Speaker 1: And so for me, the issue really isn't about whether
Speaker 1: you should expect a lot or expect a little. It's
Speaker 1: really being about strategic in the way that you're expecting things.
Speaker 1: Are you expecting the sorts of things that the two
Speaker 1: of you that this particular relationship can actually deliver. If so,
Speaker 1: then you should double down and expect those things and
Speaker 1: hope for greatness. And if you're expecting things that are implausible,
Speaker 1: you know, then you're probably ill advised to do so. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Eli
Speaker 1: Finkel on the show. Eli is a professor at Northwestern University,
Speaker 1: where he has appointments in the Psychology Department and the
Speaker 1: Kellogg School of Management. In his role as director of
Speaker 1: Northwestern's Relationships and Motivation Lab or RAM Lab for short.
Speaker 1: He has published more than one hundred and sixty scientific
Speaker 1: papers and is a guest essayist for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: The Economist declared him quote one of the leading lights
Speaker 1: in the realm of relationship psychology. His latest book is
Speaker 1: called The All or Nothing Marriage. In this episode, I
Speaker 1: talked to Eli Finkle about how the best marriages work.
Speaker 1: The institution of marriage has evolved throughout the decades. People
Speaker 1: used to tie the knot for socioeconomic purposes, but nowadays
Speaker 1: we seek to fulfill a higher need for self actualization
Speaker 1: in relationships. According to Eli, higher expectations are not necessarily
Speaker 1: bad for marriages if people can use them strategically. Eli
Speaker 1: also shares love hacks we can implement to approve our
Speaker 1: relationships with our partners. This episode is a long time coming.
Speaker 1: I've been willing to chat with Eli for a long time.
Speaker 1: I've been a long time admirer of his research. I
Speaker 1: find his work incredibly nuanced and incredibly relevant, and so
Speaker 1: I really am excited to present this episode to you today. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I bring you doctor Eli Finkle, Doctor
Speaker 1: Eli Finkel, it is an honor to have you on
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. We've wanted to talk for a while.
Speaker 1: Finally it's finally the moment is here. Sure, sure it arrived.
Speaker 1: Even going back when this piece by David Brooks came
Speaker 1: out talking about your book in positive terms, he talked
Speaker 1: about your book and positive terms, but he kind of
Speaker 1: hated more on my boy Abraham Maslow and kind of
Speaker 1: attributing this whole idea of self esteem and the movement
Speaker 1: and self expression got run a look to him, which
Speaker 1: it was not a good attribution. Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: that was sort of an odd experience for me. His
Speaker 1: piece came out the day the book was published, which
Speaker 1: is pretty great to get a hold David Brook's column
Speaker 1: in the New York Times on the pub date for
Speaker 1: your book. And yeah, he was complimentary about the book.
Speaker 1: But definitely I felt like I was blindsided, or was
Speaker 1: I was sort of a drive by victim in a
Speaker 1: battle that he had yet with Abraham Aslow. And I
Speaker 1: was excited because not that many days past before you
Speaker 1: took him to task in the pages of Scientific American. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I had him on my podcast too, and
Speaker 1: we talked about it. Interesting, So why do these ideas
Speaker 1: about self expression? Why are they not necessarily bad in
Speaker 1: the realm of romantic really ships? I found the I
Speaker 1: guess you could say the conservative critique of the marrying
Speaker 1: for personal fulfillment shift, right, that was a cultural shift.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that we always married for the personal fulfillment
Speaker 1: of the spouses. And I think people raise some good
Speaker 1: concerns about that, like the marriage is hard and it
Speaker 1: won't always be a pleasure. And so how can you
Speaker 1: simultaneously have marital commitment and you know, a long term
Speaker 1: orientation till death to us part while simultaneously saying, you
Speaker 1: know it's going to be great. I hope it's pleasurable,
Speaker 1: and you know, if it's not pleasurable, then I'm not
Speaker 1: going to stick with it. And I actually spend a
Speaker 1: while trying to think about where I fell on that,
Speaker 1: and it was really this distinction between two different ways
Speaker 1: of living a sort of self oriented life. And again,
Speaker 1: you've talked in your book, especially in transcend about whether
Speaker 1: that's the right way to conceptualize it. But Maslow for
Speaker 1: sure was talking about self actualization in a real sense,
Speaker 1: focusing on bringing forth the self. And that's quite a
Speaker 1: different emphasis, quite a different perspective than you see from
Speaker 1: people who are talking about self esteem and making sure
Speaker 1: that you're never having to make any compromises. And if
Speaker 1: you're not living, you know, if you're not living according
Speaker 1: to your true self, you have to leave the marriage. Right.
Speaker 1: There's I think a couple of ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: this stuff, and so it took me a while to
Speaker 1: figure out how I thought about it, And it's pretty
Speaker 1: much the distinction between pleasure and self esteem on one
Speaker 1: side and meaning and self expression on the other. And
Speaker 1: as far as we're focusing on meaning and self expression,
Speaker 1: and in so far as we think that one of
Speaker 1: the ways that we can live a meaningful, fulfilling, authentic
Speaker 1: life is by building and sustaining long term committed relationships,
Speaker 1: the tension between you know, wanting to live in accord
Speaker 1: with yourself and also wanting to be committed to your
Speaker 1: marriage goes away. Well, that's so interesting. My personal philosophy
Speaker 1: is that sort of like what ever works for two
Speaker 1: people in a relationship or ten people in a relationship.
Speaker 1: There's such a thing as polyamory. It kind of whatever
Speaker 1: works for people. To me, that's my model self actualization.
Speaker 1: And I don't try to judge or say that there
Speaker 1: is one correct way, because for some people, maybe just
Speaker 1: a relationship that's just full of lots of great sex
Speaker 1: is meaningful. Maybe that's maybe that pleasure is meaningful for them.
