Signalling - Why You Do The Things You Do - Rob Henderson | Modern Wisdom Podcast 292

1. 0:00 – 0:33

   Intro

   1. RHRob Henderson0:00

      What researchers have found is that people will experience, you know, what's called schadenfreude, which is pleasure at the suffering of others. But they feel schadenfreude the most when they see someone experience a misfortune who's similar to themselves. We kind of feel more schadenfreude for people who are the same gender as us. So some researchers speculate, oh, this is because if someone is roughly on your level, they are a sexual competitor or maybe a competitor for friends, for allies. And so it might feel good to see them sort of slip up a little bit.

2. 0:33 – 0:55

   Is everyone signaling

   1. CWChris Williamson0:33

      Is everyone signaling all of the time?

   2. RHRob Henderson0:36

      Well, yes. Uh, everyone is signaling all of the time, but people don't necessarily know they're signaling, and they're not necessarily consciously signaling all of the time. But however, uh, we are sending information about ourselves at all times, which is sort of the classic academic definition of, of signaling.

3. 0:55 – 1:20

   What is signaling

   1. RHRob Henderson0:55

   2. CWChris Williamson0:55

      What ... How, how would you define it? Someone's new to the topic. What's signaling?

   3. RHRob Henderson0:59

      Well, signaling is basically, uh, we, we're all constantly leaking information about ourselves, uh, from the way we talk, the way we dress, uh, the kinds of work that we do, the activities that we choose to engage in. Uh, signals are information that other people sort of pick up based on what they see and what, what kind of information they're inferring from, from our behaviors and so forth.

4. 1:20 – 2:27

   Not all signals are unconscious

   1. RHRob Henderson1:20

   2. CWChris Williamson1:20

      But the interesting thing about that is not all of the signals, in fact, probably most of the signals are unconscious.

   3. RHRob Henderson1:29

      Right. Yeah. I think that ... Well, this is basically borne out by the academic research, is that this is not something that we are, you know, sort of sitting down and, you know, calculating and deliberating, "How am I gonna send information about myself? What kind of information do I want to send?" And even when we do do those things, uh, we're often not even aware of the information that we, we are sending. So for example, if I want to buy like, a fancy car, I'm not thinking to myself, like, "Oh, this is really gonna impress my friends, and it's gonna give me a hot partner, and it's gonna make me look great to my coworkers," or something. Uh, often, it's just like, "This car makes me feel good, and so I want to buy this car." But you know, as a lot of evolutionary psychology research indicates, we don't do things just because they feel good. That feeling good has to have some kind of social payoff, some kind of evolutionary benefit, uh, if you reach back far enough, why that feel- why that feeling good is actually something, uh, you know, that we feel that is so positive.

5. 2:27 – 3:19

   The golden rule of signaling

   1. RHRob Henderson2:27

   2. CWChris Williamson2:27

      Is there a golden rule of signaling? Is it like, just why you do what you do might not really be why you do it?

   3. RHRob Henderson2:36

      Uh, the golden r- golden rule of signaling. I mean, well, I mean, the first would be sort of related to your first question, I think, which is that, uh, the golden rule is that we're, we're always signaling, and that there's no escaping the signaling game. I've noticed sometimes when I talk about signaling with people, they think like, "Well, I don't do that." Like, "That's, that's silly." Like, you know, "This just sounds like people trying to impress each other or whatever. I'm not, I'm not into that." But even by saying that, you're communicating something about yourself. So there, there's no sort of escaping that signaling game. If I tell you, like, "I don't care what people think about me," you have learned something about me. I have emitted a signal, and now you're, "Oh, you're one of those guys who don't care. Okay, you're that kinda guy." Right? So there's no escaping that. Um, do, do you, do you have a, a sort of rule about, uh, signaling?

6. 3:19 – 4:15

   Im just a cargo

   1. CWChris Williamson3:19

      No, not at all, man. Just that increasingly I realize how, how tiny the sliver of my motivations are that I get to see, and that the vast majority of the stuff that my body and my mind are doing is just completely on autopilot, and I'm just ... I'm like cargo. I'm just along, I'm just along for the ride. (laughs) I'm not passenger. I can't even order nuts off the air hostess. I definitely can't drive the plane. I'm just like, I'm the suitcases in the back.

   2. RHRob Henderson3:48

      You know, I've heard someone, I can't remember, uh, this was a psychologist who described it as a like, you know when you're walking through like a video game arcade and there's like the, the racing games, and the car is driving, and you'll see like a little kid get into the seat? And he didn't put any coins in. He's just sitting there pretending to drive the car. Uh, the analogy I heard was that like, that's our life. We are in that driver's seat playing with that steering wheel, thinking we're driving the car, but we are not. Something else is going on, and we're just sort of along for the ride, like you're saying.

7. 4:15 – 6:28

   Examples of signalling

   1. RHRob Henderson4:15

   2. CWChris Williamson4:15

      What are some of the examples of how people might signal, or some of your favorite examples that you've seen recently where it would be quite surprising?

   3. RHRob Henderson4:23

      Uh, well, one that I just read, so this was an old study from like, the late 1950s in the US. Um, these, these like, old-school behavioral psychologists, um, maybe not even organizational psychologists, but anyway, they found that these executives in this office, um ... Somehow it became a game to see like, you know, who could have a fancy pen on their desk. So at first they found that like, oh, you, you know, each one of these executives has one pen on their desk, this sort of fancy, expensive fountain pen or something. And then the psychologist came back a, a few days later, and one of the, one of the individuals had put two pens on their desk. And then, you know, by the next day, all of them had two pens. And then they kept doing this, and eventually, e- every, every executive had multiple fancy fountain pens on their desk. And you know, I, I would bet that if you sat down with them and asked like, "Why do you keep collecting these pens?" they're not gonna say like, "I'm trying to keep up with the other guys. I want to show that I can afford these pens too." Um, they just sort of feel this pressure of like, "Oh, well, if I only have one and that guy has five, people are gonna look at me, and that makes me feel uncomfortable." Um, you know, there are some other interesting examples of this from, uh, research in, in mating in evolutionary psychology. Uh, you know, for example, if you show, um, women images of the same man next to a, you know, sort of a, a typical sedan, like a four-door kind of a sedan, like a Mazda or something, and ask how attractive he is, versus, um, the same man next to a luxury automobile, like a Lexus or something, and ask how attractive he is, uh, it's the same guy, same clothes, same everything, just the car next to them is different, the guy next to the Lexus is rated as much more attractive. And...... men on some level are aware of this, and this is why so many guys are obsessed with buying fancy cars, upgrades, uh, taking pictures of them. I have friends who are into this. You know, they take, you know, Instagram, you know, "Look how, look at what I did to my car. Look at, like, how shiny my rims are," or whatever. Um, so that is actually a key, uh, motivator for signaling, is to, uh, impress, impress romantic partners as well as, you know, other kinds of people.

8. 6:28 – 7:08

   Upgrading the car

   1. CWChris Williamson6:28

      Is that, upgrading of the car, is that an Asian thing? Is that 'cause you've got lots of Asian friends?

   2. RHRob Henderson6:34

      Uh, well, I actually don't have that many, uh, Asian friends. I, um, the-

   3. CWChris Williamson6:39

      It's not like Too- Too Fast 2 Furious down in Cambridge, is it not?

   4. RHRob Henderson6:42

      (laughs) It's, uh, uh, it's not like that here. The guy I'm thinking of, he's, he's actually a, an American. He's a white guy in America who's really into cars. Um, but, yeah. I mean, uh, yeah, I'm sure. Uh, this is probably, at least, you know, in, in, uh, uh, developed countries, advanced economies, I would be very surprised, uh, if, uh, for example, men cared less about their cars than women. I bet it's always the young guys who care much more about how their cars look and how fast they are and how, you

9. 7:08 – 10:29

   Costly signals

   1. RHRob Henderson7:08

      know, how they look.

   2. CWChris Williamson7:09

      So what's the signal with that in evolutionary psychology speak? Is it resource acquisition? Is it conspicuous consumption?

