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,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest
Speaker 1: who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast right now, we're really
Speaker 1: excited to be speaking with our guest, Roy Baumeister. Roy
Speaker 1: is a professor at both the University of Queensland and
Speaker 1: Florida State University. He's authored more than five hundred publications
Speaker 1: and his co author who edited almost thirty books. He's
Speaker 1: one of the most highly cited psychologists of all time.
Speaker 1: This is part two of a two part series. You've
Speaker 1: also studied willpower, another you know, small topic. Let me
Speaker 1: just because of an interest of time, Like, can you
Speaker 1: just tell me one or two things people can do
Speaker 1: increase their willpower, because that's something that people, you know,
Speaker 1: like goal achievement, goal attainment. The biggest thing they'll get
Speaker 1: in their way is lack of willpower. Like I want
Speaker 1: to go to gym and lose wheat, but that juicy
Speaker 1: cookie is right in front of me, and I've lost
Speaker 1: the willpower. So what's there some strategies. Well, first we
Speaker 1: say that the glass of willpower is half full and
Speaker 1: half empty. The people think a lot, and the big
Speaker 1: positive psychology survey on the Values and Stuff found that
Speaker 1: people rate self control is one of their biggest weaknesses.
Speaker 1: Rarely does it come up as one of one's biggest strengths.
Speaker 1: So it seems to be a widespread perception that we
Speaker 1: don't have enough self control and in terms of reaching
Speaker 1: our ideals and being the person we want to be,
Speaker 1: more self control would help. But we also have a
Speaker 1: lot more than other creatures and we use it a lot.
Speaker 1: We do pretty well with what we have, so to
Speaker 1: focus on the positive as well as the negative. So
Speaker 1: in terms of practical question of what people can do
Speaker 1: to maximize it, this is something where that a lot
Speaker 1: of research going on and some controversies and different opinions.
Speaker 1: My best guess present is that good self control it's
Speaker 1: not really that they have more will power in any
Speaker 1: kind of physiological sense, they just use it more wisely
Speaker 1: and prudently. Had a big study looking at what everyday
Speaker 1: desires and do people resist their desires and so on?
Speaker 1: So what people high self control, you'd expect them to
Speaker 1: report resisting their desires more No, they reported resisting desires
Speaker 1: less high is that well, they stay out of tempting situations,
Speaker 1: They avoid trouble. It turns out what successful people do
Speaker 1: is they develop habits and routines that get them the
Speaker 1: results that they want, don't expose them the temptation where
Speaker 1: they need all their willpower. And you talked about being it,
Speaker 1: you wanting to go exercise and seeing some tempting piece
Speaker 1: a cake or don't at what you said, cookie cookie, Okay,
Speaker 1: person with high self control is not going to come
Speaker 1: across the cookie. The person price self control, it's just
Speaker 1: time to exercise. And so you have a well developed
Speaker 1: habit that you go exercise. You don't need willpower to
Speaker 1: make yourself do it. You do need it to establish
Speaker 1: the habit. But once it becomes a habit that every
Speaker 1: day at seven am or four pm or whenever I'm
Speaker 1: going to go get some exercise, and then you manage
Speaker 1: not to find yourself looking longingly at cookies in between.
Speaker 1: So to me, there's been a big change in how
Speaker 1: we think about self control. It's not the heroic act
Speaker 1: of resisting temptation. Rather, it's setting up the routines and
Speaker 1: habits that will make life runs smoothly and the more
Speaker 1: automatic thing, so you don't need as much willpower because
Speaker 1: we don't have a great deal in terms of your question,
Speaker 1: was how to increase or strengthen or replenish or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's some evidence that it works like a muscle, that
Speaker 1: if you use self control regularly you get better at it,
Speaker 1: you get stronger, and there maybe even some brain changes
Speaker 1: and how it stores energy, stuff like that, and then
Speaker 1: basic things getting enough sleep and getting food to eat
Speaker 1: bodies energy comes from food. It's one of the particular
Speaker 1: challenges of dieting because for dieting you need willpower. For willpower,
Speaker 1: you need energy you need from food. So you have
Speaker 1: to eat so that you'll have the willpower to resist
Speaker 1: the fattening foods. Start and be successful. To start by
Speaker 1: eating a bunch of healthy foods, and you can tell yourself,
Speaker 1: I can have desert later, fill up on the healthy stuff,
Speaker 1: and then that would give you maybe the strength of
Speaker 1: character to resist. The Sleep is another one, a little
Speaker 1: bit of argument about it, but to me it looks
Speaker 1: like people who are sleep deprived look like people with
Speaker 1: poor self control are more likely to act impulsively and
Speaker 1: get into trouble and make poor judgments. What do you
Speaker 1: say to the critics. There's some scientists who have proove
Speaker 1: challenged the ego depletion theory thing. It's not like a
Speaker 1: muscle that that's not the mechanism. Does your research still
Speaker 1: stand up as far as you're concerned, that is what's
Speaker 1: going yea, yeah, yeah, I just went through all the literature.