Speaker 1: I just don't like to like tell people how they
Speaker 1: should live their life or or say there's one best way.
Speaker 1: But there is science, and that is true. You've spent
Speaker 1: your whole career studying probabilities. You've spent your whole career
Speaker 1: studying well what tend tends to work? And I want
Speaker 1: to hear all about all that. But I also really
Speaker 1: am interested in that individual differences piece, because that is
Speaker 1: my My field is personality psychology. So how much do you,
Speaker 1: you know, put in these moderator variables in your in
Speaker 1: your study and stuff and look to see, oh, well,
Speaker 1: actually those introverts they bow off the whole trend. Well,
Speaker 1: we certainly do. I'm certainly interested in, you know, when
Speaker 1: and for whom are certain approaches to marriage especially beneficial.
Speaker 1: So for example, there's some interesting research out there now
Speaker 1: about you brought up polyamory and nominogamy, which is something
Speaker 1: that I deal with directly in the book. And there
Speaker 1: are certain people individual differences people hire in socio sexuality.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're listeners will be familiar with them,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you for sure like the you know, comfort
Speaker 1: with casual sex. And it looks like, perhaps not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: people who are hiring socio sexuality really benefit from opening
Speaker 1: up their relationship. So I'm entirely with you that there
Speaker 1: are these individual differences in terms of whether there's a
Speaker 1: more versus a less healthy way to think about this, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, are you sort of in it for the
Speaker 1: pleasure of it? Knowing full well that you know sixty
Speaker 1: year marriages don't tend to be unmitigated pleasure for every moment, right,
Speaker 1: There'll be some challenges there versus sort of more self
Speaker 1: actualization meaning based approaches. For me, I entirely agree with
Speaker 1: you out the individual difference. Is there the challenge for me?
Speaker 1: And really the sort of the crux of the book
Speaker 1: is about calibrating your expectations to what you think the
Speaker 1: relationship can deliver. That is, who are you and who
Speaker 1: am I? And who are we? And are the things
Speaker 1: I'm looking for from this relationship likely to be things that,
Speaker 1: given our strengths, we're going to be able to deliver.
Speaker 1: And so I entirely agree with you that there's no
Speaker 1: rule that says we have to ask for self actualization
Speaker 1: from our marriage. In fact, a fair bit of the
Speaker 1: time in the book, I'm talking about why it's a
Speaker 1: high risk choice to do it, but I also talk
Speaker 1: about why those of us who are seeking that from
Speaker 1: our marriage from our primary romantic partner, let's say, and
Speaker 1: able to achieve it, Like have a relationship that's actually
Speaker 1: able to deliver that. For the two of us are
Speaker 1: almost certainly achieving a level of fulfillment in their marriage
Speaker 1: that was out of reach in an era before Maslow,
Speaker 1: in an era before people were even trying to that
Speaker 1: sort of connection in their relationship. Yeah, you talk about
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. Yeah? Yeah? Did I mention that sometimes I
Speaker 1: get confused between Maslow and Lincoln? Did I say the
Speaker 1: wrong name? No, you said Maslow. Now, But I'm just
Speaker 1: bringing that up because you talked about before Maslow, and
Speaker 1: my mind went to the sort of pragmatic love sort
Speaker 1: of view that you talk about in that historical period.
Speaker 1: So could you umpact that a little bit? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's hard for us today, I think, to get
Speaker 1: our heads back into a pre industrial mindset, to get
Speaker 1: ourselves back into a world where people regularly died in childbirth,
Speaker 1: giving birth, and sickness and plagues and droughts, like people
Speaker 1: regularly died of this stuff. And so, you know, I
Speaker 1: find it useful to think of an example. So Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln was born a couple hundred years ago, eighteen o nine,
Speaker 1: and he was born into a one room, dirt floor
Speaker 1: log cabin I had an older sister, and then another
Speaker 1: sibling came along, but that one died, And when Abraham
Speaker 1: was nine, his mom died, and when he was still
Speaker 1: a teenager, is only remaining sibling died giving birth to
Speaker 1: a stillborn kid. And you know, I find that interesting
Speaker 1: because I think US history is interesting, and I think
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln is interesting. But really I find that useful
Speaker 1: for our purposes because it helps to illustrate just how
Speaker 1: precarious life was. And so I guess I would ask
Speaker 1: you and me, all of us, like, if you lived
Speaker 1: in a world where life was fragile at that level,
Speaker 1: you didn't sort of stroll by the target to pick
Speaker 1: up all the food that you needed. Literally your marriage
Speaker 1: was a primary means of achieving things like food, clothing, shelter,
Speaker 1: and so forth. How much would you really prioritize like
Speaker 1: this feels like a like a match that you know,
Speaker 1: I feel it in my fingertips when we kiss, or
Speaker 1: you know, you complete me right. The way that we
Speaker 1: talk these days would have been like comedically ridiculous in
Speaker 1: you know, a couple hundred years ago, and so it
Speaker 1: was really you know, this transition from this earlier more
Speaker 1: pragmatic era when life was fragile and the relationship was
Speaker 1: just about two fundamental things, things that were too fundamental
Speaker 1: lower down Maslow's hierarchy, that we weren't really as focused
Speaker 1: on the individual fulfillment of the spouses, and certainly not
Speaker 1: focusing on like trying to achieve a sense of self
Speaker 1: actualization through the relationship. Yes, yes, are you familiar with
Speaker 1: my revised hierarchy of needs any chance? Yeah? Well, I
Speaker 1: the one you lay out in Transcend as well. Right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that that framework is it might be a
Speaker 1: good launching pad for this discussion, because you do need
Speaker 1: your basic needs meant to a certain degree in your life,
Speaker 1: or else you'll sink too much water will come in.
