Speaker 1: You all know I'm a big fan of flow states
Speaker 1: of consciousness where we are completely in tune with what
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Speaker 1: designed to help guide you into a deep state of focus.
Speaker 1: Each episode provides thirty minute sections of uninterrupted music. This
Speaker 1: is when you can focus on the task at hand.
Speaker 1: The music sections are separated by five minute intermissions to
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Speaker 1: visit Anchor dot fm. Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where
Speaker 1: we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity.
Speaker 1: I'm doctor Scott Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I
Speaker 1: have a conversation with a guest who will stimulate your
Speaker 1: mind and give you a greater understanding of yourself. Others
Speaker 1: and the world to live in. Hopefully we will also
Speaker 1: provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for listening and
Speaker 1: enjoy the podcast today. It's great to have Paul Boom
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Doctor Boom is the Brooks and Suzanne
Speaker 1: Reagan Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University.
Speaker 1: His research explores how children and adults understand the physical
Speaker 1: and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction,
Speaker 1: and art. He is past president of the Society for
Speaker 1: Philosophy and Psychology and co editor of Behavior and Brain
Speaker 1: Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in
Speaker 1: the field. Doctor Boom is also author editor of seven books,
Speaker 1: including Against Empathy, The Case for Rational Compassion. A delight
Speaker 1: to talk to you today, doctor Boom. Nice to see
Speaker 1: you again, Scott. We didn't have known each other for
Speaker 1: a while since your Yale days. Yeah, a long time.
Speaker 1: I attending your lad meetings was one of the highlights
Speaker 1: of my graduate school career, so I remember it was
Speaker 1: great having you there, So it was nice. Nice to
Speaker 1: see you again. Thanks, nice to see you too. Well.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about some like your classics as
Speaker 1: well as some of your newer stuff. But before we
Speaker 1: get there, I wanted to back up a bit because
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people may know about
Speaker 1: your graduate research, which I thought was pretty revolutionary as well.
Speaker 1: The work you did was Stephen Pinker and that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Going back to your graduate school days and
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about your earliest research in this field. Sure,
Speaker 1: I was an undergraduate at me GIL and I was
Speaker 1: lucky enough to connect with John McNamara, one of these
Speaker 1: chance moments where you connect with a professor who changes
Speaker 1: your life. And John was very interested in language and
Speaker 1: my early work as an undergraduate was on language development
Speaker 1: and world learner. And so when I went to graduate
Speaker 1: school at MIT, my advisor was Susan Carey, and I
Speaker 1: did work on semantics and on conceptual structure. My dissertation
Speaker 1: was called something like Semantic Structure and Language Development. And
Speaker 1: after being in graduate school for five years, I think
Speaker 1: I had one paper that was coming up on that work.
Speaker 1: So things are very different than they are now, and
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure. It's a lot more pressure now.
Speaker 1: Nobody just you know, I would never if with the
Speaker 1: record I had back then, I would never get a
Speaker 1: job now. But I also did some work with Stephen Pinker,
Speaker 1: and together we wrote an article called the theoretical article
Speaker 1: called natural Language natural Selection, where we argued that human
Speaker 1: language is a biological adaptation. It's a darkwhitty adaptation. And
Speaker 1: you might think, you know, a lot of time has passed.
Speaker 1: I think that it what an incredibly boring argument to make.
Speaker 1: You know, course, language is complicated in the structure, and
Speaker 1: natural selection is the only game in town for the
Speaker 1: origin of complex structures. But at the time it was
Speaker 1: extremely controversial. You know. On the one hand, you had
Speaker 1: people like Noam Chomsky, strong nativists at MIT where I
Speaker 1: was a student, who argued were very critical of natural
Speaker 1: selection still still is. On the other hand, you had
Speaker 1: a lot of people who would argue that there's nothing
Speaker 1: special about language. Language. There's no such thing as the
Speaker 1: evolution of language, because language just a bypart of what
Speaker 1: you get. When you're smart, you could learn language. So
Speaker 1: we published this in the journal Behavioral Marine Sciences, which
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. We've got dozens of heated commentaries,
Speaker 1: got to respond to them, and then many years later,
Speaker 1: this is a journal now, and now I was gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you ever think that you would end up being
Speaker 1: the editor of it, of that journal. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't, I did it. It's actually a
Speaker 1: very fun journal to edit. I get to encourage people
Speaker 1: to submit material on ideas interesting they see. You get
Speaker 1: to encourage their submissions. They get to see a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff before it comes out. Because we're a theoretical journal,
Speaker 1: we don't have to wrestle with the sort of replication
Speaker 1: crisis and statistics wars that the rest of the field
Speaker 1: is involved in. Yeah, it's kind of a real pleasure
Speaker 1: being involved in that journal, I imagine. I imagine it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great journal in the sense that it's
Speaker 1: high quality articles, but also this debate aspect of it
Speaker 1: is something you don't often see in other journals. It's
Speaker 1: like a one shot deal with the other articles and
Speaker 1: then yes, and then people just talk about you behind
Speaker 1: your back. You know, that's right. You still get talked
Speaker 1: about behind your back. But you published a VPS. You
Speaker 1: have you know, twenty to thirty maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: more people saying bad things, but you do face and
Speaker 1: you have to deal with it. Then you get to
Speaker 1: respond though, Yeah, you have to deal with it. So
Speaker 1: you have to deal with it. But it's many people
Speaker 1: find it a very exciting experience for sure. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean just just historically that time period with them Chomski
Speaker 1: there and you and Stephen Pinker. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: just a very in the history of psychology. I feel
Speaker 1: like that was a very historic time period, and that
Speaker 1: debate about is language you know, like a module, so
Speaker 1: to speak, or is it uh, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: gnomes more gnomes you. I mean, that's to this day.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that that's debated today. I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty much well accepted, at least by evolutionary psychologists.
Speaker 1: That's accepted that there is an evolved function there. But
Speaker 1: is anyone still arguing like that, well, no, evolutionary didn't
Speaker 1: have any forces specifically on the structure of language. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of people who would argue that
Speaker 1: language is better explain in the terms of cultural evolution
Speaker 1: than biological evolution. I see. The thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is, you know, my field of development of psychology,
Speaker 1: I think is that root pretty empiricist empiricists in the
Speaker 1: sense that there's a lot of rejection and skepticism of
Speaker 1: innate ideas about hardwiring and and I think deep down
Speaker 1: a lot of people in development on a psychology feel
Speaker 1: a little bit bad that Skinner didn't quite win the
Speaker 1: day and are always hoping for him to come back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so so my own my own biases, you know,
Speaker 1: I think informed biases is that a careful look at
Speaker 1: psychology says a lot is hardwired in an interesting way.
Speaker 1: But I to answer your question, I think there's still
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy. Okay, fair enough, So with this
Speaker 1: discussion of what's hardwired? Was I mean, please explain to
Speaker 1: an audience that might not be familiar with the phrase,
Speaker 1: like what you mean by hardwired? Because I think sometimes
Speaker 1: there's misunderstandings about what that means, you know, Like I
Speaker 1: think Steven Pinker is in a great job in some
Speaker 1: of his writings trying to make it very clear, you
Speaker 1: know what that that doesn't mean that like so, in fact,
Speaker 1: it means it requires environmental input, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like people think like hardwired means like, oh, it doesn't
Speaker 1: require you know, any input, it's just gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: automatic express itself. And if you could please dispel them
Speaker 1: of that misconception, that'd be great. You know, everyone who's
Speaker 1: thought about innate ideas and hardwiring, and nativism has always
Speaker 1: been clear and exactly the point you're making, which is
Speaker 1: typically these things need some environmental input to grow. Color
Speaker 1: vision is a great example of something that's built in.