Speaker 1: In my view is just to end up knowing what's right.
Speaker 1: I never assume I'm right, of course, but you think
Speaker 1: on totality the evidence. Yeah, other views. There's some great
Speaker 1: contributions people are making, and they have excellent valid points,
Speaker 1: but mostly it works together as an extension of the
Speaker 1: idea that there's limited willpower to replace it. There only
Speaker 1: one or two that have seriously tried to say, let's
Speaker 1: get rid of the whole notion of limited resource, and
Speaker 1: they're just a fair number of findings, so much evidence
Speaker 1: now that if you want to take it seriously, you'd
Speaker 1: have to be able to account for things. You know
Speaker 1: they want to pick and choose. Well, I can explain
Speaker 1: this finding without using willpower or strength that yes, they're right,
Speaker 1: they can explain this finding and this finding and this finding,
Speaker 1: but what about these others challenges them to do that?
Speaker 1: And there are lots. So just spent about two years
Speaker 1: trying to read everything and let's put it together. So
Speaker 1: I've changed my opinion several times and may change it again,
Speaker 1: But right now, the best guess is that we still
Speaker 1: need to understand the limited resource. Some of the processes
Speaker 1: are fairly far removed from the actual physiological expenditure of energy.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the stimming licut. It turns out with
Speaker 1: physical exertion, it's the same thing. Your muscles start to
Speaker 1: feel tired long before they reach the biochemical state where
Speaker 1: they can't function. So you're tired muscle. If you're motivated,
Speaker 1: it can still perform at the full peak level. It's
Speaker 1: just there's some kind of central system that starts to
Speaker 1: conserve energy. And this is why we've exerted a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. And this is not sustainable. You've got to
Speaker 1: realize we evolved under different conditions. You know, there were
Speaker 1: no supermarkets and evolutionary past you might have to go
Speaker 1: several days without anything to eat, and moreover, the basic
Speaker 1: energy that goes into self control and willpower. So it's
Speaker 1: the same energy that powers the brain and the kidney
Speaker 1: and the rest of the functions, and in particular the
Speaker 1: immune system. Immune system uses a lot of glucose, but
Speaker 1: quite variably cool. This next topic just sound like the
Speaker 1: worst segue ever. But what have you found is the
Speaker 1: main cause of violence and aggression? I mean, you did
Speaker 1: this terrific review paper. I believe you wrote a book
Speaker 1: on this topic, The Counterintuitive True Cause of Violence and Aggression,
Speaker 1: which is different than what a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the media often say, all right, causes of aggression. This
Speaker 1: is from my book Evil Inside even violence and Cruelty,
Speaker 1: and the go there is to understand these nasty things
Speaker 1: from the perspective of the perpetrators. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of books about evil that just say, oh, look at
Speaker 1: this awful thing this person did, and okay, you believe
Speaker 1: with this monster, but you sort of treat the perpetrator
Speaker 1: like some inhuman foreign species. I want to try and say,
Speaker 1: I want people to read these things and be able
Speaker 1: to say I could see myself doing that in that situation.
Speaker 1: So what I came up with there was for root
Speaker 1: causes and three and a half maybe, and then one
Speaker 1: approximate cause. So the root causes. First, it's just a
Speaker 1: means to an end, and there's a lot of that.
Speaker 1: People do violence. People fight wars to take food and
Speaker 1: land and other resources from other people. People commit crimes,
Speaker 1: rob people or whatever to get their way. Second, threatened
Speaker 1: egotism that people have a favorable view of themselves. Others
Speaker 1: question it, challenge it, disrespect them, impune and criticize them.
