot. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: there are many things when being at the appropriate level
Speaker 1: is the best, and too much or not enough are
Speaker 1: both bad, but in different ways. You know, brought a
Speaker 1: question of how is it held up? It held them
Speaker 1: surprisingly well. Yeah, it's it's the second most cited paper
Speaker 1: on my lead. Even I was related to nothing else
Speaker 1: other than this, this book coming out, and most most people,
Speaker 1: their most cited papers are the culmination of years of
Speaker 1: research and of many papers. You got. You got a
Speaker 1: way easy with that one, really, yeah we did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just stumbles on a chair. Well, your other
Speaker 1: one has held up. I assume you're most cited. Is
Speaker 1: the need for Belonging paper? Is that right? I'm guessing yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that one's held up pretty well too. No. No,
Speaker 1: it's not like the replication crisis came out and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: the people's need for belonging didn't replicate. Turns out, turns out.
Speaker 1: People don't really give a beep about that. You know, Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: just wanted to take a quick break and talk about
Speaker 1: my new book that's coming out April seventh. It's called
Speaker 1: Transcend The New Science of Self Actualization. Really excited to
Speaker 1: present this book to you all. It represents the culmination
Speaker 1: of many, many years of hard work and synthesis. What
Speaker 1: I've what I've done in this book is I've taken
Speaker 1: Maslow's classic hierarchy of Needs and I've revised it for
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, trying to bring back humanistic psychology.
Speaker 1: I think that the field of humanistic psychology in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties really got a lot right about humanity
Speaker 1: and the creative possibilities of humans, as well as the
Speaker 1: humanitarian and spiritual possibilities. I really hope in this book
Speaker 1: can present a vision of humanity that transcends us all
Speaker 1: and helps us connect deeper with each other, but also
Speaker 1: help us reach our greatest potential individually and collectively. So
Speaker 1: if you want to check out this book, you can
Speaker 1: actually pre order it right now in Amazon as well
Speaker 1: as other there's independent bookstores. I think you can pre
Speaker 1: order it from and then on April seventh, starting April seventh,
Speaker 1: that should be in bookstores. A lot of people in
Speaker 1: wondering throughout the years how they can support me and
Speaker 1: the Psychology podcast, And here here's the time. You know,
Speaker 1: you're always welcome to contribute money to the podcast, help
Speaker 1: support it. If you're a longtime listener or even short
Speaker 1: time listener, you want to not only support the podcast
Speaker 1: but dive deeper into a lot of the concepts and
Speaker 1: ideas we talk about constantly on this show. This is
Speaker 1: a great way to do that by buying this book.
Speaker 1: So please check the book out and let me know
Speaker 1: what you think. So you're you're doing pretty well in
Speaker 1: this replication crisis, except for perhaps someone could say the
Speaker 1: the you know, the the self control Uh what what
Speaker 1: is the theory called? With the yeah, you go to
Speaker 1: except sometimes it doesn't replicate. So that's something where are
Speaker 1: about probably some boundary conditions. But I don't see how
Speaker 1: any honest scientists can read the literature and say there's
Speaker 1: no effect. There is clearly an effect with six hundred
Speaker 1: significant findings, and not in the opposite direction. What are
Speaker 1: some of the criticisms on the self control thing? That's
Speaker 1: been a very successful theory and so it invites attacks.
Speaker 1: They're one line of argument saying that it's not a
Speaker 1: limited resource, that there are other sorts of things, change
Speaker 1: and motivation, subjective beliefs. I think all of those have
Speaker 1: something to contribute, But in terms of replacing the theory,
Speaker 1: they don't. But you know, there's still questioning the theory.
Speaker 1: That's fair game. And there are some things we don't
Speaker 1: understand and how the bind body part of it in
Speaker 1: our lap. Giving people a dose of glucose, which is
Speaker 1: the body's energy supply, that whites out all the manipulations
Speaker 1: as it should, if you know, if being depleted of
Speaker 1: your willpower means that your body doesn't have enough energy
Speaker 1: to uh to spare something for for further acts of
Speaker 1: self control. But other people, you know, question that and
Speaker 1: don't find that. So so I am arguing about what
Speaker 1: is the causal mechanism the process, And then there's some
Speaker 1: saying that there's no such effect because they don't replicate
Speaker 1: it in their lab. Obviously, the two kind, the two explanent,
Speaker 1: the two criticisms contradict each other, so one of them
Speaker 1: at least has to be completely false. R You can't
Speaker 1: have a ballet alternative explanation if there's no phenomenon. If
Speaker 1: my take on it, thank you, that that there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as is absurd given the way to the evidence.
Speaker 1: The one exception would be if you decide you're not
Speaker 1: going to believe anything social psychologists have done, and I
Speaker 1: think it people are hoping for that. There's some people
Speaker 1: trying to make their careers by tearing everything down. So
Speaker 1: I mean that's in a way fair. I mean, if
Speaker 1: it were to be established that there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as ego depletion, I would have trouble believing anything in
Speaker 1: social psychology. We've found it over and over again for
Speaker 1: twenty years, and many different contexts and people replicated the
Speaker 1: finding again all over the world and different laboratories. Many
Speaker 1: people I never met or heard of have found the
Speaker 1: same effect. So if all of that can be mistaken,
Speaker 1: then yeah, there's something so fundamentally wrong with the way
Speaker 1: we do research that I would say abandoned social psychology entirely.
Speaker 1: But I don't believe. But to argue about what is
Speaker 1: the process and mechanism and what are the border conditions,
Speaker 1: I mean that remains a lively and open thing. And
Speaker 1: over the twenty years I've revised the theory multiple times,
Speaker 1: has no day to come in. That's I think what
Speaker 1: you should do. I never assume I get it right
Speaker 1: the first time. To do it, follow all the criticisms,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people say and say, oh, they've got a
Speaker 1: very good point, and they change my thinking because of that.
