Speaker 1: Oh hey, hey, up top. This is an encore presentation
Speaker 1: of one of the most favorite episodes of ologies we
Speaker 1: have ever done, because we all want to know what's
Speaker 1: in me? Why am I this? And I'm taking a
Speaker 1: few weeks off. If you have been following what's been
Speaker 1: going on in my life and my family, your Grandpad
Speaker 1: has passed into the beyond. So I'll just come out
Speaker 1: and say right in the beginning, my dad, Larry Pete Ward,
Speaker 1: passed away on Friday, July eighth after a long illness
Speaker 1: with multiple maloma, which is a cancer recover. In the
Speaker 1: hematology episode, if you're thinking of him or thinking of us,
Speaker 1: people have been posting a hashtag critter pick for Grandpad.
Speaker 1: He loved sending pictures of critters in the morning to
Speaker 1: us every morning and all day, and that has really
Speaker 1: meant a lot to me. Tiny ice cream cones, we're
Speaker 1: one of his favorites. We sat around eating those a lot.
Speaker 1: Have a tiny ice cream cone for your Grandpod if
Speaker 1: you feel like donating anywhere, If you've got a local
Speaker 1: wildlife rescue. He loved critters, maybe help them out a
Speaker 1: little bit. And the IMF myloma dot Org has been
Speaker 1: really amazing to us and giving us so much information
Speaker 1: through his illness. So if I talk too much about it,
Speaker 1: I will start crying a lot. I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about it at the outro. But here is
Speaker 1: an encore presentation of a great episode. I hope you
Speaker 1: like it. Oh hey, it's your all roommate who always
Speaker 1: subscribe to magazines that you read. But we're too embarrassed
Speaker 1: to buy Alli Ward back with another episode. Apologies. Okay,
Speaker 1: so please imagine me right now. I'm worrying a Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes flappy wool overcoat that smells like a wet dog
Speaker 1: in the rain. Also, I have a Walrus mustache and
Speaker 1: a decorative pipe because we're about to investigate the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the psyche? What makes you you? Who are you?
Speaker 1: Who am I? Why are we like this?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: First, let's show some goddamn gratitude for one second and
Speaker 1: say thank you to everyone on Patreon who supports a
Speaker 1: show for a dollar or more a month. Also, all
Speaker 1: the folks getting ologies merch at ologiesmarch dot com, and
Speaker 1: all the nice people who hit subscribe and who rate
Speaker 1: the show, who lead reviews like a friendliness fairy in
Speaker 1: the night. For me, to read, For example, this week
Speaker 1: from Lala Jujou, who says I love Ali Ward. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Lala Jijeu, I love you too. I also love science
Speaker 1: and learning. When I heard about this, it was better
Speaker 1: than I could have imagined. I can learn about different
Speaker 1: ologies while I'm at work or getting ready for work.
Speaker 1: Once my eleven year old daughter got wind of this
Speaker 1: podcast from me, she started listening to I never told
Speaker 1: her to, she just listened on her own. So Lala Juju,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing the gift of ologies with your
Speaker 1: eleven year old. I'm very sorry that I am teaching
Speaker 1: how to swear okay on word ward personality psychology. I
Speaker 1: really wish that there was a weirder documented name for
Speaker 1: this ology, and for a second I thought the academic
Speaker 1: study of personology could apply. I was like, yes, But
Speaker 1: the guy who coined personology, Henry Murray, essentially pete on
Speaker 1: the word to make it his forever, and he had
Speaker 1: a really heavy hand in founding the study of personality.
Speaker 1: That's great, but he's also noted as having done some hella,
Speaker 1: sketchy and maybe damaging experiments on a young man named
Speaker 1: Ted Kaczinski, who later became a terrorist known as a unibarmer.
Speaker 1: Doctor Murray also linked to government mind control experiments mk Ultra,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with michelob Ultra. So my point
Speaker 1: is personology was off the table for this episode title.
Speaker 1: We had to go with the clunkier, well respected and
Speaker 1: academically recognized personality psychology. So this ologist had been on
Speaker 1: my list for months, and one chilly December day, I
Speaker 1: made my way to UC Davis to meet her on
Speaker 1: a corner near campus and I drove by one minute
Speaker 1: late and I screamed out the window, hold on, I
Speaker 1: have to park, thinking it would take like one second
Speaker 1: to park because school wasn't even in session. It was
Speaker 1: December twenty sixth, but the city was under construction, so
Speaker 1: I had to circle the block maybe fifty two times,
Speaker 1: and then I was seven minutes late to the corner.
Speaker 1: I felt like a very bad, not conscientious person, but
Speaker 1: she was so cool about it. We walked to her office,
Speaker 1: where she is a professor in the Department of Psychology.
Speaker 1: She's also been a fellow at the Center for Advanced
Speaker 1: Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and her
Speaker 1: focus is on people's own awareness of their personalities and
Speaker 1: how personality and relationships influence your life and make it
Speaker 1: suck more or less. So she's co authored papers with
Speaker 1: titles like others sometimes know us better than we know
Speaker 1: ourselves and this salty goodness. You probably think this paper's
Speaker 1: about you. Narcissist perception of their personality and reputation. She
Speaker 1: studies all the stuff that if you were sitting next
Speaker 1: to her on an airplane, you'd be like, tell me
Speaker 1: everything before this flight to Japan lands. So we chatted
Speaker 1: about first impressions, introverts, extroverts, amberrots, narcissists, psychopaths, whether not
Speaker 1: psychology researchers believe self reported data, how parenting affects personalities,
Speaker 1: and if you're screwing your kids up, what personalities work
Speaker 1: best together? If astrology is in any way on point
Speaker 1: some textbooks you'd actually want to read? And I essentially
Speaker 1: ask her ten different ways, why am I so get
Speaker 1: comfy and gaze into your brain with someone I wish
Speaker 1: I could call a personologist, but that Murray dude made
Speaker 1: it awkward for everybody, So instead we'll just use the
Speaker 1: more common and scientifically acceptable personality psychologist. Doctor Samine Vizier.
Speaker 3: Samin Vizier, Doctor.
Speaker 4: Of students to call me my first name, so anything's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think there are they uncomfortable with it at first?
Speaker 3: Like it's not where of them are?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, but I find that well because of my personality,
Speaker 4: I think I have to worry more about not being
Speaker 4: approachable enough rather than being too like casual or not
Speaker 4: having enough boundaries. So for different people, different things work.
Speaker 4: But for me asking telling them they don't have to
Speaker 4: call me by my first name, but telling them that
Speaker 4: they can, like reduces that distance a little bit, which
Speaker 4: tends to be the bigger challenge for me.
Speaker 1: And you said because of your personality, which gets us
Speaker 1: right into work, because you study not only personality psychology,
Speaker 1: but also people's own awareness and knowledge of their own personality.
Speaker 1: So you seem to know yours pretty well.
Speaker 4: I know some aspects of mine. I'm sure they have
Speaker 4: blind spots too. Yeah. We have this expression and that
Speaker 4: could be called me search, which is like you study
Speaker 4: what you're bad at. So I think I'm probably overall
Speaker 4: average on self knowledge, but I know I have some
Speaker 4: blind spots for sure.
Speaker 1: What did you start to notice about your personality when
Speaker 1: you got into this work.
Speaker 4: I think I was really fascinated by the differences between
Speaker 4: how people see themselves and how others see them And
Speaker 4: I think it's really rare that we find out how
Speaker 4: other people see us. I remember when I was in
Speaker 4: high school. At the end of high school, when my
Speaker 4: friends wrote in my yearbook, I always admired you because
Speaker 4: you don't care what people think, and I was like,
Speaker 4: what do people think? So I had no idea that
Speaker 4: I came across as not caring what people thought, and
Speaker 4: I was like, well, maybe I care less than other people,
Speaker 4: Like I experienced myself as carrying a lot what other
Speaker 4: people think. But then I realized, well, I don't wear makeup,
Speaker 4: I don't like put a lot of thought into my clothing.
Speaker 4: So if I really cared what people think, maybe I
Speaker 4: would have been doing those things. So then I was like, oh, maybe,
Speaker 4: like relative to other people, I actually do care less
Speaker 4: what people think. So it's like, but like, yearbooks are
Speaker 4: like one of the rare places where people sometimes tell
Speaker 4: you a little bit about what they think of you.
Speaker 4: I actually found a note. My best friend and I
Speaker 4: in high school used to write each other notes. You know,
Speaker 4: we shared a locker when we leave each other notes
Speaker 4: in our locker, and she wrote me a note sophomore
Speaker 4: year of high school, and it said, you asked me
Speaker 4: at the party on Saturday what I thought of your personality?
Speaker 4: And so I want to tell you what I think
Speaker 4: you're a personal and she's like, you're a nine out
Speaker 4: of ten, but don't worry, like you wouldn't want to
Speaker 4: be a ten out of ten because those people are annoying.
Speaker 4: And it was just really funny that apparently, when I
Speaker 4: was fourteen or fifteen years old, I was asking my
Speaker 4: best friend what she thought of my personality. It was crazy, you.
Speaker 1: Were doing personality research in your locker.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's so funny. It was so funny when
Speaker 4: I found that.
Speaker 1: Did she say what that docked point was for?
Speaker 4: No, I don't know. I mean, so then she went
Speaker 4: on to tell me more specific things, because like nine
Speaker 4: out of ten doesn't really mean anything. But I don't
Speaker 4: remember now. I actually took a picture of it and
Speaker 4: have a PDF so that I don't ever lose it,
Speaker 4: so it'd be interesting to go back and look. But
Speaker 4: I don't remember what the specific criticisms were. There were
Speaker 4: some they weren't mean or anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, side note, So I sent Samine a note to
Speaker 1: ask if she ever found that pdf, and she emailed
Speaker 1: me right back with the pdf itself. What a time
Speaker 1: capsule of vulnerability. I love her, so of course I
Speaker 1: read it. So here are some of the things that
Speaker 1: her friend Jarlyn Hand wrote on a greeting card that
Speaker 1: was a nineteen ninety five Dot Matrix picture of a turkey.
Speaker 1: So an excerpt. I think you're very good at understanding people,
Speaker 1: but sometimes a little too harsh in your judgment. You're spirited,
Speaker 1: it said. You motivate people, and you're a good sport
Speaker 1: about things. You're trustworthy and honest and one important quality,
Speaker 1: your morals are wonderful. Another great thing I like about you,
Speaker 1: You're always learning about yourself and growing. Your influence in
Speaker 1: friendship is part of what makes me me. And I
Speaker 1: have to thank you because I like myself and your
Speaker 1: friendship has meant a lot to me over the years.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Not only is this an honest and sweet ass letter
Speaker 1: from a best friend, but how precious to see that
Speaker 1: personality psychology and how people see themselves is something that
Speaker 1: Samin has been low key researching since the dot matrix days. Also,
Speaker 1: this prompted me to look back at some old school
Speaker 1: papers and I found an old yearbook of mine with
Speaker 1: inscriptions that were like you're weird but fun, I guess,
Speaker 1: and one from a guy named Eric in my science class, who,
Speaker 1: in the fashion of middle management, inscribed, here's a piece
Speaker 1: of advice. Try to calm down. You always seem to
Speaker 1: be going in fast forward, so nothing's changed.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I think that that's something that so many people want
Speaker 1: to know. How do others see them versus how they
Speaker 1: see themselves? And did you grow up, you know, earlier
Speaker 1: than high school thinking about this or was it really
Speaker 1: when you started to get around peers and go through
Speaker 1: adolescens that you start thinking about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question, thank you. I mean I
Speaker 4: grew up pretty close to my brother. We were one
Speaker 4: one year apart in school, so I think I always
Speaker 4: like looked at differences between him and me, and like
Speaker 4: within our families we had like kind of different roles
Speaker 4: and personalities. Now that we're adults, I see that were
Speaker 4: actually really really similar compared to like the broader population.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it was always interesting to me, like the
Speaker 4: things that he was scared of and I wasn't, or
Speaker 4: vice versa, So I think it was on my radar
Speaker 4: earlier on. But I think it becomes really relevant when
Speaker 4: you have like friend groups and who doesn't get invited
Speaker 4: to the party and why, and you know, what do
Speaker 4: people think of you? What's your role and your friend
Speaker 4: group and all that.