Speaker 1: And certainly if you're in a relationship where you're constantly
Speaker 1: you know, there's violence in the relationship, where there's constant discord,
Speaker 1: no coherence. That's not good in any relationship, however, and
Speaker 1: I think the point you're making, which I completely agree with,
Speaker 1: is that that's not enough in a relationship. In a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship, you eventually have to open up that sale
Speaker 1: of the sail boat metaphor and to grow and yet
Speaker 1: to move somewhere knowing there's going to be uncertainty, and
Speaker 1: the grow together model of romantic relationships is what David Brooks.
Speaker 1: What David Brooks wrote, he criticized the growth together model
Speaker 1: in more of what he sees his transcendence, which is
Speaker 1: not what I think is transcendence, which is complete self sacrifice.
Speaker 1: And he's sort of like defending you know, complete self
Speaker 1: sacrifice overgrowing together. And the alll psychological literature I've seen
Speaker 1: shows that complete self sacrifice never ends. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, it's yeah, yeah, I understand that having this
Speaker 1: like romantic you know, Romeo and Juliet ideal is but no,
Speaker 1: that's that doesn't end well. You know, if you completely
Speaker 1: sacrifice your whole sense of self and your whole your
Speaker 1: own needs to grow your growth needs. You're not your
Speaker 1: security to but you sacrifice your growth needs to me,
Speaker 1: that's a recipe for disaster. Well, certainly go all that
Speaker 1: well for Romeo and Juliet either. Yeah, you brought in
Speaker 1: the work on unmitigated communion, for example. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I liked, you know this like in Meslow,
Speaker 1: but I think your book really helped to bring it
Speaker 1: to the four at least for me, was this idea
Speaker 1: of like the vertical integration of the needs. Right. That is,
Speaker 1: it's not really like, well, you achieve the you know,
Speaker 1: safety thing and then cross that off, and then you
Speaker 1: go up to the love and belonging thing and you
Speaker 1: cross that off. It's that you're simultaneously meeting these I
Speaker 1: guess higher and lower needs. Again, yours is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a hierarchical framework because you talk about the sale boat
Speaker 1: and so forth. But yeah, it's the simultaneous integration of
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I like to address in the book is you're a
Speaker 1: personality researcher first and foremost, and I'm a relationships researcher
Speaker 1: first and foremost, and I think you're focusing on, you know,
Speaker 1: the integrated life. And one of the things that really
Speaker 1: interests me from that perspective is, well, one of the
Speaker 1: ways that we lead an integrative life is through our
Speaker 1: close relationships. But one person doesn't have to be the
Speaker 1: source of fulfillment for all of those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: And so what is it again playing to strengths? Will
Speaker 1: I need to do a full vertical integration of my
Speaker 1: meslo Van needs, including transcendence through the marriage. Well, no,
Speaker 1: we don't have to. It is a high risk choice
Speaker 1: to put all the eggs in the basket like that.
Speaker 1: But again, it's sort of neat that it's available to us. Now.
Speaker 1: It's sort of neat that some of us talk this
Speaker 1: way and think this way, and even as it puts
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on this one relationship. You know,
Speaker 1: this takes us to the question of you know, what's
Speaker 1: happening with marriage today in America? Is the news good
Speaker 1: or bad? And you say that it's both, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the question really is about, you know, what
Speaker 1: are the functions of expectations. And you know, it's easy
Speaker 1: to lament them. It's easy to say, well, if we
Speaker 1: didn't have such high experts, we wouldn't be so disappointed.
Speaker 1: That's totally true, right, That is that expectations serve an
Speaker 1: evaluative function. And if my marriage is providing I don't know,
Speaker 1: twenty units of goodness and I'm expecting thirty, I'll be disappointed.
Speaker 1: But if I'm expecting ten, I'll be happy. That's completely true.
Speaker 1: And so the logic that says we should be asking
Speaker 1: less is entirely valid. What it ignores is that expectations
Speaker 1: also essentially functions as goals, right, That is, they have
Speaker 1: a motivational function. And so when we say, like, these
Speaker 1: are the things I really want to get from the marriage,
Speaker 1: and I want to have high expectations for a deep
Speaker 1: level of emotional connection, that it's not just about how
Speaker 1: I'm going to evaluate things once the information is there.
Speaker 1: It's about what I'm going to try to seek, not
Speaker 1: just about evaluating how the outcomes are. Right now, it's
Speaker 1: those of us who are saying, you know, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have high expectations are ignoring the fact that expectations are
Speaker 1: motivating the they get it to try to pursue a
Speaker 1: level of connection that we might not have tried to
Speaker 1: pursue before. And so, yes, we might end up disappointed
Speaker 1: today with a level of marital well being that would
Speaker 1: have been totally fine for our grandparents. But the fact
Speaker 1: that we're shooting for a higher level of connection than
Speaker 1: than people back then we're shooting for has the upside
Speaker 1: of some of us are actually getting it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: say the best marriages are getting better. Yes, again, I'm
Speaker 1: a little beyond the data here. Unfortunately, there hasn't been
Speaker 1: the one hundred year longitudinal study of the best marriages.
Speaker 1: But Maslow I think is basically totally correct that surely,
Speaker 1: you know you need to have enough food to eat
Speaker 1: and not be freezing. But if you're talking about things
Speaker 1: like self actualization or really talking about transcendence or richness
Speaker 1: in your life, this profound sense of purpose and meaning
Speaker 1: in your life, you know it's fulfilling those sorts of needs,
Speaker 1: those self actualization sorts of needs that are especially important.