Speaker 1: Initially we thought it was that the brain is running
Speaker 1: out of fuel and somehow it was using a fuel.
Speaker 1: That was a plausible first first thought about it. But
Speaker 1: I've been convinced to the extent it's tied to say
Speaker 1: that the glucose, which is your body's energy. Modern people
Speaker 1: aren't running out of that, So it's it's it's allocation,
Speaker 1: you know, does the brain decide I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: putting energy into this endeavor or not. That's that's a
Speaker 1: different kind of decision that oh, I don't have enough energy. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe that we evolved under conditions when conserving all your
Speaker 1: energy was really important. Your immune system, for example, again
Speaker 1: coming back to I guess the immune system doesn't really
Speaker 1: help against the coronavirus because we don't have any immunity
Speaker 1: to it. But system responds to infections by fighting them
Speaker 1: and trying to get you healthy again, and that uses
Speaker 1: a lot of glucose, but it just uses it once
Speaker 1: in a while. I went this from Susan Siggers from
Speaker 1: and so, you know, back in the olden days before
Speaker 1: they were antibiotics or any sort of medicine and so on,
Speaker 1: if you've got an infected cut on your foot, it
Speaker 1: could possibly kill you. You needed to conserve all the
Speaker 1: energy you could for crises like that. Not to mention
Speaker 1: it might be hard to find something to eat tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You might have a bad day and the hunt doesn't
Speaker 1: work and you sometimes go hungry. So we evolved under
Speaker 1: conditions where it was a lot more necessary to conserve energy.
Speaker 1: Hence self control is a more modern development, least modern
Speaker 1: and evolution. That's an expensive use on it. And maybe
Speaker 1: when the brain things I've expended a lot of energy,
Speaker 1: maybe I need to cut back now and conserve energy,
Speaker 1: feed the other organs, preserve it for the immune system
Speaker 1: and so on. So I'm just bringing this up as
Speaker 1: a as an illustration of revising that that theory, and
Speaker 1: I expect that to continue. I don't think we've got
Speaker 1: it perfect yet, but there's clearly something there. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned the replication thing in social psychology in general, A
Speaker 1: couple of colleagues. We are trying to go through all
Speaker 1: these because the education got publicity because they did it first,
Speaker 1: but now it's become familiar. They're failing to replicate one
Speaker 1: thing after another. I was prompted to do this review.
Speaker 1: I was at a conference a couple of months ago
Speaker 1: and they said they had just done a big one
Speaker 1: on terror management theory and that had not worked either.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I don't I don't even really
Speaker 1: like terror management theory. But I've replicated their findings and
Speaker 1: you know, a dozen or two times there's clearly something there.
Speaker 1: So there's something wrong with the way we're doing these
Speaker 1: multi lab application things. You know, for one, if you
Speaker 1: fail to manipulate the independent variable, it's not a test
Speaker 1: of the hypothesis. If you want to say anxiety causes
Speaker 1: risk avoidance, when you're testing that theory, if you fail
Speaker 1: to manipulate anxiety, then even if you don't get an
Speaker 1: effect on risk avoidance, that doesn't mean anything's wrong with
Speaker 1: the theory, right because you haven't supplied a test. There's
Speaker 1: no way your data can say anything about weather anxiety
Speaker 1: causes risk invoidance. If you fail to create the difference
Speaker 1: between a higher group and a low anxiety group. You
Speaker 1: can't learn anything about what effect anxiety has on risk taking.
Speaker 1: So and that the first study on ego depletion that
Speaker 1: didn't work. They didn't manipulate it. And I've looked into
Speaker 1: a number of these other things. The Boston Schooler manipulating
Speaker 1: beliefs in free will to see if people who were
Speaker 1: led to disbelieve in free will would cheat and steal more,
Speaker 1: which they showed, and they had a manipulation that it worked,
Speaker 1: but they had a very motivated population. And then other
Speaker 1: people tried different populations around as motivated and they don't
Speaker 1: get it, and they don't care and they don't respond
Speaker 1: to it. It was one in one of the failures
Speaker 1: in the many Labs replication thing that reported that they
Speaker 1: didn't get that effect. But I tried to look up
Speaker 1: did they manipulate the independent variable. It was very hard
Speaker 1: to find because that was not prominent, and you had
Speaker 1: to look in all the obscure online supplementary materials and
Speaker 1: finally looked there and then know they failed to manipulate
Speaker 1: the belief in free will. Well, then again, you're not
Speaker 1: drawing any conclusion about the effect of belief on free
Speaker 1: will on whether people will achieve and steal because you
Speaker 1: haven't manipulated the the pane variable. So that's that's one
Speaker 1: possibility for why these things aren't working, and I suspect
Speaker 1: that's true with the terror management and lots of the others.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are dozens now and mostly the record
Speaker 1: is pretty dismal. No why that is, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I know people like to imagine you can just bring
Speaker 1: someone to the laboratory, or actually they want to run
Speaker 1: these on computers that you just put the instructions there
Speaker 1: and people will read them and follow them. But you know,
Speaker 1: people doing these online studies aren't nearly as involved in them,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're watching television or eating or drinking or whatever,
Speaker 1: so their responses are not as motivated. One of my manners,
Speaker 1: Joel Cooper, was here on sabbatical. He's not in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and his life's work was on cognitive dissonance. To again,
Speaker 1: something that's replicated hundreds of times, although lots of people
Speaker 1: don't get it. He says, Yeah, I'm just wait till
Speaker 1: they come after me with one of these big online things.
Speaker 1: He says that they will never work on an online thing.
