The Secret Games Women Play - Dr Tracy Vaillancourt

1. 0:00 – 7:08

   Why Women Hate Their Sexy Friends

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Do women have an intolerance of sexy peers?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt0:04

      Absolutely. Um, 100%. Uh, I, we say we don't. We say that we just love women and we promote women. But, um, we lo-... We love certain women and we promote certain women. So, uh, yeah, we're, we're not the angels that we purport we are to be. Um, I think we do a lot of impression management.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:28

      Who are the women that we do support and love?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt0:33

      Um, it depends. Like, obviously we're gonna have, um, different qualities that we admire in a person. And so if they have those, then I think that that's who we're gonna promote. We're pretty good at, um, tolerating our friends and promoting our friends. Um, but I don't think we're universally kind to all women. And it's interesting because I think that there's been this, like, change in zeitgeist where people, or women talk about how the sisterhood has never been stronger and we support each other unconditionally, and yet we really don't.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:10

      Why? Why, why do you think that that's the current pop culture s- summarization of female friendships, uh, and why is it not the case?

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:22

      Well, I think that... It, it's funny 'cause it's kinda said but it's not really said. So, have you seen the Barbie movie yet?

   7. CWChris Williamson1:28

      No.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:29

      Okay. You need to see it. It's really (laughs) good.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:30

      Okay.

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:31

       But anyhow, so it's funny 'cause there's this big speech where she talks about, like, all the pressures that women are under and everything that we have to manage and, you know, and then there's also this, like, thread about women supporting women, and yet there's, like, plenty of examples of women not supporting women in that movie, right? So I think that there's this, like, a little bit of a disconnect where we say it but then we don't actually, um, live that ideal. Um, now, the reason I think it happens, that we don't support each other as much as we should, is because there's, like, a resource scarcity that affects women, I think, more than men. And I th-... Or this perception of resource scarcity. And in some places in the world, there's absolutely a resource scarcity, um, with women. You know, they're not... They don't have as many privileges. They don't make as much money, those sorts of things. Um, and when things don't seem fair, it's hard to be, uh, generous.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:27

       Right. So what's the sexy bit of the sexy peers? Why be particularly intolerant of the sexy ones?

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt2:34

       So, so that would be, um, the idea that... (sighs) It's gonna sound sexist (laughs) but it's a robust finding. I did a study on this. So the idea that, um, historically, we've sort of maintained, uh, control over what the opposite sex wanted. And so if we, um, you know, are giving away sex freely, um-

   13. CWChris Williamson3:03

       You mean we as women here.

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt3:04

       ... um, and... We as women, then, then we don't hold that... W- we don't... The power of that resource is, um, is less. It's even nonexistent. So it would behoove us to then punish those who give away sex too freely. So slut shame, um, debase women who are a threat to that power-folding position. And so this is a study that I did that showed that exact phenomenon. It has since been replicated around the world. And basically, um, women are intolerant of certain types of women, but in particularly, they're particularly intolerant of women who are sexy. And it's a universal phenomenon.

   15. CWChris Williamson3:52

       Right. So sexy is a very specific word to use here. This isn't necessarily just attractive. Uh, it's, like, presumably sexually provocative.

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt4:03

       Exactly.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:03

       Uh...

   18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt4:04

       It's not attractive per se, although I think that if you get to the end of that spectrum on attractiveness, so like you're incredibly attractive, I think that that would probably unnerve some women because that person would be, um, would be revered by men and that would then debase their own standing in terms of competition. But generally speaking, I mean, yeah. So the, the impression would be that you're sexually provocative or available.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:40

       What was the study that you did? Or are there any that came along after yours and did it even better that you prefer?

   20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt4:47

       Well, I don't know if anybody's done it better 'cause I think I did it the best, but (laughs) 'cause I thought about it forever and ever. It took, like, over a decade to c-... for this study to come to fruition. So basically what I saw all the time was that when a woman violated norms, so the norm of, you know, you could be sexy but not too sexy, um, then women would mock them. They would use indirect aggression. And indirect aggression, um, takes the form of gossiping, peer group exclusion, um, but also more non-verbal things like, you know the once-over where you start at the top, you look down, you look up but you don't smile to convey disgust? Or you stare at each other and then when she leaves the room you laugh? Those sorts of things. So anyhow, I saw that over and over again. So I, um, designed a study with my postdoctoral student, Aunchal Sharma, where we had women come into the lab. They were part of this previous study where we're looking at their use of indirect aggression. Then we invited them into the lab to talk about female friendships, how they deal with conflict. Um, we randomized them into one of four conditions, with their friend, with a stranger, and whether or not they were gonna be interrupted in their conversation by a very sexy dressed confederate or a-... conservatively dressed confederate, and the person was the exact... It was the same person, Lisa. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Anyhow, we standardized everything right down to the number of steps she took. Everything was scripted. So they came through, they didn't know that we were recording them right from the get-go. She came through and walked right between the two women and mentioned to Aanchal in the back room that I needed to talk to her about something, and then she left with Aanchal, and we recorded what they did. And everybody in the sexy condition treated her poorly with two exceptions. Um, and I think they were just not paying attention 'cause had, had they be- been, they would have done something. And those that when, um, Lisa interrupted them and she was just dressed conservatively, they didn't even pay attention. So the only thing that was different between the two conditions was her sexy outfit.

   21. CWChris Williamson7:06

       Wow. Okay, so what

2. 7:08 – 14:34

   The Psychology of Slut-Shaming

   1. CWChris Williamson7:08

      are the implications of this? What does it, what does it tell you about female psychology?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt7:12

      It tells us that... Like, I mean, a lot of times people think that the suppression of women's sexuality is done by men, and it is done by men, um, for sure, that exists, and especially in certain countries. But it also is policed by women, and women do suppress other women's sexual expression.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:35

      So on average, would you say more slut-shaming comes from men or from women?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt7:39

      I think it depends on the country. It really does. There's a cultural component to that, but let's just talk about Western cultures. Um, I think that, uh, that women are particularly intolerant of sexy peers more so than men. Does it bother you to see a sexy woman?

   5. CWChris Williamson7:56

      Me? No, but I, I would campaign for more if there was-

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt7:59

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson7:59

      ... the opportunity to do it.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt7:59

      Exactly. And would, would you be upset if women were more promiscuous?

   9. CWChris Williamson8:04

      Yeah, precisely. I mean, this, th- this is from Roy Baumeister. I learned this from him, that he was saying, "It, it's very strange to lay at the feet of men a restriction in, uh, female sexual freedom, given the fact that almost every man, if given the opportunity, would campaign for that precise thing."

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt8:24

       Exactly.

   11. CWChris Williamson8:25

       Like, I, I haven't been to a parade downtown here in Austin, but if there was one for that, you know, that would be up there with one of the... You know, uh, for, for my other male brethren, I'm going to stand firm and I will help. I will, you know, you will, you will finally be able to get your underwear." So, yeah, I, I, I... It makes complete sense to me, and I learned from Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max as well this insight about the game theory of slut-shaming where (clears throat) if you think about sex as having a price, and if one woman is prepared to lower the price from three dates to one date or from X amount of resources to 0.5 X amount of resources, that lowers the market value of whatever that thing is overall. So you need to-

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt9:08

       That's exactly, that's exactly what I showed. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson9:09

       You need a... Yep.

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt9:10

       Exactly.

   15. CWChris Williamson9:10

       You need a price enforcement mechanism.

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt9:12

       Exactly.

   17. CWChris Williamson9:12

       Right? It's a c- it's a cartel.

   18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt9:13

       Yeah, and that's... And Baumeister's theory that... So he wrote a paper with Jean Twenge where they talk about this, and this is what I used as the theoretical basis for the study along with what I knew about, uh, indirect aggression. So it's interesting 'cause, uh, intrasexual competition is, like, one area that people study, but indirect aggression is very similar. It's like the behavior, the manifestation of intrasexual competition.