   3. RHRob Henderson7:18

      Yeah. Well, okay, so conspicuous consumption, that comes from, from economics. Uh, which is, so, I mean, this is actually a really neat example of, like, whatever, like parsimony across the sciences of biology and economics both sort of converged on the same idea of what are called, uh, uh, honest signals or, or costly signals. So what a guy is communicating when they can afford that expensive, fancy car, um, you know, they're basically sh- saying, you know, "I have a, I have a job. I'm resourceful. I am conscientious because I can take care of this." Um, and, you know, often luxury cars do take more sort of maintenance and upkeep and care, uh, compared to, you know, sort of a, a more sort of downgraded, less, less luxurious car. Um, so that's, that's definitely one component of this conspicuous consumption, just showing your economic, uh, uh, position. And the sort of analogous idea in biology, um, sort of costly signaling idea or the handicap principle some people call it, um, the sort of what, uh, key example of this would be the peacock's tail. Um, I'm sure, you know, many of your, many of your, uh, listeners have heard about this idea from evolutionary biology. Only a healthy bird can produce such, you know, uh, incredible and beautiful plumage. Um, that tail does not help that peacock survive. In fact, it does very much the opposite. It actually puts them at danger. Um, if that peacock displays this tail, um, it alerts predators to its position. Uh, if it tries to fly away, that tail is going to weigh it down. But when that, that peacock shows its tail to the peahens, to the women, or, you know, the female peacock who it's trying to attract, it's showing that like, "Look, I'm so healthy and so robust and strong that I can afford to lug this thing around, uh, and therefore you should mate with me and, you know, we'll have some, you know, some, some offspring with some, with some quality, quality genes too."

   4. CWChris Williamson9:17

      (laughs) .

   5. RHRob Henderson9:17

      There's another animal that does this too. Um, I think it's a gazelle. Uh, some, some kind of a animal similar to that in, in Africa, and they do what's called stotting. Uh, and what th- what this is, is, um, if they sense that a predator is nearby, uh, like a lion or something, uh, they'll start jumping. They'll immediately start jumping into the air. These are mostly the male, uh, gazelles. They'll start jumping and then, you know, in the research they call it stotting. And what they're doing, the researchers believe that what they're doing is, uh, showing the predators that, "I am very strong, very muscular. This is how high I can jump into the air. If you try to chase me, you're not gonna catch me, so just relax. Go for one of those other guys who are, who, when they stop, they're not, they're not jumping as high as me," right? Um, and often they'll do this as well when there are female, uh, gazelles around, and this is sort of to impress them too, to show that like, "Look how high I'm jumping. There's a predator right there. I'm drawing their attention and I don't care. This is how, how, uh, impressive I am." And, you know, I'm sure we can think of some similar examples with, with guys too. Sometimes I think young guys do this with like, um, like playing very loud music out of their cars.

   6. CWChris Williamson10:26

      (laughs)

   7. RHRob Henderson10:27

      Uh, and sort of drawing that attention.

   8. CWChris Williamson10:28

      What do you think,

10. 10:29 – 11:11

    Loud music

    1. CWChris Williamson10:29

       what do you think the signal of that is? Like listen to my shite music.

    2. RHRob Henderson10:33

       (laughs) Well, I, I think what, like, it is, especially like late at night when there's a lot of, you know, drunk people around and so on, sometimes I think like, are they just drawing the attention of either unsavory people who would wanna like tell them to shut up or start a fight with them, or if they're trying to draw the attention of the police? I mean, it's not usually a good idea, uh, in those kinds of situations, late at night, a lot of drinking going on, um, and who knows what else, to suddenly start blaring loud music out of your car. And I, and again, I don't think this is con- I don't think the guys in that car are like, "Let me show off how tough I am," or whatever. I think

11. 11:11 – 12:33

    Young male skateboarders

    1. RHRob Henderson11:11

       it's just like-

    2. CWChris Williamson11:11

       You have some budding evolutionary psychologists driving around with neons under their car and a bass box in the back.

    3. RHRob Henderson11:18

       There we go. (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, this is, that's totally speculative. I've never seen any research on that. But sometimes I, I think that. A lot of the, a lot of this stuff, I mean, even when I was, you know, a young guy doing dumb things, I don't think that is conscious in any way. A lot of it is extremely risky. But that riskiness is, uh, you know, it, it's attractive. Um, I've seen research along these lines on, on skateboarders. Um, so researchers did, uh, visit a skating park, and what they found was that, you know, they'd, they'd sort of interview these, uh, young male skateboarders and sort of look at how risky the, the, the tricks or the moves they were doing were in the skating park. And what they found was when they sent a young male research assistant to interview them-... uh, they measured, you know, how risky the activities they were doing compared to when they sent a young female research assistant to interview them. And when it was a young woman, these young male skateboarders were taking much more risks, uh, incurred more injuries, uh, and they were, you know, sort of, you know, in a way, you could think of this as odding or something, right? Like, they were trying to show off to, to the young female versus, versus the guy who maybe they don't care that much ab- about, about impressing. But sometimes guys do care about impressing other guys, and we can talk about

12. 12:33 – 15:45

    Signalling

    1. RHRob Henderson12:33

       that too.

    2. CWChris Williamson12:33

       Yeah. W- the fascinating thing, I think, about signaling is running back from what the action is and trying to infer what all of the different branches are. So it's kind of like a reverse tree. Or I guess it's like roots. So it's like, you have one thing that happens and then you try and pull back from there. So you've got the, the, the guy that always wants to get in a fight on a night out. Like, what's that guy signaling? That guy's signaling, "I have so much excess fitness and I'm so robust that I am able to have what is a really dangerous altercation with someone drunk, with a hard floor, with other people around, maybe taking on multiple men." And, um, we spoke about this last time that you were on where, if anyone has ever watched two guys about to fight outside of a nightclub, the first thing that they'll do every single time is circle each other. And that's precisely-

    3. RHRob Henderson13:29

       (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson13:29

       ... what you see when you watch lions or tigers or, um, uh, stags, you know, th- uh, about to... They circle, circle each other, and maybe they'll push, which is gauging each other's-

    5. RHRob Henderson13:42

       Hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson13:42

       ... strength. And, um, so much... Every time that you send me journal articles or articles to read and stuff like that, I feel less and less removed from the animal kingdom. That's the most gracious way that I can put it.

    7. RHRob Henderson13:58

       (laughs) Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I get that too. Um, I've, I've even seen, like, along these lines, about guys circling each other. There's, um, there's an author, Rory Miller I think is his name, he wrote a book called Meditations on Violence, and he worked in law enforcement for a long time and he calls this the monkey dance, uh, you know, to go back, you know, are we, are we animals, are we human? Well, he calls this the monkey dance, uh, which is when two guys... He has like a s- like, um, whatever, like, this sequence that, that he sees that, just like you're describing, where at first they'll sort of, uh, like, verbally threaten each other, "What are you looking at, man? You got a problem?" That kind of thing. And then they'll start to sort of bu- you know, do this chest bump, and then they'll do the shoving match. And then at a certain point, you know, things will escalate into, you know, a sort of roundhouse punch with the dominant hand, and then the other guy tackles, and, you know, inevitably this is usually how it goes, right? And one of the things that he points out is that this almost always happens with, well, one, almost always young men, and two, it's they- they do it with each other, right? So young men are not going to engage in the monkey dance with a, with a female at a nightclub. I, I guess I have seen, like, Worldstar videos or something. Occasionally some weird stuff happens, but overwhelmingly (laughs) it's, it's two young guys, they usually aren't trying to fight women, they're usually not trying to fight people who are much, much older, uh, or much, much younger. They're not trying to do the monkey dance with little kids, right? They're usually same age, roughly the same size, yeah. I mean, you know, very few are going to try to do the monkey dance with, like, one of the massive bouncers or something. Um, and I, I find that to be particularly interesting too that we sort of, at least in that instance, you know, they want to find someone who's roughly on the same position, who... It's sort of a question whether they could beat them, right? And that is sort of where you'll get that maximal signaling value.

13. 15:45 – 18:15

    Hierarchy

    1. RHRob Henderson15:45

    2. CWChris Williamson15:45

       Is that where the friction occurs? The fact that you are within reaching distance of each other in terms of whatever hierarchy you see it to be?