Speaker 1: He says, you know, it's so important in dissonance. You
Speaker 1: get the person there and make eye contact and engage
Speaker 1: them and get them to care about what's going on
Speaker 1: in the study, and then they care about what's happening,
Speaker 1: and then their responses reflect that. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: the way they do these studies, that will never work either,
Speaker 1: and you know that's one of the foundational theories and
Speaker 1: in social psychology. And he's calling it before before, before
Speaker 1: it even happens together. They're trying, and I will see
Speaker 1: how it turns out, but that might be a factor too,
Speaker 1: you know, getting people involved in getting them to care. Mike, Mike,
Speaker 1: I regret about the way they're doing These replications are one. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to say, well, they got it and I
Speaker 1: don't at it. But instead of saying, well, then we
Speaker 1: have to figure out why it happens here and why
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen here. That's the right scientific approach. But
Speaker 1: your findings are all wrong, you know, and ones that
Speaker 1: don't get it say, you guys must be faking your
Speaker 1: data or doing something tricky or analyzing the data in
Speaker 1: tricky ways or whatever. And then and then meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: ones who get it. They're saying about the other as well,
Speaker 1: you're just doing it wrong, getting people properly involved, and
Speaker 1: so both yelling at each other. You know, we should
Speaker 1: try to do studies that you replicate it in one
Speaker 1: condition and not another. That will teach us what the
Speaker 1: conditions are. Oh, I think you're absolutely right. I think
Speaker 1: that's really the true spirit. If we're all good faith
Speaker 1: actors in this game, then that's the right spirit to have.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem. That's what some of the impetus
Speaker 1: was the Didrik Stoppel and a couple others who were
Speaker 1: found to be faking data, and and that sort of
Speaker 1: raised the specter of how widespread is this. My assumption's
Speaker 1: most social scientists are honest and decent people and really
Speaker 1: doing their best to find out the truth. And then
Speaker 1: some of them are sort of politically motivated trying to
Speaker 1: advance the social justice causes that they want to live.
Speaker 1: More suspicion of them scientifically, But nobody's out there just
Speaker 1: the way Stopple is was deliberately faking data so as
Speaker 1: to advance their careers. Well, I won't say nobody. There
Speaker 1: are clearly a few doing that, but I think that's
Speaker 1: the strong minority. In particular, when I find something that
Speaker 1: multiple lads has found and I start to think, well
Speaker 1: that that has to be something really there. There's only
Speaker 1: one person who gets it and nobody else does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then I'm suspicious. And as you know, I'm a literature reviewer.
Speaker 1: I'm doing more of that as I get older, think
Speaker 1: about the big issues, and read lots of different literatures.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of how I operate. If it's found
Speaker 1: in multiple places by unrelated labs, there's got to be
Speaker 1: something there. And and if other people don't get it,
Speaker 1: well there has to be some something explaining the different
Speaker 1: I haven't believed causality and science. There's almost like a
Speaker 1: social status boost you get to show, look, I didn't
Speaker 1: replicate something that that has a very well known finding.
Speaker 1: You know, there's sort of this this this tendency to
Speaker 1: feel the sense of glee almost that look, I you know,
Speaker 1: there's a thrill to not replicating something that has replicated,
Speaker 1: you know, and is in this in terms, I'm taking
Speaker 1: down the intro site textbooks, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: didn't you know what I'm saying. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Yeah? I know that. Yeah, I mean when
Speaker 1: I was a graduate school. If we couldn't replicate something, well,
Speaker 1: you said it was our fault. You know, I must
Speaker 1: be doing it wrong. But now a new thing is no,
Speaker 1: if I don't reputate it, it's somebody else's fault. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but neither of those is entirely healthy. If some people
Speaker 1: get it and I don't, well there must be something
Speaker 1: we're doing differently. And assumption that somebody is faking or
Speaker 1: pe hacking or any of that stuff that I think
Speaker 1: that should not be the primary assumption. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: really do like the spirit upon which we try to
Speaker 1: figure out. You know, we're all in this together, right,
Speaker 1: Let's try to figure out why are we getting this
Speaker 1: and you're not getting this? And maybe even joined forces.
Speaker 1: So you said the journals seem to have favor failures
Speaker 1: to replicate. It's so economics paper a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago that before the whole replication industry got established, that
Speaker 1: if you repeat somebody's experiment and you find the same thing,
Speaker 1: the journal editors don't want to publish that. Figure, Well,
Speaker 1: what do we care about this? We already know this,
Speaker 1: This is not news. But if you repeat somebody experiment
Speaker 1: and don't get it, in the journal said it says, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. So you're actually better off failing to replicate
Speaker 1: and in terms of being able to publish your work
Speaker 1: in a prominent place, and that's dangerous insteadive, and I
Speaker 1: think they're taking steps to correct for that. Now with
Speaker 1: some of these replications, you register them in advance and
Speaker 1: they'll publish them however they turn out. So that's that's
Speaker 1: that's healthy roy in an ironic sort of or metas
Speaker 1: sort of way. How does what we're talking about right
Speaker 1: now relate to the larger topic of this conversation today,
Speaker 1: which is that the bad is stronger than the good?
Speaker 1: Does this apply it all to scientific Yes, you see
Speaker 1: what I did. Yeah, inicial fighting is good, but it's
Speaker 1: more of an exciting scandal if other people fail to
Speaker 1: replicate it. So the bad thing gets uh, gets publicity,
Speaker 1: and then and then you know the way the media
Speaker 1: have a bias toward negative things, So to publicize the
Speaker 1: bad news and then after a while other people find it,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't get as much publicity. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: that original replication study on ecotopatient by Hagar and so
Speaker 1: got lots of media coverage. Say, oh, look it didn't work.
Speaker 1: Something's wrong with the theory. And then and then this
Speaker 1: guy Dang when he published the data a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, the original data, he went and analyzed it
Speaker 1: and he said, well, the manipulation check didn't work. And
Speaker 1: to the extent the manipulation check worked, it was significant
Speaker 1: so that they did replicate it, but that didn't get reported.