   19. CWChris Williamson9:39

       Oh, it's the, it's the enforcement mechanism of intrasexual competition.

   20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt9:42

       Yeah, and people hadn't really considered that. So I wrote a theory. It was published in Trans B of the Royal S- Royal Society, and it did very well. And, um, people have used it now to springboard other studies. But basically, I was arguing just that, that the form of intrasexual competition, the form it takes in women is indirect aggression.

   21. CWChris Williamson10:02

       Interesting. I've got a quote from you here. "Sex is coveted by men. Accordingly, women limit access as a way of maintaining advantage in the negotiation of this resource. Women who make sex too readily available compromise the power-holding position of the group, which is why many women are particularly intolerant of women who are or seem to be promiscuous." And it's the seem to be bit, I think, which is particularly interesting there.

   22. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt10:26

       Exactly. It's interesting because after that study came out, I was in Florida at Disney with my daughter, who is eight, and h- I, uh... We brought along her two girlfriends. And there was a woman who was dressed, um, in a very sexually provocative manner. She was probably in her mid-50s, uh, tiny, tiny skirt, tiny, tiny shirt-

   23. CWChris Williamson10:46

       Florida, baby.

   24. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt10:47

       ... breasts, breasts out.

   25. CWChris Williamson10:48

       Florida.

   26. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt10:49

       Look gorgeous, look gorgeous. Anyhow, and, uh, I turn around, and I saw these three eight-year-olds doing exactly what was done in my study.

   27. CWChris Williamson11:00

       No. (laughs)

   28. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt11:01

       So, (laughs) so she was getting, she was getting the once-over by three mean eight-year-olds.

   29. CWChris Williamson11:07

       Well, what... I mean, that's fascinating. What, wh- why would it be the case that animals who aren't even sexually active, who don't understand what sex is, how deeply wired is this at the base of the brainstem that even they have got an idea, "Oh, she might be too promiscuous, and maybe she's going to take some future husband away from me"?

   30. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt11:29

       I don't know if it's at the brainstem, but it's certainly... There's, like, a lot of socialization around this. Think about-
3. 14:34 – 19:35

   Do Men Use Indirect Aggression Too?

   1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt14:34

      it.

   2. CWChris Williamson14:35

      Indirect competition, do men use that too? What's the, what's the ratio of indirect competition between the sexes?

   3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt14:43

      So proportionally speaking, and I'll talk about indirect aggression, because indirect, um, competition, I'm not too sure what that means per se.

   4. CWChris Williamson14:52

      Okay.

   5. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt14:52

      So indirect aggression, um, is used by men for sure. Men talk about each other, they gossip, they give each other the silent treatment, that sort of thing, but not as often. So men use a melange of behaviors. So you guys are like straight out in your face, um, you, uh, are physically aggressive, and you also use indirect aggression, uh, indirectly aggressive tactics. Whereas women, proportionately speaking, only use this form of aggression. Of course, there are exceptions. There's some women are really violent, but they are rare and they're so salient. When we see these women, they make the front page of every news outlet in the world because we don't see them that often. So this is our exclusive way of dealing with each other when we're, um, being less than appropriate, being less than kind.

   6. CWChris Williamson15:39

      Interesting. Okay, so what-

   7. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt15:40

      And we're more affected by it. So if I rolled my eyes at you, it, it's not gonna cause much distress. If I did that to a woman, it would cause some problems. And there's quite a bit of studies showing that we have a heightened physiological response to being, um, ostracized, rejected, um, all of the things that encompass indirect aggression.

   8. CWChris Williamson16:08

      So women are more attuned to-

   9. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt16:09

      We're more attuned to it and we re- we respond to it more. And that has an evolutionary significance because belonging was far more important to women than to men. Not to suggest that you didn't need to belong, you needed to get your coalitions set right so that you could win the war and kill the boar. But, um, for women, we also needed, um, alloparents. We needed support from other women. And so it's a really interesting, um, issue because on the one hand, you need the support of women, but in another hand, there's not enough resources to go around, so there's also a zero sum game, in a sense, attached to that. So it's trying to reconcile that. So then the way to do it then is to be strategic, is to, um, appear to be on your side, but not really be on your side.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:03

       Why is it so important to not be directly aggressive as a woman?

   11. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt17:08

       So, um, Anne Campbell wrote this really great theory about this, and basically it was about, she called it staying alive. And so if women historically, um, got into a physical battle, a fight, and they died or were injured and not able to take care of their offspring, those offspring did not survive. So historically, and in some places in the world that still exists, um, infants' survival is inextricably, um, linked to maternal survival. So we can't be fighting all over the place. I think that it's not good for our health and wellness, and it's certainly not good for our offspring. So how do you get your genes into the next generation? They gotta grow up and make babies themselves.

   12. CWChris Williamson17:57

       Okay. S- whereas if the man was to die in some fistfight gone wrong, the kids are still probably going to survive, mom's still around. Men also a little bit more physically robust, a bit more tolerant of being hit in the head, that's why we've got the brow ridge and the bigger hands and the blah, blah, blah.

   13. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt18:13

       Yeah, yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson18:14

       Okay. How, how effective is indirect aggression?

   15. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt18:19

       And just before we say that too, get to that, um, uh, before I answer that, the other thing too is that men don't always stick around and yet we still, we still have managed. It'd be better if they did, historically, but they haven't always though, and they still don't really always stick around. I just needed to put that dig in. Okay. See? 'Cause I'm like really good at indirect aggression-

   16. CWChris Williamson18:39

       (laughs)

   17. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt18:39

       ... from a research perspective. And, uh-

   18. CWChris Williamson18:41

       So, and it is effective. It is effective.

   19. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt18:43

       It is. (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson18:44

       I, I, I felt it in my soul.

   21. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt18:46

       What is that? Me-search research? So, um, it's incredibly effective. It really is. And again, because women are so attuned to it. So it doesn't have the same hit on men, so us using it against men doesn't have the same effect, but man, are we ever good at picking it up, women. We see it in a nanosecond. I coach adolescent girls, I'm a high performance soccer coach, and I tell them, I can hear them roll their eyes, like a kilometer away. I know when it's going down. And we do, we, we notice that. Um, there are memes, like you go onto any social media platform and there's tons of memes of like, you know, a woman like opening the door real quickly 'cause she heard somebody like roll their eyes or do a ... (sighs) You know?

   22. CWChris Williamson19:31

       Mm-hmm.

   23. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt19:31

       We come back and we hear it. We know it.

   24. CWChris Williamson19:34

       Uh, there's a number of interesting

4. 19:35 – 27:51

   Intra-Sex Dynamics of Female Sports

   1. CWChris Williamson19:35

      studies going on at the moment to do with female sports. I think, um, tennis players and basketball players on opposite teams, given that you've been your ethnographic, uh, in-place research with your high performance female soccer team, what have you observed about inter-, intra-team love and distaste and all that stuff?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt19:58

      Oh. I've noticed so much, and in fact I've studied a lot of the things that I've noticed. So one of the things I've noticed, f- ... and then we actually have a study that showed this to be true, more so for adolescent girls than for adolescent boys, but (clears throat) adolescent girls make a lot of social comparisons. Is she prettier than me? Is she better than me? Is she smarter than me? Is she more popular? Those social comparisons elicit jealousy, and the way that jealousy is managed is either it's turned inward, they become depressed, anxious, so they're like, "I'm not as good as so-and-so," or they turn it outward, which is more common, and they tear down their rival. So, "The only reason that she's playing left fullback and I'm a left fullback is because her dad's the coach or her mom's the coach," that sort of thing. So we show, we showed that longitudinally, that's the pathway, and we showed it to be stronger in girls than in boys. One thing I notice all the time is that, um, like when somebody's done you wrong on the field, you can't let it go if you're a girl or a woman, but men just go out for a beer right after the game. They don't give a shit. It's done with, let's move on, right? So-

   3. CWChris Williamson21:06

      Does that matter whether it's your own team or the opposition?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt21:09

      We can't let it go from the opposition. So I'll get to this. So what happens is, um, it's very common to do a handshake after the game in North America, and, um, and for you to not get your hand shook by somebody who thinks you did them dirty on the field. Whereas men just shake hands and get on with it. And there was a study that looked at this across, think it was 44 different countries, post-affiliative behavior after competitions, and it showed that women around the world just can't let it go. So like, if somebody's done us wrong, it's there, it's there for life. Like, if you did me wrong in grade five and I ran into you just now, it's on, okay?