    3. RHRob Henderson15:54

       Yeah. I think that probably plays some role. There was a sociologist, Roger Gould, he wrote this book, um, Collision of Wills, where he actually... I mean, his whole book is about that specific question about, like, when is conflict most likely to arise between individuals? And, you know, he, he reviews, uh, you know, just a bunch of research cross-culturally and within psych- sociology, anthropology, and so on, where he finds that, uh, like, basically equality of status actually increases the likelihood of conflict, or the absence of methods to establish a social position. Uh, so a simple example he gives is, um, sort of the norms around age. You know, typically, uh, we try to defer to our elders. Elders usually have higher positions in society and so we defer to them. But then he says, um, you know, imagine a workplace scenario where the boss is actually this sort of hotshot, this young upstart, and his subordinate, or her, you know, his employee is, is an older guy, uh, an older person. In that case, you can imagine more conflict than if the boss was the older person and the young person was the subordinate. Uh, you know, there are other, other instances of this as well, um, where essentially, if people aren't sure, you know, who's supposed to be the top person here, how is this hierarchy going to be settled, then conflict is, is more likely. I've also been reading the, uh, uh, this book, um, by Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, about, uh, criminals. And he documents research in prisons and finds that, um, when prisoners don't know each other, fights are way more likely to break out than when prisoners have been around each other for a long time. And he posits that this is because they're actually trying to gain information from one another. They're trying to elicit those signals. Um, when you have a new guy in the prison, they immediately want to size him up, you know, see what he's made out of. If, uh, if he gets into a conflict with another prisoner, all the other prisoners will surround and say, "Fight, fight, fight." Like, we- they want to know what's this guy made of? But if they've all been around each other for a long time, number one, a fight is less likely to break out because they already know what the pecking order is, and number two, if a fight does break out, they're actually more likely to break it up than encourage it because they already know.... like, they're not gonna gain any signaling information. We don't need to create a problem in our little prison community, so let's just, you know, let's not, let's not get into this. Let's just break this up.

    4. CWChris Williamson18:14

       I think

14. 18:15 – 21:11

    We are less hierarchical

    1. CWChris Williamson18:15

       I heard you on a podcast talking about schools or foster homes being something similar to that. When you get a group of sort of young kids together, that's, they wanna size each other up and-

    2. RHRob Henderson18:25

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson18:25

       ... see what, see what they're made of. But once that's established, it doesn't really matter so much. I also read in one of the articles you sent me that we are less hierarchical than other primates. Is that right?

    4. RHRob Henderson18:41

       Well, yeah. In, in a sense it is. So, there's, there's a lot of, like, debate about this in anthropology and, um, but basically, what it looks like is, you know, according to, like, Christopher Behm and other, other anthropologists, if you look at the ways that hunter-gatherer, uh, communities are structured, uh, there's actually not a firm hierarchy. They do have sort of, like, you know, what they'll sometimes call, like, big men or, like, sort of, like, elders or something who sort of make the decisions, and these are in, like, you know, hunter-gatherer forager communities in, in South America or Africa or Papua New Guinea. Um, and they also believe that this was probably the case in early hunter-gatherer cultures as well, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago, tens of thousands of years ago, um, they, that hunter-gatherers don't like strict hierarchies and they actually, um, will sort of downplay their own skills. So, if there's a hunter who's particularly talented, um, if they sort of managed to, to take out a large animal, uh, the others around them, uh, around the, this talented hunter will sort of make fun of how he threw his spear or how he runs or his appearance, uh, because they don't want him to, uh, to basically get a big head. They don't want him to, uh, sort of ex- you know, feel arrogant or cocky. And this hunter will, will go along with it and say like, "Ha ha, you guys are right," like, "Yeah," and they'll sort of play that, that, uh, that role of being very humble and, and sort of downplaying their own skills. Uh, and this maintains social harmony within those communities. Um, they themselves may not necessarily put it this way, but it sort of suppresses envy. Uh, they don't want anyone to be too high- too much higher than anyone else. Um, yeah, interestingly, like, hunter-gatherers seem to be more monogamous. They don't like if, you know, one, one male, uh, like, basically takes up all the women, and they try to evenly distribute that as well in terms of, like, uh, romantic relationships. Uh, it wasn't until later, historically speaking, after the rise of agriculture when people could stay in one place and accumulate wealth and resources, that tyrants could emerge and standing armies and so on. And then you could have kings with harem of thousands of women or something. But if you're a nomadic hunter-gatherer, um, you can't really accumulate resources and you can't really sort of, um, take out, uh, you know, your male competitors, uh, if they all gang up against you, and you can't have, like, multiple wives.

15. 21:11 – 25:01

    We are less civilized

    1. RHRob Henderson21:11

    2. CWChris Williamson21:11

       Yeah, I suppose that's one of the reasons for Dunbar's number being around about that, that it doesn't, uh, once you get to sufficiently large, if you try and splinter off to form some sort of a person moat, you know, like a, a roving gang of hunter-gatherer mobs around you, singing you loud music at night with your neons on-

    3. RHRob Henderson21:30

       (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson21:30

       Like, if you try and do that, (laughs) if you try and do that, uh, you just splinter off into a new group, um, and y- it requires a critical mass of people to actually be able to get that one person who was the, the best hunter but decided not to be humble, if he was a dick and if he, if he was quite showy with it, someone would just take him out after night, a member of his family would take him out to the woods and kill him. And then you would move on with your life. So yeah, it, it requires that, that number of people, I suppose, and the structure as well and the culture, uh, and the excess resources and all of that stuff. So oddly, oddly, us maturing as a civilization is one of the ways that we've become less civilized almost.

    5. RHRob Henderson22:16

       Huh. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess when you, when you think about, like, civilization in terms of like, oh, agriculture and establishing settled communities and so on, uh, yeah, I mean, we did sort of stray from that egalitarian culture of, you know, that sort of Dunbar number of, of that small group. The Dunbar number for, uh, listeners is basically this idea that human beings have this upper, uh, cognitive capacity for how many people they can, uh, basically stay on personal terms with, stay familiar with, um, and this is because hunter-gatherer bands usually comprised of about 150 people, uh, and then modern research sort of supports this idea. Uh, if you look at the number of, on average, the number of Christmas cards people send out, the number of people they regularly stay in contact with on social media, you know, you might have 1,000 Facebook friends, but you really only sort of regularly stay in contact with, you know, maybe 100 to 300 of them, and it sort of converges around 150. Um, and yeah, that, that's, that's a very interesting idea that, I mean, to go back to your earlier point about the sort of taking out the, the arrogant problematic male, um, there was a recent book, uh, by the, a Harvard anthropologist, I think he's an anthropologist, Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox, and that whole book is about this idea of basically capital punishment, uh, domesticated humans. So he, he calls it self-domestication, um, where essentially early humans, uh, once they sort of, you know, created these hunter-gatherer bands and there would be- you know, if there was like, a sort of person who was creating a lot of problems who maybe didn't care that much what others thought about him, who would hog up the resources, who would try to steal another person's wife or whatever, um, the sort of lower, you know, or maybe the more humble, uh, males, say, would, would basically organize and plot and take this guy out. Um-... usually through the use of, like, uh, like, extended weapons that would put themselves at risk. It was spears or something like that, they would take him out, or, or bows and arrows. Um, and so this was basically, over time, uh, uh, after many iterations of this, uh, you know, who are the humans that survived that sort of filtration mechanism? People who are, you know, socially anxious, who care what others think about them, who are very alert to disapproval, who don't want to ruffle, ruffle people's feathers, who want to get along with the group. Because that feeling was adaptive, uh, 50,000 years ago. If you, if suddenly, you know, the 150 members of your community gave you a look that made you think that there was something wrong with you, uh, that was an indicator that y- you may not be there for much longer.

16. 25:01 – 31:56

    Cortisol responses

    1. RHRob Henderson25:01

    2. CWChris Williamson25:01

       The implications are now so grave of you moving around the status hierarchy. I suppose, um, I'm, I've got this TEDx Talk coming up, and the, the nerves are pretty palpable even though it's only three weeks away, or still three weeks away, um, and I think it's quite common people say that one of the most uncomfortable, scary things people have to do is public speaking. And that's supposedly an archeti- uh, uh, artifact of our time as hunter-gatherers as well, right?

