Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, 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: we have doctor Michael Inslct on the podcast. Doctor Insluct
Speaker 1: is a Research Excellence Faculty scholar at the University of Toronto.
Speaker 1: His primary appointment is as professor in the Department of Psychology,
Speaker 1: but he is also cross appointed as professor at the
Speaker 1: Roman School of Management and a research fellow the Behavioral
Speaker 1: Economics and Action Group. Michael conducts research sits at the
Speaker 1: boundaries of social psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Along with
Speaker 1: the yoel Inbar, he hosts the podcast Two Psychologists for Beers. Michael,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to chat with you today. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited as well. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: I'm really like your podcast. I'm a fan of your
Speaker 1: podcast and well of all these sort of topics you
Speaker 1: cover on there, as well as the very informal, sort
Speaker 1: of chatty kind of feel of it, you know, and
Speaker 1: so let's like, I know the age of the replication crisis,
Speaker 1: but let's replicate that sort of feel sure on this
Speaker 1: podcast and see if the replication holds and works in
Speaker 1: a different context. Sorry, I'm so you know, I'm so nerdy.
Speaker 1: That was such a nerdy joke, wasn't it. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty good one, though. You know. One thing that really
Speaker 1: helps with the fluidity of our podcast is ours is
Speaker 1: a beer themed podcast. So we're drinking beers, sometimes more
Speaker 1: than two, so that helps with the the banter, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's more in the morning here. I don't drink beer.
Speaker 1: I make a rule not to before noon, so I'm
Speaker 1: strictly coffee this morning. Yeah, I'm on coffee right now
Speaker 1: as well. But you know, it's an interesting idea for
Speaker 1: me to try that someday on the podcast. I can't
Speaker 1: have beer because of my dietaristrictions, but wine sounds good.
Speaker 1: Just straight shots of Jack Daniel. That's what we did
Speaker 1: for the last episode. Oh boy, Well, maybe I'll try
Speaker 1: that sometime. I think it depends on the guest that's right.
Speaker 1: And how much we can riff, Well, we can. I
Speaker 1: already know that we can riff, and you know, we
Speaker 1: can really just let this conversation unfold. I really don't
Speaker 1: have a strong structure for this. I have some potential topics.
Speaker 1: I thought we could start out with, like the most
Speaker 1: obvious kind of elephant in the corner, which is the
Speaker 1: replication crisis, because you've been on the forefront of this topic.
Speaker 1: You were on the forefront of this topic before. Not
Speaker 1: to like stroke your ego at all, but like before,
Speaker 1: the phrase replication crisis was like a thing. I feel
Speaker 1: like you were standing up. You were saying, I, look, everyone,
Speaker 1: we need to take a step back and look to
Speaker 1: see if our biases are creeping into this. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Would you admit that I'm not saying you're the only one.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the only one. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm not sure I'm one of the early
Speaker 1: early adopters. But I think because you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of weird to think of myself as more senior, I'm
Speaker 1: forty six years old, but I suppose I've been around
Speaker 1: for you know, twenty years now doing this. So I
Speaker 1: think I'm you know, there are a handful of more
Speaker 1: senior people been standing up and saying, hey, guys, let's
Speaker 1: you know, let's slow down, and let's rethink what we've
Speaker 1: been doing and also ask ourselves some serious questions. You know,
Speaker 1: have we made errors? Have we made mistakes? And I
Speaker 1: think that's really hard to do when you're a bit
Speaker 1: more senior, because you've got something on the line now.
Speaker 1: I think so. In other words, I think it's easy
Speaker 1: to point the finger at bad science when it's not
Speaker 1: your own science, when it's someone else who's doing the science.
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot harder when you've got some
Speaker 1: experience under your belt to say, hey, you know, we
Speaker 1: made mistakes. And when I say we, I'm also talking
Speaker 1: about myself. And I think perhaps I was one of
Speaker 1: the earlier ones to do that, to look at myself
Speaker 1: in the mirror. And I did that on purpose. I
Speaker 1: did that, you know, I pointed the finger at myself
Speaker 1: and blamed myself for some of the mess that we're
Speaker 1: in because at least before I kind of waited in,
Speaker 1: I'd seen a lot of people pointing fingers at other people, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you over there, sure you're doing something wrong, and you know,
Speaker 1: invariably what happened then was people got their backs up,
Speaker 1: people got defensive, and I thought it would be perhaps
Speaker 1: more productive, it'd be a way forward if I didn't
Speaker 1: blame anybody else except for myself and say, listen, I've
Speaker 1: contributed to the mess, and I'm responsible partly for this mess,
Speaker 1: and I've got to clean things up. Well. What was
Speaker 1: particularly remarkable and shocking, because most of us have never
Speaker 1: seen anyone do that before, was this article you wrote
Speaker 1: kind of denouncing your work on stereotype threat. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just you, I mean, you would colleagues, You had
Speaker 1: collaborators on that project. You potentially could have taken heat
Speaker 1: from your collaborators who didn't say that. Now, did you
Speaker 1: get any heat you know, the back channel for that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really really good question. I think sometimes I
Speaker 1: don't think things through. I mean I knew, I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew I was taking a risk, and I knew
Speaker 1: I was, I guess potentially butting the hand that fed me.
Speaker 1: So in this blog post that you're referring to, I
Speaker 1: actually was pointing at really two areas of work that
Speaker 1: I engaged in. So one area, as you mentioned, Stereotype Threat,
Speaker 1: But really that was a secondary player in that blog post.
Speaker 1: The bigger player was its work I'd done on ego
Speaker 1: depletion and self control, and that had been kind of
Speaker 1: more prominently in the spotlight with regards to having replication
Speaker 1: problems and Stared Up Threat. You know, there have been whispers,
Speaker 1: and if you're paying attention, it's more than whispers. You're
Speaker 1: you're you're seeing, You're seeing people even screaming about it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I was worried about it because I was
Speaker 1: worried about, you know, suggesting there might be problems with
Speaker 1: Stereotype Threat, because again, I mean, these are personal friends,
Speaker 1: these are mentors, These are people who it's not a
Speaker 1: doubt in my mind that without their help, without their support,
Speaker 1: financial and otherwise, I would not be here today. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, to suggest that some of that work might
Speaker 1: not be a solid I mean I was. It was
Speaker 1: disloyal of me. And I struggled with whether I should
Speaker 1: even point the finger at Stared Up Threat, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm indebted to some of these people and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: most you know, most closely about my postdoc supervisor, Josh Aronson,
Speaker 1: who is nothing but amazing to me, and also just
Speaker 1: a mention of a person, a great person. He's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine as well. Yeah, yeah, so I just
Speaker 1: I'm worried about it. And I know that he was
Speaker 1: a bit upset with me after that blog post. I
Speaker 1: know he wished that I had spoken to him about
Speaker 1: it before I had published it. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: in this weird position, you know, like I'm a human being,
Speaker 1: I'm a friend, I'm loyal to my to the people
Speaker 1: who were I consider my friends and mentors. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I've got this other cap, which is
Speaker 1: a scientist. And as a scientist, I think my job
Speaker 1: is foremost to you know, speak about truth, you know,
Speaker 1: to small t truth you know as I see it.
Speaker 1: You know, speak about you know, the lay of the
Speaker 1: land as I see it. And what I saw and
Speaker 1: still see are problems problems with stereotype threat. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not specific to staradep threat. I think there are
Speaker 1: problems written large in the field. But I know what
Speaker 1: I know, and I know startup threat, and I think
Speaker 1: some of the there are problems. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: the problems is stared up threat are as mature as
Speaker 1: let's say, in other areas and that's because we haven't
Speaker 1: had this big, massive replication attempt yet. But I think
Speaker 1: that's on the way and we'll see what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for your honesty about that. You know, you point
Speaker 1: to a good issue that I wanted to discuss with you.