   5. CWChris Williamson21:51

      (laughs)

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt21:51

      So anyhow, so I notice that and I don't notice ... and I coached little boys too, and I never noticed that. And then they talk about the girls on the other team and the women on the other team, and, "What a bitch. I can't believe she did this," this and that. Like, they're personally offended by a slide tackle gone wrong, whereas, you know, men don't, don't really seem to care about that. And then the other thing I've noticed that, is that on a girls' team or a young women's team, the best player on the team is not necessarily the most popular player on the team. Whereas in boys' teams and men's teams, the best player on the team is almost invariably always the most popular person on that team, is always the leader. So we don't care if you're the best per se, unless you get to like the high, high, high end of, um, of elite women's sports, um, that's not what makes you popular. And in fact, being the best might actually make, get you bullied on a girls' team or women's team, because how dare you think you're so good? So there's this whole th- theory about tripping the prom queen, I've written about it, um, knocking down the tall poppy, and we're pretty good at making sure women stay in their place, and if they're not gonna stay in their place and they're gonna think too well of themselves, we'll put 'em back there real quick.

   7. CWChris Williamson23:12

      Okay, so status and competence are split apart in female hierarchies in a way that they are not in male hierarchies.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt23:22

      100%. And it's interesting 'cause I read Carli Lloyd's autobiography and she talked about how, um-

   9. CWChris Williamson23:27

      Who's that?

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt23:28

       Carli Lloyd is one of the most decorated women's, uh, football player in the world. She won the Ballon d'Or, um, for the, uh, be- and also the best player for, uh, the FIFA World Cup when it was here in Canada in 2015. She wrote a ... her ... in her autobiography she talks about how when she joined the national team that sometimes y- she felt that women weren't passing to her, the ball even, because she was seen as competition. And can you imagine like, you know, if you're playing a sport, even if it's like a beer league and you're not that good as a guy, you take yourself off and sit on the bench so that you guys can win the championship. Whereas I think, and it's been said by many of my colleagues, in some ways women and girls would rather lose the game and have everybody play than win. Now, of course I'm not talking about at the elite-elite level, 'cause that's gonna have different parameters and different personality types.

   11. CWChris Williamson24:25

       Mm. But you've got this, a preference for egalitarianism that-

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt24:30

       Yeah, a preference for knowing your place and staying in your place.

   13. CWChris Williamson24:33

       (laughs) Yeah, I, uh ...I learned some interesting stuff to do with the behavior of male and female students as they walk out of exam halls and they talk to each other. And the guys will say, "Oh, yeah. Question three, absolutely smashed it. I, I revised that. Like, that was absolutely great." Whereas the girls will go, "Oh, you know, it was all really hard. I probably failed. It's not so good." And the guys will also say that too, but it seems like the guys have less of an issue proclaiming their successes. Uh, again, also super interesting study where, um, girls will tend to downplay qualifications and accolades if they think that their responses are going to be seen by other people, as opposed to if they're being kept private. So there is this very below the surface, uh, you know, undersea current that's going on here with how women play with status, uh, what they want other people to know about their accolades and their accomplishments. They do not want to enact the ire or the jealousy or the envy of any of the other girls specifically that are in their location. And I think the, uh, and final bit is they're probably at least partially aware that many of the accomplishments that they could be talking about probably don't impact their mate value all that much, so it's going to be a detriment to me to the females that are around me. And maybe not that, like, is the, uh, is the guy around you going to be that much more attracted to you if you say that you smashed that exam than if you didn't? Like, is your socioeconomic competence going to be-

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt26:13

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson26:13

       ... a big part of it?

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt26:15

       He's not gonna be turned off by it, that's for sure. But what's gonna happen is, like the reason why women, they make themselves smaller, not because of men. They make themselves smaller so that they don't get, th- they don't attract the negative attention of women. We can't brag. We can't say what we're good at, because then you think you're special and you'll get torn down. And then, and then we wonder why we lack confidence, right? Like, it's, it's just really interesting. A lot of times people will talk about how women dress for other women, and it, there's some truth to that, right? Like, we really are trying to, um, please other women and, um, and minimize the discomfort that could come, um, from not pleasing them. Um, Amy Schumer has this really funny skit, and you should try and find it after, where it's like women basically use, th- we use a lot of self-deprecating humor, so we put ourselves down all the time. Like, "Oh my goodness," you know, if somebody says something nice about us with like, "Are you kidding me? I just found that in the garbage and put it on me." You know, like whatever, you know, we go on and on and, and make sure that, um, we don't think well of our- ourselves or give the impression that we think well of ourselves. So the skit goes on about women just putting themselves down all around, and then this one woman, somebody compliments her and she just says, "Thanks." And all of their heads explode.

   17. CWChris Williamson27:37

       (laughs)

   18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt27:37

       Like, "Are you kidding me? Thanks?" Like, we just said something nice about yourself. You're supposed to put yourself down. Those are the rules. So it sh- it's spot on what she did in this, in this skit.

   19. CWChris Williamson27:49

       Talk to me about how jealousy

5. 27:51 – 33:04

   Why Women Attack to Cure Jealousy

   1. CWChris Williamson27:51

      mediates this relationship then between, uh, attractiveness comparison and indirect aggression.

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt27:58

      So it, it, it actually works just like that. It's, it's a mediator, right? So it explains the relationship. So if I am jealous, then, um, I need to remedy that icky feeling. That's not a good feeling. And so I have a couple different ways I could do it, or more than a couple. I have a few different ways I can manage it, but the more often, the more common way it's managed is by attacking myself or attacking the source of my comparison, the person that's making me feel jealous. And women are very good at attacking, um, other women whom they perceive to have more, but again, they justify it. So back to, remember we started off with impression management. Um, so they use a variety of cognitive strategies to make their egregious acts more palatable. And, um, and one way they do it is they, they make it so that the, the person that's being targeted, um, had it coming to them. It was justified. So if she wasn't so arrogant, if she wasn't, um, you know, whatever it is it's gonna be, then I wouldn't have treated her poorly.

   3. CWChris Williamson29:05

      Interesting. Did you see-

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt29:06

      And, and by the way, like I can predict what the reaction's gonna be when this comes out and when my book comes out too.

   5. CWChris Williamson29:13

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt29:13

      The reaction is gonna be that, um, you know, I have internalized the misogyny myself that, you know, what I'm saying about women-

   7. CWChris Williamson29:21

      Well, so has your data, apparently.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt29:23

      Pardon me?

   9. CWChris Williamson29:24

      So has your data, apparently.

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt29:25

       Yeah, exactly. Like I, I obviously don't like women, and I don't like women because I've believed what men have said about women. Um, and yet, you know, we do these really sneaky studies and, in the right context, we see it done. We s- it comes out like in full force. So I don't know, like maybe there is a bit of internalized misogyny. I'll own, I'll own some of the variance, but a lot of this is, uh, it persists because it works. It's very, very effective.