Speaker 1: You know. No, not even the most ardent empiricists would say, oh,
Speaker 1: we just learned to see in color, just the same
Speaker 1: way we learn to play baseball or we learn to
Speaker 1: do crossword puzzles. You know, color vision is part of
Speaker 1: what our species has evolved to do. Same with growing
Speaker 1: arms and legs. But at the same time, unless you
Speaker 1: have the proper input visual input in the case of
Speaker 1: color vision, food in the case of arms and legs,
Speaker 1: the growth won't happen, or if it does happen, to
Speaker 1: be stunted, and so on. So one way to think
Speaker 1: about what it means for something to be in need
Speaker 1: or hardwired is just that it's not learned. It's not
Speaker 1: acquired through observation, generalization, induction. Rather, it grows. But just
Speaker 1: like what you're saying, say it grows doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's a independent input and also doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: present at birth. So puberty is an example. Language probably
Speaker 1: is not learned it's not people don't learn to show
Speaker 1: the signs of puberty at that time of life. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, of course it's not present at birth.
Speaker 1: It comes in many, many, many years later. So so
Speaker 1: the fact that something isn't there at birth does not
Speaker 1: mean you should reject the claim that is hardwired are
Speaker 1: built in. That's a great a great example. I've always
Speaker 1: been a big fan of Rachelle Gellman's research, and and
Speaker 1: you know, she talks about it as a like in
Speaker 1: terms of skeletons. You know, we have these build in
Speaker 1: skeleton structures that environment kind of like where our attention
Speaker 1: that focuses our attention on what to pay attention to
Speaker 1: in the world. I mean, people, if you really, if
Speaker 1: people really thought about it, like we wouldn't want nothing
Speaker 1: to be an eight That would be a mess. Isn't
Speaker 1: there a quote about the Big Booming Confusion? You know
Speaker 1: that William James is a Wim James quote, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, thank god, thank god it listen to me,
Speaker 1: thank the evolutionary process. Whatever nicely put that was unintentional,
Speaker 1: you know, and that I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's kind of funny, but you know, but thank whatever whoever,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking for that process, even it's random, you know,
Speaker 1: variation selection that you know, we have some input of us,
Speaker 1: we would be it would take a d D to
Speaker 1: another level. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think
Speaker 1: you're right in both ways. First thing, one way to
Speaker 1: think about this is sort of blueprint or I think
Speaker 1: Gary Marcus talks about a first draft, a certain fundamental
Speaker 1: starting point. But you could also get this through this
Speaker 1: another way. So there's a lot of interest as you know,
Speaker 1: in computational models of learning, invasion models in neural network
Speaker 1: models used to be. And one of the discoveries that
Speaker 1: that rediscoveries always comes up is unless these things are
Speaker 1: are pre set to certain parameters, they don't learn. You know,
Speaker 1: they're a pure a purely unbiased learner the fiction and
Speaker 1: couldn't get off the ground. So true, we need something
Speaker 1: that's straining, is learning, and that's another way of making
Speaker 1: sense of innate ideas and in aid categories. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: this this might be a total tangent, but I've been
Speaker 1: kind of diving into the intense debates and the machine
Speaker 1: learning literature about you know, about bias and the necessity
Speaker 1: of bias in the system in order information and it's
Speaker 1: and it's really controversial because there are some topics, some
Speaker 1: things you know that we the machine learning might be
Speaker 1: good at, but do we really want to predict certain things?
Speaker 1: And I won't get into that, I won't mention some examples,
Speaker 1: but it can get really controversial quickly. But it's tricky
Speaker 1: because the field is going to has to learn how
Speaker 1: to balance morality with bias uh and have has to
Speaker 1: make some decisions on on exactly what thresholds and cut
Speaker 1: up what there'll be, what they're willing how much bias
Speaker 1: there are willing to allow into a system because there
Speaker 1: seems to be an accuracy bias trade off. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: really complex and I'm not doing it. I'm not doing
Speaker 1: the whole debate justice, but you just made me think
Speaker 1: that some of that. I mean, one thing to think
Speaker 1: about here is that bias is an ambiguous word, so
Speaker 1: it has two sorts of meanings are very important to
Speaker 1: keep the crop keep separate. One is the bias we've
Speaker 1: just been discussing. So a creature might be biased to
Speaker 1: think the sun the light will come from above rather
Speaker 1: than from below, or that color is very important for
Speaker 1: sorting fruit, or that you know, animals are often symmetrical.
Speaker 1: And then there's bias in a way that we talk
Speaker 1: about in sort of the political social context, which you know,
Speaker 1: I say like oh I don't want to hire women
Speaker 1: or something like that, and they're very, very different. So,
Speaker 1: you know, great point a desire to reject the second
Speaker 1: type of bias. It shouldn't preclude you from thinking that, oh,
Speaker 1: well humans must be biased to have some ideas and
Speaker 1: not others. Yeah, thank you for that clarification. So you
Speaker 1: have so many juicy topics. I'm like, which once shoud
Speaker 1: we jump in right now? Well, why don't we just
Speaker 1: just like go rate for the why why empathy sucks? No, No,
Speaker 1: that's not how you would ever phrase it, I know,
Speaker 1: but but let's just let's just go into that topic.
Speaker 1: Because a fascinating topic, and I think, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a hall moments if someone were to
Speaker 1: read your book Against Empathy, a lot of a homoms
Speaker 1: that like, you know, maybe they'll read the title and
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, hell no, but then they'll actually
Speaker 1: read the book. And that's the experience I had once
Speaker 1: I actually read your book, which I'm apologized for taking
Speaker 1: so long to actually read it. Okay, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of really really good insights. So can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what are potentially some downsides of empathy?
Speaker 1: And then and and how are you defining empathy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important. I mean one thing, I do you realize
Speaker 1: most people won't get Many people won't get past the
Speaker 1: cover of the book, which is why I have a
Speaker 1: useful subtitle. So my title is against empathy, but the
Speaker 1: subtitle is the case for rational compassion. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I hope to do there from the get
Speaker 1: go is get people think. Well, when he's talking about
Speaker 1: it empathy, he's meaning something distinct from compassion, and the
Speaker 1: feel is in kind of a terminological mess and I
Speaker 1: like to sort of stay away from the terms. But
Speaker 1: just to get things started, there's one sense of empathy.
Speaker 1: People have to mean everything good, love, kindness, morality. I'm
Speaker 1: not against that, that'd be terrible to be against. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of empathy in sort of a more narrow sense
Speaker 1: when many psychologists and philosophers use it of putting yourself
Speaker 1: in another person's shoes and feeling what they feel. And
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely against that. I think it's an important
Speaker 1: source of intimacy between people. I think it's a great
Speaker 1: source of pleasure. I think a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of joys of life is being sitting with
Speaker 1: somebody else and they're having a wonderful experience and you're
Speaker 1: sharing their experience. But from the standpoint of making moral
Speaker 1: decisions and moral motivation, I've argued that it's a train wreck.
Speaker 1: And one reason to answer your question is that empathy
Speaker 1: in the sense is highly biased. It's much easier for
Speaker 1: me to feel empathy for you, a guy who kind
Speaker 1: of looks like me, speaks my language, somebody I know
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with. Then empathy for somebody who has different
Speaker 1: skin color, different ethnicity, doesn't speak my language frightens me.
Speaker 1: So there's countless studies finding empathy is more naturally drawn
Speaker 1: to those who are similar to us, those who are safe,
Speaker 1: those who are allies are in group, and a morality
Speaker 1: based on empathy then distorts our behavior in favor of
Speaker 1: the familiar in some way. Empathy is a wonderful ally
Speaker 1: for racism and bias, bias in a bad sense, and
Speaker 1: that's one problem with it. A second problem is just
Speaker 1: to get caught up in these political times, empathy could
Speaker 1: be is often used by malevel and people to direct
Speaker 1: hatred towards some groups. So one common piece of rhetoric
Speaker 1: these days is to talk about victims. And so, for instance,
Speaker 1: one common thing to talk about victims of crimes by
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants and this, and people will tell these terrible
Speaker 1: stories of maybe some of them real, of horrific crimes,
Speaker 1: and they will use this as a mechanism to get
Speaker 1: people to hate illigal immigrants. And this is a standard playbook.