Speaker 1: That seems to elicit an aggressive response, as you want
Speaker 1: to know you shouldn't criticize me. They want to keep
Speaker 1: a positiveview. This might be what you were referring to,
Speaker 1: because there was a tradition of thinking low self esteem
Speaker 1: led to aggression, but could not find anything exactly, any
Speaker 1: set aside, any signs of that. And there's abundantly clear
Speaker 1: that most perpetrators of violence think they're superior beings, and
Speaker 1: studies of murderers and rapists and yes, so as often
Speaker 1: a sense of superiority that's not being respected. I'm not
Speaker 1: getting the respect I deserve, even terrorists and so on.
Speaker 1: The governments too have this feeling. The third was an
Speaker 1: idealistic that we think God's on our side and God's
Speaker 1: against the other people, and God wants me to kill
Speaker 1: those other people. So the biggest body counts of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. We forget this, but they produced by idealists,
Speaker 1: the communism. They thought, we're going to make the world
Speaker 1: a better place by making everyone equal, killing a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who didn't fit in. The Nazis had
Speaker 1: this utopian vision of a fair and just society. People
Speaker 1: treat each other. They just need more space. We're going
Speaker 1: to kill other people who are in the way or
Speaker 1: who weren't with the program. It's in the US we
Speaker 1: don't see this as much, but some of the people
Speaker 1: who bomb abortion clinics and so on, thinking that, well,
Speaker 1: they're killing babies in there. You know, to most of
Speaker 1: us that seems evil to kind of bomb and kill
Speaker 1: some people. But to them, they're doing what's good. And
Speaker 1: I think this work. It's come out since then that
Speaker 1: many murderers see what they're doing is upholding positive moral
Speaker 1: values and avenging. I run killers and not serial killers
Speaker 1: much more. The impulse that most killers are one time thing.
Speaker 1: The serial killers are probably a deranged group, and then
Speaker 1: they might fit into the fourth category, which is sadism,
Speaker 1: which is do people actually get pleasure out of harming others.
Speaker 1: And I wrestled with that one for a long time.
Speaker 1: There were lots of victims always claiming, oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: were laughing, they were enjoying it. They took pleasure in
Speaker 1: our suffering. It's hard to see much of that in
Speaker 1: the perpetrator's own accounts, but there was enough way that
Speaker 1: they said I don't really enjoy it, but there was
Speaker 1: someone else who said he did, and so on. So
Speaker 1: I came to think this is the half. It's not
Speaker 1: a real route that people are born and say this.
Speaker 1: There may be a few, but it's not a major
Speaker 1: source of violence. But some people can let themselves start
Speaker 1: to enjoy killing others or performing harm to others, and
Speaker 1: so then they take pleasure in inflicting harm on others.
Speaker 1: And to me that secondary. They often may be initially
Speaker 1: motivated by one of the other three basic motives, but
Speaker 1: as they do it, they start to get some pleasure
Speaker 1: out of it the proximal cause. Those are the beginnings
Speaker 1: of violence, the roots. But I also struck me that
Speaker 1: the last link in the chain between all these things
Speaker 1: and the actual doing it is self control. That most
Speaker 1: people have violent impulses now and then, but they restrain them,
Speaker 1: and so a breakdown and self control is often the
Speaker 1: immediate cause of violence. So things like alcohol or extreme
Speaker 1: emotion or provocation, these are things that will overcome one's
Speaker 1: natural inhibitions against hurting another person and allow people get
Speaker 1: carried away in However, there are clearly individual differences. Not
Speaker 1: everyone who loses their cognitive control goes and kills someone,
Speaker 1: absolutely right, So there's a combination of individual differences and
Speaker 1: societal variables. Yesh yep. So why did you write the
Speaker 1: book Is there anything good about men? Well, for me
Speaker 1: and my grand intellectual plan was to move from my
Speaker 1: book on human nature to write another book on free
Speaker 1: will and understand that problem. So in between, I wanted
Speaker 1: to understand how culture, which is not a physical thing,
Speaker 1: can influence behavior, which is a physical thing. So I thought,
Speaker 1: let's look at how culture uses one gender, and for
Speaker 1: that I could have picked either men or women. But
Speaker 1: there are already a ton of books about how culture
Speaker 1: or exploits and takes advantage of women, so I thought
Speaker 1: it'd be a little more interesting and different to look
Speaker 1: at how culture uses men. There's some interest there. Since
Speaker 1: the seventies, there have been two dominant themes about people
Speaker 1: write about gender. One is that women are just superior
Speaker 1: to men, and the other is that there's no difference,
Speaker 1: but no difference. One has its advocates, but seem less
Speaker 1: plausible to me. But also it didn't seem plausible that
Speaker 1: women would just be better across the board than men.