Speaker 1: I mean, the social human aspect of science sometimes cannot
Speaker 1: be removed from the criticism aspect of I mean, some
Speaker 1: people do remove it, and they come across as assholes,
Speaker 1: you know. But if you're a human and you don't
Speaker 1: want to come across an asshole, but you want to
Speaker 1: be productive and move the field forward, it sometimes puts
Speaker 1: people scientists in a tough position if they have deep
Speaker 1: respect for you know, humanity and the fellow scientists who
Speaker 1: put in such hard work. I think, you know, science
Speaker 1: is so freaking hard, Like people don't really really I
Speaker 1: mean the people who like in the public who aren't scientists,
Speaker 1: who write these headlines like you know, this study proves
Speaker 1: this what I mean, I don't think they really fully
Speaker 1: understand just how like hard it is to you know,
Speaker 1: you can go through years and years collecting data from
Speaker 1: like sixty participants. If it's like a longitunal like really detailed,
Speaker 1: like say a diary study or something, and then like
Speaker 1: if it doesn't replicate, you know, it's fair to like
Speaker 1: talk about I mean, we want to talk objective about this,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, we don't want to devalue
Speaker 1: the real humanity of that researcher who And I'm assuming
Speaker 1: good intentions. I'm assuming there wasn't data fabricated. I'm saying
Speaker 1: it just didn't work out scientifically. Fabrication is a whole
Speaker 1: different issue, right, But you know, just a human side
Speaker 1: of like someone an earnest attempt to get at the
Speaker 1: truth about something and let's say it doesn't replicate or whatnot,
Speaker 1: and then the media kind of makes it is means
Speaker 1: sometimes about it, like you know, like almost with Glee
Speaker 1: and some you know, like with Glee, like look, this
Speaker 1: didn't work out, you know, like isn't that exciting in
Speaker 1: a way, But let's not forget that, like that person
Speaker 1: really put in bood sweat and tears into that. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I agree with your assessment. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: the human side gets lost, you know, I think you
Speaker 1: were right to bracket out fraud. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think fraud is incredibly serious and important, but in
Speaker 1: my estimation, it's probably a small problem and it's still real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's real, but I suspect it's small. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the replication issues are not in that arena
Speaker 1: of fraud for the most part, I believe they're in
Speaker 1: the arena of researchers trying their best to conduct good
Speaker 1: science and I think, you know, making mistakes. And I
Speaker 1: think right we're experiencing now is a massive field correction
Speaker 1: where we're realizing en mass as a group, we might
Speaker 1: have been playing a bit loose and fast with our
Speaker 1: inferential tools. And also maybe we didn't have it as
Speaker 1: deep of an understanding of the limits of our inferential tools.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking here about stats. But in the last
Speaker 1: I think people have you know, for the most part,
Speaker 1: researchers do have the best of intentions. They're trying to
Speaker 1: do good work. I honestly believe that, And because of that,
Speaker 1: I think you have to give researchers to the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt. Now that doesn't mean if mistakes are found,
Speaker 1: if there are error is intentional or not, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we can't call those out. But I think it's
Speaker 1: important to when you do call them out, remember there's
Speaker 1: a human being on the other side, and try to
Speaker 1: not inform motives, try not to infer you know something,
Speaker 1: you know something beyond what you can't see. Talk about
Speaker 1: what you can see, which is the data and the
Speaker 1: infrises that are being made. And I think if you
Speaker 1: stick to that and again realizing there's a human on
Speaker 1: the other side, I think you're a bit safer. And
Speaker 1: I still think we're going to have this correction going on,
Speaker 1: but we're less likely to be assholes, as you said.
Speaker 1: But that being said, even if you are kind and
Speaker 1: polite and realize there's a human on the other side,
Speaker 1: I still think that we have really tough time as humans,
Speaker 1: as scientists dealing with criticism. So even if someone critiques
Speaker 1: you gently and kindly and politely, I still think that
Speaker 1: sometimes we overreact and sometimes we personalize criticism that's not personal,
Speaker 1: and that's because we are so invested in our own science.
Speaker 1: We're so invested in our work that we can't help
Speaker 1: but feel personally attacked. So I have no doubt that
Speaker 1: sometimes people have felt personally attacked, they even felt bullied,
Speaker 1: when that hasn't necessarily been the intention or hasn't even
Speaker 1: necessarily happened. So I think we had to grow a
Speaker 1: thicker skin as scientists as well. So yes, we need
Speaker 1: to be polite, but we also have to realize, hey,
Speaker 1: we're all trying to seek our truth here, and if
Speaker 1: we get it wrong, it's actually better for the collective
Speaker 1: enterprise if someone tells us that we're wrong and we
Speaker 1: have a thicker skin about it. Yeah, for some people
Speaker 1: listening to that who may have gone through it might
Speaker 1: disagree or even be offended by you saying thicker skin.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of better from every perspective in
Speaker 1: the world right now. You know, like you can imagine,
Speaker 1: like I saw this feature piece on Amy Cuddy, right,
Speaker 1: and I was like, and it was painted as like
Speaker 1: a gender thing, you know, like really dominant males bullying
Speaker 1: the female scientist, and you know, like, do you think
Speaker 1: that does happen in certain instances? Like is it possible
Speaker 1: in certain inces that some people are seeing it that way?
Speaker 1: But it's not actually the truth. We're truth seekers, So
Speaker 1: what do you think the truth is? Yeah, so, I
Speaker 1: mean there's and there are a few issues there. So
Speaker 1: so if ify want to hone in, I mean hype
Speaker 1: picking on Amy. So I know Amy personally, and you know,
Speaker 1: I know she's gone through a hard time, so that
Speaker 1: is legit. There is legit bullying, you know. Well, no,
Speaker 1: let's let let's kind of let's unpack a little bit.
Speaker 1: So I know for sure that Amy is going through
Speaker 1: a hard time. I know she's personally experiencing distress and anxiety,
Speaker 1: and and she certainly experiences bullying. But then the other
Speaker 1: other then we have to ask, Okay, but why you
Speaker 1: know she might experience that, but was there actually bullying?
Speaker 1: You know, from my perspective, I you know, if we
Speaker 1: can't bullying as piling on, you know, persistent and consistent criticism,
Speaker 1: I think for sure. I mean I think you know
Speaker 1: someone you know, you know, Andrew Gellman for example, someone
Speaker 1: who's you know, I believe, just down the street from
Speaker 1: where you are. Yeah, totally, Yeah, So I think he,
Speaker 1: like you know, named her, I don't know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: times in a blog post, and maybe anyone mentioned wasn't bad,
Speaker 1: but it's just like the persistent and consistent. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that might be kind of piling on, and one could
Speaker 1: construe that is bullying. I do think that's possible. And
Speaker 1: how do you see it? Along gender lions? Have you
Speaker 1: noticed or witnessed that at all. So, I mean, at
Speaker 1: first of all, I've heard the claim. I've heard the
Speaker 1: claim that there's some of the critiques are more likely
Speaker 1: to be leveled against women, and maybe especially more junior women.
Speaker 1: You know, it's tough for me to say, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't have any data in front of me. It
Speaker 1: seems to me, like, you know, clearly Amy is a
Speaker 1: prominent woman who's been critiqued. But I've also seen lots
Speaker 1: of prominent men who've been critiqued. So Roy Baumeister, he's
Speaker 1: been savagely critiqued, John Barge. I know he does care.
Speaker 1: I know he's been Yes, he does care, that's true,
Speaker 1: that's by the critiques, and he's also been again, you know,
Speaker 1: criticis has been a lot of people, you know, Brian Wansink.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I mean, I would want to
Speaker 1: see data before I make claims of there's being a
Speaker 1: gendered element. You know, I recognize that this is possible,
Speaker 1: and I recognize that people have made this claim. I
Speaker 1: just don't know how the data behind it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: appreciate that, you know, I want to see the data,
Speaker 1: and that can get you in trouble sometimes some people
Speaker 1: want you to take a certain stance on something a
Speaker 1: very hot political issue or a hot ideological issue. And
Speaker 1: if you're the type of person who responds to questions
Speaker 1: like you just responded, that doesn't make you friends with everyone.