Speaker 1: And so as we are looking to higher levels of
Speaker 1: need fulfillment, at least in the Maslovian sense, those of
Speaker 1: us who are able to achieve fulfillment of those needs
Speaker 1: are achieving a level of fulfillment from the marriage that
Speaker 1: was unavailable to people who weren't even trying to fulfill
Speaker 1: those needs. So it's simultaneously harder, right nobody. Certainly you
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that it's easy to reach self actualization and transcendence,
Speaker 1: but these are worthy goals, and those of us who
Speaker 1: are able to set those goals and at least sometimes
Speaker 1: achieve them, achieve a level of life fulfillment and happiness
Speaker 1: that is profound. Wow. So it's not that we're asking
Speaker 1: more of our marriage, but we're asking for different things
Speaker 1: than people asked for in the past out of their marriages,
Speaker 1: and then expectations mess us up. If we expect Disney movie,
Speaker 1: you know, Disney movie people who are saying and again,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I got into the research that I
Speaker 1: really fully understood this. You know, we're saying, oh, we're
Speaker 1: asking more and more and more. People used to ask
Speaker 1: for survival, they asked, They used to ask for like
Speaker 1: literally food, right, like, how are we going to make
Speaker 1: sure that there's enough food for our family to eat?
Speaker 1: Now I understand in some way we're still asking those
Speaker 1: things of our marriage, but not in the very literal
Speaker 1: way that people did two hundred years ago. And so
Speaker 1: for us to say we're asking more, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you ignore all the other stuff, we're asking more
Speaker 1: about the things that were higher up Maslow's hierarchy, the
Speaker 1: deeper sort of emotional connection and especially these sorts of
Speaker 1: self actualization things. That's true. So expectations obviously play a
Speaker 1: big role in all of this in society obviously, and
Speaker 1: media can influence our expectations. So are you saying, like
Speaker 1: in Lincoln's time, like a newspaper, you know, in stories
Speaker 1: like their stories, they expected less out of romantics. So
Speaker 1: like the Disney of Lincoln's time was like, oh you
Speaker 1: saysfy my basic needs, I'm in love. Is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying? Is that what you're saying? That was like
Speaker 1: the expectation of the society then as well, like in
Speaker 1: the media and stuff. You know, it's funny because you know,
Speaker 1: we don't focus that much on this part of Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln's mythos. But yeah, he was famous for like walking
Speaker 1: around with an ax. I mean very literally. He was
Speaker 1: like a handy guy to have around, and he was
Speaker 1: very strong and in his I think when he was
Speaker 1: first running. I forget if it was for Congress or
Speaker 1: with the presidency, but there was a whole thing about
Speaker 1: how like this guy can really like split a piece
Speaker 1: of wood in a perfect way. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I don't know, like was there like awkward reality TV
Speaker 1: about Jebediah and home building or like farming. You know,
Speaker 1: probably not, but yes, yes, the cultural norm was that
Speaker 1: these practical sorts of skills were the ones that really
Speaker 1: made sense in a partner being a good provider, being
Speaker 1: somebody who's who's competent around the home to make sure
Speaker 1: that that life is livable and practical and that you
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to worry about the fact
Speaker 1: that target wasn't invented yet. Those were the things that repealing.
Speaker 1: It's not that people were indifferent to whether they loved
Speaker 1: their spouse. We've all read Jane Austen. She was early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, and sure people wanted to love their spouse.
Speaker 1: They preferred to have a hot sex life. But those
Speaker 1: things as reason for marriage, that that would have been absurd. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I hear you. I hear you, even though I don't
Speaker 1: I didn't live during that time period. And then it's
Speaker 1: the same you know, sexpectations of the fifties. We weren't
Speaker 1: much more romantic, were they, Well, they were romantic. I
Speaker 1: would say that by then you're romantic, right, So it's
Speaker 1: really starting around the eighteen fifty Yeah, women should be
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. Well that's romantic. It's not romantic. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, look, it's not romantic by our sensibility, to
Speaker 1: our standards, by our standards. It's not like you can't
Speaker 1: tell a romance story about how she's tending the nest
Speaker 1: and he's earning the bread, and they come home and
Speaker 1: they have their moment and they love their kids, like
Speaker 1: I do think that for a lot of people, they
Speaker 1: were very happy with that. And certainly the cultural narrative
Speaker 1: was that they had little you know, each little suburban
Speaker 1: home they had carved out their little slice of heaven,
Speaker 1: and I think people thought, like, this is ideal and romantic.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I was saying that, in some sense,
Speaker 1: you know, I do think that era prized romance in
Speaker 1: marriage is that rather than focusing on the bottom part
Speaker 1: of Maslow's needs, these really practical, basic sorts of needs,
Speaker 1: there was a big emphasis on love and really like cherishing.
Speaker 1: The weird part is like you were supposed to love
Speaker 1: and cherish your spouse. But never had people lived such
Speaker 1: different lives like that. Men and women just had these
Speaker 1: radically gendered existences. I mean, that wasn't the case before
Speaker 1: when everybody worked around the home, nobody kissed somebody good
Speaker 1: bye to go to the office. In eighteen hundred or
Speaker 1: not many people did. And these days, of course, now
Speaker 1: there's often a two breadwinner sort of situation. But in
Speaker 1: that period, like he had his sphere of life and
Speaker 1: she had hers, and somehow yet they were supposed to
Speaker 1: have this like deep emotional connection and it was pretty
Speaker 1: hard to bridge across the divide, even though certainly that
Speaker 1: was the cultural narrative that that's the it was supposed
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, so I think it's time to explicitly
Speaker 1: put a name on a lot of what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You'd call it the all or nothing theory of marriage.