   11. CWChris Williamson29:58

       You don't need to worry. We've had Tanya Reynolds and Joyce Benenson and, you know, there are, there are many female heads that have been chopped off by the internet before you've got here. I think everyone that's listening is fully aware of the fact that th- being a woman, being a female, and trying to navigate the delicate samurai blade that is the female status hierarchy is really, really tough. And it does not get any easier. It is not made...You're no more prepared by ignoring the sort of thermodynamics of how these interactions work.

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt30:36

       It ... But I mean, how do you change it if you can't acknowledge it, right? So like I, I'm prepared. I've, uh, you know, dealt with it for many, many years. I know what's gonna be said. And ironically, they use indirect aggression to-

   13. CWChris Williamson30:47

       (laughs)

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt30:47

       ... make their point. And I just think, like, "Seriously? You don't see the irony in, in how you're behaving." Because certainly we should be tolerant of people holding different viewpoints. It's not like I'm espousing hate speech. But, um, Mr. Rogers, of all people, said that "If it's mentionable, it's manageable." So how do then we change our behavior if we can't acknowledge it? And it causes a lot of harm. Like, I mean, we've, we've kinda been joking around here, but some young women take their lives over this. Some older women take their lives over it. Teenage girls take their lives over this. Um, you know, the bullying, uh, that, uh, they endure is real. It's significant. It's linked to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, suicidality. So, I mean, this is an important, uh, worthy area of study. We gotta get this right.

   15. CWChris Williamson31:37

       The issue that you come up against is anything which is seen as not being upfront very, very positive for whichever the maligned or lower-down group is, is always presumed, it's always castigated very quickly as being the thing which is at fault.

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt31:55

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson31:55

       And it's ... The child wants to eat ice cream every night, that is what the child wants and would be enjoyable, but is ultimately not good for it in the long run. So you're front-loading compassion, but back-loading all of the issues that come from not actually understanding what the problem is in the first place.

   18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt32:13

       Exactly. Um, I, I would love for women to be ... and some women are. I mean, women in academia, I find, are very tough and, and can handle, uh, opinions being, um, expressed directly and in contradiction to their own viewpoints. But I just wish, just generally speaking, I think if we were a li- little less, um, sensitive, a little bit more tolerant, um, a little bit more honest, then I, we'd probably be in a better position in terms of, uh, wielding power, holding power, um, progressing with power.

   19. CWChris Williamson32:52

       Did, did you see this, uh, hypothetical hairdressing client study that came out a little while ago?

   20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt32:59

       Okay. So it's ... Gimme a, a, and one more hint. I feel like I know this.

   21. CWChris Williamson33:03

       Uh, "I

6. 33:04 – 36:34

   Hairdressers Are Sabotaging Attractive Women

   1. CWChris Williamson33:04

      explored how women sabotage hypothetical hairdressing clients through disingenuous beauty advice which would-"

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt33:09

      Oh, no.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:09

      "... detrimentally impact clients' physical attractiveness. In both studies, the more attractive the client, the more hair was recommended to be cut off. Both laywomen and female professional hairdressers-"

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt33:19

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson33:19

      "... cut most hair off women who were of the same attractiveness level as them, with women cutting the most hair off women they perceived to be about as attractive as themselves. They sabotaged women whose hair was in good condition and had requested a smaller amount cut off to a greater extent than women with hair in poor condition. Client makeup caused lower mate value laywomen to cut off less hair, suggesting the dominance incited by women wearing makeup resulted in reduced sabotage. More intrasexually competitive women, including hairdressers, cut off more hair, confirming competitor manipulation as intrasexual competitiveness strategy being employed."

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt33:54

      Yes. It ... That study finds itself in the book. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson33:58

      (laughs) Amazing.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt33:59

      Um, (clears throat) it's interesting 'cause I had this one, um, girlfriend in high school. We were in that popular group, and everybody was very attractive and had a lot of, um, assets and competencies that the peer group valued. But any time she told me that I looked really good in an outfit, I automatically had to change it-

   9. CWChris Williamson34:20

      (laughs)

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:20

       ... 'cause I just couldn't trust anything she said. Like, I mean, I just ... Like, it was almost like a given that-

   11. CWChris Williamson34:27

       It's fucking opposites day.

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:29

       ... um, okay, I look like crap and this is why she's saying it. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson34:32

       Wow. That is so good. So-

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:34

       And that's not my reaction to all women, right? But, like, experience tells you what's going on.

   15. CWChris Williamson34:40

       Bill Burr has this amazing bit about the po- body positivity movement. He thinks basically that the body positivity movement is women encouraging other women to push themselves further and further out of the appropriate mate value dating pool. That, you know-

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:55

       Interesting.

   17. CWChris Williamson34:55

       ... as you applaud women for being the size that they are, it makes a really good case that while, yeah, y- y- you get all of the points of being, you know, morally grandstanding, and "I am empathy" and "I care for the l- the, the downtrodden group," and so on and so forth, but you are also doing something that benefits your own mate, uh, value, right, which is moving more and more women away from wherever you are.

   18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt35:21

       So, are we that Machiavellian?

   19. CWChris Williamson35:24

       I think that the underlying, uh, turbulence that happens below the surface is so effective, it doesn't matter whether you are or whether you aren't, the net result is what works.

   20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt35:37

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson35:37

       And ultimately, I think that this would, you know?

   22. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt35:41

       'Cause that's some sneaky shit.

   23. CWChris Williamson35:42

       That is some sneaky shit, but I don't think that it's ... I don't think m- pretty much any woman is cognizant of this. I, this is, again, it's a bit from Bill Burr that I was listening to, and as I was listening to it, I was going, "Wow, this sounds like really comprehensive intrasexual competition from women to push the other women out of the mating pool. Hmm, I wonder if that's ..." Uh, so this is total bro science here, right?

   24. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt36:01

       And, and, you know, it's interesting 'cause I have a reaction to it, because, like, here I know people are gonna, women are gonna have a reaction to everything I've said, and now I'm having a reaction to this. So, I'm gonna have to give this some thought because, like, I- I wanna believe that we're not that Machiavellian, and I also wanna believe that, um, we, we ... I, I do know we have free will and we're conscien- conscious beings and conscientious individuals as well. So, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not buying that one just yet.

   25. CWChris Williamson36:31

       High hopes for humanity. Okay, so one

7. 36:34 – 41:35

   Declining Mental Health in Young Girls

   1. CWChris Williamson36:34

      of the other things, you mentioned it earlier on about, um...... bullying, the sort of, the effect of youth ostracization on, uh, especially young girls. Uh, some of the stuff that I learned from your work, one in four children report that they have experienced clinically elevated rates of depression, 25% of children and adolescents reported that they'd experienced significant depression, incidents and hot- hospitalization rates for new onset eating disorders increased by 60% during the pandemic, and rates for emergency department visits for attempted suicide have increased by 22% in the past few years. What is going on with young people's mental health?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt37:15

      So there's been a general decline in their mental health for the past 15 years or so. So, (clears throat) it ha- it wasn't good before the pandemic and it was worse during the pandemic. You know, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. So I've been studying, um, mental health and violence for years, and not the violence, like, not the mental health of violent people, but what happens when people are exposed to violence and the mental health issues that ensue. Um, so we have this crisis, this mental health crisis that's particularly pronounced for adolescent girls and young women, and there's a bunch of reasons why this could be the case. Um, during the pandemic, I think that a lot of it had to do with, um, social isolation. There's a lot of evidence to support that the need to belong is a fundamental human motivator to all, but it's particularly pronounced for women, and we talked about this already, so staying alive. So, you know, belonging, being in a group, affiliating, all of those things are really important for my survival and my offspring's survival. Um, so I think that challenged girls and women particularly during the pandemic. Um, but also too, we're, we're more ex- we're exposed to violence more than men, so we're more likely to be, um, victims of intimate partner violence, um, you know, uh, everything except for murder. Men get murdered more than women. Um, and then there, uh, we're big on social comparisons, and so social media has not been really good for, um, adolescent girls and for women. Um, I think all of those things contribute to poorer mental health.