Speaker 1: And then he also published I think he ran a
Speaker 1: multi site replication around the world and now a significant
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, I worked there too, But again,
Speaker 1: none of that gets nearly as much tension. So the
Speaker 1: media like that, and that's true unfortunately for people and
Speaker 1: their reputations as well. It's been well known for a
Speaker 1: long time that some band who's comes out will destroy
Speaker 1: your reputation, and then exonerating information comes out later, and
Speaker 1: the media might report that too, but it's hidden away
Speaker 1: and doesn't get nearly the reaction. So it's really hard
Speaker 1: for someone, especially falsely accused people. It's really hard for
Speaker 1: them to rebuild their reputation or recover their status because
Speaker 1: the band gets so much more publicity than the good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's obviously potential negative implications of that for
Speaker 1: early career researchers who might be scared of taking any
Speaker 1: sort of risk whatsoever in their research or the topics
Speaker 1: that they investigate out of fear of reputation damage as
Speaker 1: opposed to the explorer. I'm hearing that a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: really cut back, you know, I'm getting older and feigning
Speaker 1: graduate students to the big part of my career up
Speaker 1: until now, I'm kind of phasing out doing that. But
Speaker 1: from the ones I hear who are actively doing that,
Speaker 1: from our younger colleagues who were still training, they said
Speaker 1: they're more and more scared of publishing something that might
Speaker 1: turn out to be wrong. And then it takes away
Speaker 1: much of the discovery. I mean, it assumes before you
Speaker 1: do an experiment, you know exactly how it's going to
Speaker 1: turn out, so you can't learn from your data that
Speaker 1: my generation, or talk to our colleagues that we would
Speaker 1: run a study with an idea and then it would
Speaker 1: turn out differently than we thought, and then we'd think
Speaker 1: about that and try to figure out and then they'd
Speaker 1: run another study to act and then you know, after
Speaker 1: three or four or five, and then you start to
Speaker 1: zero in on what's really going on. But if you
Speaker 1: had to be right, in the first place and didn't
Speaker 1: re analyze your data or try something different or you
Speaker 1: really learn from your mistakes, the whole discovery process would
Speaker 1: be short circuited. Also, being scared takes the fun out
Speaker 1: of it. A lot of people I know are saying
Speaker 1: social psychology is just not fun to do anymore, what
Speaker 1: as it really was for a long time, partly because
Speaker 1: of this discovery. Like I said, I never assume I
Speaker 1: know what's right when I get started, and so for
Speaker 1: me it's a process of trying this and listening to
Speaker 1: the data and analyzing and really trying to figure out
Speaker 1: there and doing more and building on that. So a
Speaker 1: lot of my best work has come about that way.
Speaker 1: But the young people won't get to do that if
Speaker 1: they're scared of of being wrong. I was maybe scared
Speaker 1: of being boring. I never wanted to be boring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's I think you could say you successfully never
Speaker 1: became boring. Our mutual friend, Marty Selgman I said that
Speaker 1: there are two kinds of scientists, never be wrong or
Speaker 1: never boring. I try not to be wrong, but I
Speaker 1: hate to be boring. I'm willing to check a few chances. Well, Mary,
Speaker 1: Marty was successful in that regard as well, both of
Speaker 1: you him or successful, and I hope, I hope I
Speaker 1: can be successful in saying that too someday. So far, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. We don't need to view these
Speaker 1: as mutu exclusive categories, right, like you can be interesting
Speaker 1: and do interesting topics and do good science as well,
Speaker 1: you know you don't. Maybe we can give a message
Speaker 1: to early career researchers to take some risks and but
Speaker 1: just do it do it well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: do the risks. Do the science well, but take the risks. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another idea that there's one method that should one
Speaker 1: sort of methods that should be used all the time,
Speaker 1: and that you have to preregister everything and know it well,
Speaker 1: we kind of leave a little more rope for exploring.
Speaker 1: We're going to really shut down a lot of the
Speaker 1: creativity and in the field, and we should adjust the
Speaker 1: methodological standards to the topics so we can study everything.
Speaker 1: My take is going to use the best available method
Speaker 1: and not the only method. I remember, like way back
Speaker 1: in the seventies when they did that first study comparing
Speaker 1: you know, studying people who were in the hospital had
Speaker 1: been seriously injured. Well that was in the Social psych Journal,
Speaker 1: which at the time mainly had laboratory and studies on undergraduates,
Speaker 1: and there was a very different method, and you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite as strong. I lacked some of the
Speaker 1: metological strengths of a laboratory experiment with under grants, but
Speaker 1: it was such important information about how people coped with
Speaker 1: serious long term injuries and disability. Ken you've got to
Speaker 1: relax the standard study everything with the best method available
Speaker 1: at the time, and that's how the field advances to say, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do anything unless you have one hundred people
Speaker 1: per condition. Well, that's just ruling out large swaths of
Speaker 1: things that we ought to be studying. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: think we're on the same page with that. So, you know,
Speaker 1: returning to the overall theme, because I didn't necessarily expect
Speaker 1: us to go in that whole topic, you know, down
Speaker 1: that whole route, but I'm glad we did. I think
Speaker 1: it'll be beneficial to people listening. But talking, you know,
Speaker 1: recentering here for a second, why are we wired for bad?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you fundamentally think that from
Speaker 1: a brain wiring perspective, where we evolved a kind of
Speaker 1: a brain neuromachinery to make us focus more on the
Speaker 1: bad than the good. Yes, that is very much what
Speaker 1: I think. And we came around to this early in
Speaker 1: the process with the line that's in the power of
Speaker 1: band talking. So that life has to win every day.
Speaker 1: Death only has to win once. Avoiding something that's going
Speaker 1: to kill you has to get priority. You know, people
Speaker 1: did take risks, you do things that are promote survival
Speaker 1: reproduction at some or they can trade those off. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of people who have sex with somebody that not
Speaker 1: supposed to and somebody else might come around to kill them,
Speaker 1: which happened in most societies in the history of the world,
Speaker 1: going back into prehistory. But for the most part, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to survive into advances, that has to get priority. I
Speaker 1: mean learning what to eat and how to eat food,
Speaker 1: how to prepare different kinds of complex foods, and that
Speaker 1: took trial and error, and you know a mistake could
Speaker 1: kill you, so naturally you want to be cautious on there.