Speaker 1: When did you start steering your career that way?
Speaker 4: I took a personality site class and had a really
Speaker 4: good teacher and a really good textbook, So I think
Speaker 4: it was that class in particular that got me into it.
Speaker 1: Did you ever take those personality quizzes in magazines or yeah, definitely?
Speaker 1: Is there any merit to those at all?
Speaker 4: Probably not, or if there is, it's probably by accident.
Speaker 4: It's actually not that hard to write a valid personality quiz,
Speaker 4: so the ones that don't seem completely ridiculous probably actually
Speaker 4: do have merit. So if it's a test of your
Speaker 4: extra version and it asks if you like to go
Speaker 4: to parties, if you like to hang out with people,
Speaker 4: that's probably pretty valid. But if it's a test of
Speaker 4: your extraversion it asked you like Bernese mountain dogs or chiuahas,
Speaker 4: that's probably not a valid measure of your extroversion.
Speaker 1: That is what we call bullshit ps. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to take a bullshit quiz. Oh, Oh, there's plenty waiting
Speaker 1: for you, such as buzzfeeds, what type of sandwich are you?
Speaker 1: Which nineties cartoon series are you? What piece of Ikea
Speaker 1: furniture are you? Or living these your choice in late
Speaker 1: night snacks will reveal your dominant personality type, or which
Speaker 1: Megan mar are you? Zimbia has A are you Robin
Speaker 1: Williams Genie? Or will Smith Genie? And finally buzzfeeds, which
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed quizz are you?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: How does some means methodology differ from these insightful surveys?
Speaker 1: And so when you're doing research on personalities, what is
Speaker 1: that involved? Are you asking people about their own personalities?
Speaker 1: Or are you grabbing their best friend and asking what's
Speaker 1: their deal?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How are you getting the data?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's all of the above. So we try to
Speaker 4: get every measurement we can think of, because none of
Speaker 4: them is like a direct pipeline, right, There's no like
Speaker 4: pure measure of someone's personality. So we try to get
Speaker 4: We ask them what they're like, We give them a
Speaker 4: questionnaire with you know, dozens or sometimes hundreds of questions
Speaker 4: about their personality, and then we give a similar questionnaire
Speaker 4: to their friends or family members whoever they let us
Speaker 4: contact and ask those people to describe the person on
Speaker 4: the same kind of questionnaire. We also try to get
Speaker 4: something independent of both them and their friends or family
Speaker 4: so that we can try to gauge who's right or
Speaker 4: who's more accurate. And that's a challenge because those are
Speaker 4: the two easiest methods right Asking people to fill out
Speaker 4: questionnaires is easier than almost anything else. So the challenge
Speaker 4: with getting okay, a third measure, something other than self
Speaker 4: and friends. We try to get actual behavior, so we
Speaker 4: want to observe what people are like. But the trick
Speaker 4: with that is if you bring people into the lab
Speaker 4: and observe their behavior, that might not be what they're
Speaker 4: really like.
Speaker 1: I keep picturing myself stiffly walking in, trying to conceal
Speaker 1: a mustard stain on my scarf, wearing an expression of
Speaker 1: desperation to blend in. Hello, I am healthy but normal.
Speaker 4: So we try to do it in a naturalistic way
Speaker 4: get people in their everyday lives. So we have this
Speaker 4: audio recorder that our participants agree to wear if they're
Speaker 4: willing to, and it's really just an iPod touch, but
Speaker 4: we program it so that the audio recording aspect of
Speaker 4: it comes on and off, and so they just clip
Speaker 4: it to the outside of their clothes or their bag
Speaker 4: and they wear it for, for example, a week, and
Speaker 4: it comes on and off and they don't know exactly
Speaker 4: when it's on or off. And then when they turn
Speaker 4: it in, we tell them we're going to give you
Speaker 4: a disc with all the files. You can delete any files,
Speaker 4: you know, tell us which files to delete, you know.
Speaker 4: And actually people end up being fine with leaving all
Speaker 4: all of them on, but we want to make sure
Speaker 4: that they're really okay with it. We give them a
Speaker 4: lot of opportunities.
Speaker 1: Okay, side note, I had done some research of Semine's
Speaker 1: work ahead of time, and I was so excited she
Speaker 1: brought this up right away. So these devices are called ears. EAR.
Speaker 1: It stands for electronically activated recorder, which is very cute. Technically,
Speaker 1: that's called a backronym when something that stands for something
Speaker 1: else is cute on purpose. So the most common capture
Speaker 1: pattern they do is recording for thirty seconds every twelve minutes.
Speaker 1: Then the volunteers fill out an hourly report of what
Speaker 1: they were up to. They also wear a button that says, essentially, hey,
Speaker 1: someone might be recording this and listening to this, so
Speaker 1: let me know if that freaks you the fuck out
Speaker 1: or whatever. Also, this made me wonder, aren't our phones
Speaker 1: just always eavesdropping all the time anyway, just ready to
Speaker 1: sell us something we casually mentioned in a conversation. Well,
Speaker 1: a study from Northwestern University came out last year that
Speaker 1: tracked over seventeen thousand apps to see if they were
Speaker 1: recording our conversations about out like vegan marshmallows and platform sneakers,
Speaker 1: and the researchers, well, they didn't say no. They just
Speaker 1: said that they couldn't find evidence of the activities taking place.
Speaker 1: So it's not not listening to you anyway. Some personality
Speaker 1: psychologists recording conversations to untangle the mysteries of the human
Speaker 1: mind pretty benign. It's not like the UC Davis research
Speaker 1: team includes old Zuckerberg at his laptop sending you coupons
Speaker 1: for off brand invisi line where geometric sloth necklaces, which
Speaker 1: is what my Instagram just tried to sell me, which
Speaker 1: was spot on. Though it's pretty good. Well, play a
Speaker 1: big brother, So.
Speaker 4: It's about five percent of the time that it's on,
Speaker 4: So random snippets of your life. Yes, so thirty seconds
Speaker 4: turns out to be long enough that we can figure
Speaker 4: out are you socializing or are you working? Or are
Speaker 4: you watching TV? And if you're socializing, is it a
Speaker 4: group of people or is it one on one? Is
Speaker 4: it a deep conversation or is it superficial. So we
Speaker 4: can tell a lot about what people are doing, both
Speaker 4: like just the behaviors and also the psychological context that
Speaker 4: they're in. So, yeah, it turns out of thirty second
Speaker 4: clips gives you quite a bit of information about what
Speaker 4: people are up to without like violating their privacy too much.
Speaker 1: And then so you take all of those files and
Speaker 1: you figure out, Okay, this is how often the person
Speaker 1: was around other people or talking to other people. This
Speaker 1: is how much they were alone, This is how much
Speaker 1: they were using maybe violent or sexual language. So you
Speaker 1: can kind of categorize, yeah, and interpret the data that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So for example, if from the questionnaires, if you
Speaker 4: said you're not very funny, but your friends said you're
Speaker 4: really funny, then we can listen to the sound files
Speaker 4: and have a group of coders who are relatively neutral
Speaker 4: and objective, who don't know you. They can rate how
Speaker 4: funny you were and your conversations, and then we can
Speaker 4: say who's more accurate, you or your friends?
Speaker 1: Wow, you're so funny, And now what are you studying
Speaker 1: when you're looking at this data?
Speaker 3: Are you do you do?
Speaker 1: Maybe one study on extra version and one on narcissism?
Speaker 4: Or what are you looking at? That's a really good question.
Speaker 4: So because it's so hard to collect these data, we
Speaker 4: measure everything we can think of.
Speaker 1: Okay, a bunch of people too many to name asked
Speaker 1: what tests they use, and boom, here it is in
Speaker 1: five four three two five.
Speaker 4: So we use a model called the Big five, which
Speaker 4: is a model of personality that says there's five kind
Speaker 4: of broad dimensions along which people differ. So, for example,
Speaker 4: one of them is extraversion, and in each of those
Speaker 4: five categories there's specific traits, Like in the extraversion category,
Speaker 4: there's how sociable the person is, how talkative they are,
Speaker 4: how assertive they are, So there's like more specific personality
Speaker 4: traits in each of the five categories. So it's not
Speaker 4: that there's only five personality traits, but there's five kind
Speaker 4: of clusters of personality traits. So we measure those and
Speaker 4: then we also throw in other things that we think
Speaker 4: aren't really well captured by the Big Five. So narcissism
Speaker 4: is one example of something that we think doesn't quite
Speaker 4: fall neatly into those five categories. So we measure a
Speaker 4: handful of other traits beyond the Big five as well.
Speaker 1: So real quick, what is the Big five? So it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of questions. It takes maybe eight minutes to complete.
Speaker 1: It measures essentially what your deal is. It's also called
Speaker 1: the very unspicy name five Factors model, or the exciting
Speaker 1: acronym ocean because these factors are measured openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
Speaker 1: and euroticism. So you can flip those words around and
Speaker 1: make it spoke canoe if you're more of an inland
Speaker 1: lakes rather than an open sea kind of person.
Speaker 4: So our research isn't really about one specific personality trait.
Speaker 4: What we really want to know is how accurate people
Speaker 4: are describing themselves in general. So we might, you know,
Speaker 4: look at how accurate they are about how funny they are,
Speaker 4: but actually we're interested in also how accurate are they
Speaker 4: about how extroverted they are and how narcissistic they are
Speaker 4: and everything else.
Speaker 1: What do you think is a trait that tends to
Speaker 1: get misreported the most.
Speaker 4: So I don't have a lot of evidence for this,
Speaker 4: but my intuition, my hunch, and we're starting to collect
Speaker 4: data on this and have some evidence for it. But
Speaker 4: I could be wrong. But my hunch is that we're
Speaker 4: not very good at judging our own what in personal
Speaker 4: psychology we call agreeableness, which is basically how like polite
Speaker 4: and kind and considerate you are. And that all sounds
Speaker 4: like a good thing, and everybody wants to be really agreeable,
Speaker 4: but actually it can be taken too far. So people
Speaker 4: who are too agreeable are kind of doormats. They won't
Speaker 4: stick up for people they care about or things they
Speaker 4: believe in. Things like that, So I don't want to
Speaker 4: paint it as only good things. It's like most personality traits,
Speaker 4: there's good and bad components to it, or it can
Speaker 4: backfire in some situations. But I think it's a dimension
Speaker 4: that we're really bad at judging in ourselves, or at
Speaker 4: least that's my intuition.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we think we're more agreeable than
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 4: I think some people think they're more agreeable than they are,
Speaker 4: and some people think they're less agreeable than that, and
Speaker 4: it probably has a lot to do with self esteem,
Speaker 4: Like with many personality traits, to the extent that we're biased,
Speaker 4: the direction of our bias reflects our self as team.
Speaker 4: So some people overestimate themselves, some people underestimate themselves, and
Speaker 4: that's going to predict the direction of their bias, whether
Speaker 4: we're talking about agreeableness or extraversion, or intelligence or anything else.
Speaker 1: So yes, researchers can't always trust self reporting because depending
Speaker 1: on how we feel about ourselves, we might be a
Speaker 1: little off. In side note, I started to wonder what
Speaker 1: is self esteem? I never quite understood the line between
Speaker 1: confidence and arrogance. Where does that lie? So I did
Speaker 1: some digging and I happened upon an article by the
Speaker 1: psychiatrist and author doctor Neil Burton, who broke it down
Speaker 1: as self confidence comes from the root word for trust,
Speaker 1: and self confidence means to trust yourself and to trust
Speaker 1: your abilities. But self esteem is to understand your worth.