Speaker 1: Anytime somebody wants to direct your hatred against some group,
Speaker 1: they'll tell you stories of victims. And so empathy, I
Speaker 1: call these empathy traps. But empathy could be used to
Speaker 1: make the world worse and not better. So I think
Speaker 1: we're much better off making our moral decisions in a
Speaker 1: rational reason way, a reflective way saying you know, look,
Speaker 1: I don't feel a lot much empathy for this person
Speaker 1: in Africa, different skin colored as being my language, but
Speaker 1: I recognize there just as much of a person as
Speaker 1: my child is. Sorry, go ahead, Yeah, So I think
Speaker 1: that's that's very good to point out those particip pitfalls.
Speaker 1: And I wrote this article for Scientific American recently summarizing
Speaker 1: this study that shows that actually people who are poort
Speaker 1: higher and pathic concerned for others, like for people suffering,
Speaker 1: actually are more likely to be politically polarized and to
Speaker 1: show less empathy for those they perceive as in their
Speaker 1: APT group. So I think that's like, if you were
Speaker 1: probably writing your book when that study, you probably would
Speaker 1: include that study is further evidence for this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Something that I'm interested, something that's interesting is this distinction
Speaker 1: the field between cognitive empathy and effective empathy. It sounds
Speaker 1: like you're describing effective affective empathy, but you've also pointed
Speaker 1: out that, And this is where I went wrong. What
Speaker 1: I want to admit in misunderstanding your argument. I thought
Speaker 1: you were making the case that, you know, look at
Speaker 1: all these things that can go wrong with effective empthy,
Speaker 1: we need to cultivate more cognitive empathy, equating cogni empathy
Speaker 1: with your construct of rational compassion. That's not, in fact
Speaker 1: what you did. So it sounds like your idea of
Speaker 1: rational compassion is actually a different construct and maybe something
Speaker 1: like a new construct in the field. It's not. It
Speaker 1: can't easily be mapped on to the you know, the
Speaker 1: different components of empathy or et cetera. What do you
Speaker 1: say that's right. I'm you know, it's it's always nice
Speaker 1: to have the idea you're saying something new, But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's really that new. Compassion. Compassion is reversed
Speaker 1: to caring with other people, valuing other people. Okay, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: So if I suppose I don't put myself in your shoes,
Speaker 1: suppose I don't try to imagine what it's like to
Speaker 1: be you, but you matter to me. You're a person.
Speaker 1: I hope you do well. You hope you're thry. That's compassion.
Speaker 1: Call it concern, call it kindness, call it love. And
Speaker 1: rational means rational, which is that that we should use
Speaker 1: sort of principles of logic and reasons and facts to
Speaker 1: try to make things better in the ways we want
Speaker 1: to make them better. Gotcha, And the reason so I
Speaker 1: would I would distinguish that from cognitive empathy. That's a
Speaker 1: whole different thing, which is understanding what other people think.
Speaker 1: And cognitive empathy can be useful, can be a source
Speaker 1: of much kindness, could also be the source so much cruelty.
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Speaker 1: Psych Podcast. Okay, now back to the show. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of psychopaths are very good at cognitive empathy. They
Speaker 1: can really get in the mind of their victims, but
Speaker 1: they don't have very good affective empathy. But but but
Speaker 1: maybe that's not true. So about the affective empathy part
Speaker 1: of something obviously, because you made a point about how
Speaker 1: people who are cruel can have used empathy in the
Speaker 1: service of being cruel, And do you think they still
Speaker 1: feel like, like, do you think, like, uh, how long
Speaker 1: did I go without mentioning Hitler? But do you think
Speaker 1: Hitler could like yeah, I mean right, it's like been
Speaker 1: like for only fifteen minutes. But like, do you I mean,
Speaker 1: is that possible that he like did have some feelings
Speaker 1: in his life? I mean he's still like, like, am
Speaker 1: I allowed to say he was still human? I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm even allowed to say that, But you know,
Speaker 1: he was obviously a horrible human being, But like, do
Speaker 1: you think there's he still like had these moments of
Speaker 1: like you know, for his like like people that he
Speaker 1: loved or people that he like saws in his inn group.
Speaker 1: Do you think he had feelings of empathy that would
Speaker 1: like be pretty much indistinguishable from like our me and
Speaker 1: you feelings of empathy? Yeah, of course, yeah, okay, And
Speaker 1: people think of these of these monsters, and I think
Speaker 1: I think it's very convenient for us to see individuals
Speaker 1: like like Hitler and say, oh, what a monster or
Speaker 1: Stalin or everything like that, and one sense they're a
Speaker 1: monster that they did great evil, but basically they're human
Speaker 1: and most likely they're evil. Is motivated by the same
Speaker 1: things that motivate your evil. Am I evil? Just you know,
Speaker 1: take it to a different extreme. So you know, the
Speaker 1: high ranking Nazis and had families, they had children, they loved,
Speaker 1: they had Hitler was apparently a vegetarian because he cared
Speaker 1: about the fates of animals. There's nothing inconsistent with that.
Speaker 1: So interesting. I hope I don't. I hope you don't
Speaker 1: get in trouble for any of that. Let me get
Speaker 1: Let me give a flip side. Okay, Obama, who's a
Speaker 1: president I much love and much respect, agreed to have
Speaker 1: drone attacks which killed many innocent people wedding parties and
Speaker 1: children and some one no doubt, there's somebody. There's a
Speaker 1: podcast going on the other side of where one person
Speaker 1: asking asking another per se, is Obama a pure monster
Speaker 1: who loves killing? Or does he have some kindness towards
Speaker 1: others who are around him? And the answer is Obama
Speaker 1: is as best I know, a family man, a good friend,
Speaker 1: a really really nice guy who because of what he believes,
Speaker 1: because I killed people. And now Obama's not Hitler. Hitler.
Speaker 1: I think Obama was Ratby right in his drone attacks,
Speaker 1: and there's no defending Hitler. But the psychologies are the same.
Speaker 1: People could be really kind to those who are close
Speaker 1: to them and either savage or indifferent to those far away.
Speaker 1: That's the human condition. So such an interesting example. It
Speaker 1: really is thought provoking, and it makes me think of
Speaker 1: Roy Baummeiser's book Evil. I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: had a chance of reading that, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: pots that thinks really underrated and you know, just really
Speaker 1: showing studies that have been conducted on how we all
Speaker 1: think we're victims, you know, like you know, and we
Speaker 1: think we're the ones that you know, we can't like
Speaker 1: think that, well, maybe we actually transgressed to someone in
Speaker 1: this situation. So it's a it's a it's a wonderful book.