Speaker 1: I believe in trade offs. I don't know why nature
Speaker 1: would make one gender superior to the other in all respects,
Speaker 1: but nature will preserve differences when there's a trade off,
Speaker 1: and one thing's better for one thing and one thing
Speaker 1: better for another. So, you know, if you're a man,
Speaker 1: you read the gender research, you just notice that the
Speaker 1: men are never allowed to win. You know, whatever you're
Speaker 1: finding is you can say it's fine to say women
Speaker 1: are better than men, or to say there's no difference,
Speaker 1: But there are almost no studies coming out saying that
Speaker 1: men are better than women at this or that. About
Speaker 1: spatial visualization research, yeah, they all still sometimes conceded that,
Speaker 1: but it's not in terms of socially meaningful interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: There's very little there, and it's a strong bias in
Speaker 1: the literature. So I've gotten thinking about men. Had this
Speaker 1: big article called the Need to belong, arguing that one
Speaker 1: of the basic human motives is this desire to connect
Speaker 1: with others. Goes back to the theme of my career
Speaker 1: that we evolved to participate in social systems and relationships
Speaker 1: and so on. As a paper submitted that I got
Speaker 1: sentimeter review saying that well, mainly women have the need
Speaker 1: to belong, that men aren't as social as women, and
Speaker 1: they made a pretty thorough case, but well, they're just
Speaker 1: looking at being social in terms of one to one relationships,
Speaker 1: and maybe women are a little bit more attuned to that.
Speaker 1: But if you look at lige groups and social systems,
Speaker 1: those are almost all things that men do more than women.
Speaker 1: Men care more about big groups in their position and
Speaker 1: social hierarchy and stuff like that. So you make a
Speaker 1: case men are more social there, and that got me thinking, well,
Speaker 1: society uses men and women in different ways consistent with
Speaker 1: the trade off ideas, so you start to look at
Speaker 1: the different patterns. So what emotional expressiveness is one of
Speaker 1: the basic gender differences. Women express their feelings a lot more.
Speaker 1: So it's easy to say, oh, you see, women are
Speaker 1: more social. They'll express their feelings to others, then share
Speaker 1: them and then keep them hidden. But Okay, it's better
Speaker 1: express your feelings in a one to one relationship because
Speaker 1: then your partner knows what your feeling and can take
Speaker 1: care of you and do more for you and so on.
Speaker 1: But in a large group, showing all your feelings is risky.
Speaker 1: You've got rivals, you've got enemies, you've got coalitions. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're trying to buy a used car and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: I love it, I've got to have it. Well, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get as good a deal as say,
Speaker 1: well maybe, so the male pattern, over and over is
Speaker 1: more evolved toward what's functional in large groups, and the
Speaker 1: female pattern more toward intimate relationships. Is why throughout history
Speaker 1: women very strong getting into a close intimate relationships and
Speaker 1: developing the skills and very good of that and so on.
Speaker 1: But you know, you look through history, what a large
Speaker 1: groups of women done, whereas compared to large groups of men,
Speaker 1: is almost the mainstay of history. So that made me
Speaker 1: start thinking of it that there are trade offs, and
Speaker 1: men and women are good at different things, molded by
Speaker 1: nature for somewhat different tasks. Different And you want to
Speaker 1: say either gender is inherently superior. They're just different but equal,
Speaker 1: which is a theory that the field that never really
Speaker 1: entertained seriously, So do we have free will? Yes? The
Speaker 1: answer the free will question is a definition question. I
Speaker 1: started with defining myself. The people arguing about free will
Speaker 1: are usually using quite different definitions, and so the arguments
Speaker 1: they're talking past each other, and it's kind of frustrating.