Speaker 1: So you can be confident that you can get shit
Speaker 1: done will still feeling unworthy. You can rack up degrees
Speaker 1: and be able to buy a big house and have
Speaker 1: a ton of followers and money and be confident, but
Speaker 1: still feel like the world is that to get you
Speaker 1: and doesn't have your best interest in mind, and you
Speaker 1: have no control on you suck. So arrogance steps into
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps where there's not enough true self esteem,
Speaker 1: and arrogance can be a symptom that someone is really
Speaker 1: thirsty for approval from the outside. So self esteem good.
Speaker 1: Where we get this well, Doctor Neil Burton wrote this
Speaker 1: passage about where self esteem comes from, which for a
Speaker 1: Psychology Today blog post was oddly profound and really beautiful.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to run some royalty free relaxing music underneath,
Speaker 1: and that way you can just feel free to replay
Speaker 1: this as many times as you need. It's no good
Speaker 1: trying to pump up the self esteem of children and
Speaker 1: increasingly adults with empty and condescending praise. Whenever we live
Speaker 1: up to our dreams and promises, we can feel ourselves growing.
Speaker 1: Whenever we fail but know that we have given our best,
Speaker 1: we can feel ourselves growing. Whenever we stand up for
Speaker 1: our values and face the consequences, we can feel ourselves growing.
Speaker 1: Whenever we come to terms with a difficult truth, we
Speaker 1: can feel ourselves growing. Whenever we bravely live up to
Speaker 1: our ideals, we can feel ourselves growing. That is what
Speaker 1: growth depends on. Growth depends on bravely living up to
Speaker 1: our ideals, not on the ideals at the bank that
Speaker 1: we work for, or our parents' praise, or our children's
Speaker 1: successes or anything else that is not truly our own.
Speaker 1: So if you struggle with self esteem, or maybe you
Speaker 1: feel like you have to puff things up and fake it,
Speaker 1: you're not alone. A lot of people struggle with self esteem.
Speaker 1: But self esteem doesn't rely on perfection. It doesn't require
Speaker 1: anything outside of you, but simply an appreciation for the
Speaker 1: unique little monkey that you are trying its best. So,
Speaker 1: holy shit, I think this episode already fixed my whole life. Okay,
Speaker 1: but let's backtrack to personality tests since that was a
Speaker 1: question that I got so much. You mentioned the Big Five,
Speaker 1: and one question that I got the most, so much
Speaker 1: from patrons that it's too many to even ask, and
Speaker 1: it's such a big question is what do you think
Speaker 1: about personality evaluations like Briggs Myers and anagrams and Big five?
Speaker 1: What do you think is bullshit? What's not?
Speaker 4: There's a lot of really good valid measures that are free,
Speaker 4: So probably if you're paying for something, you're getting screwed.
Speaker 4: That's my kind of general I mean, I think there
Speaker 4: might be some context where it's worth paying for, like
Speaker 4: a PERSONALIT test that costs money, but there's so many
Speaker 4: good ones that are free that it's hard for me
Speaker 4: to imagine why somebody would charge you for a personality
Speaker 4: test when you could find a free, good one online.
Speaker 4: So if you google like big five or five factor
Speaker 4: personality tests, you can find lots of free versions that
Speaker 4: will give you feedback, and those are pretty valid. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's some that aren't, but there's plenty of
Speaker 4: really good valid big five measures. Or there's another model
Speaker 4: of personality called the hexico, which is a six factor
Speaker 4: model that's also quite scientifically valid. There's a little bit
Speaker 4: of a debate in academic psychology about five factors versus
Speaker 4: six factors, but I think both of those are quite valid.
Speaker 4: Myers Briggs, I mean, it doesn't have zero validity, but
Speaker 4: it's much much worse than the Big five, and it
Speaker 4: costs money, so there's really no reason to ever use
Speaker 4: the Myers Briggs and its validity is quite poor. I
Speaker 4: would say, again, it's not zero, it's not complete bullshit,
Speaker 4: but it's almost complete bullshit.
Speaker 1: A bullshit adjacent. Yes, Meyers Briggs officially on blast Anagrams,
Speaker 1: by the way, outline nine personality types and nam means
Speaker 1: nine in Greek. This is not to be confused with bananagrams,
Speaker 1: which is a word game like scrabble, but you don't
Speaker 1: need a board and all the tiles come in a
Speaker 1: banana shape pouch, which was invented by a seventy six
Speaker 1: year old guy from Pottucket, Rhode Island. Anyway, Myers Briggs
Speaker 1: and the anagram tests not necessary when you had the
Speaker 1: Big five.
Speaker 4: I don't judge people for finding those things fun or interesting,
Speaker 4: and I think we can learn something even from bullshit tests.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, if I take a test about
Speaker 4: like what dog read would you be? I can sometimes like,
Speaker 4: because of taking that test and reading the feedback, I'll
Speaker 4: end up reflecting and learning something about myself, not because
Speaker 4: the test is valid, but just because of the activity
Speaker 4: of reflecting on it. So don't I don't begrudge anyone
Speaker 4: for wanting to take those tests enjoying them. I just
Speaker 4: think if you're spending money on it, or you're like
Speaker 4: putting a lot of weight on it, or making important
Speaker 4: life decisions because you think it's scientifically valid. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: do that, but if you find it useful and entertaining,
Speaker 4: and maybe even that leads to self reflection and self insight,
Speaker 4: that's great.
Speaker 1: So side note, I did take a what breed of
Speaker 1: dog or you test? Thank you very much, and it
Speaker 1: said Saint Bernard, because I'm hard working and courageous. And
Speaker 1: then I was like, ooh, that went well. So I
Speaker 1: took another one and it said Chihuahua, which quote has
Speaker 1: a lot of haters, but not to let it get
Speaker 1: me down. So then I stared at the distance in
Speaker 1: a trance of self reflection and insight, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what the test was supposed to do. Have you gotten
Speaker 1: really good at being able to tell someone's big five
Speaker 1: just pretty quickly, like at a cocktail party?
Speaker 4: I think we all are, actually, I think it's like
Speaker 4: a natural human tendency. So some of the big five
Speaker 4: are easier to tell in others. So extra versions really
Speaker 4: easy to tell. Actually, even from a still photograph of
Speaker 4: someone you can judge better than chance. You could too. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it doesn't take any special skill. Like we looked at
Speaker 4: just you know, undergraduates. We showed them photos of people
Speaker 4: whose extraversion level we knew from valid measured tests, and
Speaker 4: they were better than chance at judging extraversion. Actually, same
Speaker 4: with narcissism. From a still photo, you can judge narcissism
Speaker 4: better than chance. Not perfectly, like far from perfectly, but
Speaker 4: better than chance. So if you meet somebody within five minutes,
Speaker 4: you would know their extraversion level quite well. Really, and
Speaker 4: some other personally characteristics are relatively easy to judge depending
Speaker 4: on the context. So if you see like their office
Speaker 4: or their home environment, you could judge their conscientiousness pretty well,
Speaker 4: because conscientienness has a lot to do with how like
Speaker 4: tidy and organized and orderly their life is. Although like
Speaker 4: I'm an example of when one facet of the of
Speaker 4: the big five domain, So for consciousness, like one facet
Speaker 4: is neatness, and I'm really low on neatness. You might
Speaker 4: be able to tell my office is quite messy.
Speaker 1: No, her office was fine. There were some papers, a
Speaker 1: few books on the desk, but it's a desk. A
Speaker 1: desk's job is to be a horizontal surface on which
Speaker 1: you pile your business shit.
Speaker 4: But I'm high on most of the other facets of
Speaker 4: conscious so sometimes you might be misled if you just
Speaker 4: see one facet or like, like someone might be really
Speaker 4: assertive and so you think they're really extroverted, but actually,
Speaker 4: whether you see them in a social situation, they're not
Speaker 4: that talkative or not that sociable. It's just the assertiveness
Speaker 4: that they're really high on. So sometimes you could be
Speaker 4: led as straight by like one strong trait, when actually
Speaker 4: they're pretty low on the other traits in that cluster.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you can judge conscients pretty easily if you
Speaker 4: see how like organized and self disciplined and so on
Speaker 4: they are. But actually, agreeableness is one of the harder
Speaker 4: ones to judge because almost everybody tends to be pretty
Speaker 4: polite and kind in a new like when they're meeting
Speaker 4: someone new, it takes a while before the disagreeableness comes out,
Speaker 4: and disagreeable people, so that one is a little bit
Speaker 4: harder to judge. And neuroticism is also harder to judge.
Speaker 4: So that's like their tendency to experience negative emotion. Most
Speaker 4: people don't wear that on their sleeve. You have to
Speaker 4: get to know them pretty well to know if they're
Speaker 4: the kind of person who gets sad or angry or yeah, anxious,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So a lot of Researchers have found that you can
Speaker 1: also detect neuroticism just by listening to a person's podcast
Speaker 1: and hearing them say neurotic things. And these are things
Speaker 1: that we can detect pretty quickly in meeting people are
Speaker 1: REDIS programmed to read behaviors.
Speaker 4: And yeah, certainly extraversion, conscientiousness comes acros pret quickly. I
Speaker 4: think agreeableness and arutisism you can detect once you know
Speaker 4: someone for a few weeks. I would say you probably
Speaker 4: have a decent idea, And it depends how close you
Speaker 4: are to them, And so it's like nerossism. Romantic partners
Speaker 4: are really really accurate because you see kind of all
Speaker 4: the emotional ups and downs. But you could be acquaintances
Speaker 4: with someone for a long time and not know that
Speaker 4: they have a tendency towards depression or something like that.
Speaker 4: So some things you could remain unknown for a long time.
Speaker 4: But many aspects of personality are actually quite easy to judge,
Speaker 4: and we were all kind of experts at it by necessity.
Speaker 4: When we go through life, we're trying to judge it.
Speaker 4: Would this person make a good friend? Would they make
Speaker 4: a good coworker? Should I agree to go on in
Speaker 4: a vacation. Yeah, this person. All that requires trying to
Speaker 4: predict their personality and what they would be like in
Speaker 4: different situations and so on. So by necessity we all
Speaker 4: develop the skill to do that.
Speaker 1: So if someone is swiping left and right, say on
Speaker 1: a dating app, and they don't want to date an
Speaker 1: extrovert or narcissis, like, can you tell? Because those people
Speaker 1: are in speedos like on.
Speaker 3: It yeah or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So we actually did a study where we looked
Speaker 4: at what is it in the photo that correlates with narcissism.
Speaker 1: Speed hose boat, speedos boat, speed us boat.
Speaker 4: It's pretty obvious once, you know. So for example, yeah,
Speaker 4: like wearing expensive clothes, fashionable clothes for women, wearing a
Speaker 4: lot of makeup, showing cleavage for men, being muscular, not
Speaker 4: wearing glasses. So generally, like being stylish and maybe a
Speaker 4: little vain would be correlated with narcissism. An extraversion is
Speaker 4: part of narcissism. Narcissistem to be very extroverted, so you know,
Speaker 4: very expressive and charming and things like that. And there's
Speaker 4: good things, good aspects to that too, obviously, so they
Speaker 4: often are quite charming, especially in first impressions, they make
Speaker 4: really good first impressions, so may actually be hard to
Speaker 4: avoid if you're on a dating app. They might be
Speaker 4: the more appealing for people when you just have a
Speaker 4: photo and maybe a few words about them.