Speaker 1: One of Roy's studies in the book, if I remember
Speaker 1: correct me, if I got this wrong, he asked people
Speaker 1: to remember a time when somebody did something terrible to them,
Speaker 1: and people say, oh, my God, it was unprovoked, it
Speaker 1: was vicious, it was cruel. The person got the sadistic
Speaker 1: satisfaction from it. And then he asked people, well, what
Speaker 1: about a time you did something cruel to somebody? And
Speaker 1: people say, well, I did that, but you know I
Speaker 1: had no choice. I regretted it. I didn't mean for it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't And we see things so differently. No, I
Speaker 1: think Roy is one of our best commentators on human
Speaker 1: nature around me too, and I think like underrated in
Speaker 1: terms of a lot of his books. He's written. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at my bookshelf right now because there was a
Speaker 1: book I was reading the other day. I was like,
Speaker 1: how come no one's read this book. It's an Escape
Speaker 1: from the self summer around there, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: no one talks about out this this topic. But it's like, so,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, escaping the self. I haven't hold on. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll hold it up to like plug it. Maybe Roly
Speaker 1: will give me some royalties from from this. Oh oh,
Speaker 1: I have a burd background. Oh no, this sucks a boord. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe can I do it? I get it, But then
Speaker 1: if I do it a certain light, Okay, anyway, you
Speaker 1: got it? Cool and This is only for those watching
Speaker 1: the video. Obviously, those who are listening to it just
Speaker 1: in the audio version, you might want to hop onto
Speaker 1: YouTube in order to see that. Okay, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about why people enjoy suffering, and I should say sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a there is a joy to suffering, but there
Speaker 1: might be some boundary conditions around that, some context, some
Speaker 1: things that you can elucidate as a psychologist, I hope. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm super interesting. This is a book it's writing. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're writing a book too, And oh no, no, I
Speaker 1: said the me too. I'm interested in the topic. I
Speaker 1: didn't know you No, no, no, I didn't know you
Speaker 1: write a book on it. That's great, Yeah, that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm like, I don't know, a month away from
Speaker 1: a really really bad first draft, but I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in why we choose to suffer. And I kind of
Speaker 1: think the answer is two parts. Sometimes we choose to
Speaker 1: suffer to enhance our pleasure. We do it, and I
Speaker 1: think the cases they are like spicy foods or saunas
Speaker 1: or hot bass b DSM. It's funny you mentioned Roy
Speaker 1: Baumeister because Mawemeister in that book you held up has
Speaker 1: a really nice discussion for how we could get pleasure
Speaker 1: from b DSM, and one answer is it is often
Speaker 1: nice to be liberated from our consciousness. So that's half
Speaker 1: the book is the sort of it connects lots of
Speaker 1: the work of Paul Rosen, who coined the term benign masochism,
Speaker 1: and talks about chosen suffering of all sorts. The other
Speaker 1: half of the book, maybe, I think, connects more to
Speaker 1: what you have written about quite extensively, which is I
Speaker 1: think part of a good life for many people, maybe
Speaker 1: not all, but for many people is the pursuit of
Speaker 1: long term goals we call meaningful goals, and parton part
Speaker 1: that is difficulty is suffering. If you want to do
Speaker 1: important things in the world, everything from going to war
Speaker 1: to raising children, to climbing mountains to writing a book,
Speaker 1: it's difficult, but the difficulty is an indicator you're on
Speaker 1: the right track. If you looked at your life and
Speaker 1: you found it was just incredibly easy, pain free, difficulty free,
Speaker 1: at some level, you're not doing things right, and so
Speaker 1: suffering has another appeal in that way. It's an indicator
Speaker 1: that we're on the right track regarding our meaningful pursuits.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense You've thought more about these issues
Speaker 1: than I have. Well, I want to suspend all my
Speaker 1: thoughts until I read your book, and then I'm sure
Speaker 1: that my brain will be lit up. But I think
Speaker 1: that those are certainly some factors that can help explain it,
Speaker 1: particularly this one about the human need to overcome challenges.
Speaker 1: I think there's kind of like actually, one of my
Speaker 1: intil I she heroes, Abraham Maslow, has a quote which
Speaker 1: I'll try to send you. I put it's an unpublished
Speaker 1: thing I put on my Twitter a little while ago,
Speaker 1: where he argues something like, we can't help it but
Speaker 1: create challenges in our way because we get Otherwise we'll
Speaker 1: get bored and depressed because of our exit, will get
Speaker 1: existentially despair because of our boredom. You know, like we
Speaker 1: need we need, you know, like we can't just sit
Speaker 1: in front and enjoy like Netflix all day, you know,
Speaker 1: like we need to kind of create these mountains to climb,
Speaker 1: and you know, the human variation. I think, I think
Speaker 1: it's just fascinating to look, you know, among our species
Speaker 1: that all you know, all the ways that because of
Speaker 1: our consciousness and our complex consciousness and ability to have imagination,
Speaker 1: that we can just conjure up in our imagination and
Speaker 1: in reality, so many variations of things, mountains, mini mountains
Speaker 1: to climb. Even you know that like other species, don't
Speaker 1: would never even think of like an ape. An ape
Speaker 1: would probably wouldn't. So I agree with all of that.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you, because I'm struggling with this issue,
Speaker 1: so knowing you, you'd be bored out of your skull
Speaker 1: watching Netflix all day long and and so on. Are
Speaker 1: you sure it's true for everybody? Are you sure that
Speaker 1: there aren't some people who would find a life of
Speaker 1: simple pleasure sufficient. This is not a trick question. I
Speaker 1: honestly I know, I know, no, no, no no. I
Speaker 1: encourage you in this podcast to push me or bring
Speaker 1: up any counter examples because I really enjoy those. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that if we're, if we're really thinking about
Speaker 1: this from an individual difference perspective, which is what I do.
Speaker 1: Most of my research focuses on individual differences, I'd be
Speaker 1: remiss to say that I didn't think there was something
Speaker 1: to that. So I think that the personality trait, which
Speaker 1: I've spent since you've known me, studying openness to experience,
Speaker 1: is a really predictive, really really predict of a lot
Speaker 1: of things, including creativity and intellectually, the need for intellectual
Speaker 1: stimulation is a component of it, but also a need
Speaker 1: for uh, you know, aesthetics, you know, stimulation like beauty
Speaker 1: things in that nature, adventure seeking is kind of a
Speaker 1: blend of extraversion and openness to Actually it's a debate,
Speaker 1: but maybe adventure seeks more part of the extraversion. But
Speaker 1: I think that those traits would moderate this strength of this.
Speaker 1: So I made this kind of like general statement about humans.
Speaker 1: I think it holds in terms of like human nature,
Speaker 1: but I think there like there are extremes of like
Speaker 1: extreme low levels of those traits where I think people
Speaker 1: would probably be very content maybe like just yeah, sitting
Speaker 1: there all day, like they don't have a driving force
Speaker 1: to you know, to do that. But I think maybe
Speaker 1: on average, amongst human nature, there seems to be this
Speaker 1: like dry for for exploration, you know, as I called
Speaker 1: the drive for exploration, which I think, as I make
Speaker 1: a case in this new book I have come out
Speaker 1: in April, I sent you a pdf. Uh in the email?
Speaker 1: Did you get the email? I did? Okay, good good.
Speaker 1: I'm no pressure at all, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that it got through. I have an argument
Speaker 1: in that book about how the need for exploration UH
Speaker 1: deserves a place at the evolutionary table and and it
Speaker 1: can't be reduced to some of these other evolutionary drives
Speaker 1: that like Kenrick and others have made our like the
Speaker 1: mating drive, or you know, even like Jeffrey Miller has
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting topic. He's I think he's done
Speaker 1: great work on them, you know, the mating motive. But
Speaker 1: he he really does subsume all these all the higher
Speaker 1: parts of human nature, you know, like like like intellectual
Speaker 1: as just like signaling, you know, so that we can
Speaker 1: get meats. And I think that's actually to to reductionistic.
Speaker 1: I think the need for exploration you can make a
Speaker 1: case that it is a drive on its own. So
Speaker 1: what do you think of do you what do you
Speaker 1: think of that? Well, let me let me start it.
Speaker 1: I find it really interesting. Let me step back to
Speaker 1: the universality claim. So you're a young guy. I'm not
Speaker 1: a young guy, but I'm not necessarily an old guy.
Speaker 1: But I know people who are in their seventies and
Speaker 1: their eighties, and you talk to them, some of them
Speaker 1: are in good health, they're happy, but they might play
Speaker 1: a lot of golf. They may you know, socialize, see
Speaker 1: the grandkids sit by the pool, read books, do crossroad
Speaker 1: puzzles and so on. And I look at these people
Speaker 1: and I sort of say, where's the suffering? Where's the pain?
Speaker 1: But so I wonder whether to what extent what you
Speaker 1: and I are talking about is developmental is something which
Speaker 1: shows up at some point in life, maybe phase later on.