Speaker 1: That's the technical psychological literature jargon. Now, how has your
Speaker 1: theory been received with among psychologists? Among reviewer number two?
Speaker 1: What does reviewer number two think of the all or
Speaker 1: nothing theory of marriage? Well, reviewer number two is a bastard.
Speaker 1: I think it's gone okay, Like I haven't gotten any
Speaker 1: serious pushback. In fact, I think there are reasonable critiques
Speaker 1: to offer, especially you know, we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier about how in some ways I'm a little beyond
Speaker 1: the data, right, we don't have the perfect data to
Speaker 1: say the top ten percent of couples, like how happy
Speaker 1: were they in nineteen hundred versus two thousand? But no,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that relationship scientist, that is,
Speaker 1: especially social psychologists and related fields that study intimate relationships
Speaker 1: use data to study this stuff. I think I've appreciated
Speaker 1: that I brought in a historical more sociological, economic sort
Speaker 1: of perspective on these things. And to the degree that
Speaker 1: there have been empirical tests thus far in the literature,
Speaker 1: they've been very supportive. That is, you know, for example,
Speaker 1: Jim McNulty, who's a relationship scientist at the University of Florida,
Speaker 1: has a terrific study that looks at whether high expectations
Speaker 1: are are good or bad. That is, whether the time
Speaker 1: that you're a newlywed, so people married about three months
Speaker 1: on average, they report on what sorts of expectations they're
Speaker 1: bringing or standards they're bringing to their relationship. And it
Speaker 1: turns out that having really high standards for the relationship
Speaker 1: are beneficial among those people who have good communication skills
Speaker 1: and handle conflict well. That is, their marriage just stays
Speaker 1: strong over time. They almost like stay happy like newlyweds
Speaker 1: for the first at least the first several years of
Speaker 1: the marriage. But those high expectations, those same exact expectations
Speaker 1: that are so beneficial among people who have good communication
Speaker 1: skills and so forth, are actually harmful. Right So, to
Speaker 1: the degree that you don't have particularly good expectation skills,
Speaker 1: then you're actually much worse if you have high expectations
Speaker 1: rather than low expectations of the marriage. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was broadly consistent with the idea. And this is
Speaker 1: the like related to the all or nothing theory, which
Speaker 1: is that we've arrived at a moment where we're looking
Speaker 1: to things like love, esteem, self actualization like never before
Speaker 1: from our marriage, that those are the things we're seeking
Speaker 1: like we never did in the past. And those of
Speaker 1: us who are able to stick the landing on that
Speaker 1: stuff have a level of connection fulfillment in the marriage
Speaker 1: that was out of reach when people weren't even trying
Speaker 1: for it fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, whatever.
Speaker 1: But more and more of us are falling short because
Speaker 1: those those sorts of expectations are it's pretty hard to
Speaker 1: deliver on those and so a marriage that might have
Speaker 1: been fine for our grandparents disappoints us today. Yes, I
Speaker 1: appreciate that nuance, but I wanted to double cook on
Speaker 1: something you said about how well your full humility. There
Speaker 1: is full evidence longitunally about changes and expectations, But I
Speaker 1: want to point something out about you, and that's that, folks,
Speaker 1: Eli is a legend in our field. Like if you
Speaker 1: go to his Google scholar page, he's got an H
Speaker 1: index that is humongous. He's got a humongous H index
Speaker 1: at seventy seven. He's got twenty five thousand citations. You've
Speaker 1: done a lot of research. You're under selling yourself a
Speaker 1: really big time to just like say, well, we don't
Speaker 1: have evid you have so much evidence you've accumulated. Maybe
Speaker 1: not that specific, that specific point, I get it, I
Speaker 1: got it, But look, you have so much evidence you
Speaker 1: have on romantic relationships, and you've done a lot of work.
Speaker 1: I remember your one of your colleagues, Eastwick, Paul W. Eastwick.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in grad school, he came
Speaker 1: and gave a talk at Yale, and I remember that
Speaker 1: was my introduction to your work was through him. So
Speaker 1: I know you've done a lot with Paul, right, Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: he's a legend. He was a student of mine. But
Speaker 1: that was one of those wonderful cases where the student
Speaker 1: is the mentor. I learned a ton from Paul, and
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're still collaborating together. Yeah, that stuff
Speaker 1: is a little bit separate from what I was focusing
Speaker 1: on in the book, but we were interested in question
Speaker 1: like you know, if people say, like I really want
Speaker 1: a certain set of characteristics and a partner. I really
Speaker 1: want somebody who's funny or who's kind or who's charming.
Speaker 1: Do they like? Are they right? Right? Like? To what
Speaker 1: degree do we have introspective accuracy insight into what it
Speaker 1: is that we desire and a partner? And it turns
Speaker 1: out that all of us like partners who are hot
Speaker 1: rather than ugly, or ambitious rather than lazy, Like, there
Speaker 1: are qualities that are appealing. But if I think I
Speaker 1: uniquely care about somebody who's funny or somebody who's pretty
Speaker 1: or something like that, am I right? The answer seems
Speaker 1: to be no. Like. That's among the sort of that's
Speaker 1: among the work that Paul and I have been looking at.
Speaker 1: It's like we have these deep seated feelings about ourselves,
Speaker 1: intuitions that we know what we want in a partner,
Speaker 1: and we have very little actual insight. In general, people
Speaker 1: have very little actual insight into what their preferences really are. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you have this great paper on meat evaluation theory that
Speaker 1: came out in Psychological Review, which is along those lines
Speaker 1: without getting too technical and nerdy, can you explain two
Speaker 1: different sources of vary that you found are important to
Speaker 1: tease apart from each other. Yeah, I'm delighted that you're
Speaker 1: asking about this. I mean, I'm a nerd. I'm a nerd.