Speaker 1: Sam notes that while she studies these personality traits, she
Speaker 1: doesn't do so at a clinical level, So she's talking
Speaker 1: about subclinical narcissism, which is just garden variety that Dick
Speaker 1: at the office types. Now, is the aim of her
Speaker 1: work to help people avoid folks who might not be
Speaker 1: right for them, or to help us all see ourselves
Speaker 1: in a way that might lead to healthier behaviors and relationships.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, my interest is, Yeah, it's like a lot
Speaker 4: of basic research. I don't exactly know how it's going
Speaker 4: to help people yet. I think that learning what the
Speaker 4: behavioral patterns are of people high and lower narcissism, it
Speaker 4: could help us understand ourselves better. It could help us
Speaker 4: understand each other better. It could help us understand the
Speaker 4: underlying roots of narcissism. So, for example, I have some
Speaker 4: research showing that narcissistem to be quite impulsive, which I
Speaker 4: think speaks to a kind of paradox about narciss Why
Speaker 4: do they brag so much when that might undermine you know,
Speaker 4: they're trying to make a good impression. They're trying impress people,
Speaker 4: and they're going around telling everyone things that just make
Speaker 4: them look like arrogant jerks. And our research suggests, and
Speaker 4: my former GRADIT student Erica Carlson did some of this
Speaker 4: research too, that they kind of know that this is
Speaker 4: not the best strategy, but they can't help themselves. So
Speaker 4: it's not that they think they're being like, really strategic.
Speaker 4: They just are impulsive and they just can't. They need
Speaker 4: you to know that they got that perfect score on
Speaker 4: the SAT or whatever.
Speaker 1: And now I know that the big question in personalities
Speaker 1: is nature versus nurture? What is DNA? What is ingrained
Speaker 1: in us? What is hereditarian? What is just a product
Speaker 1: of our environment? How much of personality is a result
Speaker 1: of too high of self esteem or too low of
Speaker 1: self esteem? Or the way we were raised? Where's it?
Speaker 1: Where is it coming from? Who are we?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 4: The like way over simplified answer is that it's a
Speaker 4: lot of it is genetic and isn't how we were raised.
Speaker 4: Really much of it is we're born with Now much
Speaker 4: is kind of a glass half empty, glass half fall.
Speaker 4: There's plenty that's not accounted for by genes, so there's
Speaker 4: a lot of room leftover for other things to have influences.
Speaker 4: But we're having a really hard time pinning down what
Speaker 4: those other influences are. We know that genes don't account
Speaker 4: for everything. We know that personality changes, you know, throughout
Speaker 4: the lifespan. It's not fixed one hundred percent at birth
Speaker 4: or anything like that. There is a genetic component, but
Speaker 4: there's other influences too. We just it's just very hard
Speaker 4: to identify what they are. It doesn't seem to be
Speaker 4: straightforward like if you have an authoritative parent, you're going
Speaker 4: to grow up to be more organized or you know.
Speaker 4: There's nothing quite that simple, certainly not about parenting. You
Speaker 4: have to have pretty extremely bad parenting to change your
Speaker 4: child's personality. It turns out, so childhood experiences probably do
Speaker 4: have an impact on personality, but not in a really
Speaker 4: straightforward way where we can say, if you do this,
Speaker 4: your child will be more like that, which is probably
Speaker 4: disappointing for a lot of parents. But I think I
Speaker 4: know that Dan Anger wrote a really interesting column and
Speaker 4: Slate about this, but how it could also be freeing
Speaker 4: I think for parents to realize, like, as long as
Speaker 4: you're in the range of you know, a decent parent,
Speaker 4: then like exactly when you potty train your kid or
Speaker 4: all of those decisions aren't going to shape their personality
Speaker 4: for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like more and more too, with the Internet.
Speaker 1: More parents are so worried, like, yeah, I gave them
Speaker 1: blueberries before the Internet, and now they're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: never do their homework or you know something. How do
Speaker 1: you separate kind of afflictions like anxiety and depression and
Speaker 1: ADHD pretty common psychological afflictions from personality, Like I feel
Speaker 1: like my anxiety is who I am.
Speaker 4: Which is Yeah, I'm not sure there is a clean separation.
Speaker 4: So I think if you are the kind of person
Speaker 4: who has a tendency towards anxiety or depression, and it's
Speaker 4: always kind of there in the background, it's always could
Speaker 4: be there, that's part of your personality for sure. So
Speaker 4: I think we could talk about and this is true
Speaker 4: even for extroversion. For example, we can talk about whether
Speaker 4: you have a general tendency to be extroverted, or whether
Speaker 4: you were extroverted today or in the last hour, and
Speaker 4: we could talk about the same thing with depression, right
Speaker 4: you might not be depressed right now, but you might
Speaker 4: have a tendency or predisposition towards depression and you know
Speaker 4: it happens relatively frequently for you. So there's a we
Speaker 4: call it the distinction between a trait and a state
Speaker 4: or kind of a longer term pattern versus a short term,
Speaker 4: no momentary experience. So some people might not have the
Speaker 4: long term pattern of anxiety, but have had one or
Speaker 4: two episodes of anxiety, understand what it feels like, but
Speaker 4: it's not part their personality, and same I'm that way
Speaker 4: for example, with extroversion, where I'm not an extrovert. I'm
Speaker 4: definitely introverted, but I have behaved like an extrovert sometimes
Speaker 4: I know what that feels like, I can imagine it,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't make me an extrovert, just like having
Speaker 4: had one episode of depression doesn't make you someone with
Speaker 4: a depressive personality. But so both can happen, and you
Speaker 4: could have one without the other.
Speaker 1: Why do you think some people are extroverts and some
Speaker 1: people are introverts? And do you think people ever force
Speaker 1: themselves to be something they're not?
Speaker 4: I think we can force ourselves to be something we're
Speaker 4: not in the short term, Like you know, when I'm teaching,
Speaker 4: I try to amp up my extroversion. Interestingly, my students
Speaker 4: can still tell that I'm by nature I'm an introvert.
Speaker 4: I can tell. Yeah, it's actually I think it's really
Speaker 4: really hard to hide. So i can quote unquote act
Speaker 4: like an extrovert. But I'm not fooling anybody. I'm just
Speaker 4: behaving in a way that's not consistent with my personality
Speaker 4: to fulfill a particular role or something like that. But
Speaker 4: everyone can still see this is not my personality. It's
Speaker 4: just a behavior I'm doing.
Speaker 1: So what are the signs of an extrovert? If you
Speaker 1: are likes to communicate by talk, enjoys group work, likes
Speaker 1: to talk about thoughts and feelings, and doesn't mind being
Speaker 1: at the center of attention. So I'm literally forcing her
Speaker 1: to do all of these things right now, which is
Speaker 1: very generous and wonderful of her to oblige.
Speaker 4: In terms of like whether we could actually change in
Speaker 4: a more long term way, not just for an hour
Speaker 4: or two, or day or a week, I'm pretty skeptical,
Speaker 4: but I'm kind of an outlier on this. I tend
Speaker 4: to think that people that intentional change is really hard,
Speaker 4: and that we're probably better off trying to find ways
Speaker 4: to mitigate our personality or someone else's personality rather than
Speaker 4: try to change it. So, if there's something you don't
Speaker 4: like about yourself or about your partner, I think trying
Speaker 4: to create an environment where that's not going to be
Speaker 4: as big of a problem is a more productive avenue
Speaker 4: than trying to change it. Changing personality is really hard.
Speaker 4: I have a lot of friends who've tried to teach
Speaker 4: me how to be more extroverted, really and in some cases,
Speaker 4: like really extensive, because I wanted to learn that too,
Speaker 4: Like I just don't understand why it's so hard for
Speaker 4: me to talk to strangers, for example. So I remember
Speaker 4: one year I was having lunch every day in the
Speaker 4: same cafeteria and the woman who was serving the food
Speaker 4: was really, really nice to me, and I felt terrible
Speaker 4: that I could never think of questions to ask her.
Speaker 4: She would always ask me questions, and I could never
Speaker 4: think of questions ask her. So I'd practice with my
Speaker 4: extrovert friends. I'd be like, what should I ask her?
Speaker 4: I mean, they'd give me specific questions and I could
Speaker 4: repeat those, but I couldn't think of new ones, and
Speaker 4: we would try to come with strategies of like, well,
Speaker 4: what would you say if it was someone you knew well?
Speaker 4: Or what would you say the situation where you're not,
Speaker 4: you know, feeling shy or whatever. But I could never
Speaker 4: apply it in a consistent way, like I might be
Speaker 4: able to one day, but not every day. I couldn't
Speaker 4: change my dynamic with her. I mean, that's just my
Speaker 4: that's just an anecdote. But I do think it's hard
Speaker 4: to change. I think extraversion might be harder than some
Speaker 4: other traits to change.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too, because in children, if a child is shy,
Speaker 1: we have so much empathy for the child, But as
Speaker 1: an adult, if you're shy, it's like where is that empathy? Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just a shy you know, it was shy, like
Speaker 1: to have it for yourself, you know, Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's interesting. I think I'm probably an extrovert,
Speaker 1: but there are definitely times where I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: forcing myself to be an extrovert at a dinner party,
Speaker 1: when I feel like the ball is going to drop
Speaker 1: and no one's going to do.
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's I don't know how much of it
Speaker 1: is adaptive and I don't know.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean we all have to do things
Speaker 4: that don't feel like completely consistent with our personality sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you think the best way to get
Speaker 1: objectivity on your own personality? Because I feel like there's
Speaker 1: so much I don't know. I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of shame about our personality, like maybe everyone else
Speaker 1: can see something we can't. Yeah, you know, how do
Speaker 1: people get a grip on who they are? Just a
Speaker 1: casual afternoon convo about how do we get a grip
Speaker 1: on who we are?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's really hard. There's not much research on this,
Speaker 4: so this is just kind of my guess, my intuition.
Speaker 4: I mean, one avenue when one possibility would be to
Speaker 4: ask people who you trust, But I don't think they're
Speaker 4: going to be honest with us, and for good reason, right,
Speaker 4: Like our relationships kind of depend on not being super
Speaker 4: blunt with each other about our personalities, so you might
Speaker 4: have to read between the lines, and I wouldn't. I
Speaker 4: would be careful about putting your friends or family members
Speaker 4: in that position of telling you something because it might hurt,
Speaker 4: and it might hurt your damage your relationship with them.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you, what do you think of me?
Speaker 4: So I tend not to advocate doing that very much.
Speaker 4: I think trying to find opportunities to observe yourself. So
Speaker 4: recording yourself or watching videos or listening to audio recordings
Speaker 4: of yourself could be really useful, especially if they're in
Speaker 4: like very realistic contexts. So not just like your answering
Speaker 4: machine recording, but like if there was ever a conversation
Speaker 4: you had where you weren't self conscious about being recorded,
Speaker 4: but it happened to be recorded listening to that. So
Speaker 4: I did that, you know, because we use these recorders.
Speaker 4: I wore one for a few days, and listening to
Speaker 4: myself was fascinating really well, what was fascinating was that
Speaker 4: there was nothing on the recording. I would be in
Speaker 4: all these conversations where other people were talking, and I
Speaker 4: would listen to them, and I would remember what I
Speaker 4: was thinking, and so I was like, oh, now I'm
Speaker 4: going to say this thing, and then I wouldn't say it,
Speaker 4: and I remember that I thought it, and I assumed
Speaker 4: that I conveyed it somehow, but not not audibly.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: So it was really good for me too, because I
Speaker 4: had always, you know, people had told me that they
Speaker 4: felt like I didn't like them, or they couldn't tell
Speaker 4: if I liked them, And so I knew on some
Speaker 4: level that I didn't convey when I liked people. But
Speaker 4: hearing it and hearing how silent I was, I think
Speaker 4: was really good for me to get a taste of
Speaker 4: my own medicine of like, why aren't I expressing this
Speaker 4: thing that I'm feeling? So that was really useful for me.
Speaker 1: So if screaming who even am I into the wind
Speaker 1: isn't working, you can diy this ear recorder. So I
Speaker 1: looked it up and the i ear app they used
Speaker 1: to use isn't available in the app store anymore, but
Speaker 1: there is one made for Android. Just search Electronically Activated
Speaker 1: Recorder EAR for Android and let your personality exploration begin.