Speaker 1: You know, a mushroom might look good, but the chance
Speaker 1: that it's poisonous and all bringston death should discourage experimentation
Speaker 1: along those lines. Yeah, so that makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense evolutionarily, but even you know, as you well know,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that evolved to be adaptive aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily productive or constructive. In the day and age, you know,
Speaker 1: we can kind of overshoot the target in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. How is the Polayanna principle of potential natural
Speaker 1: weapon we can use against the bad? So principle is
Speaker 1: just to look for the good side and put positive
Speaker 1: spin on things and make the best of it. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's a useful attitude to cultivate someone, not
Speaker 1: to be blind to bad things, but to notice the
Speaker 1: positive and attend to it. There really is a lot
Speaker 1: more good we are. Book is called The Power of
Speaker 1: Bad and it says bad things have stronger effect than
Speaker 1: good things. But nevertheless, it's a positive, upbeat book. You know,
Speaker 1: life is basically good, and it has gotten better in
Speaker 1: almost every respect over the centuries. So we've failed to
Speaker 1: appreciate how much better off we are. Do a fair
Speaker 1: amount of reading of history and other cultures and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and sometimes sort of remark to myself, anyone
Speaker 1: born in the United States or Western Europe after World
Speaker 1: War two should never complain about anything compared to you know,
Speaker 1: what most people have had to endure and suffer through.
Speaker 1: I can to consider that the poor people in the
Speaker 1: United States, the bottom ten percent, they live in so
Speaker 1: many ways better than the kings and queens of medieval Europe.
Speaker 1: Have much better entertainment, they have more safer sex partners,
Speaker 1: they have better food. I mean the kings of France
Speaker 1: and Spain. You know, back in the thirteen hundreds or whatever,
Speaker 1: could couldn't get fresh food all that often, couldn't ride
Speaker 1: in a car, certainly couldn't fly in a plane that
Speaker 1: didn't have cable television people to play music for them,
Speaker 1: but again not nearly the mountain diversity of music that's available.
Speaker 1: If you had a toothache, you just had it. You
Speaker 1: were just going to have to wait it out and
Speaker 1: a couple months of pain. I think there's a line
Speaker 1: by Dan Franklin, so it was just a couple of
Speaker 1: centuries ago saying, oh, if humanity could only solve the toothache,
Speaker 1: everybody would live in bliss forever after. Let's say that's
Speaker 1: a useful perspective because you must you know, if you've
Speaker 1: had a toothache, and hardly any of us have had
Speaker 1: a lasting toothache, but remember the worst pain you had
Speaker 1: at the dentist and imagine just having that around the
Speaker 1: clock for a month. That's the way a lot of
Speaker 1: people lived. And we've solved that problem. You know, people
Speaker 1: just don't know what that's even like hardly anymore. And
Speaker 1: yet we don't appreciate how great that is, No, we don't.
Speaker 1: I think the positive thing about the pollyannas you recognize
Speaker 1: the bad things so sure they have to be dealt with,
Speaker 1: but also attend to the good and refocus on them
Speaker 1: and appreciate how much positive stuff there is there is
Speaker 1: in life. Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think that
Speaker 1: for some listeners that might feel a cold comfort though,
Speaker 1: if they're get hit with this virus, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're you know individually, you know, kind of putting this
Speaker 1: in context and thinking about this in the in the
Speaker 1: history of humanity. I mean, I mean, there is one
Speaker 1: way we can kind of take a more bird's eye
Speaker 1: view of this and say, it's better to have the
Speaker 1: virus now than the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. You know,
Speaker 1: there's We're in a lot better shape now. If I
Speaker 1: had to choose between getting the nineteen eighteen flu or
Speaker 1: this virus right in twenty twenty. I it's good to
Speaker 1: be in too. It's good to be in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So you know what sort of positive spin can we
Speaker 1: at all? It's better both the time and the virus
Speaker 1: is not as bad I think the Yeah, the death
Speaker 1: total is not nearly I mean that that that epidemic
Speaker 1: killed more people than World War One. Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to see it for our listeners, you know, completely
Speaker 1: freaking out over this situation. You know what words of
Speaker 1: wisdom can you can you can you give them based
Speaker 1: on your lifetime of research? Well, I mean if you
Speaker 1: get it. The thing is most people get it won't
Speaker 1: even know it. We have most people that know symptoms,
Speaker 1: and then most people who have symptoms it's not all
Speaker 1: that bad. They say, it's it's like having the flu. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's unfortunate and it will kill a
Speaker 1: few people, which is which is tragic, But for most
Speaker 1: of us, the impact is not nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: as it would have been at another time where we
Speaker 1: have communication coordinating responses at least at the country level
Speaker 1: and somewhat at the international level. So I think they're
Speaker 1: handling it reasonably all. And you know, there's no way
Speaker 1: to prevent things like this all together. But a lot
Speaker 1: of good stuff in life. If you get the virus, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll be sick for a week, but then I
Speaker 1: would go back to normal, and it's the life is
Speaker 1: pretty good. So yeah, it's not to not to make
Speaker 1: light of negative things, but to just put them in
Speaker 1: context and appreciate the others. I think, getting back to
Speaker 1: our book, but the more important thing is not just
Speaker 1: not just your attitude, but you know, putting this actively
Speaker 1: to work in your own life. So, yes, there are
Speaker 1: bad things, but you can do good things and pursue
Speaker 1: good things to do it. And so we want to
Speaker 1: keep in mind the rule of fore and it's not
Speaker 1: just that one good thing is needed to overcome one
Speaker 1: bad thing, but rather four things but about the same
Speaker 1: level of magnitude will compensate for it and possibly put
Speaker 1: you into the positive. So in relationships, you know you
Speaker 1: do something bad annoy as your partner or whatever, well
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. Don't just think, well, I should
Speaker 1: do something nice for him or her to make up
Speaker 1: for it. We've got to do four nice things to