Speaker 1: You are on top of it. I don't think that
Speaker 1: paper's officially published yet. Again, Pauli Stork was the lead
Speaker 1: author on this, and we collaborated with Samantha Joel on it.
Speaker 1: So for a long time now people have Dave Kenny
Speaker 1: in particular, a name that I'm sure you're familiar with it.
Speaker 1: In social relations model, they've talked about questions like, you know,
Speaker 1: if Jeff has a crush on Jenny, why is that?
Speaker 1: And it turns out that there's like three statistically and
Speaker 1: conceptually independent reasons why that might be. It might be
Speaker 1: Jeff has a crush on all the girls. We're something
Speaker 1: a heterosexual case here. Jeff is a crush and all
Speaker 1: the girls could be all the boys have a crush
Speaker 1: on Jenny. So right, the first one is it's something
Speaker 1: about Jeff. The second is it's something about Jenny. And
Speaker 1: then there's this third thing, which is what we think
Speaker 1: we're talking about but may not be, which is the
Speaker 1: relationship that is above and beyond Jeff's tendency to like
Speaker 1: dig the ladies and above and beyond the like dudes
Speaker 1: tendency to dig Jenny is there's something special about the
Speaker 1: two of them together, and you know that makes him
Speaker 1: especially interested in her relative to the other women and
Speaker 1: relative to how other men think about her. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that we've done in our paper
Speaker 1: is we actually split that third thing what we call
Speaker 1: what Dave Kenny calls the relationship effect. Right, this is
Speaker 1: what we think of as chemistry. There's something unique about
Speaker 1: the two of us, above and beyond who you are
Speaker 1: and who I am. And historically that was just one thing.
Speaker 1: The relationship part was just one thing special between the
Speaker 1: two of us. But there's two versions of it. One
Speaker 1: is something that I think we could imagine gears aligning, right,
Speaker 1: something stable about Scott and something stable about Jasmine. And
Speaker 1: you like, well, look at that, oh perfect right, or
Speaker 1: look at not working right? That's something that's about you
Speaker 1: and about her, or if you wanted to think about it,
Speaker 1: somebody who's high in attachment avoidance with somebody who's dispositionally nurturing, right,
Speaker 1: like that's the gear alignment or anxious. Research shows that
Speaker 1: pairing stays together a long time. An avoidant man with
Speaker 1: an anxious woman. That's kind of a bummer because it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine that they're that happy in that dynamic,
Speaker 1: but serving some function for them, it's actually interesting in
Speaker 1: terms of your vertical integration of the Maslovian perspectives. It's
Speaker 1: probably serving one of what Maslow would think of as
Speaker 1: lower level stability sorts of functions rather than like expansive
Speaker 1: sorts of functions. But anyway, so that's one way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. But there's a totally different way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it, which is that what's happening in the
Speaker 1: relationship is irreducible to you and to me, that there's
Speaker 1: nothing that we could know in advance about like who
Speaker 1: Scott is and who Jasmine is, that would make us
Speaker 1: know whether you are going to be more versus less compatible.
Speaker 1: That it is something that emerges in the context of
Speaker 1: the relationship, and one of the things that I'm working
Speaker 1: on right now that I'm especially excited about. It's a
Speaker 1: follow up to that made evaluation theory paper, is this
Speaker 1: idea that relationships have their own cultures. In a very
Speaker 1: literal sense, we have our own in jokes, we have
Speaker 1: our own languages, all sorts of things that would be
Speaker 1: meaningless or at least difficult to fully understand from the outside.
Speaker 1: And it's that it's that thing, that part of relationship variance.
Speaker 1: If the first is the gear alignment and the second
Speaker 1: is no. We build a culture so that the jokes
Speaker 1: that we tell aren't about you versus me. They're about
Speaker 1: the experiences we've had together and how we've made sense
Speaker 1: of them as a pair. That tends to serve as
Speaker 1: a particularly powerful glue to hold us together, make us
Speaker 1: feel connected, give us this sense of joy and pleasure together.
Speaker 1: Now we have this special code language that only the
Speaker 1: two of us can use when one of us is
Speaker 1: feeling amorous and trying to figure out if sexy time
Speaker 1: is going to happen. These things aren't really about him
Speaker 1: and her or him and him or whatever. It's really
Speaker 1: about the culture that has emerged in the relationship itself.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the things we're really excited about
Speaker 1: these days. I'm excited by this paper too. I've long
Speaker 1: said on Twitter that these kind of things emerge from
Speaker 1: prolonged interactions between people that the hotness one or ten
Speaker 1: hot or not can change substantially your perceptions of that
Speaker 1: person based on actually talking to them over time. All
Speaker 1: he actually has that finding. Sorry to interject there, but
Speaker 1: he and a student his name is Lucy Hunt. They
Speaker 1: have cool studies that look at the amount of consensus
Speaker 1: that people have, like is this person hot? Is that hot?
Speaker 1: Is this other person hot? And it turns out that
Speaker 1: if you like don't know the people, then there's pretty
Speaker 1: good consensus on who's hot or who's not. Like we
Speaker 1: can to agree that Brad Pitt is hot and that
Speaker 1: some other guy might not be hot. But as you
Speaker 1: get to know people better and you say, like, now
Speaker 1: five people rate how hot somebody is, now, there's very
Speaker 1: little consensus about it. It looks like literally ratings of
Speaker 1: things like how physically attractive somebody is are heavily dependent
Speaker 1: on your experiences with that person. Absolutely. I wrote an
Speaker 1: article for the Greater Good Yes, summarizing some of that research.
