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