Speaker 1: I think there is a lot to that. And it's
Speaker 1: certainly if you look at the ericson stage theory, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's this point above generativity. I think maybe like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe when we become wise, if we can ever become wise,
Speaker 1: then we finally call them the beep down, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're like, you know, actually, the wisest path is
Speaker 1: one of the simplest pleasures. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: to that. You know. Again, I'm gonna reference Maslo again
Speaker 1: because he's on my mind. He's been on my mind
Speaker 1: for years as I've been working on this book. But
Speaker 1: he distinguishes between the peak experience and and and and
Speaker 1: in the developmental stage towards end of her life, we actually,
Speaker 1: if we're lucky, we can start experiencing what he calls
Speaker 1: the plateau experience the plateau experience, and I think this
Speaker 1: maps on nicely to what you're saying. I think that, uh,
Speaker 1: to have like ultimate peace before we die. I think
Speaker 1: it's best to have these plateau experiences where we get
Speaker 1: the greatest. They're not these big bursts of you know,
Speaker 1: I've overcome, I've got reached the top of the mountain,
Speaker 1: and then you know that all the Google images pictures
Speaker 1: of like reaching tops and mountains, you know, but a
Speaker 1: plateaux experience is like, you know what, from here on
Speaker 1: to the rest of my life, I'm okay with what
Speaker 1: I've got. So I love my wife, I love my children,
Speaker 1: I love my my you know, publishing one journal article
Speaker 1: a year from here on out, you know, like God forbid,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I like, you just choose, like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna plateau here and enjoy the rest of my life
Speaker 1: with peace. And I think there's a lot too that, Paul,
Speaker 1: I really do. But I think that in order to
Speaker 1: get there, I think you like, there's this there's still
Speaker 1: this natural inclination within a certain period of your life
Speaker 1: to be constantly exploring, you know. I think that's probably right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well cool, that was fun. So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: psychology of expectation and I and and pleasure. Okay, because
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways we talked about the joy
Speaker 1: of suffering, so I think it's appropriate that we talk
Speaker 1: about there is a joy and pleasure too, isn't there?
Speaker 1: Almost by definition, we're not MASSI kiss as a species.
Speaker 1: We're partly Matt, you know, like, I think you made
Speaker 1: that point that you were talking. You said something like,
Speaker 1: what are we a species? You're like, well, we're a mix. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we we we seek out pleasure. I think
Speaker 1: we seek out meaning. We might seek out difficulty and
Speaker 1: harsh conditions, in part because it makes the pleasure enhanced,
Speaker 1: in part because it can connects to meaning and morality.
Speaker 1: I think it's complicated, you know. And there's your point.
Speaker 1: I think you raised this in the question period of
Speaker 1: my talk, and it was very well taken that seeking
Speaker 1: a life of seeking out pleasure and seeking out meaning
Speaker 1: and higher goals are not essentially in conflict. That's right.
Speaker 1: You know, you ask people do you live a happy life?
Speaker 1: And you ask people do you live a meaningful life?
Speaker 1: You know, and there's a correlation. They're not opposed. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who say yes to both. Sadly,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people say no to both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm sort of some sort of commercial
Speaker 1: that said produces a tagline. But you can have it all.
Speaker 1: You can have it all, yeah, with a certain income
Speaker 1: level obviously, yes, Well income, I think it depends where
Speaker 1: you live. But as you know, income is correlated with pleasure,
Speaker 1: with happiness, and it's like an inverted U shaped curve.
Speaker 1: So you mean you think there's a certain point where
Speaker 1: if you make so much money, less happy. Yeah, data
Speaker 1: that you know, there's not like perfectly good data on that,
Speaker 1: and not like there's perfect goo data in anything, but
Speaker 1: if your research shows that, like, if you don't be
Speaker 1: on a certain point, if you don't like spend your money,
Speaker 1: well it actually can lead to like you know, like uh,
Speaker 1: the paradox of choice kind of issues. So you kind
Speaker 1: of get overwhelmed with all the things you could have.
Speaker 1: I know, I know a lot of people are like,
Speaker 1: oh poor, you know, babies, you know, like rich people.
Speaker 1: But but I think there's some you know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: that among you know, more people could commit suicide. I'd
Speaker 1: hire higher tax brackets actually, then lower tax brackets those
Speaker 1: lower tax brackets are actually just trying to survive in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Is that true? Is it really
Speaker 1: true that I because the data I'm aware of would
Speaker 1: say that when to come sort of experienced happiness, it
Speaker 1: goes up and up and up till like one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or something, and then you get diminishing returns
Speaker 1: because you know, obviously with each dollar you have another
Speaker 1: dollar matters less. But I hadn't known that there was
Speaker 1: risks at a higher point. That's really interesting. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's really interesting too. I think it's really interesting too.
Speaker 1: There's a really interesting chapter in one of my books
Speaker 1: on myself here called Spending Money Well, that goes through
Speaker 1: and shows like people who spend their excess money on
Speaker 1: experiences like growth, experiences like a new hobby, or on
Speaker 1: like connecting with others can kind of forestall that effect.
Speaker 1: But if you look on average past a certain point,
Speaker 1: I think you do see lots of negative effects. So
Speaker 1: there is research showing that people above a certain certain
Speaker 1: income level start being less generous. They report they'll be
Speaker 1: less likely to actually donate money than those who are
Speaker 1: poor are actually more likely to donate money. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of counterintuitive things you wouldn't you wouldn't think. You'd
Speaker 1: think because you have more money, you're obviously going to
Speaker 1: be more likely to donate to charities and things, but
Speaker 1: they're actually less likely to donate. Even just looking at
Speaker 1: money makes you more selfish, like in a psychology experiment,
Speaker 1: you like, just like put money in an implicit you know,
Speaker 1: like John Bard sort of way. You know, people are
Speaker 1: more likely to all of a sudden be more selfish.
Speaker 1: So it's like a life well lived and a life
Speaker 1: of meanings seems to be one where you expand outside yourself.
Speaker 1: So therefore, to the extent to which more money is
Speaker 1: detracting from that, it seems like it can get in
Speaker 1: the way of happiness. If that makes sense, I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess. It just seems like it seems if we
Speaker 1: were to take your advice, Suppose I'm making I don't know,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and then
Speaker 1: I suddenly am offered to be making half a million
Speaker 1: a year? Should I say no? I always love your questions, Paul.
Speaker 1: This is I feel like I'm back in I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm back in grad school again. This is like
Speaker 1: so exciting. Yeah, I loved it. You always did this,
Speaker 1: You always did this, so look I wouldn't say no.
Speaker 1: But but I also worry sometimes that, like I may
Speaker 1: my there's a there's like different selves we all have.
Speaker 1: There's a the yet the selve that would say yes immediately,
Speaker 1: I'm not because it's that's your best self, you know,
Speaker 1: Like is like, is that your best self saying yes
Speaker 1: I want that? That's sort of like the greedy self
Speaker 1: in a way, isn't it. I mean, what's going into
Speaker 1: your calculation there? Why you would say yes? Well, money,
Speaker 1: money could do so much good. You could do it
Speaker 1: could good? Is that why you do it? Though? Because
Speaker 1: you'd like right, security and freedom from worry? Okay, can
Speaker 1: it can buy cool stuff? It can? It can help
Speaker 1: out friends, It could be given to charity. I mean,
Speaker 1: in some ways sort of an economic effect of half
Speaker 1: a million strictly dominates a quarter million, because if you
Speaker 1: don't want to half a million, just you know, just
Speaker 1: take a quarter or take half of that and send
Speaker 1: it off to Oxfam and there you got off your shoulders.
Speaker 1: You can't do it the other way around. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. But I suspect that most people when given
Speaker 1: that choice, they're not. Their immediate thought is and oh
Speaker 1: all that extra mondy means I'm going to be able
Speaker 1: to have more nonprofit organizations. I think there is maybe
Speaker 1: this human I mean, I wouldn't say most people would
Speaker 1: probably am I being recentical of human nature right now.
Speaker 1: I just think I've heard this before. I've heard you know.
Speaker 1: There's a friend of both of ours, Lori Santos. She
Speaker 1: had a podcast, so we went over some similar similar issues,
Speaker 1: and people are talking about the risks of having too
Speaker 1: much money. What did she say so much? Well, she
Speaker 1: had on her show she had a psychiatrist who works
Speaker 1: with rich people, and he said, oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: so much problems with money. There's so much problems winning
Speaker 1: a lottery. Yeah, and there's a lot of anecdotes you
Speaker 1: could see how that could work. I'm just not honestly
Speaker 1: sure if it's true. I'd really be very interesting if
Speaker 1: it's true. So I'm actually very surprised if it turned
Speaker 1: out that people who are very wealthy commit suicide more
Speaker 1: than the very poor. It just seems, I mean, anything's possible.