Speaker 1: It's called is Kindness Physically Attractive? If anyone to read
Speaker 1: my article In the abstract to your paper, you say,
Speaker 1: we address puzzle a puzzle by suggesting that repeated interaction
Speaker 1: causes the target specific lens to expand. What is it
Speaker 1: about academic language that's so and sexy? Like meat? Evaluation
Speaker 1: theory like that's not a that doesn't make you want
Speaker 1: to have sex with that theory. I think, well, oh boy, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never tried, but huh, I'm intrigued. Now. You might
Speaker 1: be better qualified to judge this than I am. You
Speaker 1: have like a great ability to you know, speak with
Speaker 1: the general public about sophisticated ideas, including in transcend I
Speaker 1: remember one time there's this like disc jockey in like
Speaker 1: one of those shock jocks in the Chicago area named
Speaker 1: Jonathan Brandmei or Johnny B. I was like twenty years
Speaker 1: ago or something, but I remember he was excited by
Speaker 1: something that I had done fifteen twenty years ago, like
Speaker 1: when I first became a professor, and he had me
Speaker 1: on his show, and I think he thought I had
Speaker 1: something to plug, like something I was trying to sell.
Speaker 1: And so he was at the end of the session
Speaker 1: like we had a good time, like we're just sort
Speaker 1: of you know, shooting the shit. And at the end
Speaker 1: he said, well, the new article is called and he
Speaker 1: read it and it was something technical, and then it
Speaker 1: had a long subtitle that was just as technical, and
Speaker 1: I think he said something like what the hell, like
Speaker 1: if you're trying to sell something like this, is not
Speaker 1: the way to do it, And it really drove home
Speaker 1: the point that you're making is that the way that
Speaker 1: we communicate amongst other eggheads, I mean, in fairness to
Speaker 1: us are subtle distinctions that we need to get across
Speaker 1: to each other. But it's almost like we're competing to
Speaker 1: be as esoteric as possible. I got to read the
Speaker 1: sentence again. Repeated interaction causes the target specific lens to expand,
Speaker 1: so again in regular English, the idea is that something
Speaker 1: about just the two of us, we can call it chemistry.
Speaker 1: Right so early on, it's like is the person hot
Speaker 1: or is the person not? That's something about this particular target,
Speaker 1: this particular person we're evaluating, and that tends to be
Speaker 1: pretty substantial. If we don't really know somebody, as we
Speaker 1: get to know somebody better, then it's really about us.
Speaker 1: It's really about the unique relationship that you and I
Speaker 1: have built over time that basically trounces the is there
Speaker 1: something about you or something about me types of effects
Speaker 1: that you see in those opening moments. So really it's
Speaker 1: a story about how you relationships really just take on
Speaker 1: their own path and their own trajectory, and that they
Speaker 1: are irreducible to the people involved, and that they to
Speaker 1: a large extent, are unpredictable in advance. Yeah. Absolutely, thanks
Speaker 1: for that clarification. Well, well, I want to kind of
Speaker 1: end here today with some hacks love hacks in your book.
Speaker 1: You do have non academic jargon in that, which is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you discuss eight love hacks. You would never dare put
Speaker 1: such a word in an academic right. Can I give
Speaker 1: a little context for why I think love hacks have
Speaker 1: real value? So we've talked in the course of the conversation,
Speaker 1: this two day conversation we've had, we talked about this
Speaker 1: all the nothing theory that I'm talking about, and to
Speaker 1: some degree, like it's pretty complicated and involves historical change,
Speaker 1: but it really boils down to a supply and demand
Speaker 1: way of thinking. It's like, I don't want to scold
Speaker 1: people that they should be asking less of their marriage
Speaker 1: because asking more has these important motivational elements. It excites us,
Speaker 1: It makes us want to pursue a level of connection
Speaker 1: that has real value. And so for me, the issue
Speaker 1: really isn't about whether you should expect a lot or
Speaker 1: expect a little. It's really being about strategic the way
Speaker 1: that you're expecting things. Are you're expecting the sorts of
Speaker 1: things that the two of you that this particular relationship
Speaker 1: can actually deliver. If so, then you should double down
Speaker 1: and expect those things and hope for greatness. And if
Speaker 1: you're expecting things that are implausible, then you're probably ill
Speaker 1: advised to do so. And so for me, the question is,
Speaker 1: as we go through various aspects of the relationship, the
Speaker 1: emotional intimacy, the sexual intimacy, the financial support, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: to what degree are our expectations appropriate in light of
Speaker 1: what the relationship itself can deliver. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: it's supply and demand. And so for that reason I
Speaker 1: make the two obvious sort of suggestions. One is, you
Speaker 1: can improve your relationship by investing more right, like trying
Speaker 1: to make the relationship add up to exceed your expectations
Speaker 1: by certain sorts of date nights. I talk extensively about
Speaker 1: how to communicate more effectively, how to play more effectively together,
Speaker 1: and so forth. The second option is you can try
Speaker 1: to ask for less right. You can put your expectations
Speaker 1: in alignment with what is actually plausible given the relationship itself,
Speaker 1: and I talk very concretely about ways that we might
Speaker 1: be able to ask less of our relationship, particularly in
Speaker 1: domains where we think the relationship is going to be
Speaker 1: able to deliver. And I get into controversial stuff including
Speaker 1: consensual non monogamy. But you asked about the love hack.
Speaker 1: This is my like, there is kind of a third option, right, So, yes,
Speaker 1: you can increase the supply that is in that's more
Speaker 1: in the relationship so it can deliver. You can reduce
Speaker 1: demand that is ask less of the relationship so that
Speaker 1: you're not holding onto these unmat expectations. But there is
Speaker 1: a third possibility that that's not going to make a
Speaker 1: great relationship out of a terrible relationship, but really good
Speaker 1: option for cases where we don't have a huge amount
Speaker 1: of time or bandwidth or emotional resources right now do
Speaker 1: the really intensive communication stuff. Maybe there's a baby at home,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a cancer diagnosis, Maybe there's an incredibly intensive
Speaker 1: period at work and we're not ready to lower our expectations.