    3. RHRob Henderson25:32

       Yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting. Yeah, I, I mean, there is research on, for example, uh, cortisol responses. So cortisol is a hormone associated with stress. Um, researchers have measured the level of cortisol in sort of, like, lab settings. They'll bring participants in and have them do stressful tasks. Um, so for example, they ask participants to do, um, like, mental arithmetic or solving some difficult crossword puzzles, and then they'll take a saliva sample and measure the amount of cortisol they release. Um, so they'll, they'll take that measure and then they'll have a, you know, other participants do other kinds of stressful tasks, like deliver a speech in front of a large crowd or, uh, or a recording, like a video recording of themselves that they believe will be seen by some important person, these sort of socially stressful tasks. And researchers have found that in, in th- those more socially stressful tasks, cortisol levels are three times higher than in the non-social stressful tasks. So, if you're sort of doing something difficult, but you know no one's gonna see, no one's gonna care, you'll feel a little stress. But if you know people are going to be judging you, that's much more, uh, it's much more risky, uh, much more stressful. Um, yeah, that, that, uh... I, I also, I can't remember the specifics of this research, but, um, Naomi Eisenberger, she's a neuroscientist who had, she basically posited something that if you experience disapproval from your social circle, um... And, and this might be related to, like, delivering a speech where you're afraid that they may disapprove of you. The reason why your, uh, heartbeat increases and your blood vessels constrict and so on is because your body is preparing in ta- in anticipation of either a physical attack or exile. Um, and so that is, you know, this, this is not, this is just a sort of a speculation, but I find that to be quite interesting and shows, like, what, what's at stake in those moments, right?

    4. CWChris Williamson27:23

       So, you're saying if I do too bad of a TEDx Talk, I'm gonna have to leave Newcastle?

    5. RHRob Henderson27:28

       Yes, they will exile you. (laughs)

    6. CWChris Williamson27:29

       For fuck's sake. Or I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be chased, chased out of there with a spear. Man, I've got, um, I have a, almost an endless number of examples that reinforce that point that you've just brought up there. Uh, first one, I'd, I've done two reality TV shows. One of them, the first stage involved a live audience of 400 people. The second one... And, and went out to maybe a couple of million. The second one was over three and a bit weeks, probably accumulated tens of millions of viewers across that time, but was just done with the people that were on the show and no audience. First show, despite the fact that it quantifiably, objectively reached far fewer people's eyes because they weren't there in front of me, because they were on the other side of a camera and then on the other side of a TV screen, didn't matter. Another one, um, I think I told you this before, I was riding a moped in, uh, Bali. I came off the moped because I was paying 50 pence a day for a moped like a dick, and I came off when I pulled the brakes, hit the floor. The two guys that I was with came over. The first thing that I felt ahead of, um, fear for my personal safety, worries about the fact I was leaving half of my skin on this Balinese course road, the fact that there was still traffic moving back and forth 'cause it's Bali and they're psychopaths. The first thing that I felt was, like, shame and embarrassment. Ahead of physical risk, I felt social embarrassment. That was how high on my list of pri- list of priorities it was.

    7. RHRob Henderson28:58

       Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, our social image is, is, is critical. Um, there, you know, along these lines, uh, there, there's been some, some interesting research in the last five years or so, uh, basically comparing social pain with, with physical pain. And what neuroscientists have basically found is that they, they are overlapping neural regions. They occupy sort of the same real estate in our brain. Uh, when you experience social pain, the same part of your brain activates. It's the anterior cingulate cortex. Uh, and the... So, basically if you are experiencing social exclusion, um, or some kind of, like, damage to your image or status, uh, it, it sort of feels similar to actual physical pain. And what's more interesting, I find, is that when researchers have asked participants to, um, basically say, like, "Think back to a time..." So, at first they ask part, you know, they, they recruit participants who have experienced some major physical or socially painful event, and they ask them, um, you know, "How much pain did you feel at that time when you got into that car accident or broke that bone?" Um, and they ask them, "How much pain did you feel when you went through that breakup or when you found out your friend betrayed you?" Or whatever socially painful thing it was. Uh, there's actually no difference when they ask them how painful it was. Uh, they see both of those things, whether it's betrayal or breaking a bone, those both feel the same. But then when they ask those participants...... to reimagine it, like imagine that you're back there again. Uh, now how much pain do you feel? Uh, they actually remember the socially painful event to be more painful than the physically painful one. And they've also found that, um, oftentimes people have difficulty in the recol- in trying to recollect, um, physical pain. Uh, it's, it's hard. Like, if you broke a bone and you're trying to think back like, "What did that actually feel like?" it's actually quite difficult for, for many people. But almost everyone can remember what that tough breakup feels like, uh, or, you know, what it was like to sort of be excluded from a group you wanted to join or something. Um, that feeling sort of remains with us over time and endures more so than the physical pain.

    8. CWChris Williamson31:04

       Why do you think that is?

    9. RHRob Henderson31:06

       Yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's an interesting question. I mean, one thing is perhaps because physical pain is so almost instinctually aversive, um, that you don't need to remember it, right?

    10. CWChris Williamson31:20

        There's nothing to learn from it.

    11. RHRob Henderson31:21

        Like, you sort of already kn- Exactly. You already know that that's whatever it is, like jumping in front of a car is a bad idea. You already know that. Whereas I, I almost think that like maybe because the social parts of ourselves and our brains and our psychology, it's more sort of evolutionarily recent, and so we still have to sort of learn, learn the hard way, so to speak, that if you get embarrassed or say something wrong, make a social faux pas, you want that pain to live on so that you remember, "Oh, don't do that bad thing again. Don't do that, say that dumb word again," or whatever it happens to be.

    12. CWChris Williamson31:53

        Yeah.

    13. RHRob Henderson31:54

        But that's just speculation.

    14. CWChris Williamson31:55

        Dude,

17. 31:56 – 36:21

    Social status

    1. CWChris Williamson31:56

       I think that you're right. I, I wonder as well whether being hurt, uh, you know, seriously, if you broke a bone, probably up until 10,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, you were dead. And if you break your arm, you break your leg, you're probably dead. There's probably nothing to learn.

    2. RHRob Henderson32:16

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson32:16

       How would, how would the person that learns from breaking the bone or not learns from breaking the bone have ever been competed in or out of the gene pool? Because that person probably just dies.

    4. RHRob Henderson32:27

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson32:27

       So I don't know whether it would have had a ha- had a chance to interact.

    6. RHRob Henderson32:30

       Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I would have ... I don't know enough about like what, what those early, like human, uh, clans and tribes were like. I, I ... Probably if you were a young person, you might be able to survive some of those kinds of injuries. But it would be ... I mean, it's nothing like today. I mean, it would be like, you know, very risky.

    7. CWChris Williamson32:46

       Yeah.

    8. RHRob Henderson32:47

       Uh, but that makes a lot of sense actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean ...

    9. CWChris Williamson32:50

       Is the goal of signaling usually status then? Is that why people are doing it? They want to somehow move up in terms of status?