Speaker 1: There's very poor of far more life stressors. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it were true, it would also lead to some
Speaker 1: odd policy decisions, like you would you want to say,
Speaker 1: would you want to say, Hey, we're getting so obsessed
Speaker 1: with healthcare for the poor and improving the lives of
Speaker 1: the poor, but we shouldn't be they're better off. Well,
Speaker 1: if they're happier, why would you want to get and
Speaker 1: mess up to their lives. Well, they're happier, we should
Speaker 1: put our interventions to help and the rich. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that necessarily follows, but I think
Speaker 1: that it is. It is really tricky territory if we
Speaker 1: really want to take the data and think about the implications.
Speaker 1: Because I do like doing that too. I like saying, well,
Speaker 1: if this is true, what are the implications opposed to like,
Speaker 1: let's not even talk about this truth, you know, like
Speaker 1: and let's talk about you know, implications that will make
Speaker 1: everyone sound good, you know, feel good. So I think
Speaker 1: that that's there are some really thorny implications of some
Speaker 1: of this research. I think that it's it's really tricky
Speaker 1: because there there are I think higher levels of mental
Speaker 1: health issues among those who are like reaching this point
Speaker 1: of life where maybe they like they have everything, you know,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how that relates to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, with like the boredom and like the
Speaker 1: need to constantly have challenges and to have, you know,
Speaker 1: things to overcome. I'm just wondering how it all hew
Speaker 1: maps onto that, and I guess you're you'd be skeptical
Speaker 1: of that finding. So I let me be one hundred
Speaker 1: percent rock solid that I can find some studies that
Speaker 1: point to that. I want to be. I want to
Speaker 1: be sure that I one hundred percent because I do
Speaker 1: have a section in my book if you want to
Speaker 1: read it called money, Money, Money, that's the title of it,
Speaker 1: and I have review in that section, so you could
Speaker 1: after we've done this chat, you can just control f money, Money, Money,
Speaker 1: where I do talk about some of the studies that
Speaker 1: I've come across showing how it can make us more
Speaker 1: money can make us more self selfish and lead us
Speaker 1: to make decisions that are actually against well being. See,
Speaker 1: the thing is what we know, the things that are
Speaker 1: most cool with happiness are the really simplest things like
Speaker 1: connection and and you know, having like even like religion,
Speaker 1: Like you know, we should talk about religion as a bond,
Speaker 1: you know, as the function of religion. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of these things like you can go to a church,
Speaker 1: and thankfully I don't think you have to pay a
Speaker 1: lot of money to be in the church, but it
Speaker 1: can be one of the most meaningful, you know, things
Speaker 1: that you do in your life. Right, So it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think about about the real applications of this. So
Speaker 1: I I agree with everything you're saying about what what
Speaker 1: really matters. It's just the thing is, with more money,
Speaker 1: you get what more of what really matters? If you
Speaker 1: If you if you have the meaning job that keeps
Speaker 1: you busy every day, you're not liberated to spend time
Speaker 1: with your kids. If you can't afford travel, you can't
Speaker 1: visit those you love. You know, if you are poor,
Speaker 1: you have to worry about your kids not having adequate
Speaker 1: healthcare or education, our housing. There's so many things money
Speaker 1: you could help out with in exactly the way you're
Speaker 1: talking about, including connections with people you love, meaningful pursuits
Speaker 1: and so on. Well, I've been teaching. I've been teaching
Speaker 1: interestsych for a long time. I've teaching for so long
Speaker 1: remember giving that I remember giving lectures where I say, hey,
Speaker 1: psychologists have learned that money doesn't make you happy, and
Speaker 1: it's just that's amazing. Who would have thought might make you?
Speaker 1: And then all of the new data came in, this
Speaker 1: whole wave of data, and oh, more money you make,
Speaker 1: the happier you are, and rich countries happier in poorer countries,
Speaker 1: and this the whole you know, And like a lot
Speaker 1: of things in psychology, something which was really unintuitive and
Speaker 1: really cool turned out to make more sense than we
Speaker 1: thought it would. Now again it might really be at
Speaker 1: the very high end. It might be once you pass
Speaker 1: a million dollars to ten years in our one hundred million,
Speaker 1: weird things happen, and I can see again in theory,
Speaker 1: I could see that happening. It would isolate you from
Speaker 1: other people and so on. Well, there is that there
Speaker 1: was a study coming out that confirms something you just said.
Speaker 1: It's showing that more people who use their money for
Speaker 1: time saving activities, so they use their money so that
Speaker 1: they don't have to do like chores they don't want
Speaker 1: to do, and they can add more time for the
Speaker 1: things that matter do report higher levels of happiness. So
Speaker 1: I think I think that the key takeaway I want
Speaker 1: to make in this is that spending money well is
Speaker 1: what's important, not just the money that you have you know,
Speaker 1: but but but the but the more bolder claim, Yeah
Speaker 1: about you know, past a cerent level, you are, there
Speaker 1: is a robust correlation with war, levels of well being
Speaker 1: and even higher rates of suicide. I think I maybe
Speaker 1: want to look more rock solid into that literature. That's
Speaker 1: fair enough. And I know that Jonathan Hype, by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but
Speaker 1: he's been working on a book for a long time
Speaker 1: on capitalism and why why capitalism is a good thing
Speaker 1: in terms of happiness, And I hope he finishes that
Speaker 1: book someday because I think it'll be intriguing. And most
Speaker 1: of what John that's is very interesting. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it'd be really thought provoking. So I hope
Speaker 1: you I know, he's been working that a while. And
Speaker 1: then he then he discovered this research and stuff and
Speaker 1: you know, and coddling of the American mind. He put
Speaker 1: everything else on a hold. I think, you know, to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, okay, So, well, this pleasure, you know,
Speaker 1: the expectation of pleasure. I mean, something that I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting and in reading your book is just
Speaker 1: how much whether or not we actually enjoy something really
Speaker 1: does depend so much on whether we think we will
Speaker 1: enjoy it and it it kind of it does kind
Speaker 1: of blow your mind when when you think about that,
Speaker 1: and it does relate to I think addictions as well,
Speaker 1: and and how we know addiction works in the brain
Speaker 1: and as you know, this kind of learning mechanism and
Speaker 1: this and even to the point when we don't actually
Speaker 1: enjoy it anymore, as long as our brain thinks we're
Speaker 1: going to enjoy the cocaine even though we don't really
Speaker 1: don't want to do it. We don't. There's one less
Speaker 1: side of ourselves. We're like, we don't want to do
Speaker 1: it anymore, we're not getting the effects anymore. There's this
Speaker 1: other side that remembers that we once enjoyed it, and
Speaker 1: the dopamine is telling us, well, we got to keep
Speaker 1: doing it with a possibility someday we'll get back to
Speaker 1: that time we enjoyed it. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I have not in any of my work
Speaker 1: thought deeply about addiction. I mean, one very crude way
Speaker 1: of thinking about it is it's a nice one way
Speaker 1: to make sense of addiction at the very crude level
Speaker 1: is a way that Frankfort talks about in terms of
Speaker 1: first order desires and second order desires. So you know,
Speaker 1: I like coffee. I drink coffee, but I also don't
Speaker 1: mind it. I drink coffee. I'm perfectly happy with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe a hallmark of an addiction is you might want it,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to want it. You know, I
Speaker 1: might smoke, but I really wish I didn't smoke it.
Speaker 1: We took all treatments. I take drugs, I see somebody
Speaker 1: because I don't want that desire. And that's one way
Speaker 1: to distinguish addictions from other things. But the second way
Speaker 1: is what you're talking about, and it's kind of grounded
Speaker 1: in neuroscience account involving different appetitive mechanisms in the brain.