Speaker 1: It actually makes you friends with no one in a sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean I guess hard sometimes to say, like, look,
Speaker 1: i'd rather wait to see what the bigger picture looks like. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there are times when you don't
Speaker 1: need to wait because it's clear already the evidence is
Speaker 1: already out there. So for example, it's like last week
Speaker 1: or two weeks ago, I saw some without mentioning any names,
Speaker 1: is in the political arena, not in the science arena.
Speaker 1: Someone you know, some another controversial thing happened in the US.
Speaker 1: It seems to happen every week now, and so it said, hey,
Speaker 1: hold on, you know the progressive element here, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not what you think, Maybe it's something else.
Speaker 1: So actually this is like I can give the example here.
Speaker 1: This is like, you know what when almost pipe bombs
Speaker 1: are being sent last week and I saw some you know,
Speaker 1: some you know more centris quote unquote centrists people saying hey,
Speaker 1: this is possible. This is not you know, some right
Speaker 1: wing nationalists doing this. It could be a false flag attack.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, really, like, think of the priors of that,
Speaker 1: Think of the priors of that. You know, it's sure,
Speaker 1: it's possible, this is happening. You know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to die. This is this is this is not possible.
Speaker 1: But the prior yeah, it's just not probable. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to draw my conclusion based on my priors here,
Speaker 1: So you know, I think we can we can have
Speaker 1: these priors and and but again with the case of
Speaker 1: the gender nature of these attacks, the evidence I see
Speaker 1: is like it seems like prominent men and women are
Speaker 1: being attacked. And for me, I don't see the genderate element.
Speaker 1: But I don't deny that's possible or even the gendered
Speaker 1: aspect of the style of the criticism. Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are gender differences in antagonism as a personality trait,
Speaker 1: you know, agreeableness versus agreeableness. I mean, women on average
Speaker 1: tend to score higher on agreeableness, right, So I wonder
Speaker 1: if sometimes that plays a more nuanced role in communication
Speaker 1: science communication between genders. You know what, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: talk to you about here is. But I'm trying to
Speaker 1: bring in the human side of it, of science and
Speaker 1: just illustrate in this conversation how it's hard to separate
Speaker 1: like science from the human response. Yeah, I mean absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean there's so many there's so many factors that
Speaker 1: go into the response. I mean, the fact that they're
Speaker 1: go into the response. You know, so again being criticized
Speaker 1: and what's your response to it. But also there are
Speaker 1: factors that go into the act of criticizing. And so
Speaker 1: you mentioned agreeableness or lack of agreeableness, and you know,
Speaker 1: on average, women tend to be less a story, I
Speaker 1: tend to be more agreeable than men, and I think
Speaker 1: you might see that being played out on who is
Speaker 1: more likely to be a critic. So again, I don't
Speaker 1: have to see more data, but I believe my impression
Speaker 1: is that, you know, men are more vocal, more vocal
Speaker 1: critics online, it seems like, and they're more likely to
Speaker 1: be you know, again loving this critiques and maybe also
Speaker 1: loving them sometimes in less polite tones, I believe. But
Speaker 1: that's a slightly different question than you know, the so
Speaker 1: that's gendered maybe in the side of the critiquer of
Speaker 1: the critic. And yeah, for sure. Yeah, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure about the about the side of the target, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was just talking about the critiquer. I was
Speaker 1: specifically talking about the critiquer because and then within critiquers,
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting to think, like, can we ever
Speaker 1: become really good at distinguishing like an academic bully versus
Speaker 1: a well intentioned critique like James Coyn has been getting
Speaker 1: a lot of blowback finally, you know, for his manner
Speaker 1: of disightfully and I do think rightfully. Yeah, absolutely, That's
Speaker 1: why I said finally. You know, it's like, you go
Speaker 1: that many years being an academic bully, you know it's
Speaker 1: going to catch up to you, right, But can't you
Speaker 1: sort of tell as well, like the difference, Like I
Speaker 1: can I feel like there's a certain style and tone
Speaker 1: that seems like, oh, that's a reasonable critique. If the
Speaker 1: other person's offended, well that's more their problem because they
Speaker 1: took it personally. But I can tell when something is
Speaker 1: a pretty reasonable critique. For being an academic bully, you
Speaker 1: have a good barometer for that as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have my own barometer, and I think I suspect
Speaker 1: mine is probably consistent with yours. So there are a
Speaker 1: handful of people who I've seen, you know, engage in criticism,
Speaker 1: you know, James Coin would be one of them where
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is off bound, this has crossed the line,
Speaker 1: or multiple lines. I think it's maybe a handful of
Speaker 1: people like that. So yeah, I mean I certainly see them,
Speaker 1: and I react negatively to them. You know, when I
Speaker 1: first joint Twitter, I was, you know, let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: there are two camps. It's kind of slightly thing of camps.
Speaker 1: But I was maybe more on camp status quo, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, yeah, we got some problems here
Speaker 1: that might not be as deep as some people claim.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of more defending, and I was
Speaker 1: really reacting negatively against people who I thought were criticizing,
Speaker 1: you know, politely or just just being assholes essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But as I've kind of seen more the response of
Speaker 1: people who are denying the problems, I'd be started to
Speaker 1: be like, no, I think the problems are deeper than
Speaker 1: people are saying, because like, why is there this reluctance
Speaker 1: to say, hey, there are problems here? And also the evidence,
Speaker 1: you know, every week it seemed, you know, it's calmed
Speaker 1: down out quite a bit. But a few years ago,
Speaker 1: every week it seemed like another big paper wasn't being replicated.
Speaker 1: You know, multiple lab things weren't working out, statistical analyses
Speaker 1: suggesting this is bad. So it's just like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: like how can you maintain your opinion of the status quo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And but also it seems particularly in social psychology though,
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't say in my field of personality psychology,
Speaker 1: like it's like, oh, we didn't replicate the Big five.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you have very very large samples
Speaker 1: and you have reliable and valid psychometric tests, I find
Speaker 1: less of a replication crisis. It might be never the
Speaker 1: ephemeral nature of social psychology experiments that make it more
Speaker 1: prone to replicated. I don't know, I'm just putting that forward.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and there's
Speaker 1: lots of reasons. But yeah, personality I believe in a
Speaker 1: lot better place, I think for multiple reasons, the bigger
Speaker 1: samples also working. If you mentioned the Big five, so
Speaker 1: working in a strong tradition where everyone's kind of working
Speaker 1: on similar or not everyone, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: working on similar problems, where it seems like psychology is
Speaker 1: you know, is plagued by small samples. It's also plagued
Speaker 1: by bad theory or lack of theory. So hey, I've
Speaker 1: got an idea. Let's try this, and then you try
Speaker 1: it and you try to be ten times and you
Speaker 1: publish the two that work or something like that. So
Speaker 1: I just think, yeah, there are multi multiple reasons. But
Speaker 1: I don't think it's only social psychology. I think any
Speaker 1: field that relies you know, it doesn't initially have a
Speaker 1: strong theoretical basis, have small samples, that relies on between
Speaker 1: subjects analysis especially, and that's you know, largely problematic. But
Speaker 1: you know, so I think developmental psyche might be problematic.
Speaker 1: I think clinical psych is most certainly problematic within psychology.