    10. RHRob Henderson32:58

        Right. Well, I mean, so that's definitely one goal. Social status itself is usually, uh, at least more recently it's been sort of, uh, divided into two kinds of pathways. Uh, so there's sort of two paths to the top, I've heard it described as. So there's, uh, there's dominance. So one path to obtaining status is, is, is dominance. So this is basically the ability to impose physical costs on someone. So someone like, like Joseph Stalin or something like that is ... He's, he's high status, right? But he's, he's, uh, high status because of his dominance, his ability to hurt you. Um, whereas the other pathway is, uh, is prestige. So this is the, another component of status. And this is, um, basically someone's, someone's sort of respect and admiration, like how much respect and admiration do other have- others have for them. So someone like, uh, like Stephen Hawking, right? Like Stephen Hawking is not dominant. You're probably not afraid Stephen Hawking is gonna impose any physical costs on you, but you respect his intellect and his ability to communicate science or whatever. Um, and so those are sort of two distinct pathways. Another way I've, I've heard this described is that, uh, dominance is, you know, that kind of status is what people can do to you, whereas prestige status is what people can do for you. Um, and so you would want to make a s- you know, make a relationship, build relationships and associations with those prestigious individuals and almost want to avoid the dominant ones. Um, I think it sort of depends on your society and the incentive structure and so on, but at least I think in the modern West, people are much more preoccupied with signaling, uh, prestige. Uh, you know, they want to be admired, they want to be respected. Uh, and in fact, there's a lot of interesting research indicating that, you know, when you ask people, you know, what, you know, sort of what's associated with wellbeing and, and how good people feel and living a comfortable life and so on, and people will usually point to socioeconomic status. How much money you have, maybe, uh, you know, the kind of job you work and so on. But actually, um, social status or sociometric status, which is, uh, respect and admiration from your peers, that is a much stronger relationship with wellbeing and self-esteem than socioeconomic status. And so, you know, basically you can have all this money, but you may not feel that great if you're, if you're not well-liked, if people around you don't like you, if you don't have many friends, if the friends you do have, maybe you have doubts about how much, you know, how much respect they have for you. Uh, and so signaling, a, a key component of it is to, uh, basically build relationships with people, friendships, associates, um, and of course, uh, romantic partners. Um, I've seen people ask this question about, um, you know ... Because a lot of people sort of read, you know, sort of pop psyc- psychology books about evolutionary psychology, and they'll say like, "Okay, so we know that men want to do these cool, impressive things because they want to impress women, but then why do women want to do these things? Like, why do women wanna become lawyers and, and drive nice cars and wear fancy clothes and stuff too?" Well, the thing is like, it's not, it's not just about me. It's also about our associates and our friends and our community, right? Like, you want to obtain the best friends you can and sort of build the, the highest quality relationships you can with the most interesting people. And it's not just men who want to do that. Women want to do that too.

18. 36:21 – 40:08

    Dominance

    1. CWChris Williamson36:22

       It seems to me that dominance, rather than prestige, dominance is quite obvious.

    2. RHRob Henderson36:31

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson36:31

       It's probably more l- uncouth and looked down on, generally, by society. You know, if you're imposing your will on someone else, and that's how you're raising yourself up, people are happy at seeing someone raise themselves up through their own talents. They're far less happy at seeing someone raise themselves up by dragging other people down. It seems like, uh, culturally and legislatively, dominance status-seeking has been restricted, whereas prestige status-seeking has been enabled.

    4. RHRob Henderson37:04

       That makes sense to me. Yeah, I, I guess it would depend on, you know, again, like, sort of the incentive structure and, and, and, and s- sort of culturally. I would imagine somewhere in, like, a prison, for example, dominance goes, uh, much further than, than prestige. Um, or, or in, like, organized cr- like the mafia, right? Like they probably don't care that-

    5. CWChris Williamson37:22

       But look at, look at the situation that's the example. It's where the laws have been removed, right? So ...

    6. RHRob Henderson37:27

       Ah, I see.

    7. CWChris Williamson37:27

       Yeah. I think-

    8. RHRob Henderson37:28

       Pretty cool.

    9. CWChris Williamson37:28

       No, I think that you're correct. What are some status-seeking behaviors that people might not realize they're doing?

    10. RHRob Henderson37:37

        Right. Well, so it, it depends on, you know, even, even prestige itself, uh, is, is a sort of difficult to pin down, you know, what, what makes someone prestigious. Uh, well, for one, uh, education, right? Like, people tend to wanna show off how smart they are, uh, and how clever they are or witty, um, which basically indicates that this person can probably be a problem solver or someone who, uh, you know, basically I can rely on to, uh, solve, solve problems or, or to have interesting conversations or whatever it happens to be. Um, so how do we sort of signal our smarts, uh, in the modern age? Well, I think clearly one of them is, is education, right? Higher education, um, getting good grades, going to college, those kinds of things. Um, Geoffrey Miller, uh, has written at length about this in one of his books. I think it's, it was his second or third ... it was the book Spent, I think it was, where he basically says that, like, you know, people are spending va- at least this is in the US context, people are spending vast sums of money to, to go to college, right? Like, I don't even know what it is now. If you wanna get a degree from Harvard, it's $200,000 or something like that. And Miller posits that a huge reason for why people are doing this, uh, isn't for the education, because you can just go on YouTube and watch, like, super high-quality lectures from the best scholars in the world for free. Um, you know, you can listen to podcasts or whatever. Like, the, all the information is out there, and it's available. So why would people spend, you know, $50,000 to $200,000 to get that piece of paper? Uh, and Miller sh- that basically serves as a guarantee of, like, a minimal level of competence. Um, you know, there's no way for me to look at you or, a- and basically learn how clever you are if you've watched a bunch of YouTube videos. But if you can put on your CV and show me that you earned a diploma from this university, I know a little something about you, and you might be willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to prove that to me. Um, and then this, of course, will open the, open more economic opportunities for you to get a job and then earn more money, and so earning money, of course, signals resourcefulness and, and a little bit of competence to some degree as well. So that's an interesting question actually. What are the, uh, characteristics we want to show other people? And I definitely think, uh, one of them is, is smarts.

19. 40:08 – 42:54

    Difficult to Fake

    1. RHRob Henderson40:08

    2. CWChris Williamson40:08

       What is the difficult-to-fake element of all of this?

    3. RHRob Henderson40:14

       Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, yeah. So, so, uh, biologists have distinguished between what they call, like, cheap talk or, um, you know, sort of cheap signals, which are things that anyone can do, right? I think, um, in the past, in the mid-20th century, uh, it used to actually be, uh, a little bit more difficult, uh, to obtain a, like, a high school, high school diploma. Uh, fewer people could actually go in the first place because oftentimes kids would have to work or whatever. Um, and then once that became sort of the norm that everyone graduates from high school today, that, that, um, that credential doesn't have the same signaling power. So, you know, (laughs) if I try to impress you with my high school diploma today, you may not be so surprised. And so now I have to do something extra, go above and beyond, and sort of, uh, paying that more, uh, honest signal, the costly signal of going to college. So both, uh, somehow acquiring the money to go to college and then completing the degree signals, uh, you know, all, all of the qualities I had just mentioned. Um, and this, I think this brings us to something about signaling that's important to remember, which is that, um, it's not a ... Like, signaling is not, like, like, it's not deception. It's not faking. I, I think people sometimes get these ideas mixed up, and they're, you know, they think like, "Oh, he's just signaling, so that means he's not really doing the thing." Um, but actually, signaling is, is, signaling wouldn't work if, if, um, if it was completely de- de- decept- all deception, right? Right? It has to have, it has to communicate some real information. Otherwise, it wouldn't survive as a system. And for the most part, um, only people who have the underlying quality can afford to produce the signal, just like with the peacock, right? The peacock, only the healthy peacock can, can grow those feathers. So we call that a signal, um, but this is not to say that that, that tail isn't real or something, uh, or that the peacock is sort of-

    4. CWChris Williamson42:04

       Yeah. I suppose that the equivalent, using the education analogy, would be someone can sound as smart or as dumb as you want during a s- a short transaction, but it's only the person that's gone through five years of university that has the piece of paper.

    5. RHRob Henderson42:19

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson42:19

       There's this-

    7. RHRob Henderson42:20

       Yeah, yeah. But-

    8. CWChris Williamson42:21

       There's this quote from Robin Hanson which I loved, and it says that, "If we are built to hide ugly motives and substitute pretty ones, we should suspect that our actual motives are uglier than we think." I think that that's like a Hanson's razor that we can use.

    9. RHRob Henderson42:38

       Oh, yeah.So, so the razor would be, what? That whatever you think your motive is, it's probably worse than that.

    10. CWChris Williamson42:45

        Yes, precisely.