Speaker 1: And you're right. Apparently one of the hallmarks of addiction
Speaker 1: is they provide you some relief, but they don't provide
Speaker 1: you pleasure. Yeah, so someone who someone who is addicted
Speaker 1: to cigarettes doesn't really enjoy this smoking a cigarette, but
Speaker 1: it takes away, it takes away to pain of not
Speaker 1: having it. That's right. And there's kind of like this,
Speaker 1: These things we do in our lives because we want
Speaker 1: to relieve, as opposed things we do because we want
Speaker 1: it to grow. You know, like as we call them
Speaker 1: deprivation needs versus growth needs. But there are things that
Speaker 1: we do from a sense of deprivation and it's almost
Speaker 1: like we feel compulsion to do it so that we
Speaker 1: can get rid of this feeling we have of you know,
Speaker 1: this compulsion to do it versus r That's a good
Speaker 1: way to characterize addiction in part. Yeah, So I was
Speaker 1: just I was just trying to link that to to
Speaker 1: your to your discussion of expectation, because I just like
Speaker 1: to link things on my podcast that see if they
Speaker 1: go together at all. Well, but it seems like reading
Speaker 1: your book on you know, pleasure, how pleasure works, this
Speaker 1: idea of just you know, how much our expectation can
Speaker 1: influence things we enjoy. It can also influence things that
Speaker 1: we no longer enjoy, And that's made me think, yeah,
Speaker 1: does that make sense? So, you know, one the main
Speaker 1: theme of my book the different things I pursue, but
Speaker 1: main theme is that what you think of something influences
Speaker 1: the pleasure you get from it. So if you think
Speaker 1: you're drinking the best wine in the world, will tastes
Speaker 1: better to you than otherwise. If you think you're looking
Speaker 1: down the street and this love of your life approaching
Speaker 1: as opposed to someone who just looks like that person,
Speaker 1: it'll affect you differently, and so on and so just
Speaker 1: for everything, for sex, for food, for literature, for film,
Speaker 1: what you think you're experiencing really matters for how you
Speaker 1: experience it. It's so true. Sometimes it's like you can't
Speaker 1: get more true than that, and you've and how does
Speaker 1: that really to like judgments of the value of arts,
Speaker 1: you know, like, because we're told, you know, I'll go
Speaker 1: into an art museum. Let's say I go before people
Speaker 1: tell me, oh, I should find this one's worth four
Speaker 1: billion dollars. That one's seven million. Now let's say I
Speaker 1: go in. I don't know any of that information. I'm like, uh,
Speaker 1: that's a sucky paint. But then like, but let's say
Speaker 1: I go in and I am given all that information
Speaker 1: is not going to fundamentally alter my like perception of
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing and the value that I give to it,
Speaker 1: and maybe even the enjoyment I get from it. I
Speaker 1: don't know it will it won't matter the story you
Speaker 1: hear behind the creation of something. But I'm not an
Speaker 1: arts I'm ar skeptic. I'm not sure. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's a bad thing. Let me give you another analogy.
Speaker 1: There's a movie I want to see called Knives Out,
Speaker 1: and I just heard a commentary. It's a comedy and
Speaker 1: apparently there's a lot of references to Agatha Christie movies
Speaker 1: and stories and Hitchcock movies and so on. Now suppose
Speaker 1: you've never heard of Agatha Christie or Hitchcock. You go
Speaker 1: see the movie, you'll have a very different experience and
Speaker 1: someone who's more knowledgeable. Is it a better experience because
Speaker 1: it's more naive. No. I think sometimes the knowledge of something,
Speaker 1: the knowledge of in the case of visual what a
Speaker 1: Kandinski is, what Picasso was up to, who Dechamp was
Speaker 1: commenting on, really can actually enhance pleasure. So when I
Speaker 1: say sometimes people hear me say that our beliefs about
Speaker 1: something influenced the pleasure we take from it and think, Ah,
Speaker 1: we're just so dumb. But it's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: It could be our beliefs influence us, and it's a
Speaker 1: good thing because maybe we're better informed. Certainly, a wine expert,
Speaker 1: I am not a wine expert, but I am willing
Speaker 1: to believe a wine expert it takes things I cannot
Speaker 1: because of their expertise, So we're not an art expert too. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's a really good point, and they might get some
Speaker 1: enjoyment out of life that we'll never know what that's like.
Speaker 1: Also kind of sad, right, that's right, it's a very
Speaker 1: it's not well, it's it's only sad, you know, if
Speaker 1: we each have it at our disposal, all sorts of
Speaker 1: tools to get better and better, have learning things. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to learn about movies, just watch a lot
Speaker 1: of movies, study movies and so on you want to
Speaker 1: you know, some of this could just be had on
Speaker 1: your laptop. You don't even need a lot of money
Speaker 1: to get access to the pleasure fair enough, So you
Speaker 1: wrote an article you saw you co authored an articled
Speaker 1: art and authenticity, importance of origins and judgments of value?
Speaker 1: Does that study and those fundis related all to this
Speaker 1: idea that like people won't even like touch some If
Speaker 1: you say, like this shirt was made by a serial killer,
Speaker 1: like people, what is it? People won't touch it or
Speaker 1: won't want to, or if you say this food was
Speaker 1: I forget you mentioned example of this in our lab meeting.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm trying to go in my memory from
Speaker 1: like fifteen years ago, so please forgive me, but I
Speaker 1: feel like you said something. So that work was actually
Speaker 1: Paul Ros and Carol Nemrov and done some nice stuff
Speaker 1: on sort of social contamination. So if you knew a
Speaker 1: sweater was worn by I don't know, Jeffrey Dahmer, a
Speaker 1: serial killer, you might be unwilling to put it on.
Speaker 1: They would have bad associations. And similarly, houses where there's
Speaker 1: been a suicide our murder are hard to sell. And
Speaker 1: this is my people who don't have any sort of
Speaker 1: magical thoughts or whatever explicitly, but there is sort of
Speaker 1: this common sense feeling of contamination that happens. And in
Speaker 1: my work I did, and some of this work was
Speaker 1: with George Newman and some was skilled decent drug I
Speaker 1: was that positive contamination. So imagine a sweater that was
Speaker 1: worn by George Clooney. Imagined a desk that was owned
Speaker 1: by Albert Einstein. I'd love a desk going by Albert
Speaker 1: einst I'd pay extra for it, even if I couldn't
Speaker 1: brag a just the idea, this is Albert Einstein's freakings
Speaker 1: and I'm working it would be worth a lot. So
Speaker 1: we have both positive and negative contamination influencing our thoughts
Speaker 1: on things. Yeah, it so relates to the expectations we're
Speaker 1: just talking about. Yeah, that's right, that's right. All the
Speaker 1: stuff is really I mean, everything we talked about today
Speaker 1: is like related. Did some Well these are great topics,
Speaker 1: these are fascinating, so much fun. So I did say
Speaker 1: I wanted to circle back to religion. So I was
Speaker 1: going to ask you would Tarzan believe in God? So
Speaker 1: this is a title of the paper I wrote with
Speaker 1: Conybenergy And it was a clever thing. She thought of
Speaker 1: a clever way of framing the question. How much of
Speaker 1: religion is innate? So you take it so plainly, just
Speaker 1: about most people in the world have some religious knowledge
Speaker 1: and religious background because we live in a religious world.
Speaker 1: But how much of that's human nature? And so one
Speaker 1: thought experiment is you take a bunch of kids, put
Speaker 1: them on an island somehow, give them food and water,
Speaker 1: and see whether they create gods. Well, they naturally do that,
Speaker 1: And our answer is no. Our answer is kids might
Speaker 1: develop some sort of superstitious beliefs, they may believe in
Speaker 1: some deities, but surprisingly, if they have any belief it
Speaker 1: will be polytheistic, not monotheistic. So you look at the
Speaker 1: history of religion, religion starts off of many gods. The
Speaker 1: idea of a single god, what Era and or in
Speaker 1: Zion call a big God is a relatively recent invention
Speaker 1: or discovery. You could say, So the tame we have
Speaker 1: a natural default for religion. It's for polytheism. Well that's
Speaker 1: very interesting. Well what do you see as some of
Speaker 1: the other sort of evolved mechanisms that religion or modern
Speaker 1: religion plays on. That why religion is so pervasive and
Speaker 1: so popular. Well, I think in some of my work
Speaker 1: I argued that modern religion often speaks to a common
Speaker 1: sense distinction being body and soul. You know, neuroscientists will
Speaker 1: tell you that you're a physical thing, you are your brain,
Speaker 1: but we don't feel that way. And so I feel
Speaker 1: like you say, you know, you do feel like you
Speaker 1: are your brain. No, I was going to say, when
Speaker 1: neu scientists say that that you, you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: speak for yourself. Oh, I see, I'm just joking. So
Speaker 1: common sense says, you know, you know, I could leave
Speaker 1: my body in a dream, float around, exchange body. That's
Speaker 1: common stuff in fiction. Religions talk about this. Religions often
Speaker 1: have a notion of karma or karmic balance, some sort
Speaker 1: of justice where you know, people get what they deserve.