Speaker 1: Are there things we can do to get us through
Speaker 1: those sorts of fallow periods that can keep the relationship strong.
Speaker 1: And this is where I talk about love hacks. And
Speaker 1: love hacks have these two properties. The first is they
Speaker 1: are simple that is they don't require much time or energy.
Speaker 1: And the second is you can do them by yourself.
Speaker 1: They don't actually require you coordinating with your partner. And
Speaker 1: so this is an option for you can't really increase
Speaker 1: the supply. You can't really invest more right now, you're
Speaker 1: not ready to reduce the demand or reduce expectations. Are
Speaker 1: there quick and dirty things you can do to try
Speaker 1: to keep things strong with the resources that you have available?
Speaker 1: Is that a love hack? Did you just give me
Speaker 1: a love hack? There are eight love hacks that I
Speaker 1: offer in the book, but that was the context in
Speaker 1: which I think it's useful for people to think about
Speaker 1: when love hacks are especially important. Okay, so do you
Speaker 1: want to give two love hacks then and let them
Speaker 1: read the book. Yeah. The opening quote in the book
Speaker 1: is from Marcel Proust, who says that that mystery is
Speaker 1: not about traveling to new places, but about looking with
Speaker 1: new eyes. And this is the logic of the love hack.
Speaker 1: Are there things that we can do to tilt our
Speaker 1: vantage point, to tilt our perspective, to look with new
Speaker 1: eyes at the relationship. And luckily our field has done
Speaker 1: a really good job of this stuff. So one of
Speaker 1: the more straightforward examples is, you know, our partner shows
Speaker 1: up late to something. We have a lot of control
Speaker 1: about how we make sense of that, right, And this
Speaker 1: is again the clunky language that scholars use is positive
Speaker 1: and negative attributional biases and so forth. But it's really
Speaker 1: what sort of explanation why was he late? Is it
Speaker 1: because he's kind of a jerk who doesn't respect me? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: you're welcome to draw that conclusion. Your relationship will get
Speaker 1: worse if you do. Or he's been distracted lately because
Speaker 1: he's working on important stuff. But I know that he
Speaker 1: loves me and he didn't mean to hurt me. You
Speaker 1: can draw that conclusion. And again this is independent of
Speaker 1: what's actually true. But this is the story that we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves, and truly, the story that we tell ourselves
Speaker 1: is a huge amount of how well the relationship is
Speaker 1: going to go. So that's one option. That's a positive
Speaker 1: attribution bias generous explanations for your partner's behavior. Another one
Speaker 1: is one that we developed here at Northwestern. This is
Speaker 1: the idea of adopting a generous third party perspective about conflict.
Speaker 1: And what we did is we recruited one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty married couples from the Chicago area. We asked all
Speaker 1: of them over the course of two years, seven times
Speaker 1: over the course of two years, to write about the
Speaker 1: biggest conflict in their relationship. And then in the second year,
Speaker 1: we randomly assigned half of them to try to think,
Speaker 1: not only write about the conflict, which everybody's been doing,
Speaker 1: but now write about it also from the perspective of
Speaker 1: a neutral third party who wants the best for everybody.
Speaker 1: This could be a parent, this could be a friend,
Speaker 1: whoever it is that wants you guys to succeed. And
Speaker 1: then what we did is we had people do that
Speaker 1: for seven minutes three times in the course of the
Speaker 1: second year of the relationship, so three times over the year,
Speaker 1: so it was twenty one minutes of writing. And what
Speaker 1: we found is that people who adopted this generous third
Speaker 1: party perspective were more satisfied over time, even had a
Speaker 1: hotter relationship over time, felt more trusting and intimate with
Speaker 1: their marriage with their partner over time. And this is
Speaker 1: another idea of a love hack, right, This is how
Speaker 1: can we reorient our thinking about the reality the conflict
Speaker 1: is the same and in fact, our manipulation didn't affect
Speaker 1: the frequency with which people reported conflict, or how serious
Speaker 1: the conflict was, how upset they were by it. It It
Speaker 1: didn't affect those things. What it affected is is the
Speaker 1: extent to which the conflicts that were just going to
Speaker 1: exist in their relationship anyway, we're internalized in a harmful
Speaker 1: way for the relationship, versus processed in a way that
Speaker 1: was more beneficial. So that second one, if the first
Speaker 1: one was generous explanations for your partner's negative behavior or
Speaker 1: positive attributions, this one is a sort of a third
Speaker 1: party reappraisal of conflict, a third party perspective of comment. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for teasing people with a couple of hacts. If
Speaker 1: they want more, they can buy your book. And your
Speaker 1: book is called the all or Nothing Marriage, right, the
Speaker 1: all and nothing marriage, How the best marriages work, and
Speaker 1: the way to live a happy life is to purchase
Speaker 1: a few hundred of those each listener, So enjoy it. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we finally wrapped this one up. We've
Speaker 1: been trying to do this for a while and then
Speaker 1: we had some technical difficulties yesterday. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for all the great work you've contributed to the field.
Speaker 1: Of psychology. I mean you've really you've published a lot
Speaker 1: of very important papers in our field. Thanks for saying that,
Speaker 1: and thank you for having me, and thanks all the work,
Speaker 1: for all the work you do, not only in the field,
Speaker 1: but for giving psychology away to the broader public. It's
Speaker 1: a huge service. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at thus psychology podcast dot
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Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.