Speaker 1: Also wear a button that warns people and check your
Speaker 1: state laws about whether or not it's legal to record conversations. Okay, bye.
Speaker 1: When it comes to different personalities, what do you think,
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary standpoint, is happening? You know, do we
Speaker 1: because we work together in groups, do we need a
Speaker 1: certain balance?
Speaker 4: It could be Yeah, I'm so this is so far
Speaker 4: outside my air of expertise. My best understanding is that
Speaker 4: we don't have a good explanation. It's it's kind of
Speaker 4: a paradox of evolution, like why haven't we all evolved
Speaker 4: to have a more optim whatever is the optimal personality?
Speaker 4: And one argument could be maybe the range of personalities
Speaker 4: that we see is actually a much narrower band than
Speaker 4: what we might have seen without natural selection. So we
Speaker 4: don't see a lot of psychopaths. We don't see a
Speaker 4: lot of people who are just always disagreeable all the time, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I'm on the more disagreeable end of the spectrum, and
Speaker 4: I would still like to think that most of the
Speaker 4: time I'm agreeable. What distinguishes me from a really agreeable
Speaker 4: person is that I'm willing to be disagreeable or I
Speaker 4: am disagreeable sometimes. But we don't. There aren't very many
Speaker 4: people who are just always disagreeable, and that might be
Speaker 4: the result of evolution in natural selection. Than those people
Speaker 4: get selected out.
Speaker 1: We just cast them away. They don't produce vanished. You're
Speaker 1: a dick. When she says that we don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of psychopaths, she's right. Relatively speaking, about one percent
Speaker 1: of people could clinically be considered psychopaths. Well, four percent
Speaker 1: are estimated to be sociopaths. We're going to get into
Speaker 1: more of this later, but back to her work on
Speaker 1: how we see ourselves. Do you think anyone ever has
Speaker 1: a big shift in personality after like getting medicated for
Speaker 1: depression or anxiety or ADHD. Would you say like or
Speaker 1: do you think it just uncovers their true personality to
Speaker 1: get properly medicated.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. There's some research on whether medication
Speaker 4: or therapy changes personality, and it looks like on average
Speaker 4: it does have a small effect, like people do shift
Speaker 4: a little bit. Big shifts are really rare, but there
Speaker 4: are anecdotes or individual cases where you see big shifts
Speaker 4: after some kind of treatment or trauma or something like that.
Speaker 4: I think it's a really deep philosophical question whether that's
Speaker 4: their true personality coming out or their personality has actually changed.
Speaker 4: Was it always there and it just didn't come out before,
Speaker 4: or did it really change. I think we should study
Speaker 4: that more often. Like the rare cases of really dramatic
Speaker 4: sudden personality changes, I mean, they're hard to study because
Speaker 4: you don't know when they're going to happen, right yeah,
Speaker 4: but it's a really fascinating question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, so it is a fascinating question, and I
Speaker 1: asked the Internet, and it turns out that yes, getting
Speaker 1: medicated can change your personality, so say it some researchers.
Speaker 1: So doctor Brent Roberts, who's a professor of psychology at
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois and his colleagues looked at one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty four studies with over fifteen thousand people,
Speaker 1: and they were using different kinds of interventions from talk
Speaker 1: therapy and meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and antidepressants, and it
Speaker 1: turns out that without trying to change their personality traits,
Speaker 1: some changed anyway. In particular, patients with anxiety disorders who
Speaker 1: displayed a lot of neuroticism changed the most. And then
Speaker 1: in another study, the professor of psychology at Northwestern University,
Speaker 1: doctor Tony z Tang, found that antidepressants like SSRIs can
Speaker 1: alter two really key personality traits linked to depression, and
Speaker 1: that's neuroticism and extraversion. So compared to placebo drugs, just
Speaker 1: to sugarpill, particip events showed a drop in neuroticism, which
Speaker 1: is that tendency toward emotional instability and bad moods, and
Speaker 1: then they had an increase in extra version, which is
Speaker 1: a tendency to be more outgoing. And yet another study
Speaker 1: done by researcher Ali Ward, they looked at one participant
Speaker 1: taking an antidepressant for anxiety and found that one percent
Speaker 1: of the one participant me did feel less anxious and
Speaker 1: less neurotic after starting medication. Okay, I call myself a
Speaker 1: doctor or what okay?
Speaker 4: I mean? And even the more subtle changes, like all
Speaker 4: of us change a little bit as we get older
Speaker 4: and have different experiences. There's some pretty good research that
Speaker 4: suggests that things like major role changes like getting married
Speaker 4: or having kids, or entering the workforce or becoming a
Speaker 4: caretaker or things like that really do have an impact
Speaker 4: on our personalities. It's not a dramatic shift overnight, but
Speaker 4: they do change our personalities a little bit. And it's
Speaker 4: an interesting question, like if you reflect on something that's
Speaker 4: changed about yourself over a few decades, like were you
Speaker 4: a different person back then? Or were you always like
Speaker 4: that but you had to grow into it or you know,
Speaker 4: I think it's a really interesting question, maybe not even
Speaker 4: a scientific one, Like I don't know that there's a
Speaker 4: scientific answer to that.
Speaker 1: There's so many cautionary tales of like never trust someone
Speaker 1: who's burned you, they're going to do it again. But
Speaker 1: do people change over time? You know, if you think
Speaker 1: about people maybe who've been incarcerated who come out of
Speaker 1: it the other end more conscientious because of discipline or remorse.
Speaker 1: Do people change?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely, people do sometimes change, It's just not the norm,
Speaker 4: I would say. So then I think everyone has to
Speaker 4: make a decision for themselves about how willing they are
Speaker 4: to take a risk on someone who may have changed
Speaker 4: but probably have a you know, like the default is
Speaker 4: that people tend to be pretty similar over time, but
Speaker 4: it's too harsh to assume everyone always will be the
Speaker 4: same and no one ever changes, so you have to
Speaker 4: allow for some change. And then I think it's a
Speaker 4: really for me that's a really interesting challenge in life,
Speaker 4: is like how many second or third chances to give people?
Speaker 4: And how open should we be to people who really
Speaker 4: want to change even if we know it's unlikely they'll
Speaker 4: be able to, Or how much should we try to
Speaker 4: change even if we know it's going to be hard,
Speaker 4: And I think those are those are really personal questions
Speaker 4: that I think everyone has to decide for themselves. The
Speaker 4: evidence is relevant. The evidence suggests it's hard. We shouldn't
Speaker 4: expect change to happen frequently or easily or quickly. So
Speaker 4: know that and then decide what you want to do
Speaker 4: with that information.
Speaker 1: Do you think your work changes who you have close
Speaker 1: to you in your life or who you kind of
Speaker 1: give the boot?
Speaker 4: It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. I think
Speaker 4: maybe I study personality because I've always been pretty picky
Speaker 4: about who i have close to me in my life.
Speaker 4: I think, you know it, certainly, if people close to
Speaker 4: me had one complaint about me, I think it would
Speaker 4: be that I don't I'm not very optimistic about people changing,
Speaker 4: and so sometimes that can that can be hard on
Speaker 4: the people close to me. And also I'm pretty stubborn
Speaker 4: about not wanting to change myself.
Speaker 1: I can change, and I will change.
Speaker 4: I think that, Yeah, I'd rather try to find different
Speaker 4: ways around problems than trying to change myself or trying
Speaker 4: to change someone else. And I think that, yeah. I
Speaker 4: don't know if my work informs that, or if I
Speaker 4: became a personal psychologist because I've always been that way.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but it is I have a pretty
Speaker 4: I think I'm trying to soften a little bit in
Speaker 4: that because I know I'm too extreme in my view
Speaker 4: about that in my personal life.
Speaker 1: You're like, I have the data, all right, these are
Speaker 1: the receipts.
Speaker 4: No, but the data do show that people people change,
Speaker 4: Like I mean the maturation stuff like if you enter
Speaker 4: a relationship, or you become a parent, or you gain responsibilities,
Speaker 4: you actually become more responsible and more mature. And the
Speaker 4: evidence is pretty clear. So that I think is something
Speaker 4: I'm trying to internalize more like my rational side, academic
Speaker 4: side knows that's true. But in my personal life, I
Speaker 4: think I tend to be like, you're going to be
Speaker 4: the same way as you were twenty years ago. So yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a case where maybe I'm actually my personal views
Speaker 4: don't match up with evidence.
Speaker 1: Do you ever study a couple dynamics at all? Like
Speaker 1: what personalities fit better? Like and when you watch movies?
Speaker 1: Does that ever freak you out? Like that's not gonna
Speaker 1: want you're both extroverts, that's funny.
Speaker 4: I don't study much, but there's there is research on that,
Speaker 4: and actually it turns out personality is not the most
Speaker 4: important determinant of whether couples are going to work. It's
Speaker 4: values matter a lot more.
Speaker 1: Side note to anyone asking what values in partnerships are
Speaker 1: ones that my partner and I should value, I'll say
Speaker 1: them quickly, caring about others, avoiding harm to others, seeking pleasure,
Speaker 1: personal success in life, maturity, independence and thought and action
Speaker 1: and security. If you're like I hate all those values,
Speaker 1: those values are for pansies, then that's cool. Just find
Speaker 1: another similar asshole who feels the same way.
Speaker 4: So being similar or different on personality doesn't really matter
Speaker 4: that much for whether the couple's likely to work out.
Speaker 4: But having similar values and things like that that matters more.
Speaker 4: With personality, it's more what we call a main effect.
Speaker 4: It's not the interaction between the two people. It's just
Speaker 4: the absolute level of personality traits that each person has.
Speaker 4: And it turns out that if the either or both
Speaker 4: of the partners are disagreeable or neurotic, that makes relationships harder.
Speaker 4: Maybe they could be richer and more rewarding if they
Speaker 4: can work. I don't want to judge, but disagreeableness and
Speaker 4: neuroticism tend to predict more dissatisfaction and more breakup in relationships.
Speaker 4: Although I have one bone to pick with relationships research,
Speaker 4: which is they always define breaking up as a bad outcome.
Speaker 4: So when you look at like, well, they'll talk about
Speaker 4: like this is a risk factor, it's a negative trait
Speaker 4: because it predicts breaking up. But to me, that's not
Speaker 4: clear that it's always a bad outcome. Many people should
Speaker 4: break up, and for many people it's a positive experience
Speaker 4: and it leads to new experiences in the future that
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have had otherwise. So this assumption that the
Speaker 4: good relationship is the one that stays together is a
Speaker 4: weird assumption to me in relationships research. So I would
Speaker 4: take that. You know, just because disagrillable people tend to
Speaker 4: break up more doesn't necessarily mean they're making worse choices. Right,
Speaker 4: For some people, breaking up might be the right choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And breakups can be the best period of growth
Speaker 1: and new haircuts and and journal entry. Is that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had other one?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is there any flim flam that you would debunk, any
Speaker 1: myths that about personality that really really get your goat?
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot more mystery around personality than
Speaker 4: there needs to be, And I don't know why, Like,
Speaker 4: I think that people think that you have to be
Speaker 4: an expert and you have to take this like really
Speaker 4: convoluted test that will reveal your personality. But actually you
Speaker 4: don't have to try that hard to reveal your personality.
Speaker 4: If you ask yourself some basic questions and think about
Speaker 4: your behavior and how people see you and things like that,
Speaker 4: I think you would get pretty far. And indeed, I
Speaker 4: think it's what's really frustrating as an academic personality psychologist
Speaker 4: is that what gets popularized about personality is completely different
Speaker 4: than what's scientifically valid. There's this huge gap between what
Speaker 4: the public reads about personality and what's actually scientifically valid.