   3. CWChris Williamson38:58

      Well, if you look at Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt's work, they lay an awful lot of the changes at the feet of social media. What's your, what's your perspective on that? Do you think it is the patient zero of all of this, or is there more going on?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt39:14

      There's gonna be more going on. It'll never be, w- you're never gonna find one thing that causes everything. Um, but I do think it counts for a lot of the variance. I really do. Um, we see this over and over again, um, like, I don't do any clinical work anymore, but certainly this was something that was n- when I worked in the mood disorders clinic when I was doing my internship, it's something I saw a lot. Um, yeah, girls and women make a lot of comparisons. They spend a lot of time on social media, um, and those social comparisons, I already told you, lead to jealousy, and that jealousy in turn leads to externalized or internalized behavior. Um, I don't think men use social media the same way we do. I really don't. Um, I don't, I don't know how often you take your screen and zoom it to see, um, you know, every wrinkle and every hair out of place. Do you ever do that? I'm just curious.

   5. CWChris Williamson40:08

      (laughs)

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt40:09

      No? Like, this is even, like, if I asked my husband, he'd be like, "What are you even talking about?"

   7. CWChris Williamson40:12

      Yeah.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt40:13

      Um, but certainly we do that all the time, and thank goodness that feature exists now, 'cause I used to have to take a picture-

   9. CWChris Williamson40:19

      (laughs)

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt40:19

       ... of it, and then I could zoom it. Um, anyhow, so, uh, yeah, it's not good, it's not good for the health of, uh, of females, and, and we need to get a grip on this and figure it out.

   11. CWChris Williamson40:30

       Yeah.

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt40:30

       We did this study that's just under review, and, um, so one thing I noticed that happens and hasn't been looked at, but it makes sense, so we're really interested in, um, threats to relationships, right? So, like, mate poaching and the like, and I know you know that literature very well. Um, so I was really interested in female and friendship poaching, and what it looks like for girls, or sorry, for women versus men. So, what we did was we loo- we developed a scale called a Social Media Friendships, um, Jealousy Scale, and basically said, like, you know, "How affected are you if your friend posts something and you're not tagged in it? Or your friend's geolocator tells you that they're out with all their friends and you're not invited? Um, your friend..." And it's, like, just all these things that happen on social media-

   13. CWChris Williamson41:21

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt41:22

       ... and we found that women were more affected than men by it across three studies.

   15. CWChris Williamson41:27

       Very interesting.

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt41:27

       And then they became more depressed and anxious as well, as a consequence of that jealousy.

   17. CWChris Williamson41:33

       Wow. What's

8. 41:35 – 45:25

   The Problem with Social Media

   1. CWChris Williamson41:35

      the underlying dynamic that social media is playing on which is particularly, uh, effective at, uh, impacting girls' mental health? Like, what- what- i- is it the ostracization? Is it being felt, like, uh, feeling like they're being left out?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt41:54

      It's that. It's that fe- it's that FOMO. It's that fear of missing out. It really is significant for girls and women. And it comes back again to that need to belong. I'm not suggesting that you're all psychopaths, that men are psychopaths and they don't need, uh, positive relationships and affiliation and the like. You certainly do, but we need it more. We absolutely do need it more. And so, um, you know, we, our value is, is not that it should be, but we place a lot of value on having friends and belonging, um, and being included, and when we're not, it hurts.

   3. CWChris Williamson42:29

      Give me the evolutionary explanation for why that's the case. Is it just that a woman on her own is fragile and potentially dead?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt42:36

      Is dead. She's so fragile. She needs the resources of other women, um, you know, that's that tailor, tend, and befriend hypothesis that we really do need... And there's tons of evolutionary scholars who've written about this, that women have historically relied on other women to...... to stay alive and to keep their children alive, and it still exists in some places in the world today. So it's like a fine line. Again, you need to belong, um, more so than men, um, but you also have to compete within this, um, nest of belonging, and that's really challenging, which is why I think we're so, so good at indirect aggression. We're so sophisticated in how we use it. Like, you're all pretty crude when you use it, and we're not.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:23

      Mm.

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt43:24

      We're like black belts in this.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:26

      It's a, it's a, it's a surgeon's scalpel rather than a big hammer-

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt43:30

      Totally.

   9. CWChris Williamson43:30

      ... when, when women do it.

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt43:31

       It's so funny how often I'll say to my husband, "Oh, my goodness, did you notice what she did?" I'm like, "He didn't even notice who was in the room." Like (laughs) -

   11. CWChris Williamson43:39

       (laughs)

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt43:39

       ... it's just like, "How do you get through life like this?" (laughs) But then it's like, how do we get through life where we're like so hypersensitive and attuned to every perception of slight?

   13. CWChris Williamson43:51

       Have you got any idea, th- th- this, uh, attenuation to what's going on in the room, is that on a sliding scale where certain wome- obviously this is a, on average, there is a bell curve, blah, blah. Is there a particular personality trait which really tunes that up? Is it conscientiousness? Is it neuroticism? Is it, you know, is there something that you have found that can quite accurately predict the level of attenuation that a girl would have to her surroundings and the status in her group?

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt44:21

       I think it, it, it's not gonna be any of the big five, or if you look at the HEXACO, it's not gonna be any of those per se. When we looked at it, we found like conscientiousness was actually negatively related to it. Um, but it's gonna be hypercompetitiveness. So there's the competitiveness where you, um, just like personal development competitiveness that you use to better yourself vis-a-vis yourself, and then there's the, "I need to be better than everybody else," where like everything is a zero-sum game. So women who are hypercompetitive are the ones that are more likely to be attuned to these things. They're more likely to perceive slight when things are ambiguous. They're more likely to cause harm to others who they perceive to have harmed them, um, to hold grudges, to get others mad at them, to, so to use indirect aggression. So hypercompetitive women are, um, they're difficult in a lot of ways, and they're not happy themselves, which is really interesting. Their mental health profiles are very problematic.

   15. CWChris Williamson45:22

       Wow. Talk to me about the relationship

9. 45:25 – 51:40

   Relationship Between Bullying & Status

   1. CWChris Williamson45:25

      between bullying and social status. I had, uh, Tony Volk on the show a few months ago.

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt45:31

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:31

      I adored his work on bullying. I spent a lot of time being, uh, becoming more familiar with bullying than I would have liked while I was in school, so I was getting to learn an awful lot. What, what have you found about this? Y- we've spoken a lot about social status so far, mostly for, for girls but also for boys. What is this, uh, how do these two things live in, in relationship to each other?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt45:53

      So Tony's a really good friend of mine. Um, he's fantastic. And, uh, so I, I told you about that study, the, um, slut-shaming study, the sexy confederate study. So I think one of my other more famous studies, if you can say that without getting knocked down 'cause I'm like bragging about myself, um, is, um, basically I, my, for my dissertation, my PhD, I looked at Mean Girls, the phenomenon, before it even came out as a movie. So I was really interested. At the time, scientists kept talking about popular kids being really well-adjusted, good citizens in their schools, and that sort of thing, and I kept thinking, I'd go to these conferences and say like, "What the heck are you talking about? That's not what popular kids are like." But I honestly think that there's probably an overrepresentation of nerds in academia who weren't in the popular group, so they really didn't know what it was about.