Speaker 1: Then you can talk about other areas that's out of psychology. Cool,
Speaker 1: I have problems too. Cool. So I've really been enjoying
Speaker 1: reading your recent research in preparation for this interview, and
Speaker 1: I thought for the rest of our chat today we
Speaker 1: could talk about some of your most recent findings. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about self control. Is the one most closely linked
Speaker 1: to what we've just been discussing was the replication crisis.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me. You wrote this paper called is
Speaker 1: ego Depletion Real? And analysis of arguments? Can you kind
Speaker 1: of summarize some conclusions you came to from that article? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so, this is a paper that's impressed. Now the
Speaker 1: first author's Malt to Freeze and really the main movement
Speaker 1: shaker of that paper. But I've contributed a lot to
Speaker 1: it as well. That's why I've been out there. But essentially,
Speaker 1: I think the idea behind this paper is we wanted
Speaker 1: to take what appeared to be a really heated debate
Speaker 1: that was happening largely online. It was happening largely on
Speaker 1: social media with academics, you know, really arguing and debating
Speaker 1: back and forth with one another, but also you know,
Speaker 1: commenting on trends and recent publications, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the state of the field of egodopletion. So kind of
Speaker 1: to give a little background ego depletion, the idea of
Speaker 1: ego depletion is an idea put forward by Y Baumeister
Speaker 1: and as students back in let's say mid to late
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, where they propose this phenomenal of you
Speaker 1: get a polation, you get to plation. Is the phenomena
Speaker 1: whereby you essentially feel tired, you've engage in some sort
Speaker 1: of cognitive effort, and because you've engaged in cognitive effort
Speaker 1: at time one, you have less of it at time too.
Speaker 1: So it relies on a kind of a couple of
Speaker 1: central ideas. The first is that self control is a
Speaker 1: central resource that many many different things that appear different
Speaker 1: on the surface actually beneath its surface rely on controlled processing.
Speaker 1: So for example, you know, eating healthy, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to restrict your food intake, that would be require self control.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to get yourself to the gym, that
Speaker 1: requires self control. If you're trying to study for a test,
Speaker 1: that might require self control as well. They all are
Speaker 1: kind of different skills or different behaviors that they all
Speaker 1: might require this kind of effortful deliberation, maybe pushing back
Speaker 1: certain predispositions or desires for the sake of some long
Speaker 1: term goal. So that's proposition one. Propacist number two, and
Speaker 1: the central one is that this self control relies on
Speaker 1: a limited resource. So not only is it central, but
Speaker 1: it's limited and it runs out so much like fuel
Speaker 1: that runs your car, you've got this self control fuel
Speaker 1: that powers your brain your mind and when you use
Speaker 1: it you lose it. If you use it to control
Speaker 1: your impulse for you know, something a time one, you'll
Speaker 1: have less of it a time too. And anyway, so
Speaker 1: the central goal of this paper was to say, hey, like,
Speaker 1: what is the evidence in favor of the existence of
Speaker 1: this phenomenon, this notion that we are fatigable and when
Speaker 1: we are our behavior is affected afterwards. So what's the
Speaker 1: evidence in favor of it, and what's the evidence suggesting otherwise?
Speaker 1: And we went through, you know, a long series of
Speaker 1: arguments in favor, long series of arguments you know, not
Speaker 1: in favor, and I mean the really short conclusion is that,
Speaker 1: you know, despite this being studied now for twenty years,
Speaker 1: despite their the accounts are vary, but you know, anywhere
Speaker 1: between four hundred and six hundred separate empirical studies of
Speaker 1: the ego deopletion phenomena. Despite having you know, these six
Speaker 1: hundred or so studies, and despite there being twenty years
Speaker 1: of research and lots of theorizing, despite capturing the imagination
Speaker 1: of multiple fields, despite best sellers being written about it,
Speaker 1: it's not clear whether the phenomenon is real. Row That
Speaker 1: was my Scooby doo what row. Yeah. So, now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, we're not saying we have evidence that it's
Speaker 1: not real. Okay, at least at least our actions the
Speaker 1: existence of God that you're making the same argument. You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying God doesn't exist, but I am kind
Speaker 1: of saying it's nine nine percent probable he doesn't or
Speaker 1: she doesn't. Well, I wouldn't go as far as that,
Speaker 1: I would say it. I would say it's more that
Speaker 1: it's inconclusive. So it's it's more like, you know, we
Speaker 1: cannot affirm the positive. We can't say here's the phenomenon,
Speaker 1: just because there's so many questionable pieces of evidence in there.
Speaker 1: So the existence of publication bias, the existence of peace
Speaker 1: hacking that we know that affects the published record, you know,
Speaker 1: failures to replicate, massive failures to replicate. But also the
Speaker 1: evidence isn't so so strong that it doesn't exist either, right,
Speaker 1: So we're like, hey, our conclusions like we're just not
Speaker 1: sure which is is damning as well. I mean it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: after all this stuff, we just don't know. It's as
Speaker 1: if we're in square one essentially. Yikes. So let's say, okay,
Speaker 1: let's say that the truth is that it isn't real.
Speaker 1: Let's think it through these implications. So what explains like
Speaker 1: the feeling that it's real? Like I certainly, after a
Speaker 1: taxing day of exerting lots of self control, I feel
Speaker 1: exhausted for exerting any more self control. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: much more susceptible, at least it seems to me at
Speaker 1: eating the cookies. You know, Right, that's a great question,
Speaker 1: and it's actually one that I think puzzles me as well. So,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of rephrase your question, it's like,
Speaker 1: how is it possible that all these studies cannot find
Speaker 1: positive evidence for something that we clearly know is true
Speaker 1: the quality just I can tell you my quality makes
Speaker 1: it true. Right, So I think there's a couple of
Speaker 1: answers there. So the first answer is that, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we just haven't captured that phenomena in the lab. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the typical lab demonstration is you get people to
Speaker 1: work hard on some cognitive task for you know, I
Speaker 1: think the modal amount of time is about five minutes. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you work on something hard for five minutes and
Speaker 1: then you kind of test your level of self control
Speaker 1: after that five minute period. Well, guess what, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe five minutes just not long enough. Maybe we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have escaped the savannah if we couldn't you know, think through,
Speaker 1: think hard for five minutes. Maybe you know the kind
Speaker 1: of experience you're talking about is hours, all day long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all day long. Right. So there's I think a brilliant
Speaker 1: paper published a couple of years ago now in PNAS,
Speaker 1: so the Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences, and
Speaker 1: it showed or demonstrated, well, they could not find it
Speaker 1: a depletion effect within an hour. They didn't find it
Speaker 1: within two hours or within three. They found it emerged
Speaker 1: at about hour four, so, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: crazy study. So they had people and this is also
Speaker 1: an fMRI study. They had people in the lab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the SMI machine for six hours. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, period would bring in there, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: p to eat. But they found deficits only at emerging
Speaker 1: at hour four and then obviously getting a lot bigger
Speaker 1: at our six but the first four hours. And I
Speaker 1: find that remarkable because I find that almost too long.
Speaker 1: I feel like after I give a one hour lecture,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm drained and I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't want to. I can't I talk about as post
Speaker 1: talk blindness. I just can't think. I can't, like really,
Speaker 1: you know, answer questions very well after an hour of speaking.