Speaker 4: And in trying to understand why, I think it's because
Speaker 4: the scientifically valid stuff is actually quite boring. Boring, Like basically,
Speaker 4: like if you want to know, well, what do narcissts
Speaker 4: do differently than non narcists. They brag more and they're
Speaker 4: more vain, and they you know that's you didn't need
Speaker 4: an expert to tell you that, right, Everybody could have
Speaker 4: guessed that I.
Speaker 1: Mean not to brag, but I could have guessed that
Speaker 1: I'm pretty smart.
Speaker 4: So I think a lot of this more true things
Speaker 4: about personality are quite obvious and boring, partly because we
Speaker 4: all have to be experts on personality, so it's not
Speaker 4: going to be these like super counterintuitive things because we've
Speaker 4: already figured them out in the course of everyday life.
Speaker 4: So I would just say personality is not that mysterious.
Speaker 4: It's not that hard to see in ourselves or in others.
Speaker 4: And if you're reading something that makes it sound like
Speaker 4: it is like you have to uncover something really really
Speaker 4: deep to really know someone's personality, that's probably not true.
Speaker 3: That's deep.
Speaker 1: So the fact that it's this big mystery, like we
Speaker 1: have a secret inside us that's our personality is probably.
Speaker 4: Not right for most of us. I think that's not true.
Speaker 4: There might be like a few people in the world
Speaker 4: who really have fooled everyone else and their true personality
Speaker 4: is really different than how they come across, but that's
Speaker 4: extremely rare.
Speaker 1: I think, what other challenges do you have in studying
Speaker 1: this in terms of that gap between who we are
Speaker 1: and who we think we are.
Speaker 4: I mean, the biggest challenge is that there's no absolute
Speaker 4: truth of the matter, right. Can't just like you know,
Speaker 4: draw blood from you and know that this is your personality.
Speaker 4: There's no like direct pipeline so that's a big challenge.
Speaker 4: Another one I think that we struggle with as personalit
Speaker 4: psychologists is to study it quantitatively. We have to put
Speaker 4: numbers on people, right, so we one thing when common
Speaker 4: misconception is that we put people into categories, we actually don't.
Speaker 4: The best scientific evidence suggests that there's not categorical differences
Speaker 4: between people. It's all on a continuum. So it's not
Speaker 4: the case that there's extroverts in these introverts. It's basically
Speaker 4: a bell shaped curve and most people are somewhere in
Speaker 4: the middle. That's why things like ambervert is so popular,
Speaker 4: or like I keep seeing different terms for like the
Speaker 4: extroverted introvert or the introverted extroverts, Like, yeah, it's called
Speaker 4: being in the middle on a normal, normal curve. So
Speaker 4: we don't categorize people because it turns out that's just
Speaker 4: not the shape of the distribution. It's not like two boxes.
Speaker 4: It's a continuum. But we do put numbers on people,
Speaker 4: so we'll say, like you're in the sixtieth percentile on
Speaker 4: extraversion or whatever, and of course that's we can't actually
Speaker 4: know that so precisely, it's it's an estimate. There's some
Speaker 4: uncertainty that, but it's still I think feels uncomfortable to
Speaker 4: people to put numbers on something as kind of rich
Speaker 4: as personality.
Speaker 3: Oh that's rich, that's really rich.
Speaker 4: And to have, you know, five dimensions and once we
Speaker 4: have these five numbers about you, we've got you figured
Speaker 4: out or whatever. And I think it's important to convey
Speaker 4: that I don't know any personalities like ill just who
Speaker 4: actually thinks that you can describe someone in their full
Speaker 4: complexity with five numbers or even with twenty five numbers
Speaker 4: or one hundred numbers if we go into the finer
Speaker 4: grain traits and within the Big five. But if we
Speaker 4: want to study it quantitatively, we have to end up
Speaker 4: we don't just use five numbers. We often have many,
Speaker 4: many more numbers than that, but it's still numbers, and
Speaker 4: I think that can feel very reductionistic and harsh. I
Speaker 4: think to a lot of people it's like we can't
Speaker 4: completely capture someone's experience with numbers, but there's still a
Speaker 4: lot of interesting stuff we can study.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't see any other way around it.
Speaker 3: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Just you can't just have a spreadsheet full of words, right,
Speaker 1: You just have to translate them into something that you
Speaker 1: can compute right, right, And is that part of the
Speaker 1: methodology of it is trying to really figure out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so personally, slarly spend a lot of time developing
Speaker 4: questionnaires and fine tuning them and arguing about like if
Speaker 4: I ask you on a scale from one to five,
Speaker 4: you know, how often do you like to be around
Speaker 4: other people? And one is never in five? As always
Speaker 4: we will spend like hours at a conference, or you
Speaker 4: should be a one to five scale or a one
Speaker 4: to seven scale, or maybe you should be an even
Speaker 4: numbered scale, so there's no midpoint, Like you can have
Speaker 4: all kinds of academic debates about those things, and we do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are those conferences?
Speaker 1: Like more introverts, more extroverts, more ambroverts, way more introverts.
Speaker 4: I think introverts are overrepresented, probably in academia in general,
Speaker 4: maybe not in psychology, Like I feel like the social
Speaker 4: sciences have a lot of extroverts, but then within psychology,
Speaker 4: personality is a very introverted group. Interestingly, at least I
Speaker 4: actually don't have any evidence for that, but I feel
Speaker 4: I would bet a lot of money on that.
Speaker 1: Very quiet cocktail hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we're not the like socializers of psychology, like
Speaker 4: if you go like if you go to a social
Speaker 4: psychology conference, there's way more talking and socializing and partying
Speaker 4: going on than at a personality psychology conference. We do
Speaker 4: have dance parties, but we're very We like go somewhere
Speaker 4: secluded and isolated where no one can see us, and
Speaker 4: then we do our nerdy dance parties. Good morning dance party.
Speaker 1: So can we pretend to be something we're not? This
Speaker 1: next revelation was such a surprise and a comfort to me.
Speaker 1: I maybe didn't realize that I had more introverted tendencies
Speaker 1: because I just was always stuffing them down. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: get out the social or people are going to think
Speaker 1: that you don't like them, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of extroverts think that that
Speaker 4: makes them an ambivert or you know, like introverted, extrovert whatever.
Speaker 4: But nobody's always extrovert. Nobody always feels like socializing. And
Speaker 4: this idea that you get energy from socializing, nobody gets
Speaker 4: energy from socializing. That's one of the miss One of
Speaker 4: the things that's wrong about the Meyers Briggs is that
Speaker 4: it makes a lot of extroverts question whether they really
Speaker 4: are extroverts when they read that. But no, you are
Speaker 4: an extrovert even if you're tired at the end of
Speaker 4: a party or you don't always feel like talking, or
Speaker 4: that's fine. Everybody feels that way sometimes, it's just that
Speaker 4: introverts feel that way even more.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's yeah. That always. That always sparked my curiosity
Speaker 1: because I was like, who goes to a work party
Speaker 1: in his life? I'm ready to go.
Speaker 4: Can let's do this again tomorrow?
Speaker 1: I have so many questions from patrons? Can I ask
Speaker 1: you some? Yeah? Okay, okay. Before we get to questions
Speaker 1: from patrons, first, a few words from our sponsors of
Speaker 1: the show. You may hear a few ads in which
Speaker 1: I call patrons and one on one telemarket to them,
Speaker 1: which earnestly is a joy to do because we had
Speaker 1: a hanging out on the phone for a while and
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Speaker 1: and I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay, ok,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get to your questions. Obviously, this is
Speaker 1: something that's everyone has some experience with, given that everyone
Speaker 1: probably has a personality.
Speaker 4: Everyone and their dog, literally dog.
Speaker 1: So many people, uh, Tina Roudio, Stephanie Brotes, Adriana Taurus,
Speaker 1: Bert Madison, Cody Albert, Tiagan Moore, Kaylea Brigham, and Alex E. Fuss.
Speaker 1: Everyone wanted to know about psychopaths and sociopaths. What personality
Speaker 1: traits would a psychopath have? And is that a personality
Speaker 1: or is a personality disorder?
Speaker 4: I think you could think of it either way. So,
Speaker 4: like narcissism, there's the disorder, and then there's probably the
Speaker 4: like subclinical version that like everyday version. I'm not an
Speaker 4: expert on this, so I think the common factor with
Speaker 4: psychopathy and and some other kind of disorders that are
Speaker 4: similar is a lack of compassion. It's a kind of
Speaker 4: very low agreeableness where people are not considered have Maybe
Speaker 4: some people would describe it as like not having a
Speaker 4: conscience at the very extreme end. But callousness, I think
Speaker 4: is a really common characteristic of people who are high
Speaker 4: in psychopathy. I think that's kind of the defining feature.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yes, psychopathy talk again. Samine says this isn't
Speaker 1: her field of expertise, but in looking for definitions, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a rough sketch, partly because this could be
Speaker 1: a whole episode in and of itself, and a history
Speaker 1: of it is sticky. The diagnosis is sticky. Different editions
Speaker 1: of diagnostic manuals don't recognize psychopathy as a clinical diagnosis.
Speaker 1: It's traditionally thought of as a personality disorder ASPD or
Speaker 1: antisocial personality disorder, and sociopathy is somewhat of a less
Speaker 1: severe form, and one expert on the matter, a criminal psychologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Robert Hare, describes sociopathy as only differing from the
Speaker 1: average person in the sense of right and wrong, but
Speaker 1: psychopathy is not having a sense of empathy or morality. Therefore,
Speaker 1: all psychopaths or sociopaths, but sociopaths are not necessarily psychopaths.
Speaker 1: It's the old All cacti are suculents, but not all
Speaker 1: succulents are cacti. So some traits of psychopathy are a
Speaker 1: lack of guilt or remorse, lack of empathy, lack of
Speaker 1: deep emotional attachments, narcissism, supervicial charm, dishonesty, manipulativeness, reckless risk taking.
Speaker 1: So there you go. What is the difference between a
Speaker 1: personality and a personality disorder?
Speaker 4: So that's a really good question. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: debate on that. My best understanding is that it's a
Speaker 4: matter of degree more than a matter of kind for
Speaker 4: most personality disorders. There might be some exceptions, but most
Speaker 4: personal disorders, it's not the case that if you meet
Speaker 4: the threshold for disorder, you're qualitatively different than someone who's
Speaker 4: close to the threshold but doesn't cross it. So, for example,
Speaker 4: in the case of narcissism, you know there are people
Speaker 4: who have diagnosable narcissis and personality disorder, and then there's
Speaker 4: people who are just really arrogant and exaggerate a lot
Speaker 4: and are condescending to others. And if they do that
Speaker 4: all the time and many contexts, and are persistently that
Speaker 4: way over time, they might not quite reach a threshold
Speaker 4: of a personality disorder. But it is the same spectrum,
Speaker 4: they're just not as far out on the spectrum.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot more bell shaped curves than boxes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Personalities. Amber Willis had a great question, what about the
Speaker 1: birth order between siblings in relation to certain personality tests?
Speaker 1: Is it just a myth?
Speaker 4: It's just a myth. Yeah, really, Yeah, so there's really
Speaker 4: good research on this. There might be tiny, tiny effects,
Speaker 4: but nothing that would be practically meaningful or detectable to
Speaker 4: us in our everyday lives. So if you think you
Speaker 4: see a pattern, it's just random fluctuations.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a surprise.
Speaker 4: At least on personality. There might be birth order effects
Speaker 4: on other things, but on personality there's no consistent differences.
Speaker 4: I read this great book like it was a theory
Speaker 4: about why there should be birth order differences called born
Speaker 4: to rebel. This really fascinating theoretical account. It just turns
Speaker 4: out not to be true. But yeah, like you could
Speaker 4: imagine why firstborns might have different personalities than later borns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and middle kids always seem the most stable. Hats
Speaker 1: off to all the jan Brady's of the world and
Speaker 1: the Malcolms in the middle or my sister Janelle, who
Speaker 1: always seemed to have it together more than all of
Speaker 1: us combined. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I had the same intuition, but yeah,
Speaker 4: the evidence suggests there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: Madeline Rogers asked how did the astrological signs become tied
Speaker 1: with particular character and personality traits? Is it accurate at all?