   5. CWChris Williamson46:46

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt46:46

      But I was in that popular group, and we weren't all that nice in a lot of ways. So I, for my dissertation, looked at, um, adolescents from grade 6 to grade 12, um, and whether or not they had assets and competencies that the peer group valued, so if they were attractive, good athletes, rich, funny, tough, all of those things, and how that related to bullying and, um, other status indicators like popularity and power. And what we found was, or what I found for my dissertation, was that, um, most kids who bully others have a lot of power. Um, th- then, then there's this other group of kids who bully others who have low power. Those are like the Nelsons from The Simpsons, right? So, um, that group kind of indiscriminately bullies everybody, but they're very marginalized. They're rejected. Um, you know, their future's pretty bleak. Um, but most kids who bully others are actually the elite of the school, so the reason that they're afforded power and they abuse their power is because they have things that the peer group values, right? So for girls, it's being attractive, and for boys, it's typically being athletic in North American culture, or probably even in Western culture. So every school's gonna have a different culture. Um, you know, you could go to a performing arts school, and the most popular kids at that school will be maybe the best, I don't know, whatever, guitar players or whatever. So all this to say, whatever the peer group values, that affords you power. That power then, in turn, typically gets, um, corrupted, and that's true of almost every human being on the planet. Power corrupts, and it, um, and it, and absolutely corrupts, right? So, um, so anyhow, so that's what my dissertation was about, and it's been robustly, uh, uh, replicated. You know, this is something we see over and over again. I went to Finland early in my career to give a talk on this, and they, I was, uh, hosted by, uh, S- Christina Sama-Valley, and she's like, "I don't know if we'll find this in, in Finland." And I was like, "Oh, I've been to your malls. You're gonna find it." And they found it. It's been found everywhere.

   7. CWChris Williamson49:00

      (laughs)

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt49:00

      Right? So-

   9. CWChris Williamson49:02

      What is it?

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt49:02

       And it exists in colleges, too, universities. So my daughter plays D1 soccer.It exists in D1 sports, it exists in sororities, it exists in university life. And then we get out of it.

   11. CWChris Williamson49:17

       What... Two questions. First off, what do the bullies get out of it? What, what is the benefit to them? And secondly, why do we then get out of it? What is it about growing up?

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt49:28

       So, okay, so, they get resources, right? So we've shown, and we've shown with Tony, so Tony and I... and I have published a few studies on this, they get more sex, which is awesome I guess, and good stuff for, for people. Um, they get, um, uh, better recognition. They can influence the peer group and the norms of a school more. Uh, they get more resources. People give them shit. People look at them. People adore them. All of those things are good, right? Like, they're the silverbacks of their school. Um, and then nobody messes with them, which is also a good feeling. And-

   13. CWChris Williamson50:06

       I, I don't understand, I don't understand how, uh, standing on the shoulders of lower-status individuals gives the bully ... it bestows that benefit onto them.

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt50:17

       Ah, that's not who they bully. That group doesn't bully the, the lowest, lower standard. So they do a little bit, but no, it's not that unfair fight so much. So, um, Bob Ferris's work and others have shown that, um, high-status bullies tend to bully those that are just at the next rung, the ones that are gonna be-

   15. CWChris Williamson50:37

       One below.

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt50:37

       ... challenging their status, right? So those are the ones that are in trouble. And, um, or anybody who threatens their catbird seat, in a sense.

   17. CWChris Williamson50:49

       Is that because it's a signal of low status to seem like you're in competition with someone who's supposedly 10 rungs below you?

   18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt50:56

       Well, they're not on your radar, because, you know, the thing is, the corrupting influence of power also makes you impervious to the plight of others. So you're not paying attention to others unless you're paying attention to people that are a threat to you. That's all you're really paying attention to. So I don't know if it's that, um, c- if, if they're that conscientious where it's, like, such an unfair fight and you're a loser if you pick on somebody who's perceived as a loser kinda thing.

   19. CWChris Williamson51:21

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt51:21

       Uh, I don't think it's like that. I think it's about maintaining, um, so achieving and maintaining hegemony. I really think it's about trying to maintain power, and, uh, and you maintain power by making sure those that are trying to threaten your power base don't get too close.

   21. CWChris Williamson51:39

       There's a meme

10. 51:40 – 59:50

    How is Adult Bullying Different?

    1. CWChris Williamson51:40

       that very well may be in your book as well that says, uh, "Everything after high school is just high school."

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt51:46

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson51:46

       Uh, where it talks about (laughs) , you know, the lunch table that you sit at and the cool kids and the games and so on and so forth. You've suggested there that once your D1 soccer career is over, you enter the real world and these dynamics at least begin to dissipate. What, uh, uh, how much do they fall away? What's adult bullying look like? Is there even such a thing in the same context as childhood bullying?

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt52:11

       Adult bullying looks different from childhood bullying in that it's not as, um, status-oriented, like I just suggested, these high-status bullies. It's more, um... I mean, certainly it h- it exists, like in the workplace, people will pick on somebody who they perceive as a threat to them. The reason it dissipates is because our peer groups are more fluid. Um, they're not as stable. So I think the stability of high school peer groups is what contributes to it as well, because the hierarchy gets formed through stability, and that doesn't exist in adulthood as much, right? So, like, you have your hockey friends, and then you have, you know, your gym bros, and then you have... I'm just making

    5. NANarrator52:53

       I'm-

    6. CWChris Williamson52:53

       All of them are gym bros.

    7. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt52:54

       You know?

    8. CWChris Williamson52:54

       They're all gym bros. I only have one group of friends and they're all gym bros.

    9. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt52:57

       Okay. But, but my point is, like, you know, and then you have the workplace, and you have an atypical job, so let's just say, like, mostly we go to the jo- same job where we see the same people over and over again. All of those things sort of happen, but we have all these different groups, right? So it's less likely to take hold unless there's more stability. One place that does happen though, that you kinda re- you kind of, um, see high school happen over and over again is when your kids, um, when you have kids and then you become, like, a soccer mom. Soccer moms are scary. Like, they're, that's where-

    10. CWChris Williamson53:31

        Why?

    11. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt53:31

        ... the high school hierarchy comes up again. It's, honestly, it's high school all over again. There's a queen bee mom. She usually is the manager of the soccer team. She organizes everything in favor of her daughter or her son. Um, she manipulates other moms. Uh, you get, you don't get included to go to the mall with them during tournaments. Um, uh, you know, it, it's all high school all over again, and it's really interesting why that happens. So we kinda relive it again through our kids.

    12. CWChris Williamson54:00

        Right. So when the social groups aren't sufficiently ossified and stable, you don't have enough time for everything to lock in and for people to understand, "I am this with this group and this with another group."

    13. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt54:13

        Yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson54:13

        School creates a purpose-built env- almost a purpose-built environment to precisely create this, um, predictability of what's going to go on. We know where people have come before. Someone news come in, but they come into an existing dynamic as opposed to just being part of this sort of swirling mess.

    15. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt54:31

        100%. So very well summarized. I think I'm more wordy than you are, but that's probably why you're good at your job, and I'm just, like, trying my best here.

    16. CWChris Williamson54:39

        No, no.

    17. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt54:39

        But the other thing that happens that I think contributes to this is that we can get out of toxic relationships a lot easier than kids can. So if I'm in grade l- 11 and all the girls are treating me poorly 'cause I'm, like, the cute one on campus, that sort of thing, like, w- how am I gonna manage that? So I have to change schools, and historically that wasn't really allowed. Now we allow it more. Um, before the internet, um, you could kind of escape that. Now you can't escape it as much as you, as you used to be able to. But anyhow, as adults, like, "Okay, so the moms are being mean to me on the soccer team."... we just move teams. Like, it's, it's easier than what it is in high school.

    18. CWChris Williamson55:20

        Yeah. So again, it's that sort of ossified nature, the fact that it's predictable, the fact that it's gonna continue going into the future.