Speaker 1: get the relationship back on a positive track. If you
Speaker 1: keep that in mind, that that's the formula. That's why
Speaker 1: life is good. Is that a lot of little good
Speaker 1: things outweigh a few big, strong, bad things. Yeah, you say,
Speaker 1: plan on at least four compliments to make up for
Speaker 1: one bit of criticism if you want to keep your
Speaker 1: business a full aim for at least four satisfied customers,
Speaker 1: very unsatisfied one. That's a very proactive message that offers
Speaker 1: hope and kind of a corrective to how do I
Speaker 1: want to frame this? In a way, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a strategy for resiliency in life as well, because
Speaker 1: you could see how the human mind could be designed
Speaker 1: to panic at one bad thing and say, well, there's
Speaker 1: no way we'll ever get out of this. But instead
Speaker 1: it kind of shifts to a more productive, constructive approach
Speaker 1: where you say, okay, well now we just have to
Speaker 1: work really hard to kind of get four more good
Speaker 1: things going on here to kind of outweigh it. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Yes, absolutely right. There's no way
Speaker 1: to prevent all bad things from happening. All lives have
Speaker 1: bad things in them, and we have to recognize those
Speaker 1: and live with those. It's just cultivate a lot of
Speaker 1: good things. I worried one When we published this, positive
Speaker 1: psychology was just taking off, and I have had a
Speaker 1: lot of sympathy with the movement and friends there, and
Speaker 1: I worried, well, like, well, they not like me because
Speaker 1: I'm saying bad is stronger than good. But what I
Speaker 1: tried to highlight for them is it's all the more
Speaker 1: need for positive psychology because you need to teach people
Speaker 1: how to cultivate more good things, because life is good
Speaker 1: and good wins by force of numbers, So we need
Speaker 1: to generate a lot of good to overcome the occasional band.
Speaker 1: I love that. I'll here's the question for you, really,
Speaker 1: why are hell fearing religions historically more popular than one's
Speaker 1: preaching a benevolent message. Yes, well, I'm not as an
Speaker 1: expert on that, and we cover that in the book.
Speaker 1: My co author, my friend down Tiarney, he had more
Speaker 1: expertise in those, but it seems to be there's a
Speaker 1: perennial appetite in what people want religion for is to
Speaker 1: recognize the negative side and recognize the power of evil
Speaker 1: in the world, and to gloss it over and make
Speaker 1: religion a kind of self esteem boosting, self help thing.
Speaker 1: You know, they drift that way that's sort of comfortable
Speaker 1: and seems to fit modern life, but it doesn't really
Speaker 1: resonate with people's spiritual needs. To be sure, I think
Speaker 1: one impetus to religiosity is to cope with bad things.
Speaker 1: I've noticed myself, and I think their general data showing
Speaker 1: the same thing, that people turn to religion when life
Speaker 1: gets hard. Indeed, when I was doing the research for
Speaker 1: my book on how People Find Meaning in Life, I
Speaker 1: read a lot of there's a chapter on religion. I
Speaker 1: read a lot of history and sociology of religion, and
Speaker 1: I kind of came away with the impression that the
Speaker 1: decline in religion in the modern world is because life
Speaker 1: is too good, and that if you know, really awful
Speaker 1: things happen, you'd see people turning back to it religion.
Speaker 1: You know, I've known people personally who, after a tremendous
Speaker 1: personal setback whatever, would start attending a church again and
Speaker 1: becoming more religious. And so it's part of the value
Speaker 1: and power of religion to give people a conceptual and
Speaker 1: emotional framework for dealing with bad things. So religions that
Speaker 1: acknowledge both hell and heaven see at least to inspire
Speaker 1: a lot more passionate participation by their members and the
Speaker 1: sort of wider down protonism that doesn't really believe in hell,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing absolutely. You know. Gordon Alport used
Speaker 1: to write a lot about the psychology of religion, and
Speaker 1: he did have this distinction between like more deprivation focused religion,
Speaker 1: which you have the religion to you avoid or to
Speaker 1: avoid punishment. You know, it seems more deprivation based versus
Speaker 1: growth based religion, which is moving toward goodness, moving toward love.
Speaker 1: And I always thought that was a really interesting distinction.
Speaker 1: He talked about different flavors of religion, and I always
Speaker 1: I always really resonated with his work, and it seems
Speaker 1: relevant to this conversation. I don't remember that from all
Speaker 1: part the deficit and growth thing we associated with Maso
Speaker 1: and his Oh for sure, I'm putting it within Maslow's terminology. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He would have been a contemporary of Gordon Floyd. Floyd
Speaker 1: was older. Yeah, they they had some interesting changes. I
Speaker 1: actually have seen some private correspondences between Maslow and Outport,
Speaker 1: which was cool. So Gordon Outport called it mature religion
Speaker 1: versus you know, like less mature religion. But I'm putting
Speaker 1: it within Maslow's framework, so that I was very keen
Speaker 1: of you to pick up on that. That was very
Speaker 1: keen of you. Yeah, mas A Outport really you know,
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, what would a mature religion look like?
Speaker 1: And yeah, it seems like what he was talking about
Speaker 1: was more of this kind of growth oriented form of
Speaker 1: religion where it's more open minded and open to the
Speaker 1: inconsistencies of the religion and as opposed to immature religion
Speaker 1: he talked about as being more self serving and representing
Speaker 1: negative stereotypes that people have about religion in general. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I just made that link on the spot.
Speaker 1: It's not like I had prepared my notes that I
Speaker 1: was going to bring up Gordon Alport, but it seems
Speaker 1: relevant to this conversation easing ideas from a time self
Speaker 1: actualization was central and ma as wells thinking, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so religions, some of them do promote a form of that,
Speaker 1: you know, the meditation and so on. It's not so
Speaker 1: much trying to cope with negative things in the world
Speaker 1: as to transform the mind and the self in a
Speaker 1: positive manner. But again, what often people brings people in
Speaker 1: the door in the first place, into churches is negative
Speaker 1: aspects of life. The great the great teologies, the religion
Speaker 1: Buddhism and Christianity and Judaism, so they tend to have
Speaker 1: their common view that life is suffering. So they were
Speaker 1: ways for people to deal with the negative aspect of life.