Speaker 1: Asking as a Pisces who is afraid of water?
Speaker 3: Interesting, I'm a Pisces too, Are you afraid of water?
Speaker 4: I am not afraid of I'm afraid of depth, deep water,
Speaker 4: but I like water. It is funny. I was once
Speaker 4: I was at a party and the sky come to
Speaker 4: me and he was trying to hit on me, and
Speaker 4: he was like, you know, what's your sign? I can
Speaker 4: tell you about your personality. No, I don't, like, you're
Speaker 4: talking to the wrong person. And then he was like,
Speaker 4: what's your son? And I was like pieces. He's like,
Speaker 4: you're stubborn, and I was like, okay, but you got
Speaker 4: lucky on that one. Yeah. No, there's no validity to
Speaker 4: the astrological sign connection to personality. I don't know where
Speaker 4: the idea came from. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: Historically, PS A little bit of digging revealed that a
Speaker 1: Japanese study, he found that people born December through February
Speaker 1: have lower agreeableness i e. Kind of jerks or at
Speaker 1: least charmingly assertive. And then another study reported that some
Speaker 1: are born males were less conscientious. But in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: a very badass, curious dude named doctor Sean Carlson wondered
Speaker 1: about the efficacy of astrology and conducted a double blind
Speaker 1: experiment where he gave twenty four respected astrologers one hundred
Speaker 1: personality profiles and and the study found that astrologers were
Speaker 1: unable to match natal charts to their corresponding personality tests
Speaker 1: better than chance. Carlson was like, Hey, astrology, y'all flim
Speaker 1: flams now. I know this, and I believe in science.
Speaker 1: But does this stop me from reading Susan Miller's Astrology
Speaker 1: Zone and screencapping it to send it to friends. Sometimes? No,
Speaker 1: it does not. It's free. It's fun. Let me live.
Speaker 1: If doctor Caleb Finch can enjoy Benjamin Button, then we
Speaker 1: can be entertained by a horror scope if we want.
Speaker 1: But just remember neither are nonfiction. Isabelle Helper asks how
Speaker 1: can a dramatic event or the loss of someone close
Speaker 1: to you influence your personality or can it?
Speaker 4: It can Again, I think most of the changes are
Speaker 4: not dramatic, So I think, you know, life events have
Speaker 4: small impacts on our personality and they add up. So
Speaker 4: if you have a lot of you know, negative events
Speaker 4: or a lot of positive events, I think that can
Speaker 4: add up to a pretty big change. But usually one event,
Speaker 4: even if it's pretty dramatic, won't have a huge impact
Speaker 4: on your personality. Again, there are exceptions. We can all
Speaker 4: think of people who did change quite dramatically in a
Speaker 4: short period of time, but that's the exception rather than
Speaker 4: the rule. So in a way, it's nice because we're
Speaker 4: more resilient then I think we might be afraid of
Speaker 4: and certainly, like major negative events will have an impact
Speaker 4: for a while and some will have an impact forever.
Speaker 4: Unemployment can have a pretty long term impact at least
Speaker 4: some people's happiness and well being, which you could construe
Speaker 4: as an aspect of personality. Unfortunately, positive events tend to
Speaker 4: have a shorter lasting impact negative events, But yeah, they
Speaker 4: tend not to have really dramatic effects.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Sarah Mischelle wants to know why does abuse
Speaker 1: make some people kinder and then others act like their abusers.
Speaker 1: So how much why do people sway after after?
Speaker 4: I mean, some of that might just be their genetic
Speaker 4: predisposition or their pre existing personality before the abuse. It
Speaker 4: could be that, you know, if you were already a
Speaker 4: very considerate and kind person, that abuse might accentuate that,
Speaker 4: And that might be your coping mechanism is to just
Speaker 4: be extra kind to everybody, And if you were someone
Speaker 4: who tended to be the opposite, then an abuse might
Speaker 4: exaggerate that I don't have. I don't know if that's
Speaker 4: empirically true, but that would explain why people react differently
Speaker 4: if they're different to begin with. Often your baseline kind
Speaker 4: of personality will predict how you react to an event
Speaker 4: or a situation, and it could exaggerate the differences between people.
Speaker 1: I thought, these are such great questions. So many people
Speaker 1: Danny C MYO Level, Carrie Kelly windsor Daniel Vaughan all
Speaker 1: kind of asked a little bit about how contagious is personality,
Speaker 1: Like if you spend an excessive amount of time around
Speaker 1: another person, how much does it shape your personality? Is
Speaker 1: there an alpha effect, like where there's dominance and status
Speaker 1: that changes who you are.
Speaker 4: I think in the short term there are complementarity effects
Speaker 4: on like dominance, So if I'm interacting with someone who's
Speaker 4: much more dominant than me, I'm going to take a
Speaker 4: more submissive role in that interaction. And then for other
Speaker 4: personality or behavior kind of patterns, there might be the
Speaker 4: opposite effect, where you become more similar to your interaction partners.
Speaker 4: I think, on like warmth, if you're not acting with
Speaker 4: someone who's really warm, you're going to match their warmth.
Speaker 4: So it's interesting that on some things it pulls for
Speaker 4: the opposite of what your interaction partners like on dominance,
Speaker 4: and on other things that pulls for similarity. But those
Speaker 4: are short term effects. Its like in our interaction, we're
Speaker 4: going to become more similar on warmth and more opposite
Speaker 4: on dominance while we're interacting. But long term, like if
Speaker 4: you live with somebody, I think the research suggests there
Speaker 4: isn't any long term like contagion of personality. You don't
Speaker 4: become more like your roommates or your partners.
Speaker 1: So not for the long term. Although research shows that
Speaker 1: in the short term, you reframing things for a bummed
Speaker 1: out friend can help them, but it might leave you
Speaker 1: feeling a little exhausted and worse about yourself. So if
Speaker 1: you're everyone's cheerleader, way to go. But psychologists recommend taking
Speaker 1: care of yourself, setting aside a few extra moments in
Speaker 1: a day to think positive thoughts about your own circumstances.
Speaker 1: I'm a badass who helps their friends. I am a
Speaker 1: beacon of light in the darkness. I make pretty good lasagna.
Speaker 1: My hair looks so good today. Sha a good ard asset.
Speaker 1: If you believe in the type A and type B personality.
Speaker 4: Traits, there's some truth to that, but I think it's oversimplified.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think the like the Big Five, is
Speaker 4: a better model of differences between people. Type and type
Speaker 4: BE kind of pushes people into We talked about boxes
Speaker 4: instead of a continuum.
Speaker 1: And some other people had some questions, you know, going
Speaker 1: back to narcissism. Theresa Bossonova I had a great question
Speaker 1: in the age of social media, how do you best
Speaker 1: deal with narcissistic friends? And also just in general, like
Speaker 1: in our culture now, are we trending toward that because
Speaker 1: of circumstance.
Speaker 4: I think the best evidence suggests there is no difference
Speaker 4: between now in previous generations in terms of narcissism or
Speaker 4: the effect of social media on narcissism. It's very easy
Speaker 4: to see, like you can you can remember specific cases
Speaker 4: of people being really narcissistic and social media exaggerating that.
Speaker 4: But I actually think that that's not there's no long
Speaker 4: term trend in that direction, or at least the evidence
Speaker 4: isn't very clear that there is. But there's controversy around that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you could see it as a way that
Speaker 4: makes it really easy to know who to avoid, because
Speaker 4: the narcissists out themselves on social media. Like, if it
Speaker 4: wasn't for social media, it might take a year of
Speaker 4: knowing somebody before you could really see how narcissistic they are,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe in some cases, although usually it comes
Speaker 4: out faster than that, but social media just speeds it up, right,
Speaker 4: Like you can tell more easily. I think the more
Speaker 4: avenues you have for someone to express themselves, the more
Speaker 4: quickly you can judge their personality more accurately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it's like having access to someone's journal
Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, you know, like straight shot into their
Speaker 1: what they want to project.
Speaker 3: And what they're going through.
Speaker 1: What about public figures, I'm a very stable genius.
Speaker 4: I am the number one most impactful artists of our generation.
Speaker 4: That's another thing we debate within our field is like
Speaker 4: is it irresponsible for us to make a professional judgment
Speaker 4: on like a famous person's personality without ever having met them,
Speaker 4: And certainly for clinicians, I think it's considered bad professional practice.
Speaker 4: But as like just not clinical but just describing their
Speaker 4: personality from a scientific standpoint, I'm kind of neutral on that.
Speaker 4: I think obviously we can tell. I don't think personality
Speaker 4: experts have much to add to what's already obvious to everyone.
Speaker 1: Lauren Chioto wants to know, are there any personality types
Speaker 1: that should be red flags?
Speaker 4: It depends on your preferences. So like even you know,
Speaker 4: we talked about narcisism, So first I would change the
Speaker 4: word type to trait, just to go back to the
Speaker 4: whole categorical versus continuous things. So if everything's on a continuum,
Speaker 4: you know, you might like narcissistic people because they're really
Speaker 4: charming and funny in their life of the party, and
Speaker 4: they keep things interesting. So some people are fine with
Speaker 4: being in a relationship or living with someone who's high
Speaker 4: on narcissism. That's fine. I think you have to figure
Speaker 4: out what you're okay with. Some people couldn't ever be
Speaker 4: in a relationship with someone really introverted. That would be dark,
Speaker 4: drive them nuts. So, you know, different people have different preferences.
Speaker 1: Maybe you couldn't love someone who loves themselves a whole bunch,
Speaker 1: or maybe people who seem like they really love themselves
Speaker 1: are the ones who don't really deeply love themselves enough,
Speaker 1: which is all the more reason to show them love.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Just everybody be nice to each other. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you. Aluisa Froz wants to know are there any
Speaker 1: personality traits associated with high performance or success the same
Speaker 1: way that it seems to have a biological correlation to
Speaker 1: high levels of testosterone and low cortisol levels like with
Speaker 1: CEOs and other leadership folks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there are personality predictors of success. It's kind
Speaker 4: of almost circular because basically, so if you're conscientious, which
Speaker 4: includes being like self disciplined and responsible and organized and
Speaker 4: on time, you're going to have more professional success. That's
Speaker 4: a pretty strong predictor of professional success pretty much across
Speaker 4: no matter what career you're in, Consciousness is going to
Speaker 4: be a predictor of success.
Speaker 1: So side note, if you're like, what does conscientiousness really mean?
Speaker 1: Some personality psychologists had the same question. They set out
Speaker 1: to define it more concretely with a study that looked
Speaker 1: at how much certain people engaged in eleven behavioral factors
Speaker 1: such as avoiding work, organization, impulsivity, anti social behaviors, cleanliness, industriousness, laziness, appearance, punctuality, formality,
Speaker 1: and responsibility. The study was called what do conscientious people do?
Speaker 1: I'm guessing because the board rejected the title who has
Speaker 1: their fucking shit together?
Speaker 4: And then depending on your career, other traits might or
Speaker 4: might not predict it. So if you're like in a
Speaker 4: sales job, then extraversion is an asset. Same with teaching,
Speaker 4: extroverts get better teaching evaluations. If you're in a creative job,
Speaker 4: than being high on the openness to experience factor is
Speaker 4: going to be an asset. You're going to have more success.
Speaker 4: But again it's almost circular, like part of being high
Speaker 4: in openness experience is being curious and creative and open minded,
Speaker 4: and so that just is part of the job description
Speaker 4: for a creative job. So yeah, different jobs will kind
Speaker 4: of suit different personality traits better, but conscientious is kind
Speaker 4: of the main factor that predicts success in general.