    19. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt55:27

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson55:28

        So funny that, uh, you get school, and then you leave, and then you get dragged back into school from your children, and then the dynamics of school happen again even though you're no longer in school.

    21. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt55:41

        And, yeah. And, and they do and they don't. Like, so in some ways, like, like I see it replicate itself also in academia. Like, academia, oh man, they're a bunch of, like, bully brats. Like (laughs) ... But it's like, we're, like, you know when the... What's that, what's that, um, what's the saying, you know, like when the stakes are so low you have to fight fiercely? And that's kind of what's happening. But anyhow, anytime you can get a hierarchy going, that hierarchy is gonna organize in such a way, and the people at the top are typically gonna abuse their power with very few exceptions. So there are very few people who are just pure implicit power, and implicit power is the kind of power that you get by having assets and competency that the peer view, group values, and you, um, you elevate people. You treat them well.

    22. CWChris Williamson56:30

        Mm-hmm.

    23. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt56:30

        Most people are a mixture of nice and mean, implicit and explicit power. Explicit power is the kinda power you get by, uh, you know, making people afraid, um-

    24. CWChris Williamson56:43

        Dominance and prestige.

    25. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt56:43

        ... eliciting compliance, that sort of thing. There was this... My favorite study that's ever been done was a study on parking. And, um, so w- what's your prediction? If somebody is in the parking stall and they know you're at Costco... Do you have Costco where you live? You must have Costco.

    26. CWChris Williamson57:00

        Yeah, I do.

    27. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt57:01

        Right. You're at Costco-

    28. CWChris Williamson57:01

        I also know, I also know the study, so if you-

    29. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt57:04

        Ah, okay. Well, like, now what am I doing?

    30. CWChris Williamson57:04

        ... if you try to get me to predict it, you can, you, you can, yeah, yeah (laughs) , ruin the game.
11. 59:50 – 1:13:30

    How Our Bodies React to Bullying

    1. CWChris Williamson59:50

       the case that our bodies would respond to childhood bullying by making all of this stuff happen? Is this an adaptive response, or is it just a byproduct of some other fuckery?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:00:02

       I think it's an adaptive response, so it sounds a bit weird, because again back to this need to belong. So if we were all lone wolves and we weren't, like, taking care of each other and we didn't have this strong need for affiliation, we wouldn't be where we are as humans, right? Um, and every system, like... So when you look at the, the prevalence of psychopathy is 2% worldwide. You know, we can't tolerate more than 2% on, on that, on psychopathy. It just creates havoc. So we need to get along. We need to belong. Um, and we need to feel pretty shitty when we don't belong 'cause then it motivates you to then do everything you can to belong. Um, and then there'd probably be some that would argue that it also weeds out the weak. But, you know, the kids, people who get bullied aren't often weak. Like, people are bullied for a range of reasons, and a lot of times, especially for adolescent girls, it's because they have-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:58

       Like Bravita.

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:00:58

       ... they're pretty. They're pretty good looking and-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:01:00

       Yeah.

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:01:00

       ... they have a lot of assets and competencies. Like, you'd mentioned that you had a pretty rough go at this. What do you think, what would you attribute it to?

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:09

       Um, I struggled to relate to other kids, so I wasn't socially very attuned or adept. I think I was quite awkward. Uh, there was definitely a neediness around, because I was an only child going to school. I spoke differently. I don't have the accent from the place that I'm from. Uh, I did cricket, which was, you know, seen as this sort of upper class sport in one of the most working class towns in all of the UK. And yeah, it was just, uh, ostracized and, uh, a combination of not being socially nimble and, uh, doing things that made you stand out, with probably being a- a- a physically unformidable child. I was, uh, like a skinny kid-

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:01:50

       Were you small?

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:50

       Yeah, yeah, small, skinny kid. Um, and I mean, I ended up growing probably height-wise at the same rate as everybody else, but there was lots ... You know, there's these dudes in school that just hit puberty at 10 and a- 10 and a half years old before you've even got into secondary school, and these guys are massive. So yeah, I think that was ... that would have contributed a good bit.

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:02:10

        So it's interesting, so we did a study and we found that, like, late developing boys were 22 times more likely to be bullied than on-time, their on-time peers.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:02:20

        Hmm.

    12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:02:20

        So these, like, squirmy little boys, especially in places that have a dog-eat-dog world, like the UK and Canada and United States, they don't fare too well, and then they, then they go through puberty, and then life gets a little bit better. And it's interesting though, what do you think for girls?

    13. CWChris Williamson1:02:38

        Ooh.

    14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:02:38

        So it comes back all full circle to slut shaming.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:02:41

        Wow, okay. So early developing girls, if you have precocious puberty and you look more like a woman early on, you're going to be seen as more of a threat by the girls, and they're going to be picked on.

    16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:02:51

        Oh, bullied.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:02:52

        Wow.

    18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:02:53

        Big time.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:02:53

        Because you are going to get the attention of the boys in class. They're going to be looking at the girl who's got boobs at- at 12 years old, and the girl that doesn't have boobs at 12 years old is going to be ignored. The only way that she can rebalance this disparity is to claw down the one that's developed.

    20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:03:09

        You got it.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:03:10

        Fucking hell.

    22. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:03:11

        So you can come do your PhD with me now.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:03:13

        I'm ready.

    24. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:03:13

        We're ready to go.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:03:14

        I told you, I'm r- I'm moving to Canada. Uh, but yeah, I mean, the brain developing thing, just to kind of round that out, is the suggestion that if you as a child ancestrally grew up in an environment where there was a lot of, uh, peer group ostracization, uh, an awful lot of pressure, perhaps you were left out, perhaps it was by design, or perhaps it was simply just, uh, as a byproduct of the climate or the period that you were living through, there is a likelihood down the line from that, that the world is still quite an unsafe place to be. Therefore, you being more forthcoming, you being more needy, you being more anxious and more attached to the people that are around you is going to be adaptive, because I am living in a period that is not particularly safe socially or from a kinship perspective. Is that kind of the, sort of the narrative story that our- our evolution is telling us?

    26. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:04:13

        I think it's one pathway, and that's the whole thing. I think we tend to want to tell a simple story, but in truth, there's tons of heter- heterogeneity, and we should expect it. Like, we ... I mean, there's just, you know, there's people who start in the same spot and end up in different spots, and people who end up in the s- at the end spots the same but their beginnings are so different. So-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:04:32

        Hmm.

    28. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:04:32

        ... multi-finality, equi-finality, that sort of thing. I think that, um, it's really hard when you think about the evolutionary significance of bullying, and I know you spoke to- to Dr. Volk, to Tony about this, because, um, like, it's such a cruel experience and it's such a damaging experience that it's difficult to put an evolutionary lens on it and say, "How could this be adaptive?" Like, I mean, I think it's adaptive for the people who are perpetrating the violence, but not for those that are receiving the violence.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:05:03

        Mm-hmm.

    30. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:05:04

        I can't think of how it makes them better people in any way. Um, people will say that they wouldn't want to trade their experience because they've achieved excellence and it made who they are. It's so interesting how often you hear about people being bullied and they're really prominent individuals. I just watched the Netflix series, uh, Beckham. Have you watched it yet?
12. 1:13:30 – 1:20:52

    Reversing the Harm of Past Bullying

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:30

       about, so for the people that are listening who might be thinking, "Okay, well, I went through some bad times in school. Uh, am I now locked into a life of suboptimal brain development and my hippocampus and gray matter is smaller? I'm never gonna be able to remember my 16-digit number across the front of my card." How possible is it to reverse the harm that's been created neurologically, biologically from bullying?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:13:55

       So we don't know, but I think that it's gonna be okay for a lot of people. And the reason I say that is that we're adaptive. Like, so we have hundreds of thousands of years of selection pressure. We are designed to survive. We're designed to be resilient. And so, um, we know that neuroplasticity exists across the lifespan, so we, you know, we can, I think, reverse some of this damage for sure. But in the absence of knowing that, knowing that it causes us much harm, it behooves us to be better citizens, and we, we really need to be reducing this, right? We can't just be hoping that, "Well, you know, in the end, at the end of the day, we'll be able to fix this-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:14:38

       Pick up the pieces-

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:14:39

       ... or we don't do the way we have."