Speaker 1: Have they ever conducted any meta analyses that looked at
Speaker 1: individual difference moderators, see if there's any robust sort of
Speaker 1: personality moderators there. I think there are a number of
Speaker 1: studies that would include individual difference variables. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if they included things like the Big Five, but they
Speaker 1: started to include things that relate to conscientiousness. Right, So
Speaker 1: trade self controls a bunch of these trade self control
Speaker 1: measures out there that all kind of are highly correlated
Speaker 1: with one another, and they'll correlate with the conscientiousness. But
Speaker 1: the problem is that there's no consistent evidence in one
Speaker 1: in one direction or the other for trade self control.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that the lab paradigms are just
Speaker 1: not strong enough to evoke fatigue, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's nothing to moderate, is the problem. If you're you know,
Speaker 1: I remember I've seen a paper quote unquote depleted someone
Speaker 1: by having them do twenty incongruent groop trials. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a minute a minute of just naming colors. I
Speaker 1: mean that's yes, it's taxing in a really really minor way,
Speaker 1: but that's not going to lead to downstream consequences, So
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing as me downing you know,
Speaker 1: like five hundred cookies at once, right, or restraining Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should have said I should restrain cavigated my face
Speaker 1: and restraining it. Yeah, Yes, I just think the lab
Speaker 1: paradigms were not strong enough. And you know, when people
Speaker 1: have gone and done stronger manipulations, they're finding more, they're
Speaker 1: more like going to find out and it's consistent with
Speaker 1: the idea. But even then that's just not enough of them,
Speaker 1: so there's nothing to moderate. Yeah. And also, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you see this as big of a problem,
Speaker 1: but I see a really really big problem with this
Speaker 1: kind of research, the fact that self report measures of
Speaker 1: self control are really not very small correlation with more
Speaker 1: performance oriented measures of self control like the stroop task
Speaker 1: that you just said. And I know you did a
Speaker 1: really cool Bayesian analysis of that, but I was worrying
Speaker 1: if you could first of all discuss that paper a
Speaker 1: little bit why a Bayesian analysis can add more perspective
Speaker 1: on that, and then also let's talk through the implications
Speaker 1: of this finding for maybe why we're not finding the
Speaker 1: ego depletion effect and the methods we're currently using. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a couple of things in there. So in
Speaker 1: this paper that you mentioned, so you know, ess as
Speaker 1: you were examining the relationship descriptively, the relationship between trade
Speaker 1: self control as reported by individuals so SEFT reports and
Speaker 1: then behavioral supposedly behavior on measures of control, and what
Speaker 1: we found is essentially there is zero association between those two.
Speaker 1: Found that in my own research as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was very surprised by this. Maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been, because other people have found this. You know,
Speaker 1: Angela Duckworth conducted at analysis that included, I forget how
Speaker 1: many suities on that specific question, but you know, a
Speaker 1: decent number, and her estimate was, I then closer to
Speaker 1: a correlation of point one, so pretty small, but still there.
Speaker 1: Whereas we found that that that estimate was closer to
Speaker 1: I think point oh three or point oh four, depending
Speaker 1: on what metric you want to use, and also, you know,
Speaker 1: more consistent with a knull than with the alternative there
Speaker 1: being an association. So I was surprised because these two,
Speaker 1: at least in theory, should be getting at you know,
Speaker 1: some of the same things, right, So people who so
Speaker 1: Roy Bama is for example, he defined self control as
Speaker 1: you know a number of things, but were the main
Speaker 1: driver was the ability to restrain you know, dominant impulses,
Speaker 1: the ability to kind of suppress your you know, prepotent
Speaker 1: tendency and to replace it with some other so you know,
Speaker 1: pushing away the food impulse, you know, the eat the
Speaker 1: cookies impulse and eat the salad and replace that with
Speaker 1: you know, eat salad instead. And so that's what's supposedly
Speaker 1: being captured by well, that's what the contract is supposed
Speaker 1: to measure. And then he came along and with Junetagni
Speaker 1: proposed this highly used self control trait measure, and that's
Speaker 1: supposed to capture you know, those sorts of things as well.
Speaker 1: But then we have these behavioral indices. These are indiciries,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at people's you know, reaction time in
Speaker 1: terms of how they perform on trials, on tasks that
Speaker 1: involve what we think involve more inhibition, more restraint, or
Speaker 1: less restraint. And these are the I can get in
Speaker 1: what these things get at. But essentially there are people
Speaker 1: call them to you know, they get a intentional control
Speaker 1: or inhibitory control. They're supposedly behavioral indices of that thing.
Speaker 1: So now we've got two measures. One of the self
Speaker 1: report that at least in part is supposed to get
Speaker 1: at restraint. And then you've got this behavioral measure that
Speaker 1: again is supposed to get at restraint. But then when
Speaker 1: you look at their association there, we found they're zero.
Speaker 1: It's it's more consistent with zero than with not zero,
Speaker 1: and we use the Bayesian. The Bayesian analysis allowed us
Speaker 1: to say something about it's you know, how much it's
Speaker 1: like the null you know, the null distribution versus like
Speaker 1: an alternative distribution. In other words, we can affirm a null,
Speaker 1: which you can't necessarily do. You can do it sometimes
Speaker 1: but with some extra kind of procedures, but typical frequent
Speaker 1: the statistics, you can't necessarily affirm a null. You can
Speaker 1: only reject the null hypothesis. You can't say, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't affirm the not lipothesis. With Bayesian you're more
Speaker 1: likely to get there. So that's why we use basin. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we could say, you know, what is this more like?
Speaker 1: Is it's more like a null distribution or an alternative distribution.
Speaker 1: So that's what you know. In essentially, we're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this looks like the zero association, but the implications of
Speaker 1: that are kind of wild. They're like, well, hold on,
Speaker 1: wait one second. Here, you're telling me these two things
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be measuring the same thing are not,
Speaker 1: and you know, and this is maybe the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's you know, what the real one is one,
Speaker 1: but also another one is like, you know, the implication
Speaker 1: might be. You know, now this is controversial a little
Speaker 1: bit because I think people are still arguing and debating
Speaker 1: about what the STROOP task actually measures, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: that's going to have for fifty years, we still don't
Speaker 1: fully have a resolved, you know, answer about what it's
Speaker 1: actually measuring. But you know, I think this consensus that
Speaker 1: it is getting out of intentional control may be inhibitory control.
Speaker 1: So does that then mean that the self report scale
Speaker 1: is not getting at that, it's not associated, it's not
Speaker 1: getting at the restraint aspect of control. And if so,
Speaker 1: then I think it offers interesting clues. The reason it
Speaker 1: offers interesting clues is because those self report scales are
Speaker 1: really really important. Right If they predict all kinds of
Speaker 1: things later in life. They seem to be more powerful
Speaker 1: than the behavioral measures in the sense of their predictive validity.
Speaker 1: They can predict things far with far better fidelity than
Speaker 1: the behavioral measures can. But now it suggests, well, why
Speaker 1: why is you know, for example, traite conscientiousness or self
Speaker 1: control predicting life outcomes you know, to tenty thirty years later.
Speaker 1: Why is that doing that? And it might not be
Speaker 1: because those people who are high in trade self control
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily restraining themselves. They might be doing something else
Speaker 1: to achieve the good life. So we know, for example
Speaker 1: that you know, people high in trade self control have
Speaker 1: lived better lives in almost every dimension. You know, trade
Speaker 1: conscientious is a great trait to have you you know,
Speaker 1: if you have children, you want them to be conscientious. Right,
Speaker 1: So what's positive about conscientiousness or what's positive about trade
Speaker 1: self control might not be that they have a better
Speaker 1: ability to restrain themselves. Instead, they might achieve those positive
Speaker 1: outcomes through different means. Okay, this is so important, and
Speaker 1: you've set me off in twenty directions. But I want
Speaker 1: to say that I did this analysis, which personality traits
Speaker 1: are most or which character traits are most predictive of
Speaker 1: well being? And I looked at, you know, all these
Speaker 1: twenty four character traits, and I found that if you
Speaker 1: do a rank or a correlation of like all these
Speaker 1: character strengths and their relative strength of prediction to a
Speaker 1: very robust measure well being in life, you find it
Speaker 1: the very very bottom is prudence or self restraint, you know,
Speaker 1: and self control. These things are actually the very bottom
Speaker 1: of the list in terms of what leads to a
Speaker 1: life well lived. Look, this is very paradoxical because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, so much of life really is self control,
Speaker 1: is self regulation, and so that's why I think maybe
Speaker 1: an important distinction here between self control and self regulation.