    11. RHRob Henderson42:46

        Yeah. (laughs)

    12. CWChris Williamson42:46

        Precisely correct. So I was talking to Diana Fleischman, uh, recently, and she was talking about how

20. 42:54 – 46:44

    No Faith in Yourself

    1. CWChris Williamson42:54

       she has so little faith in herself. This is a woman who is balls deep in all of the Eve psych work, and she just never b- sh- uh, she has zero faith in herself. She just sees herself as this myriad of competing, very unactualized sort of totally complex and, and, and m- mostly conflicting ideas floating around in her head, and, uh, she just doesn't believe anything that she's got going on. She says that she feels like an alien who's been put into a human's body, said this on the, on the episode. She feels like an alien who's been put into a human's body and at some point in the future, she's going to have to report back to the aliens about what it was like. And I suppose what she's a- 'cause she's quite big into mindfulness as well, and I think what she's talking about there is the fact that when you are very conscious of the texture of your own mind and where the motivations are coming from or could be coming from for why you act the way that you act, you actually do end up living the observer life rather than the behavior life, because you're constantly meta questioning, very metacognizant about, "Why did I do that thing? Why does this feel? Isn't it interesting that I feel anxious? I w- oh, I can feel it in my neck. I've got the mindfulness, I've got the justification from evolutionary psychology about why anxiety feels that way. I can see the socio-, uh, cultural reason of why it's occurred because of this situation." And yeah, it, it actually probably makes it very difficult, oddly, to be present. All the mindfulness probably takes you out of the present 'cause you're so fascinated at what's going on up top.

    2. RHRob Henderson44:38

       That's, yeah, that is super interesting. (laughs) Uh, yeah, that sounds like very much like a, like an evolutionary psychologist perspective, uh, in, in how they sort of live in their own heads in that way. Uh, yeah, I, I mean, I, I, uh, that, that, that makes sense to me though, that, like, the more you learn about the inner workings of your own mind and your psychology and how, you know, all of these things interact, the more you might, uh, start to maybe second-guess yourself, second-guess your motives. You know, "Why did I use that tone of voice with that person?" Um, you know, "Why do I feel this..." I mean, I think one example of this, uh, is, uh, I, I've heard this from other people too, like in, like in the fitness realm where, like, if you're trying to get in really good shape, uh, at first it's actually pretty easy. Like, that first sort of few weeks it's actually pretty easy to sort of, you know, lose the weight and build yourself up or whatever. But then at a certain point, like, people sort of hit that plateau, uh, and, you know, number one, it sort of becomes harder to maybe lose the weight or, or make that, that incremental strength gain, and you sort of, you start to, like, lose motivation too. So the, both the motivation causes you to hit the plateau, but then the plateau also causes you to lose motivation. And I think part of what's going on there is basically your body recognizes that something is changing, right? Like, homeostasis has been disrupted. You lost a bunch of fat or whatever, your fat cells are shrinking, something's going on in your body, and then it just hits the alarm button and it's like, "Let's take his energy away."

    3. CWChris Williamson46:06

       (laughs)

    4. RHRob Henderson46:06

       Like, "Let's take his motivation away. Let's make him hungry. Like, let's sort of make him not care as much, like, you know, whatever the, like, smells will, will be, uh, sort of more apparent and powerful when you walk past that bakery," right? Like, suddenly your body is working against you so that you're not ma- making your next fitness goal. And that, to me, makes a lot of sense, that, like, something so physical, y- puts your body... You know, your body doesn't know that you're just trying to lose a few pounds, right? Like, it thinks you're starving, and so it's like, "What are you doing?" Like, suddenly it transforms your psychology, uh, and I think this might be sort of, yeah, maybe, like, a similar example to, to what maybe Diana was talking about.

21. 46:44 – 51:33

    State of Seeking Behavior

    1. RHRob Henderson46:44

    2. CWChris Williamson46:44

       We're just in a battle against ourselves, aren't we? And this goes back to what I said at the very beginning about us being cargo on the ship. You're just along for the ride. There was this cool thing that you sent about the cycle of conspicuous leisure, conspicuous consumption, conspicuous nonconformity, and then conspicuous authenticity that we have now. Um, it was basically talking about what is the status-seeking behavior that people are going through. So early in the 1900s, conspicuous leather, peep- uh, leather. (laughs) Conspicuous leather? People were going, "Really expensive shoes."

    3. RHRob Henderson47:16

       (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson47:16

       Conspicuous leisure, people were going away on holiday. Conspicuous consumption, people were buying expensive cars. Conspicuous nonconformity, counterculture revolution, '60s, '70s, it's just peace, man. And then the final one, which is the most painful one I think, conspicuous authenticity, which is where people are open about their, uh, their inner concerns, about their fears, about their goals, about their dreams, and think about what we're talking so much in popular media at the moment. That Jordan Peterson, like, it's all about personal growth, accepting your demons, facing the tyranny head-on. Do you know what I mean? That is conspicuous authenticity. It's a status-seeking behavior. It shows, "Look, I am... This is how trustworthy I am."

    5. RHRob Henderson48:02

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson48:02

       "This is how much you can have faith in me. I wouldn't, I, I'm, I'm so virtuous that I can be completely open and honest with you, and I'm still going to be okay."

    7. RHRob Henderson48:12

       Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there, there is a, so, so there is a, a sort of costly signaling component to that, right, where, like, if you are, um, revealing your vulnerabilities and insecurities, you know, just trying to be maximally authentic, um, I think, you know... And a- and again, it, this isn't conscious, but I think, uh, uh, part of that is that you're sort of communicating that, like, "I am in a position where I can sort of show you my weaknesses and I'll still be okay," right? Like, "I'm so sort of, you know, in such a comfortable position, I'm so secure with myself."... uh, that I can do that. Whereas, yeah, I, I could imagine that in, in other environments, um, revealing your weaknesses is probably a very bad idea. So, I could have ... Yeah, maybe, maybe if a society reaches a level of comfort, then the way to sort of distinguish yourself in that comfortable reality is to sort of reveal your vulnerabilities, which actually reminds me ... Uh, if we wanna get into this, is the, the counter-signaling idea. You know, there are signals and then there's counter-signals, right, which is, uh ... And it ... More evidence, I suppose, that there's no escaping the signaling game. So, you know, signals are basically what we've been talking about thus far, communicating information about yourself. Uh, counter-signals are basically trying to do the reverse of what the signalers are trying to do to distinguish yourself from them, uh, and thereby raising your own status in some way. So, uh, a simple example of this ... Uh, let's see. I'm, I'm try- ... So, so there's a research, for example, on, um, p- I think this is PhD dissertations, and what the researchers found was that, um, at lower-ranking universities in the US, the linguistic complexity of the dissertations, uh, was higher. Sort of the, the lower, you know, whatever ... Like, the lower, lower, uh, rank the school is, the less prestigious the schools, the more the students were trying to, say, impress, uh, the reader with how fancy the jargon is or whatever. Whereas at the higher-ranking universities, the linguistic complexity was actually lower, and the idea here is that, you know, "I am, I'm already at this great university. I don't need to impress anyone with my language. You already know that I'm smart," right? Like, that's sort of the idea. So they're sort of counter-signaling, "I don't need to use the jargon because I'm already so great." They've done this too with, um, professors, uh, and they find that professors at lower-ranked universities are much more likely to insist on their title. You know, "I'm Doctor so-and-so." "I'm Professor so-and-so." They put it on their syllabus. They put it on their voicemail, on their door, whatever. And at the higher-ranking universities, um, they're less likely to insist on the title. Oftentimes, they just say, "Call me by my first name," uh, you know, on their syllabus and their voicemail and so on. On their email signatures, they'll often just put their name. Uh, and the thinking here is sort of similar. If you're at a lower-ranking university, you want to sort of, you know, remind everyone, like, "Okay, maybe I'm at this lower-ranking school, but I'm still a, I'm still a professor," right? "I'm, uh, still a doctor," or whatever. Uh, and the higher-ranking universities, they can counter-signal against that. But it's not just in academia. I think this works in multiple different ways. How you dress, for example. I think, uh, you know, there's a reason why people in tech will wear a hoodie to work, right? That's counter-signaling.

22. 51:33 – 53:22

    Red Sneaker Effect

    1. RHRob Henderson51:33

    2. CWChris Williamson51:33

       The, uh, red sneaker effect is-

    3. RHRob Henderson51:36

       Mm.

    4. CWChris Williamson51:36

       ... the name for this. It's the mental model that was found done at conventions for business leaders, and they managed to quantify how formally people were dressed, and there was a, an inverse correlation between the f- uh, how formal dress someone was in and their net worth, and it's-

    5. RHRob Henderson51:56

       Ah.

    6. CWChris Williamson51:56

       ... the red sneaker effect. I learned that from Rory Sutherland. Uh-

    7. RHRob Henderson51:59

       That is interesting.