Speaker 1: She gestured again to her office, which I'm telling you
Speaker 1: was not that messy, just some stacks of paper, some books.
Speaker 1: From the way she describes it, you think there was
Speaker 1: a month old cheeseburger on the windowsill. There was not.
Speaker 4: But if someone figures out the neatness, I would love
Speaker 4: to know, because I just can't for the life of
Speaker 4: me being neat You're.
Speaker 1: There are like no plates of food in here that
Speaker 1: you're dirty.
Speaker 4: It's not organized.
Speaker 3: No, I'm sure you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know if you had to find a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, you know which such guy exactly, So
Speaker 1: that's organization.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Any movies about personalities that you that that annoy you
Speaker 1: or you think are good at it explores it.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. So one movie that stuck with me,
Speaker 4: I don't remember. I don't know if I want to
Speaker 4: like endorse it as being accurate or anything like that,
Speaker 4: but it was fascinating to me because it's about self knowledge.
Speaker 4: Is iHeart Hugabes?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yes, and he hires an existential detective to follow him around. So,
Speaker 4: like you asked earlier about how should we like learn
Speaker 4: about ourselves? What should we do if we want to
Speaker 4: know what our personality is like. And I said, maybe,
Speaker 4: don't ask your friends. But if there was such a
Speaker 4: thing as an existential detective that you could hire to
Speaker 4: become an expert on you and then give you feedback,
Speaker 4: that would be fascinating. I remember when I watched that movie,
Speaker 4: I was like, if that job existed, that would be
Speaker 4: my dream job. Like just like become like follow someone
Speaker 4: around and take notes and then tell them this is
Speaker 4: what you're like.
Speaker 1: What kind of investigation existential you'll spot?
Speaker 3: Yes on me? Yes?
Speaker 1: Will you be spying on me in the bathroom?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: I think one thing people don't spend enough time thinking
Speaker 4: about is okay, if I can't change his aspect of
Speaker 4: my personality, what could I do so it doesn't have
Speaker 4: a negative impact on my life or on other people? So,
Speaker 4: you know, like when I figured out that people can't
Speaker 4: tell when I like them, I learned I have to
Speaker 4: like explicit tell people I had a really good time
Speaker 4: last night, you know, I enjoyed it and I like you,
Speaker 4: or I'd like to hang out again or whatever. Because
Speaker 4: I'm not that expressive and so it won't come across
Speaker 4: I haven't necessarily done a lot better at that. But
Speaker 4: I think that's a more viable way to change than
Speaker 4: actually becoming more expressive, for example.
Speaker 1: So a few days after this interview, I got an
Speaker 1: email from Samine just saying, it was great talking with
Speaker 1: you last week. I hope the rest of your visit
Speaker 1: was good. Thanks again for inviting me onto your podcast,
Speaker 1: which was so sweet. I was so touched. So just
Speaker 1: change some of your behaviors instead of your core identity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or like find out what the negative consequences are
Speaker 4: of your personality traits and then try to like ward
Speaker 4: off those consequences instead of changing your personality trade. It
Speaker 4: seems a little bit more realistic to me than changing
Speaker 4: your personality.
Speaker 1: And what is the thing that is the most irritating
Speaker 1: thing about your job or that's part that you hate
Speaker 1: the most, anything from parking to something existentialking so far
Speaker 1: with you'll need downside, it's good that you can't think
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 4: It's not easy. I'm trying to think, like how into
Speaker 4: the weeds to get about like what an academic job is. Like,
Speaker 4: I mean, honestly, the most annoying part of my job
Speaker 4: is having to apply for grants. But it's not fun
Speaker 4: and part of the reason. I mean, just having to
Speaker 4: ask for money is annoying, and you constantly have to
Speaker 4: Even if you get a grant within a year, it's
Speaker 4: going to run out soon you have to start thinking
Speaker 4: about appaying for grants again. So that's annoying. But also
Speaker 4: because it's kind of this like weird marketing thing where
Speaker 4: you have to sell yourself and talk about why your
Speaker 4: ideas are transformative and they're going to change the world,
Speaker 4: so then you have to figure out how to sell
Speaker 4: your work. I don't like that aspect.
Speaker 1: Of it, Lisa. I want some more. What is the
Speaker 1: thing that you love about your job or your work
Speaker 1: the most.
Speaker 4: I love the freedom to change my mind about things
Speaker 4: or change directions. So I could have been studying something
Speaker 4: for five years and then decide, oh, actually I don't
Speaker 4: think that's true anymore, and I'm going to try to
Speaker 4: find the opposite or I'm going to just go in
Speaker 4: a different direction. And I love that I have the
Speaker 4: freedom to do that that I have like job stability,
Speaker 4: so I can say my work from five years ago
Speaker 4: is wrong and there's not no consequences or not a
Speaker 4: lot of consequences, and so yeah, it's fun because it
Speaker 4: gives you the freedom to play with ideas and kind
Speaker 4: of are you both sides and figure out with self knowledge.
Speaker 4: I get this a lot like I'll sometimes say people
Speaker 4: are pretty good at knowing this about themselves, and then
Speaker 4: another paper, I'll say people have this blind spot, and
Speaker 4: then people like you need to choose a side. Are
Speaker 4: you for self knowledge or again self knowledge? I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: I don't have to choose a side, and that's the
Speaker 4: beauty of it.
Speaker 1: Are there any books on personality psychology that she recommends?
Speaker 1: She glanced over at a bookshelf and very quickly settled
Speaker 1: on a favorite.
Speaker 4: If they're interested in learning on personality. It's a textbook,
Speaker 4: so it's a weird recommendation, but it's such a readable textbook,
Speaker 4: The Personality Puzzle by David Funder in the show Felicity.
Speaker 4: She was carrying around, Dear Felicity.
Speaker 1: Here it goes, I've watched you for four years, always
Speaker 1: wondered what you were like.
Speaker 4: It's just it's so much better than what you imagine
Speaker 4: when you think of a textbook. It's not dry, it
Speaker 4: has a really nice narrative voice. The author, David Funder,
Speaker 4: is really really good at that, and it'll teach you
Speaker 4: like the basics of like the Big Five and other
Speaker 4: He's actually not a huge fan of Big Five, so
Speaker 4: it's a nice balanced kind of perspective on It won't
Speaker 4: feel like drinking kool aid as much as maybe my
Speaker 4: interview has sounded like.
Speaker 1: No, it's I wasn't sure if you would, if you
Speaker 1: would have faith in any of the tests. So it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to hear from your perspective like this one
Speaker 1: is this one's worth it. I thought you'd maybe say
Speaker 1: that they're all garbage, so I wasn't.
Speaker 4: No, No, there are good tests out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so go forth, whether you start recording life snippets
Speaker 1: or dive into a psychology textbook, or take a quiz
Speaker 1: to figure out which planet you are and yes, that
Speaker 1: quiz exists, or maybe just ask close confident to draft
Speaker 1: you an honest letter on Turkey Stationary. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Now, it's great. I'm glad to be on the show.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I hope I didn't ask you too many questions.
Speaker 1: So ask personable people sometimes two personal questions, but be respectful.
Speaker 1: But you know, hey, ask them who they are and
Speaker 1: maybe they'll tell you, because chances are everyone's wondering the
Speaker 1: same thing you are. Especially if the question is what
Speaker 1: am I? What am I doing here? Am I a
Speaker 1: good person? What's happening? The answer is yes, you're just
Speaker 1: a little monkey. You're doing your best. Now. For more
Speaker 1: of doctor Vizier's work, you can check out The Black Goat.
Speaker 1: That's a podcast she hosts with two other psychologists, Sanjay
Speaker 1: Servistava and Alexa Talette, and they have an episode called
Speaker 1: Testing one, two three, all about personality tests that they
Speaker 1: love and hate. So get all up on that. That's
Speaker 1: called The Black Goat Podcast. She's also Samine Vizier on
Speaker 1: Twitter and I'll put a link in the show notes
Speaker 1: to all this. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm at Ali Ward with one L on both. Come
Speaker 1: say hi. For more links to personality tests and other
Speaker 1: stuff that we talked about, see Ali ward dot com.
Speaker 1: And there's also a link there to buy merch if
Speaker 1: you want to rap ologies. I'm not saying you have to. Also,
Speaker 1: thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for managing that.
Speaker 1: Find them on Instagram and follow them because they're wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast
Speaker 1: Facebook group interns are Caleb Patten and Harry Kim, and
Speaker 1: the theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorburn
Speaker 1: of the band Islands. Additional editing and research and amazing
Speaker 1: cheerleading was done by Jared Sleeper of mind Jam Media.
Speaker 1: You can holler at them if you need podcast editing done,
Speaker 1: and of course lead editor always high in agreeableness and conscientiousness,
Speaker 1: Steven Ray Morris, who hosts the per Cast and see
Speaker 1: Jurassic Wright, two great podcasts about kats and dinos. I'll
Speaker 1: let you guess which is which. Okay. At the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, I tell you a secret. I mean
Speaker 1: give you today. Okay. I think that thing about self
Speaker 1: esteem was truly a revelation, and I hope this fixed
Speaker 1: in my brain an outlook about self compassion last because
Speaker 1: it's dope. Also, I'm starting to like vegan cheese more
Speaker 1: than regular cheese, and I think that the MELTI texture
Speaker 1: is less greasy and more stretchy. This is a statement,
Speaker 1: It's not an invitation for debate. Thank you, good day,
Speaker 1: Hearts and hugs, Old Dad word von podcasts saying over
Speaker 1: and out for my re Editing of this was done
Speaker 1: by Hunk of the month Jared Sleeper, who's also contractually
Speaker 1: obligated to be my spouse, And thank you for putting
Speaker 1: this together so that I can go live face down
Speaker 1: in some carpet somewhere. Jared are the best. And at
Speaker 1: the very end, we'll give you a supplemental secret. It's
Speaker 1: me again, July twenty twenty two, to me with the
Speaker 1: secret that I'm okay. I'm okay. This sucks a lot.
Speaker 1: I love my dad so much, and uh, it really
Speaker 1: really sucks. I'm going to miss him every day every day.
Speaker 1: There's so many times I've gone to take a picture
Speaker 1: of a sunset or an animal or something I'm about
Speaker 1: to eat. I'll think I'll send this to Dad already.
Speaker 1: It's only been five days. Yeah, I've sobbed looking in
Speaker 1: his empty chair. I've sobbed eating a tiny ice cream.
Speaker 1: But we'll keep living and that's what he wants. And
Speaker 1: death happens to all of us, and the best you
Speaker 1: can hope for is that you have a long life
Speaker 1: filled with love and being absolutely crushed by the love
Speaker 1: of your family in the end, eating whatever you want
Speaker 1: and slipping away in your sleep like my dad did.
Speaker 1: So I'm just looking at the positives, and thank you
Speaker 1: to everyone who's sent me messages. I read more than
Speaker 1: you I'll ever know, so much advice on grief and
Speaker 1: getting through loss. And we've got some more encore episodes
Speaker 1: coming up. As I sort of just take a big,
Speaker 1: deep fucking breath, I've needed a little bit of a
Speaker 1: break for a long time, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: do that for a little bit and I'm going to
Speaker 1: catch up and in that time I might go record
Speaker 1: some new episodes. So we come out of the gate
Speaker 1: with some awesome, good, fresh ones that I'm really stoked about.
Speaker 1: But I'm just going to take a week or two
Speaker 1: to just feel emotions. I have so many. But thank
Speaker 1: you guys for loving him and loving me and just
Speaker 1: being fucking cool. Life is hard, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of beauty and there's a lot to be said for
Speaker 1: noticing the good stuff. All right, enough, out of me,
Speaker 1: all right, Bye, Bye.
Speaker 2: Tacking German College do zoology, Lithology, Yeah, zoology, meteorologytology, the apology, ceriology, semology.
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