Speaker 1: And I like the way this distinction has been made
Speaker 1: by various researchers like Blair n Yu, you know, a
Speaker 1: Clancy Blair, because you know, he wrote this paper saying, well, look,
Speaker 1: I mean what's more important is that we have the
Speaker 1: capacity to inhibit it when we want to, but not
Speaker 1: that we consistently reliably do it. Maybe that's an important distinction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is. I think it's very important. I
Speaker 1: think distinguished between self controltile again would define as kind
Speaker 1: of this power to restrain yourself versus other means to
Speaker 1: achieve your goals. So for example, planning simply thinking about
Speaker 1: your goals in the future, that's a very effective way.
Speaker 1: Goal setting is a very effective way of meeting your goals.
Speaker 1: And you could goal set and not necessarily restrain yourself
Speaker 1: when you, for example, face temptations and it turns out
Speaker 1: that's the goal setting that's really critical and the restraint
Speaker 1: might not be as critical. But now I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. I want to turn it around a
Speaker 1: bit on you. This analysis that you just mentioned, we
Speaker 1: rank ordered, we know what predicts the good life. I
Speaker 1: mean you said that restraint was kind of at the bottom.
Speaker 1: Did you have other facets of conscientious did they rise
Speaker 1: more to the top or or am I completely off there?
Speaker 1: Now this is using the Via Character Trends survey, which
Speaker 1: is not the Big five, so there's no like consciousness
Speaker 1: is not one of the twenty four you know, character strengths.
Speaker 1: But what I think is an interesting pattern of data
Speaker 1: is that the weakest weakest correlation was judgment and prudence,
Speaker 1: and the top two where gratitude and love and things
Speaker 1: like creativity, self expression, you know, self actualization, is not
Speaker 1: the life of prudence, you know, necessarily overall. So first
Speaker 1: of all, did I answer question there? Because yeah you
Speaker 1: think yeah, I think you did. Although you're predicting a
Speaker 1: well being, so subjective well being a very broad measure
Speaker 1: well bringing that included a composite of connection meaning in
Speaker 1: life purpose health, you know, like a composite health well
Speaker 1: being scoring. Yeah, I see, Okay, So I'm typically when
Speaker 1: I examine these things, I'm typically looking at more I mean,
Speaker 1: while being is certainly one of them, but I guess
Speaker 1: I'm interested in more performance based kinds of things. So,
Speaker 1: you know, grades in school. Beautiful paper pubbi and twenty
Speaker 1: eleven by Moffitt examining you know, a life outcome of
Speaker 1: children who have been assessed in terms of their levels
Speaker 1: of self control, and then follow them twenty thirty forty
Speaker 1: years later. This is the New Zealand sample and I
Speaker 1: Dunity example, and they find that those kids who are
Speaker 1: rated as having high self control as kids were more
Speaker 1: likely to have money in the bank twenty years later.
Speaker 1: They're more likely to do they're less likely to be
Speaker 1: in prison, they're more likely to be healthy, they're less
Speaker 1: likely to abuse drugs. So all the good stuff you
Speaker 1: know they have, and then of course there's tons of
Speaker 1: research on you know, trade. Conscientious is looking at longitudinally,
Speaker 1: cross sectionally, finding all that you know relates to, you know,
Speaker 1: relationship satisfaction, likelihood of you know, uh, you know, being married,
Speaker 1: not being divorced, all that other stuff. So those the
Speaker 1: kinds of things, and from my analysis at least, it
Speaker 1: seems like consciences would be extremely important. But again maybe
Speaker 1: not the restraints side, maybe more the good yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: situations to latch, you know, a planning, you know, seeing
Speaker 1: things through. That's a good point. You know, these character strengths,
Speaker 1: like I said, none of them I think can be
Speaker 1: reduced to conscientiousness. There's some of them show correlations with
Speaker 1: various Big five and our papers on that. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, consciousness is you know, Brent Roberts has done
Speaker 1: this beautiful job mapping the herochical train of consciousness and
Speaker 1: self control is a lower level, you know, like restraint
Speaker 1: is a lower it was like a third in the hierarchy,
Speaker 1: you know, like, and then you have more proactive aspects
Speaker 1: of conscientiousness. I suspect the more proactive elements are the
Speaker 1: ones that are most predictive of the good life and
Speaker 1: you know, like industriousness and just like you said, goal setting,
Speaker 1: well goals, I think seems to be a prolac development, right,
Speaker 1: because you're taking control, you feel in control of your life.
Speaker 1: Like if you're constantly self controlling, but you don't feel
Speaker 1: like you're in control of your life, I feel like
Speaker 1: that would lead unhappiness. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I think you got it exactly right there. And Rett Roberts,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's like one of my gods. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think he's like the absolute best work and self
Speaker 1: control period. But yeah, and this is really cool. Analysis
Speaker 1: by Denise de Ritter and Will Hoffman is showing something
Speaker 1: something a parallel finding suggesting that those who are high
Speaker 1: in trade self control and you're going to place trade
Speaker 1: self control with trade conscientious is because they're so highly
Speaker 1: correlated here, they actually in the moment are actually using
Speaker 1: less state self control. So people high in trade self
Speaker 1: control are not actually controlling themselves in the moment more,
Speaker 1: they're controlling themselves less, which is right. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a paradox. And that's because what we mean by state
Speaker 1: self control is, you know, this kind of willpower like
Speaker 1: pushing things away. Those who have high trade self control.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like they're designing their lives such
Speaker 1: that they face fewer temptations to begin with and therefore
Speaker 1: don't need self control. And what happens when they actually
Speaker 1: face temptations is actually they do worse. But they just
Speaker 1: set their lives so they don't have that any temptations
Speaker 1: to begin with. They tie themselves to the mask more. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, I love that. Cool. So let's let's
Speaker 1: we I mean, we could talk about self control for eons,
Speaker 1: but let's move on to some of your recent research.
Speaker 1: You published call through the paper they angela Duckworth recently,
Speaker 1: right that I just saw. Yeah, that's right. So that's
Speaker 1: hopefully one day published. It's a it's a pre print
Speaker 1: that it's a working paper. You's a working paper, the
Speaker 1: whole paper. Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a paper. Really again that the I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: you're're naming all these papers that are like my brilliant
Speaker 1: you know, collaborators have done most of the work for
Speaker 1: so it's in this case, uh yeah, my my brilliant
Speaker 1: former postdoc and now you know is a professor at
Speaker 1: Carlton University. Her name is Marina Milievskaya, and Brian Gala,
Speaker 1: who is Angels Yes, that's right, is at the same
Speaker 1: time at Pennause office was right across from mind. Oh
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Yeah, oh that's great. Yeah. So I like
Speaker 1: angela lotch is delightful and so like so energetic and yeah,
Speaker 1: so many ideas. It's wonderful. Yeah. So we had this
Speaker 1: one paper again hopefully it'll be will be a paper
Speaker 1: now which is a working paper where we you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm a social psychologist, but i also have a
Speaker 1: cognitive psychology hat, and I'm really interested in effort and
Speaker 1: interested in what's called it's been around this law of
Speaker 1: least work. You know, psychology, you've got very very few laws,
Speaker 1: but one of them is the law of least work.
Speaker 1: And that's this notion that organisms, you know, as low
Speaker 1: as you know, crickets and grasshoppers up to humans. We
Speaker 1: show this pattern where whereby if you give us a
Speaker 1: choice between earning the same equivalent reward, but one requires
Speaker 1: more effort, one requires less effort by effort that could
Speaker 1: be physical efforts that the grasshopper has to hop like
Speaker 1: you know, five versus one hop or the rat has
Speaker 1: got to go you know, one meter versus ten meters,
Speaker 1: or the human has got to do ten strip trials
Speaker 1: to think through something, or one strip trial to get
Speaker 1: the reward. Invariably, after you learn the contingency, all these
Speaker 1: animals will choose the less effortful thing. Can that makes sense?