Speaker 1: Is basically a down or philosophy trying to say that, well,
Speaker 1: life is suffering, but you can get off the cycle
Speaker 1: of rebirth by meditating, or you can get reincarnated in
Speaker 1: heaven and live happily forever after, you know, if you
Speaker 1: do these things. So there are ways of coping that
Speaker 1: they're starting with life is suffering as the premise, and
Speaker 1: that's just not something we believe anymore, and with reason
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't have two days we talk. Well,
Speaker 1: imagine starring a religion whose premise was life is good.
Speaker 1: You don't need God, you don't need anyone but yourself
Speaker 1: because you got all the goodness within you. That'd be
Speaker 1: an interesting religion. Lots of people have that approach. They
Speaker 1: don't call it a religion, but that is sort of
Speaker 1: one widespread view right now that elevates the self to
Speaker 1: supreme value, and it goes with a non religious approach.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's risky, and I'm finishing at my
Speaker 1: next book on the self and sort of revisiting the
Speaker 1: idea of making the self one of the basic values
Speaker 1: to pursue to guide your life. That's that's consistent with
Speaker 1: individualism and much of the way we think about people
Speaker 1: in the modern world. But it's risky because obviously the
Speaker 1: self dies when you die, so your life, your life meeting,
Speaker 1: ends when it ends. That and people have generally dropped
Speaker 1: positive meaning in their life from things that will outlive them,
Speaker 1: that will last longer, like religion which has an eternal
Speaker 1: time frame, or political movements that are going to create
Speaker 1: a better society in the future. At the individual level,
Speaker 1: people often do it, you know, for their children and
Speaker 1: grandchildren and drum meaning from that. The more you replace
Speaker 1: that sort of future oriented time frame with study, studying
Speaker 1: and glorifying the self and learning about the self and
Speaker 1: building the self, well, what's that doesn't have any lasting
Speaker 1: value after your dad, although some of them imagine that
Speaker 1: it does. Well, that's very a very interesting view of
Speaker 1: the situation. I guess I'm thinking of, you know, how
Speaker 1: can we live our life where we don't appeal to
Speaker 1: to a god necessarily to keep us on track. But
Speaker 1: we do have faith that stemming from our own potentialities,
Speaker 1: we can transcend ourselves, you know, by doing good, by
Speaker 1: having purpose. So I guess it is by getting out
Speaker 1: we can get outside ourselves. But we don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to connect with a higher supernatural being in order to
Speaker 1: get outside of ourselves. Right, A lot of things come
Speaker 1: down with being nice to others and helping society and
Speaker 1: so on. Those thing could be fairly universal values if
Speaker 1: you subject that approach to a rigorous philosophical questioning, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it really holds up all their well, because well,
Speaker 1: what's the purpose of your life? Is to help other lives? Okay,
Speaker 1: but what's the purpose of their lives? Well, that's to
Speaker 1: help other people. Yet it's sort of like passing the
Speaker 1: bucks existent everybody's life draws value from everybody else's life.
Speaker 1: Well is that? Is that just some kind of Ponzi scheme? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: so what do you think? That might be a bit
Speaker 1: a cynical way to be human altruism? But what so?
Speaker 1: Then what do you what do you think is the
Speaker 1: best route of the good life? Then have you figured
Speaker 1: that out? Oh? Well, uh, I don't know that I'm
Speaker 1: quite out there yet I have to be the next
Speaker 1: book after this one. I'm just kidding. But it's clear,
Speaker 1: not clear, but it looks like pursuing happiness in the
Speaker 1: sense of immediate good feelings only works for a while,
Speaker 1: and that wears off some that it's clear that when
Speaker 1: we do live to benefit others, that tends to be
Speaker 1: pretty satisfying, not perhaps in an existential sense that it
Speaker 1: creates more meaning. But that's sort of bio logically the
Speaker 1: way we evolved to care not just about our individual
Speaker 1: selves but about the group, and so we get satisfaction
Speaker 1: for it. Go back to the eighties, social psychologists debated
Speaker 1: how much. Philosophers and also have debated I think in
Speaker 1: the seventies, you know, is altruism really possible or are
Speaker 1: people just making themselves feel good? You know, you feel
Speaker 1: bad and then you do a good deed and then
Speaker 1: you feel better. Well, is that just to sign you're
Speaker 1: really being selfish after all? Or are you're really doing
Speaker 1: a good deed and then having to get a reward
Speaker 1: for it. But my take on it is we should
Speaker 1: just be pleased that the human psyche evolved that way
Speaker 1: that we get pleasure and satisfaction out of doing things
Speaker 1: for others, so that these questions that go on unresolved forever.
Speaker 1: It's usually that the question is wrongly phrased. Oh that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. You know, there's hope here, right. You offer
Speaker 1: ways that we can see the bigger picture, that we
Speaker 1: can and really move towards a more realistic, unbalanced view
Speaker 1: of life. You talk about the negative golden rule, what
Speaker 1: is that really? But if the golden rule of courses
Speaker 1: do unto others as you have them do unto you.
Speaker 1: But given the power of bad and bad things are
Speaker 1: stronger than good, the more important rule is don't do
Speaker 1: to others things that you don't want them to do
Speaker 1: to you. So it's just emphasizing the negative version of it,
Speaker 1: but that's much that's much more important. Oh yeah, i'm black.
Speaker 1: If people did this or that for me, Okay, well yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice for you to do that to other people too,
Speaker 1: But first and foremost focus on reducing the harm and
Speaker 1: doing the negative. So don't do things to others that
Speaker 1: you would really don't want to have done to you.