Speaker 1: The answer do we have free will? It depends on
Speaker 1: which definition you use. I mean, from where I sit,
Speaker 1: there are several definitions by which yes, we do have
Speaker 1: free will. But for people to home that free will
Speaker 1: means you have to have a soul that causes behavior
Speaker 1: without a physical process, or that you're exempt from the
Speaker 1: rules of natural causality or something like that, that those
Speaker 1: seem preposterous to me. My goal has been developed a
Speaker 1: scientific theory which is natural and causal. But clearly some
Speaker 1: actions are freer than others, and people make choices. So
Speaker 1: to me, it's can you do differently in the same situation?
Speaker 1: And that's the foundation of a lot of social life,
Speaker 1: including pretty much all moral judgment. The moral judgment says,
Speaker 1: should you have done something else in that situation? Which
Speaker 1: or could yeah? Yeah? The question of whether you should
Speaker 1: have done something else presupposes that you could have yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and you would say yes you could, right, I mean
Speaker 1: you could have steered your consciousness in a different direction, right, Yes.
Speaker 1: So that's a topic. We'll table that topic for another day.
Speaker 1: All right, that's a good one. So you said you
Speaker 1: resonated with a colleague who once remarked that my whole
Speaker 1: life is sort of an avoidance response to boredom. Is
Speaker 1: there a coherent, integrative theme to all your work? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: now you're asking an embarrassing question. I was supposed to
Speaker 1: have one theme, and I know you said there's no
Speaker 1: higher meaning. I tried to pretend there is. I'm so
Speaker 1: curious about why we're here and what is the human
Speaker 1: condition and the project? Why are we doing what we're doing.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to get all the different pieces of that,
Speaker 1: and I've moved around and start doing literature views more
Speaker 1: that effecting my own data. I've looked at the different areas.
Speaker 1: I looked at self and identity and meaning of life,
Speaker 1: self control and social roles. I looked at evil and
Speaker 1: violence and sexuality and gender difference as a culture. So
Speaker 1: I give myself fifty to fifty chances to kind of
Speaker 1: have it all figured out. Before I dropped dead. I
Speaker 1: think so, I mean, you've covered the greatest hits of humanity.
Speaker 1: That's my cool and commercial advice to make your careers.
Speaker 1: You should pick one thing and make that your specialty
Speaker 1: and stick with it. And that's what works best for
Speaker 1: the system. It's just hard on an individual. You get
Speaker 1: bored doing the same thing. I see people who pick
Speaker 1: one topic and study it for twenty years, and you know,
Speaker 1: they make a major contribution that way, and you can
Speaker 1: get the grants and the awards and so on, but
Speaker 1: then eventually you just kind of run out of ideas
Speaker 1: on that and brings difficulty for those people. I've always
Speaker 1: done multiple different things, and so for me taking them
Speaker 1: something new is not such a big issue or challenge.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that most social science careers are
Speaker 1: based on collecting data and that's it. So you develop
Speaker 1: your skills to study some topic, and you keep studying
Speaker 1: the topic. Integrating into broader and broader schemes not really
Speaker 1: part of that, except as you refine your theory or
Speaker 1: whatever it is you voted your crew to. But as
Speaker 1: a literature viewer, you can combine lots of different things,
Speaker 1: and so it's more possible to come together with bigger,
Speaker 1: more integrative understanding. So I'm still hoping, so looking for
Speaker 1: a few other pieces of the puzzle and then hoping
Speaker 1: I can put together the puzzle to come up with
Speaker 1: something new the meaning of humanity. Yes, I love it.
Speaker 1: Are there any topics we didn't cover today that you
Speaker 1: want you anything you're working on more recently that you
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to talk about? No, this has been fun,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they are more interesting things going on now.
Speaker 1: But that's how I sue this. I think we've covered
Speaker 1: a lot of ground, and I hope your listeners are
Speaker 1: getting get a kick out of this patience to make
Speaker 1: it to the end. Yes, I think ween it split
Speaker 1: this up into two sections, actually two party. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you for such a wide ranging, fascinating I say cheicily
Speaker 1: uplifting because it wasn't really always uplifting, but I was
Speaker 1: hopefully litening to people discussion. Thank you so much, Royan. Okay, Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you, take care of them, talk to you and soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barak Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought per booking and interesting as I did. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to read the show notes for this episode or
Speaker 1: hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot
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