Speaker 1: We're lazy. Yeah, that was going to say that's the
Speaker 1: lazy I thought this is. Yeah, so we're lazy physically
Speaker 1: and mentally, so, you know, I believe it was Susan
Speaker 1: Fisk and Shelley Taylor coined the terump cognitive misers. So
Speaker 1: we tend to given the option, we'd rather kind of
Speaker 1: save our cognitive resources. I can't believe I just use
Speaker 1: the term cognitive resources. I hate that term. But by
Speaker 1: that I mean we just don't want to We just
Speaker 1: don't want to think things through. Sometimes you want to
Speaker 1: take the lazy approach. So that's a law, very robust.
Speaker 1: You were lazy. It was ironic you were lazy to
Speaker 1: use that term. The reason I hate that term is
Speaker 1: because I've got this you know, yeah, I got this
Speaker 1: this paper. I'm kind of you know, criticizing Roy Bammeister
Speaker 1: resource model. So you literally criticize that idea. No, I
Speaker 1: totally get why it was funny about the used it
Speaker 1: because I was the path of least you know, like
Speaker 1: it was most salient in your schema at the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, it's exactly what I was. Lazy. I know,
Speaker 1: it's actually a word that that kind of like it
Speaker 1: captures what we want to say. But I just also
Speaker 1: feel they run empty word. I know. Yeah. So anyhow,
Speaker 1: so we have this, you know, this, this is law
Speaker 1: of least work, law of least effort. And but we
Speaker 1: thought and this is you know, I'm really I'm marine
Speaker 1: and Brian's idea that like there's there's more there. I
Speaker 1: mean that there are some people. I mean, clearly people
Speaker 1: are willing to work, and people are clearly people are
Speaker 1: willing to think things through. We like some of us,
Speaker 1: for example, like to read really complex books, and we
Speaker 1: do that. We pay to we pay for the book,
Speaker 1: and some of us do Sudoku puzzles, which are essentially
Speaker 1: cognitive effort. Video games, Yeah, there's there is rewards of
Speaker 1: video games, but it's also cowdly difficult, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the better you get at the game, the more difficult
Speaker 1: the game gets. And that and we like it more so,
Speaker 1: we wondered, if you know something as simple as like,
Speaker 1: to what extent are you interested? To what extent are
Speaker 1: you intrinsically motivated for a task that clearly is going
Speaker 1: to uh shape your willingness to engage effort and tasks.
Speaker 1: And that's essentially what we find. So it's not not
Speaker 1: a you know, crazy idea, but we centually find that
Speaker 1: people who are interested in X. In our case, I believe,
Speaker 1: we mostly looked at mathematics and we found this in
Speaker 1: a lab setting and a kind of you know, a
Speaker 1: sterile lab setting. Those are my contributions or Marina and
Speaker 1: mind contributions or richer kind of field context in schools
Speaker 1: would be Brian and Angel's contributions and where they actually
Speaker 1: went into schools in inner city of Philadelphia, I believe,
Speaker 1: And we find that again when we give students or
Speaker 1: participants an option between doing a hard math task or
Speaker 1: an easy math task, generally people will will will pick
Speaker 1: the easier one, or in let's say, in the school setting,
Speaker 1: we give them a math task or some attractive kind
Speaker 1: of I believe it's a social media feed or it
Speaker 1: could have been even a video game. Those you know,
Speaker 1: fed into them and they could choose what they want
Speaker 1: to do. People will typically choose easier one. But if
Speaker 1: you're interested in math, if you you uh pick that more.
Speaker 1: So you pick the harder math, i'ms more, you pick
Speaker 1: math over your social media feed more. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: is not necessarily It's not necessarily related to how good
Speaker 1: you are at it. So yes, if you're good at it,
Speaker 1: you will tend to do it more, but that's not
Speaker 1: a consistent effect really about interest. But then I think
Speaker 1: the more interesting finding is that, Yeah, the more interesting
Speaker 1: finding is that not only are you more likely to
Speaker 1: pick the thing if you are interested in it, you
Speaker 1: are less tired doing it. So even though you're doing
Speaker 1: the more difficult thing, the more demanding thing, you actually
Speaker 1: feel less tired than those people who don't like that.
Speaker 1: So if I like math, I do a bunch of math,
Speaker 1: I don't feel cognitively drained by doing that math. Someone
Speaker 1: does less math than me but still does it occasionally
Speaker 1: they feel more tired. So it speaks to the I
Speaker 1: think it speaks to the subjective nature of fatigue. So
Speaker 1: I think to someone say, we think fatigue is like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a readout of how hard we've worked, and I
Speaker 1: think that's one input to feeling tired. But a separate
Speaker 1: input is again our subjective enjoyment of the task and
Speaker 1: how much we like it, how good we think we're
Speaker 1: at it, so on and so forth. So you know,
Speaker 1: actual feelings of a tea are not purely based. It's
Speaker 1: not a direct output of how hard we worked. That's
Speaker 1: really cool research. Did you cite Paul O'Keeffe at all
Speaker 1: in that paper? I am not sure. I kind of
Speaker 1: went down with the preprint right now and see if
Speaker 1: you did so, I just sent you. What I did
Speaker 1: is I sent you in your chatbox a prior study
Speaker 1: done by Okeef finding very similar findings. He's a friend
Speaker 1: of mine. I know he's been really interested in this research.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's not cited in that paper, and I
Speaker 1: actually think that is unfortunate. There's still time. It's a
Speaker 1: working paper. Good to it. Good, please please do because
Speaker 1: I know he was very excited to share that his
Speaker 1: work with Angela about this. But and I wonder how
Speaker 1: much influenced it, because this paper found that those who
Speaker 1: had more interest in a task when they then did
Speaker 1: like a hand grip task like a traditional performance measure
Speaker 1: of self control, they had more self control, they had
Speaker 1: more They put it in terms of resources self control resources.
Speaker 1: But even if that's not true, they demonstrate more performance
Speaker 1: self control if they're more interested in a task before
Speaker 1: it if they were uninterested, attacked them more. And they
Speaker 1: actually they did another study, you know, showing that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just interest fuel effortless engagement in tasks, like the subjective
Speaker 1: feeling of effort was much reduced, you know, when you
Speaker 1: were interested in it. So I actually think that was
Speaker 1: a really seminal kind of prior study. Oh, we definitely
Speaker 1: decide that. I mean that's I please do, Please do. Yeah, yes, essentially,
Speaker 1: very I mean I'm sure we got it in different ways,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like we're saying the same thing. Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 1: So I respect the fact that most of the studies
Speaker 1: I mentioned here or not, you're not like first author
Speaker 1: on and I appreciate you bringing that up. So why
Speaker 1: don't we end here on boredom because I think that
Speaker 1: is a topic that you're more a lead on those studies.
Speaker 1: And you also say that you personally are the kind
Speaker 1: of person who gets more easily. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is true. I am boredom prone. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: made this joke like a dozen times. I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: it again. I find boredom fascinating. That's so funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just one of these things where like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's we hear talk about boredom. I mean, is that
Speaker 1: gonna be exciting or boring? Well, I find daydreaming fascinating
Speaker 1: if that's related at all, what it might be? I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder I suspect boredom would contribute to people daydreaming,
Speaker 1: you know, it might be an input to to people daydreaming. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think boredom is fascinating, and there are now not
Speaker 1: a lot of people studying this, but there are a
Speaker 1: number of people acting more cognitive psychology who look at boredom,
Speaker 1: and I would say they look more at trait boredom,
Speaker 1: So people tend to be boredom prone more generally. It's
Speaker 1: interesting work, for example, showing that I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you knew this. I didn't know this until I learned
Speaker 1: about it. That a very very common. It might be
Speaker 1: one of the more common symptoms of suffering traumatic brain
Speaker 1: injury is feeling boredom, feeling and maybe related feelings of apathy.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of a persistent complaint of people
Speaker 1: who go, you know, and they may and they might recover,
Speaker 1: they will cover eventually from the boredom and they're covered, well,
Speaker 1: some of them will cover from their full function, but
Speaker 1: the boredom is what's really really aversive to them. So
Speaker 1: I find that interesting. But I'm more interested in state boredom.