    8. CWChris Williamson52:00

       I suppose the interesting thing about status-seeking behavior is that as soon as it looks overtly status-seeking, the whole house of cards tumbles.

    9. RHRob Henderson52:10

       Hmm. Well, yeah. I, I don't think anyone would necessarily, like, like think of it in that way. But I, I think that once the signal becomes too ubiquitous to where it no longer communicates distinctive information, that's when something has to change and people will shift away from it, so, you know-

    10. CWChris Williamson52:27

        I would say that, like, we don't respect behavior that's done mainly to gain status though, right?

    11. RHRob Henderson52:34

        Oh, I see.

    12. CWChris Williamson52:34

        Like, if someone looks like they're just doing it to look good, they're just a flash, a flash prick.

    13. RHRob Henderson52:40

        Yeah. Yeah, that ... Yeah, okay. I, I get what you're saying. And it ... Yeah, we don't like that. I mean, it, it seems like too smarmy, brownnosing, or whatever, where ... I'm thinking about, like, job interviews, for example. Like, often the interviewer will say, "Why do you want this job?" And if the person just says, like, "I need money" (laughs) or, like, you know, "I'm trying to get this job to impress my friends," or whatever it happens to be, if they use this very base level, like, "I'm just trying to increase my social or economic status in some way." No, they are asking you to, "Impress me. What can you tell me that will sort of show me that you're not a status-seeking person? How can you show me that you care about status without saying that you care about status?" Uh, which i- in itself is actually sort of a test of confidence, in a way, so-

    14. CWChris Williamson53:21

        Yeah.

23. 53:22 – 1:19:12

    Envy

    1. CWChris Williamson53:22

       How much can you kid me into believing that? How ... What about envy? How is envy related to status?

    2. RHRob Henderson53:30

       Yeah. Well, yeah, so I think envy is one of the ... So I've once heard envy described as, like, the only ... So among the seven deadly sins, envy is the only one that people won't brag about. I don't know if this is true, but, you know, I don't even know the other ones. But, like, gluttony or lust, like, these are things that people will maybe fess up to, but I don't know how many people are willing to brag or openly communicate the envy they feel for others. Um, but yeah, essentially envy is this feeling that, like, someone else is rising above you in some way and you feel a little bit bad about it, and oftentimes will, you know, if you have the chance, sabotage them. Um, there's this research ... Uh, I can't ... I, I know that, uh, William Von Hippel can ... And he writes about this in his book. Um, basically, what they did was they had, uh ... They brought in groups, like, pairs, pairs of people into the lab and had them play a game. Um, so in some instances, it was two friends. So they bring two friends in. So, uh, at first one of the friends would be playing this game and the other friend would have the chance to sort of shell- share clues to help them win the game. Uh, what the researchers did was they rigged the game so that the first person who's playing the game, uh, they rig it every time so that that person always gets negative feedback.... say like, "Oh, you really did poorly at this sort of verbal puzzle task." And then they have them switch. Uh, and then same thing, uh, the friend is playing a game, the, the one who was just told they didn't do very well is now the one sharing clues, and what they found... So, they did it with pairs of friends, and they did it with pairs of strangers, and what they found was that when it was pairs of friends, the friend who had been, the person who had been told they did poorly would, was more helpful to, to their friend than people who were just strangers. But they were only more helpful if they were told that the task was trivial. If they were told that this is a task of, th- that, that is an accurate measure of verbal intelligence, then they were actually less helpful to the friend than they were to the stranger. They were actually trying to kind of sabotage, you could think about, their friend after they realize, like, "Oh, I'm, maybe I'm not very smart. I don't want my friend to think that he or she is much, much smarter than me, so maybe I'll be careful with what clues that I share." Uh, and they were more likely to do this with their friend than with a stranger, which gets at this idea of, you know, we tend to feel envy more for people who we think of as roughly on the same level as us. Um, it's pretty rare that someone feels a ton of envy for someone who's just so far above them that, like, it's just not realistic, right? Like, you know, an ordinary person isn't gonna look at, I don't know, George Clooney and feel some kind of envy when they see him make another movie or something. But they might feel a little bit of envy if they find out that their, uh, coworker just got a promotion or someone in their field just did, you know, someone s- won some kind of prestigious award or something. Um, and what they, what researchers have found is that people will experience, you know, what's called schadenfreude, which is pleasure at the suffering of others, is sort of the literal translation of it. But they feel schadenfreude the most when they see someone experience misfortune who's similar to themselves. Um, and so when you have people sort of learn about someone, read about someone who's kind of similar to you but doing just a little bit better, and then suddenly something bad happens to them, then people feel that little bu- burst of joy, uh, relative to someone who's just not really in your social circle, not really in your sort of, uh, in your Dunbar number or something. They're so far outside of your sphere, if something bad happens to them, you don't, you don't really feel as much about what happens to them. You don't feel as much pleasure, at least.

    3. CWChris Williamson57:09

       Why do you think that's there?

    4. RHRob Henderson57:12

       Well, some people have speculated this is sort of due to sort of, you know, uh, mating competition. Um, I think there's a reason why, you know, we kind of feel more schadenfreude for people who are the same gender as us. Um, if something, you know, if a, a woman experiences misfortune, guys are, you know, they're less likely to feel happy about that. But if it's a guy who experiences misfortune, they might, "Oh, well, good. You know, I'm glad he's... You know, now I, now I'm a little bit higher than him now." Uh, and so some researchers speculate, oh, this is because, you know, if, if someone is roughly on your level, they are a sexual competitor or maybe a competitor for friends, for allies, uh, and so it might feel good to see them sort of slip up a little bit. Um, and yeah, I mean, it, it's, uh, I guess this is one of those sort of dark motives, the Hansel and Gretel kind of thing of, like, yeah, it's tough. It's tough to, to acknowledge and accept that this is a, a part of our nature. But I think maybe acknowledging it helps us to, to, you know, maybe mitigate it a little bit.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:19

       The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That, to me, seems to play out so much more, especially over the last couple of years, and, um, I asked a question on my Instagram that I got a lot of, a lot of answers to, but none of them were that satisfying, so I'm gonna pass the question down to you. And it was around why people converge on dislike groups a lot more tightly knit than on things that they like. So for instance, if you were to go onto Reddit and you were to have a look at Dave Rubin's subreddit, it's been hijacked by people who really hate Dave Rubin.

    6. RHRob Henderson58:57

       Okay.

    7. CWChris Williamson58:57

       It is so much more patriotic for hating Dave Rubin than anyone that liked Dave Rubin has ever been. If you go onto The Fighter And The Kid, it's exactly the same, Brian Callen and Brendan Schaub. It's just there's memes. They've got inner culture. They've got inner workings. Dude, it is savage. It's so bad, and it's v- a lot of people, I'm gonna guess, are probably across the board, or they've just, both of the groups have arrived at the same sort of talking cadence, uh, separately. Why do you think it is that people find negativity so cohesive as something to bind together around? Again, as a, just a, a final example, there are certain YouTube channels out there, um, Philleon is one of them. Greg Doucette is another, More Plates More Dates. Derek is another. They do these natty or not videos where they call out people. They b- basically get suggested, is this fitness model on gear or not?

    8. RHRob Henderson59:53

       Hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson59:53

       Almost a- almost always, there's an open-ended, "Well, he might be," or, like, "He probably is," or, "This seems unrealistic." There is no equivalent on the positive side of that. There is no, "Isn't this guy in such great condition?" channel. There isn't an equivalent of that. There isn't an equivalent of the people that love Dave Rubin. Is it to do with people not wanting to just look like simps on the internet?

    10. RHRob Henderson1:00:20

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:00:20

        (laughs) Or is it something more, is it something more ingrained? Why do we bind together around mutual distaste so closely?