Speaker 1: Religions often have creationists ideas, which is a very natural
Speaker 1: way to think about the origin of complicated things, and
Speaker 1: a lot of developmental work suggesting that gets probably quite
Speaker 1: naturally when they see something that's complicated, say well, something
Speaker 1: a person mustimated. The argument for design comes very naturally,
Speaker 1: and so these ideas end up coalescing and form the
Speaker 1: sort of cognitive basis, the factual basis of the world's religions. Then,
Speaker 1: of course there's much else besides. There's moral systems, there's
Speaker 1: rich uals, there's community. But I do think these biases
Speaker 1: sort of form the basis for universal religious beliefs. So
Speaker 1: on page eight of my new book, I quote you
Speaker 1: from your article Religion is Natural in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: I say, many people, perhaps most people, see religion or
Speaker 1: spirituality is central to their lives. Any complete theory of
Speaker 1: human nature has to make sense of this, and I
Speaker 1: think that this is this is still a uncharted territory
Speaker 1: in psychology. My collagues and I are trying, you know,
Speaker 1: particularly like David Yeden, who was a grad who's a
Speaker 1: grad student at univers of Pennsylvania really doing great work
Speaker 1: on this. But we've been trying to really understand like
Speaker 1: the all experience, you know, and and it's it's something
Speaker 1: that's so tied to religion, but it need not be.
Speaker 1: I mean, these things are we can we can take
Speaker 1: that of those contexts and and those experiences are still
Speaker 1: meaningful to us, you know, even if they're not associated
Speaker 1: with specific duty deity the deity. So yeah, So anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really cool paper of religion
Speaker 1: is natural, and I really do agree that any complete
Speaker 1: theory of human nature does have to make sense to this,
Speaker 1: and and science has really the science of transcendent experiences
Speaker 1: is an underdeveloped field. So well, though there are two
Speaker 1: things you could You could say religion is extremely important,
Speaker 1: but you could be skeptical as to whether the f
Speaker 1: institur exists transcendent experiences any in any interesting way you
Speaker 1: could tell people's beliefs in them, and so on. There's
Speaker 1: sort of the slippage there between. Certainly people have certain
Speaker 1: experiences and they call them transcendent experiences, but sometimes I
Speaker 1: think people go further and talk about them in terms
Speaker 1: of being in some way actually transcendent. Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Well that's the term that's used in this psychological literature. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: transcend experience. But I see what you're saying. There are
Speaker 1: there are humans individuals who use that phrase making a
Speaker 1: claim about where the experience is coming from, like the
Speaker 1: source of it. I don't think the psychologists are making
Speaker 1: that claim far enough. Yeah, okay, so sort of last
Speaker 1: question I have you take because this has been such
Speaker 1: a wide ranging I think we covered so much and
Speaker 1: I want you to to not be tired. I want
Speaker 1: you to leave on a great note. Last question. You
Speaker 1: know you wrote this book just Babies. What a great title.
Speaker 1: First of all, Oh my gosh, like just babies and
Speaker 1: just be I mean, like you think of all the
Speaker 1: I mean, how cool is that title? Yeah, I'm ready
Speaker 1: like it's gott I tell you a ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of people in the world didn't get it. Are you serious?
Speaker 1: And be? Actually? Amazon reviews saying the book says just babies,
Speaker 1: but there's parts of it that aren't about babies, so
Speaker 1: one star. Oh my god, anyway, I'm can you like that?
Speaker 1: I can't even It's so good. So the origins of
Speaker 1: good and Evil? Now we have touched on so much
Speaker 1: of this throughout this whole thing, but I thought it'd
Speaker 1: be kind of cool just a last topic. Just let's
Speaker 1: go down from a developmental perspective. Are babies do they
Speaker 1: tend to be like having the precursors to a morality
Speaker 1: there like do you see what do you see at
Speaker 1: the youngest ages? That that kind of to answer this
Speaker 1: age old question, are we fundamentally good or evil? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I what's interesting is you ask two questions, So I
Speaker 1: think the question. I think you do find signs of
Speaker 1: morality early on. You have a sensitivity to good behavior
Speaker 1: and bad behavior. Pretty early in development. You get some
Speaker 1: sensitivity to fairness and justice. You find suffering at the
Speaker 1: pain of others, You find some desire to help others.
Speaker 1: So and you know, I think we're social creatures, and
Speaker 1: the social and the moral tend to blend together early on.
Speaker 1: So you have ay, I don't know what word used
Speaker 1: earlier on, but a blueprint, a first draft, more skeleton,
Speaker 1: a skeleton exactly in the kid. As for whether we're
Speaker 1: good or evil, though, I think the answer is both.
Speaker 1: I think our morality compels us to do good things,
Speaker 1: but also compels us to do bad things. I think
Speaker 1: we're bad in two ways. One is we're simply self interested,
Speaker 1: which often clashes with morality, and that's part of human nature.
Speaker 1: A baby, a baby crying to get fed doesn't really
Speaker 1: care that much about anybody else at the moment, nor
Speaker 1: should it. But also morality connects to punishment and cruelty,
Speaker 1: and you know, vendettas, and there's a case to be
Speaker 1: made that a powerful moral sense is responsible for an
Speaker 1: extraordinary amount of evil in the world. M well, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: A lot of terrible, terrible things are done by people
Speaker 1: not who are sort of rational self maximizers, but rather
Speaker 1: we're caught up in a powerful moral vision. You know what.
Speaker 1: A great point, and I think a really understudied topic
Speaker 1: in psychology is moral righteousness, that that particular kind of
Speaker 1: expression of one's morality, more righteousness, which seems to be
Speaker 1: something different than just just having a moral system or
Speaker 1: a code of code of ethics, you know, is the
Speaker 1: question is what do you do with the code of ethics?
Speaker 1: How do you feel about your code of ethics in
Speaker 1: relation to other code of d I mean, there's so
Speaker 1: many interesting questions. There was this paper that was interesting
Speaker 1: about moral grandstanding, philosophers and then psychologists tried to operationalize it,
Speaker 1: and I think it got really close to this notion
Speaker 1: of more lightness. But I think it's still an underdeveloped
Speaker 1: field for sure. Yeah, well, yeah, there's but in some
Speaker 1: way people talk about moral grandstanding in terms of signaling,
Speaker 1: and I had a perfectly reasonable idea. But look, suppose
Speaker 1: you think killing babies is wrong, you have a moral view,
Speaker 1: and then you walk down the street and there I am,
Speaker 1: and I'm killing babies. You're going to be compelled to act.
Speaker 1: So morality is quite aside from signaling, get you into
Speaker 1: other people's business. Oh sometimes that could be good. If
Speaker 1: you stop me from killing all those babies, You've done
Speaker 1: a great thing. Yeah, that's that. That's a very good point.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, not all of it is virtue signaling.
Speaker 1: It's natural. I think there's an extreme cynicism that I
Speaker 1: don't ascribe to about human nature that everything is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're okay, we're on totally the same page about that.
Speaker 1: I I do, and and and that's a good place
Speaker 1: to end this on on the note that we have
Speaker 1: talked about all the naughty bits of human nature. But
Speaker 1: I think none of that negates the fact. There's also
Speaker 1: there's like aspects of human nature that's good. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to choose my words very carefully because like
Speaker 1: it's it's because it's like nuanced, like if I say
Speaker 1: it's moral like and that's not quite what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: There's aspects of human nature that is cooperative. I don't know,
Speaker 1: is that fair? You know? And you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of pleasure that we can have
Speaker 1: as a species and share shared shared pleasure. So absolutely, Paul,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on my podcast today.
Speaker 1: It was such a fun as always to talk to you,
Speaker 1: such a delight. Thank you so much for having me
Speaker 1: on this was this was critic. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please
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Speaker 1: and subscribe to the Psychology Podcast YouTube channel, as we're
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Speaker 1: for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and
Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
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