Speaker 1: So being in a position where you know, you're might
Speaker 1: be engaged in something and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're just you know, your engagement wanes. And why I'm
Speaker 1: interested in it is because part of me wonders if
Speaker 1: what we think of as fatigue or ego depletion might
Speaker 1: be more akin to boredom, or at least partly boredom.
Speaker 1: And that is like, so think of the typical egodopletion study.
Speaker 1: You have people come into a lab who's something laborious, difficult,
Speaker 1: effortful for like I said, about five minutes. But those
Speaker 1: tasks are also typically not interesting, right, They're typically not
Speaker 1: meaningful for the participants. So doing a you know, five
Speaker 1: ten minutes of a strip task, it might be interesting
Speaker 1: for the first minute or so, but then you get
Speaker 1: used to it and then it's like oh god, another
Speaker 1: you know, it's a mind numbing task. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So to some extent, I wonder if some of the
Speaker 1: after effects that you know, again we might have seen
Speaker 1: with some of these depletion studies. It's simply like a
Speaker 1: means to regulate your boredom. Right, So I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this task. It's not meaningful. It's also really
Speaker 1: really hard for me. Or conversely, it's too easy for me.
Speaker 1: Both of those things. And something is meaningless, and it's
Speaker 1: either beyond my capacities or way way under my capacities
Speaker 1: that will lead to boredom. And this is actually I'm
Speaker 1: borrowing now from work done by this brilliant young a
Speaker 1: psychologist named Aaron Westgate, who's I believe a postdoc now
Speaker 1: at Ohio State, worked with Timothy Wilson, and she has
Speaker 1: this brilliant paper. I think it's either impressed or already
Speaker 1: published in Psychic Review, I believe, on state boredom. And
Speaker 1: she puts his model boredom out there, and in essence,
Speaker 1: I just I simply think it might be contributed to
Speaker 1: a lot of the more phenomena that we might think. So,
Speaker 1: for example, here's a controversial one and it's possible that
Speaker 1: a lot of fMRI studies, long fMRI studies, you get
Speaker 1: people lying down, you're doing these tasks. Are we just
Speaker 1: like having is this you know, our fMRI studies, the
Speaker 1: study of disengaged participants? Right? Can you have four question
Speaker 1: one more time? Yeah? So you you know, put yourself
Speaker 1: in this position. You're in this you know, you're lying
Speaker 1: down and a super noisy, maybe uncomfortable scanner and okay,
Speaker 1: maybe the first few minutes you're you're engaged. After a while,
Speaker 1: it's like, Jesus, how many times are going to ask
Speaker 1: me this kind of same question? Or imagine having imagined
Speaker 1: doing this thing over and over again after a while,
Speaker 1: you were bored. And I suspect your number one motivation
Speaker 1: in a study, not just f f RI studies, but
Speaker 1: other studies too, is I want to get out of here,
Speaker 1: I want to be done, and I want to go
Speaker 1: eat lunch or I want to meet my friends. So
Speaker 1: you're kind of already in a low engagement state. So
Speaker 1: are many of those studies you know, kind of partially
Speaker 1: you know effect yeah, or polluted by you know, boredom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is what I wonder. Yeah, we're all right. The ceiling
Speaker 1: of boredom there. Yeah, that's right. And so what's interesting
Speaker 1: about bored them as well is that, you know, so
Speaker 1: we talked about the antecedence of it, but the consequences
Speaker 1: of boredom are you know, are actually very similar to
Speaker 1: the consequences of fatigue. So when you're boord just like
Speaker 1: when you're fatigued. So there are these functional theories of
Speaker 1: both those emotions. And you know, from what I've seen
Speaker 1: is that they both act as stop signals. They both
Speaker 1: act as like, hey, stop what you're currently doing, you know,
Speaker 1: scan the environment and do something else, like I you know,
Speaker 1: you know what's the number one motivation when you're bored
Speaker 1: or tired is do something else. Now, sometimes you think
Speaker 1: fatigue the only thing you want to do is sleep.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily the case. That's sleepiness. Sometimes when you're fatigued,
Speaker 1: I know, I know some people when they're tired, and
Speaker 1: this sounds weird, they want to go jogging, they want
Speaker 1: to exercise. Okay, when they're mentally drained, they want to
Speaker 1: go do exercise, which again shows you the kind of
Speaker 1: the subjective nature of fatigue. But what it's doing, it's
Speaker 1: saying stop, what you're currently doing. You got other goals
Speaker 1: to maintain happy, in full and complete life. Go do
Speaker 1: these other goals now, and boredom might do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Boredom might essentially be like, I'm not engaged with this,
Speaker 1: and there are many other things I could be doing.
Speaker 1: Let's I want to be doing that other thing right now. Gosh,
Speaker 1: so interesting here, this linkage with the ego depletion is
Speaker 1: brilliant and kind of like takes us back to the
Speaker 1: beginning of this conversation. So many of these things are linked,
Speaker 1: and the linkage there to my own research, is clear
Speaker 1: because I've been interested in distinguishing between mind wandering and
Speaker 1: productive daydreaming. You know, some people lump all daydreaming into
Speaker 1: the same category of like its idleness, but that's not true.
Speaker 1: I mean, the default mode network is associated with compassion,
Speaker 1: It's associated with imagination, you know, things that can be
Speaker 1: very productive, you know if we harness it with our
Speaker 1: executive attention network. So maybe a good reconciliation. A lot
Speaker 1: of this is not viewing the executive attention network in
Speaker 1: isolation from these other brain networks. You know, if you
Speaker 1: want to get neuroscience perspective, it really matters what we're
Speaker 1: pairing it with, you know, is it paired with rumination
Speaker 1: processes or is it paired with positive imagination and a
Speaker 1: hopeful you know, construction simulation of your future self. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the level of distinction. I think we need to
Speaker 1: make these things, and some of those contents are going
Speaker 1: to be more boring than others. Yeah, I think you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. Think it's productive and not not productive daydreaming
Speaker 1: or mind wandering and yeah, and I think I think,
Speaker 1: you know, fatigue and boredom both might lead to mind wandering,
Speaker 1: some of which might be productive so much literally might be. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in this boring study. I fulfilled my obligation to
Speaker 1: the experimenter, and I'm just kind of going to walk
Speaker 1: through this. I'm going to kind of sleep walk through
Speaker 1: the rest of the study. And then that gives the
Speaker 1: appearance of me not having self control. Right, I'm now
Speaker 1: doing poorly on a strip task. I'm reaching for the
Speaker 1: you know, the cookies now because I'm thinking about something else.
Speaker 1: But it's not because I've lost self control or necessarily
Speaker 1: even lost motivation. You know. It's more that I'm like
Speaker 1: starting to engage with other tasks like preparing to meet
Speaker 1: to prepare for my class, or thinking about my class,
Speaker 1: or preparing for an assignment in my mind. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily lost of self control at all. It
Speaker 1: could be a whole host of other things. Cool. Well, hey, Michael,
Speaker 1: want to be inspective of your time. I just want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for being on the podcast today,
Speaker 1: and I hope you found this chat just as interesting
Speaker 1: and unboring, non boring whatever the word is the correct
Speaker 1: anton in there as I did. Yeah it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was really a bit exciting. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me on. I did not find it boring whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Hopefully your your viewers, well your listeners have to say, well,
Speaker 1: I will agree, hopefully hopefully, but they tend to be
Speaker 1: just as geeky as I am, so I think you'll
Speaker 1: get a still sizeable proportion of our listeners who will
Speaker 1: be right on board with this excellent Well, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me on. Thank you thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
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