    12. RHRob Henderson1:00:29

        Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, uh, so in related, uh, related idea from political psychology research, um, what researchers have recently found is that, uh ... So at least until relatively recently, if you measured people's attitudes towards, this is in the US context, Democrats and Republicans s-... how much they like their own party versus dislike the other party, people tended to have more love for their party than hate for the out-party, right? Like, up until roughly 2012, that was the case. And then starting in 2012, their hate for the out-party was much higher than their love for their own party. So if you're a Democrat, it's not so much that you like Democrats, it's just you really hate Republicans and vice versa, right? And this has been growing. So 2016, it grew more, and then 2020 just continues. So s- suddenly, we're uniting more around our dislike of the out-party than our own in-party, uh, in terms of politics, which I think is sort of getting at what you're saying here. But in terms of why, it's just, yeah, who really ... It's, it's a tough one. I think one thing that comes to mind is, um ... Well, Roy Baumeister just has a book, uh, it came out I think last year or the year before, uh, uh, something like the Power of Bad or something, uh, which is basically like, if you look at a lot of psychology research, uh, there's a, this idea of negativity bias that the bad stands out stronger than the good. Um, you're more likely to remember bad things, uh, uh, sort of lock your attention onto negative information. It's likely to stay with you. There's even research, uh, on social media, uh, for what kinds of posts get shared and retweeted, and overwhelmingly, so like, the top 15 words that, um ... Basically, if y- each one of these words that you put in your tweet increases the likelihood of getting retweeted by 20%, and overwhelmingly they're words like attack, blame, bad, kill, destroy, hate. Um, and there's like, out of 15 words, there's, like, three nice ones. (laughs) It's like, you know, care or something. But even care can be used in a negative context. Like, who cares, right? Um, and so I think this gets at something about maybe our psychology that, like, if something is bad, it just, like, activates our emotions more, and I don't know, there is something about, like, wanting to tear someone down that just feels satisfying when you're doing it with others.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:02:46

        Yeah, so that's part of it. The next step is why does that bind people together? Why do they find a commonality around this mutual ... Is it as simple as in-group, out-group tribalism?

    14. RHRob Henderson1:03:02

        Yeah, I think that ... Well, so if that, that thing that they're uniting around is clearly an enemy, uh, you know, it can be perceived as a threat, then, you know, we, we can all sort of agree that, like, okay, maybe we have some quibbles about the principles of our own community, but we can all definitely agree that what that person is doing is wrong. There's no arguing. It just feels good. Like, a disagreement can be uncomfortable. Uh, but, you know, agreement is nice, and then this, you know, if we can all sort of collectively agree that that's something bad, then I think there is a sort of, there's a, a bonding experience there. Um, there's even, you know, some researchers, I think Pascal Boyer, he has suggested ... So he had this book, Mind, Minds Make Societies, and he suggested that, um, it's actually advantageous to exaggerate. Uh, so if you perceive someone as a threat, it's in your best interest to exaggerate their misdeeds. Um, you know, number one, because, you know, if you want allies, you want to convince them. You want them to be on the same page emotionally as you. And so if they said something and used a word or whatever and you think it's bad, um, you know, if other people don't think it's bad, you have to really sort of convince them that like, "Well, if they say this, this is putting our lives at risk. It's putting our safety at risk, or our community, or these communities that we care about." And so it's in their best interest to magnify every single potential interpretation into something that's horrible, um, one, because it, it wins you allies, and then number two is if you want to know who's truly your ally, who's really on your team, um, broadcasting those misdeeds and then seeing how people react to it will let you know who's on my team and who's not on my team. Um, and so if I say, "This person said a bad thing and it puts us all at risk," and out of 10 people, seven of them are on my side, but three of them are like, "Well, I'm not so sure that was so bad." Now, you know, oh, those are the three people. Those can be next that we can all unite around, right? Like, those are the next people could be on the, on the chopping board.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:02

        I wonder if part of it is game theoretical. I wonder if some of it is to do with the fact that if you're seeking agreement with people about a thing, there are multiple different ways that they might not arrive at how you think that thing is good. Whereas if you're seeking disagreement ... Oh, sorry. If you're seeking agreement about a thing being bad versus if you're seeking agreement about a thing being good, the agreement about someone that you don't like might be easier to arrive at, 'cause it's, it's far more simple to just, "I hate that person," than, "We like this, but oh, yeah, but do you also like this about it? Do you also like this about it?" I, I, I wonder whether the negativity bias shows up in the fact that it's just simpler and it's easier to signal that you are part of the same team by doing it in that sort of a way.

    16. RHRob Henderson1:05:55

        Yeah. Th- that makes sense to me. I mean, you also maybe don't have to provide as many justifications, uh, if you hate something and you can say, you know, X, Y, Z. Like, you know, it just, I think it's easier to justify why you hate something versus if you like something and then you have to put an argument for why it's good. Yeah, it might be harder. Um, liking things, yeah, maybe it just doesn't have the same emotional punch. I've seen research, uh, so this was out of, I think, Stanford, where they basically, uh, looked at how people choose to ... or how people do bond over shared likings of things, how much they like something and what the thing happens to be, and what they find is that, you know, basically if two people learn that one another likes a popular band and then you ask them, you know, how their favorability ratings of each other, you know, it's, it's okay, whatever. Like, they like the same band as me. If it's like the Rolling Stones, if it's a popular band, but if it's an obscure band that very few people have heard of, then their favorability ratings are much higher, right? Like, "Oh my God, you know that band too?" Like, "Wow, that's crazy." Yeah. And so I think, like, liking is just more nuanced. It's harder. There are more, there's more complications with it. Whereas hate, right? Like ...... you know, if y- yeah, if you can collectively agree that you hate someone, like, that's just, you know, that's just easy, right? And, and-

    17. NANarrator1:07:13

        Yeah.

    18. RHRob Henderson1:07:13

        ... you know, yeah, it just ... It's tough. I think it's, uh ... I think it's, it's a pretty dark, a dark aspect of our, our psychology that (techno music plays)

    19. CWChris Williamson1:07:23

        Yeah. A reason I think ... So, I, I spend far more time than I care to admit thinking about Dave Rubin and Brendan Schaub subreddits. Like, I-

    20. RHRob Henderson1:07:31

        Right.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:07:32

        It's just, you will ... Go, go and have a look at them, man. They're an absolute (laughs) dumpster fire of, like, really ... And if they weren't so funny, it wouldn't be as bad, but there's, like, some really quite innovative humor on there. (sniffs) And what I was trying to work out- (laughs)

    22. RHRob Henderson1:07:48

        (laughs) .

    23. CWChris Williamson1:07:48

        What I was trying to work out was what the common thread between Dave and Brendan is that people had a problem with. Part of it is, uh, visibility. It's the fact that these guys have managed to get themselves to a sufficiently high social status that people are like, "Actually, yeah, fuck this guy." But the common thread and the term that kind of underlies it is grifter. So, what they're concerned about is someone being unreliable, I think. I think that's the, the underlying term of it, that there are these montages of Joe Rogan saying a thing and then Brendan Schaub agreeing with him. Have you seen these?

    24. RHRob Henderson1:08:30

        I have not.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:08:31

        Dude, they go on for, they go on for, like, minutes, like, tens of minutes of-

    26. RHRob Henderson1:08:36

        (laughs) .

    27. CWChris Williamson1:08:36

        ... Joel say, like, you know, "He's the baddest guy in the planet," and Brendan will go, "Ah, the baddest." You know, "Totally the baddest." And it's just endless medleys of this. And I think what people are potentially trying to highlight there is this person is untrustworthy, they're prepared to compromise what they believe, uh, in service of someone who is slightly higher status than them. Uh, so Brendan always kind of, um, he's got that younger brother, older brother kind of relationship thing going on with Rogan. Rogan says something, he reflects it back to him. You have Dave Rubin as well, who gets accused of having pivoted from one particular viewpoint to another particular viewpoint when that political movement seemed to be, like, more on trend. He then attaches himself to Jordan Peterson. He then attaches himself to the IDW. Like, none of these things, I don't have a particularly strong opinion. I've never met Brendan Schaub, and I've spoken to Dave Rubin for 55 minutes. Um, I don't know if that's the case, but I think that that's the signal that people are trying-

    28. RHRob Henderson1:09:41

        Mm-hmm.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:09:41

        ... to identify. And one of the things that I've realized, and this is a really interesting part of having your conversations watched, is if I don't disagree with people sufficiently frequently on this show, you get-

    30. RHRob Henderson1:09:55

        (laughs) .

Episode duration: 1:26:35