    5. CWChris Williamson1:14:39

       ... in your late 30s or something.

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:14:41

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:14:41

       Yeah. I mean, well, and also, the, the, just the lived experien- I mean, again, like, I can fly the flag from my ethnographic research, like, it's just not enjoyable. Like, you have-

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:14:50

       It's not.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:14:50

       ... this 4,000 weeks that you've got on this planet, and, uh, o- of them, however many hundred is spent, like, really just not enjoying your time, feeling bad about yourself.

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:14:59

        It's funny that you said that. Like, I'm giving, um, a, the keynote for UNICEF's violence, um, conference that's coming up in a couple of weeks.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:15:06

        Pro-violence, presumably.

    12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:08

        Pardon me?

    13. CWChris Williamson1:15:09

        Pro-violence, presumably.

    14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:11

        Yeah, yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:15:12

        You're pro-, you're pro-... You're going into-

    16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:14

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:15:14

        ... "We need more violence," uh...

    18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:14

        The violence symposium, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anti, you mean (laughs) . Anti-violence. Anyhow, um, and so the abstract that I wrote was just about what you said in a sense, like that, um, it's interesting how people with lived experience have told us over and over again how harmful this was, and is, being bullied, being treated poorly. Um, even women being treated poorly by other women and, um, and yet we needed to, like, put 30 years worth of science to it to, in a sense, acknowledge their pain was real. Like, how, like, that's bullshit, like, we, like, why did we need to do this? Like, we certainly needed to show it, but why do we have to show it over and over again? Like, we keep showing it without doing anything about it, like, we need to do something about it and stop-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:16:01

        I see that.

    20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:16:01

        ... documenting the harms.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:16:02

        Th- well, definitely, you know, speaking as a, a, a member, a proud member of the ex-bullied community, I guess one of the issues with at least being too forthcoming is what I said at the beginning. It's the reason I was reticent to bring it up in the first place on the show, that it's a signal of low status. You know, you'd already had to battle with this before in the past. Is this not something that I should've already got past into adulthood? Is this really something that plays on my mind? And even if it's something that doesn't play on your mind and that you have got past and you do feel like you've managed to get a balanced life and you've got friends that you care about and you think that you've repaired the damage that might have been done to your brain and the, all the rest of the stuff, even the fact that you're able to acknowledge that it was a part of the story in the first place is also kind of still this signal-

    22. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:16:47

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:16:47

        ... of vulnerability. You don't want to give the people that mistreated you any more power, or any more time, or any more thought than they already got out of you-

    24. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:16:55

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:16:55

        ... when it was happening at the time. So it's just a, you know, the real litany of reasons as to why people who have gone through bullying wouldn't want to bring it up, even in adulthood when it's no longer affecting them.

    26. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:17:10

        It's interesting because, um, women are more, uh, vengeful than men. You may not think that, but it's true. Um, so we never l- forget somebody who's done us wrong. Remember I said? So if I was you and I had the podcast, like, meaning, like, I was as popular as you and I had the good lighting that you have in the back of me and stuff like that, I'd be naming names (laughs) .

    27. CWChris Williamson1:17:35

        (laughs)

    28. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:17:35

        I'd be like, "Here's a list of the people who've fucked with me (laughs) ," and I'd out them. But you're, like, a kinder person. It's interesting that you still say this, though, because, um, you're probably very familiar with the social pain research.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:17:49

        No. What's that?

    30. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:17:50

        Okay, so there, so, um, about a, maybe about 15 years ago, um, you know, with the, the advancements in FMRIs and the like, what they found was that the physical pain network, so you stub your toe, your brain lights up. It tells you, you know, "This thing just happened." You pull your foot away, that sort of thing. So there's this mechanism, and we know what parts of the brain that are, um, activated when you physically hurt yourself. When you're ostracized, treated poorly, bullied, you name it, the same areas of your brain are activated. It's called social pain. The difference between social pain and physical pain... So there's overlapping neural structures, physical and s- and social pain, and this has evolutionary significance, again, because, um, it's a neural alarm that you're not belonging, so you better be motivated to get back in there and belong, right? So it actually does hurt. And it's interesting 'cause, like, when you think about the physical pain me- or the, the, the... Physical pain metaphors are used to describe social pain around the world. "Broke my heart when I wasn't invited to that party." "Felt like you punched me in the stomach when I think about it," right? So the thing about physical pain is that it's short-lived. So I had two daughters, and both times, the epidural didn't take, which is complete BS, but I can tell you... And I don't have a visceral reaction. I don't. But if I think about the time when my daughter was in grade six and she wasn't invited to that party-... I feel like I felt that day. And so social pain lasts a lifetime, and it's very, it's, it's very, um, socially motivating, but it's really hard to shake. So when you're 88 and you think about when you were eight, you'll feel the same thing. It's so salient, and that's been shown to be very robust. Um, so, you know, this is why it hurts. It hurts forever. Um, it's, it serves an evolutionary, um, function, but it's kind of like an evolutionary function that took steroids and, and kinda went off.
13. 1:20:52 – 1:25:51

    Interventions to Reduce Bullying

    1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:20:52

    2. CWChris Williamson1:20:52

       What about... Given that you're talking about this an awful lot, and it's obviously a topic that you're passionate about, what are the interventions that look most promising for reducing the rates of bullying?

    3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:21:03

       So the... Most programs don't work very well. They work a tiny bit if they work at all. And then there was a, a paper that just came out, a meta-analysis that involved over 100 studies, and it showed that the effects were pretty small again. Um, better than they've been in the past. But the programs that work tend to be universal, so they address all kids in the school. Um, they do it before they head out of middle school 'cause they're not very effective in high school. Um, they, um, involve the peers but are not peer-led. Um, they, um, include education of teachers. Um, they have consistency. So there's, like, some components here and there, but ultimately, I think that the reason the programs don't work is because we don't have a good enough appreciation of that, that dichotomy I talked about, the low-status bullies and the high-status bullies. And I think historically, all of our programs have been devoted towards, um, the remediation of Nelson instead of the remediation of, you know, that mean girl clique. I think then we'd be in a better position if we, um, if we addressed that, that top-tier group.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:22:16

       I- it's such a, uh, kind of like... n- not a game of Russian roulette, but a little bit of a Catch-22 for parents and for the kid. You know, by bringing it up, uh, there's a fear that more bullying is going to happen to you. The parent goes into school. That also lowers the status of the kid presumably because they can't handle it on their own, and then the parent now is super vigilant. I mean, there must be something like, uh, even though it's no longer a developing brain, but, uh, second-to-order parent to the child that's being bullied vigilance effect which is going on, you know, increased anxiety, all the rest of it. So they're now going to be asking their kid when they come home, "Did that girl speak to you today? H- has anything changed?" And you're then kind of scared 'cause, "Mum, I don't want to say... If I tell you what's happened, then you're j- I'm scared you're gonna shout at me. I feel like I'm at fault." And you end up, as the child, I certainly did this with my parents. I ended up being, like, uh, being scared of telling my mum and dad that b- bad things had happened at school, but I was also having to absorb the bad things that were happening. So you end up kind of like, I don't know, this sort of neutron star that's just absorbing whatever, whatever is around it in a desperate attempt to try and just not make the situation any worse.

Episode duration: 1:26:43