Speaker 1: And that's a good way to live on live one's life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: y yes, yes, way to construct relationships and deal with
Speaker 1: social environment and everything else. I mean, it's just a
Speaker 1: variation on the classic Golden rule advice, but it recognizes
Speaker 1: the greater power of bad good. I like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: keep giving me things to live the little bad diet,
Speaker 1: as you call it. How do I get on that diet?
Speaker 1: I want to get starting to right now. I want
Speaker 1: to get on that diet. All right, Well, I think
Speaker 1: we had five suggestions for the low bad diet. First
Speaker 1: of all, it doesn't have to be perfect. Perfectionists tend
Speaker 1: to be dissatisfied and unhappy, often neurotic. Indeed, for the
Speaker 1: book I was writing, I've been going through a lot
Speaker 1: of things about mental illness, and you'd be surprised at
Speaker 1: how many psychological disorders have perfectionism. We might not be surprised,
Speaker 1: but many people would be. How many how many psychological
Speaker 1: disorders have element of perfectionism in there? Forget about being perfect,
Speaker 1: just concentrate on being good enough. Eliminate the negative that
Speaker 1: will get you far, and then you know, we can
Speaker 1: slowly seek improvement. But the important thing is to get
Speaker 1: to where you're good enough. Second, bad things are going
Speaker 1: to happen, but focus on the big picture. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: calamatizing the bad, overstating it, or again you know, this
Speaker 1: is the end of the world. Yeah. And the classic
Speaker 1: thing is that the teenager who breaks up with his
Speaker 1: or her girlfriend, her boyfriend and says, oh, I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna no one will ever love me again, I'll never
Speaker 1: be happy again. I might as well kill myself. Well,
Speaker 1: come on, there are plenty of other things to live for,
Speaker 1: and there are plenty of other people. My research on
Speaker 1: broken hearts show that people feel a real bad when
Speaker 1: they when their heart is broken, and then they find
Speaker 1: somebody else and then they're happy. It works reliably well,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of good in the world. As
Speaker 1: I said, don't get carried away with the bad. No.
Speaker 1: A bit of advice was to use this with the
Speaker 1: media too. He's recognized the media and it's their business model.
Speaker 1: I'm not attributing nefarious motives to them, but the media
Speaker 1: tend to exaggerate negative things and focus on negative things,
Speaker 1: and that's what what sells newspapers or gets clicks or whatever.
Speaker 1: Journey my co author was a journalist and he said
Speaker 1: very early in his career he started wondering, why does
Speaker 1: everything have to be a crisis One of his first
Speaker 1: assignments was writing something about local weather pattern and you know,
Speaker 1: under the influence of the editor, he was starting to
Speaker 1: build it into this crisis. Wait a minute, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just some weather. It's not not a crisis. But
Speaker 1: you recognize that the media doing this and then compensate,
Speaker 1: so you actively look for some positive media stories. You
Speaker 1: can sign up to a cartoon service to be email
Speaker 1: a cartoon every day, or or whatever it is. When
Speaker 1: you're reading something negative, deliberately look for positive stuff in
Speaker 1: the media. Both make some time for nostalgia, think back
Speaker 1: on the good things in your life. I mean, a
Speaker 1: lot of us tend to automatically remember things we did wrong,
Speaker 1: things we regret or whatever. But you know that sort
Speaker 1: of gives you a negative view of the past. Indeed,
Speaker 1: a paper about to be published on people spontaneous thoughts
Speaker 1: and thoughts about the past are the most negative. You know,
Speaker 1: not all of them, but on average, you know, the
Speaker 1: present is pretty pleasant. The future is mixed. A lot
Speaker 1: of good in the future, but negative thoughts about the past,
Speaker 1: often involuntary ones, ruminating and sort of remembering bad things,
Speaker 1: but just make an effort to remember positive, happy things.
Speaker 1: My Buddy Constantine said, Akitas, there's this great line of
Speaker 1: research on nostalgia, and he said, we started doing it.
Speaker 1: Nostalgia was assumed to be a sign of mental illness
Speaker 1: or neurosis or something like that. You tell his colleagues, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm remembering the happy time I had there, and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: what's wrong. Are you feeling depressed? Or you've said no,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling good. And it's a reason. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons old people are in general happier than young people
Speaker 1: is they do bring back things from the past and enjoy,
Speaker 1: enjoy those positive memories, and last remind yourself that, yeah, overall,
Speaker 1: things that are getting better right at the moment, got
Speaker 1: this virus spreading around the world, and so yes, some
Speaker 1: things are getting worse. Economic downturn going to be a
Speaker 1: consequence of this and other problems. But mostly life is
Speaker 1: much better than it was fifty years ago, one hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, five hundred years ago. The long term trend
Speaker 1: is very much upward. And what we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: people adjust so rapidly and they forget about things, and
Speaker 1: you know, you used to just suffer and suffer from toothaches,
Speaker 1: and now we don't do those. We don't have toothaches anymore.
Speaker 1: But instead of appreciating how great we have it, our
Speaker 1: living in bliss wherever after, like Ben Franklin suggested, you know,
Speaker 1: we just forget about it and worry about other positive
Speaker 1: things in the future. So yeah, again, look at the
Speaker 1: big picture and the overall positive trends in individual lives
Speaker 1: as well as society and collectively. That's just constantly new
Speaker 1: and better things happening. This is great stuff, Roy, and
Speaker 1: I hope it helps our listeners get through this tough time.
Speaker 1: And a lot of what's tough about it is the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of the matter, not necessarily the reality of the matter.
Speaker 1: So maybe putting things a little bit more in context
Speaker 1: and focusing or bringing more, you know, four good things
Speaker 1: in the day for every one news story they hear
Speaker 1: might actually help them good. I help so too. Thanks Roy,
Speaker 1: it's always such a great time chatting with you. Oh Jay,
Speaker 1: sat My, Grise, thank you. I hope it's a good podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast
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Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior and creativity.