Why Men Are At The Top Of Society (and the bottom) - Roy Baumeister

1. 0:00 – 7:27

   Why Men Are Seen as More Expendable

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You say that cultures flourish by exploiting men. What's that mean?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister0:05

      Well, um, there are multiples a- multiple aspects to it, but, uh, uh, first of all, men are more expendable, uh, than women, uh, probably for basic biological reasons. If a, a small group loses half its men, the next generation can still be full size. Loses half its women, it'll be a long time to, uh, to recover. So it takes, it risks men, uh, puts men to work, um, to, to produce things. Most of, uh, um, you know, the structures of society are really created by men. Um, I was talking to Carol Huven at Harvard, and she said, uh, th-there was a feminist who had an epiphany one point. She was looking out the window and said, "The whole world was built by men." [chuckles] Uh, you look at the buildings and the roads and the cars and the, uh, all those things and, uh, and that's, that's just the physical world, the institutions too, the, uh, the banks and the, uh, the schools and the, uh, armies and the governments and the marketplaces. Um, I mean, women do plenty of wonderful things, and they're important partners in the flourishing of our species. Uh, but, uh, creating large social systems, that seems always to be the men's job. Um, and so our cultures compete against other cultures, which is mostly groups of men competing against other groups of men. And now women have joined the groups in many places, but still the institutional structures are created, created by men.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:45

      Why is it the case that men have been over-represented as the builders in that case, both cognitively, uh, systemically, physically?

   4. RBRoy Baumeister1:57

      Oh, why is it? Um, it's 'cause m-men do those things and, and, and women don't. Um, what I realized fairly early on, and I have some publications of this and, and it was, um, an early part of my thinking, um, is that the way people are being social, there are a couple ways. There's interacting one-to-one or there's doing things in large groups. Now, I noticed this 'cause in my field, social psychology, people were starting to say women are more social than men, um, because they're really invested in the relationships, the one-to-one relationships, uh, which is a big area of study in my field. But if you start looking at things that people do in groups, um, men do those much more than, uh, than women. And I think probably again, it's a, uh, innate, uh, tendency. Uh, the most important relationship in biology is the mother to child, uh, one and so that's a one-to-one relationship. Uh, in humans, uh, women got particular men to, uh, uh, form a one-to-one relationship with them, uh, to protect and provide and do all those things which, uh, really enabled the larger brain to grow and, you know, made everything else possible. Um, whereas men do things more in, in larger groups, and so competition between groups is, is, is men against men, whether it's on the battlefield or in the business marketplace or, or scientifically. Um, um, men compete, uh, uh, in groups. It's, it's, it's not something that, uh, women naturally do and form large groups. There are even experiments when I was researching this they would do with children, and they'd have two boys playing together, and then the experimenter would bring in a third boy. Uh, and the boys would say, "Okay, sure, come on, join the game." But if it's two girls, they don't really want the third girl. They, they exclude her and reject her. Z- Suggests there's this mental focus on the one-to-one relationship. Again, it's better for intimacy. A, a lot of the differences, psychological differences between men and women, uh, can be, you know, understood this way. For example, most data show that women are more mo- emotionally expressive, uh, than men. They sh- share their feelings directly and, and so on. Um, well, in a one-to-one relationship, that's what you wanna do, so the other person understands you, so you can, uh, share your feelings and the other person can take care of you and respond to you and so on. In a large group, showing your feelings all the time is not so useful. Obviously, in the economic marketplace, uh, if you go, "Oh, this is wonderful. I gotta have it," well, the price is gonna be higher, [chuckles] uh, than if you say, "Oh, I'm not sure. Uh, maybe not today." "Wait a minute. Come back. I'll give you a better deal." Um, and, uh, you may have, in a large group, you have rivals and, uh, competitors, so again, you don't wanna give away too much. So the, the emotional reserve of men is more suited to the large group where the expressiveness of the woman, uh, is suited to the, the one-to-one relationship. And, uh, um, that's why love and family and all those things women are, are sometimes considered they are the natural experts at these things and, uh, you know, some of the researchers tell the men, "Well, listen to your, your wife on this." But it also explains why women haven't ever organized themselves in large groups to, uh, [coughs] to, to get things done. I mean, why didn't women ever, 50 women build a boat and sail off into the unknown to explore things? You know, men did things like this, you know, throughout history and all over the world. Um, but, uh, y-you don't do that as one or two people. You do it in a larger group. Um-So again, uh, the, the men in groups seems to be a natural pattern. There's even some evidence about this in, in the other great apes. Uh, I was reading like Michael Tomasello's work on there, and he says, uh, groups of male chimpanzees will go out and get in a battle with others, or sometimes they'll go hunting together. It's not real cooperation, he says. Each one's really out for itself. But you have more opportunities if you, if you go out in the group. Uh, but the females don't do that. He said about the only thing you see cooperation among adult female chimpanzees is sometimes if, if one of them has a, a cute little baby, a, a couple of the other adult females will join together and, and come and, uh, go over to that woman and, uh, that, that ape and beat her up and steal her baby and kill it and eat it. Uh, which is fortunate we don't seem to see much of that [chuckles] in our species.

   5. CWChris Williamson6:56

      Right.

   6. RBRoy Baumeister6:56

      Uh, we left that behind evolutionarily. Uh, but that's one of the only things Jane Goodall and her observations, uh, had, had that, uh, with, uh, with gorillas, I think also that, uh, a couple adult females would kill and eat all the babies, um, 'cause it was a nice, tasty snack for them. Um, and with the two of them, they could overpower the, uh, the mother. Um, but, uh, you know, it's obviously not productive cooperation. That's just taking someone's baby and eating it.

2. 7:27 – 13:25

   The Hidden Power of Intrasexual Competition

   1. CWChris Williamson7:27

      What about the, the ways that males compete and females compete? D- I have to assume that that, uh, level of competition drives different kinds of outcomes for each sex.

   2. RBRoy Baumeister7:42

      Yes. Well, um, there was the idea for a long time that women don't compete or don't like to compete as much, uh, and then they gradually realized that, that this is wrong. It's just they don't wanna acknowledge it that openly. Uh, they do compete often for, for love, specifically for the, uh, uh, affection and attraction of the, of the most desirable men. Um, but that often can't be acknowledged. It's done sometimes by blackening the reputation of the other woman and spreading negative, uh, uh, stories about her. Um, even some of those my, uh, my former PhD student, Tanya Reynolds, who's, uh, really made a, a terrific career studying female competition, uh, in, in evolutionary, uh, context. Um, i-i-in one of her experiments, uh, they-- she wanted to see will there be gossip used?

   3. CWChris Williamson8:38

      Mm.

   4. RBRoy Baumeister8:38

      Uh, will women just spontaneously gossip about someone else? So she had people come in, told two women to work on a project together, and so she leaves them alone, and they're working. And then the one who's actually a, a, a, a research assistant who's working, pretending to be a, a subject in experiment, but she's actually following a script, [clears throat] and she says, uh, "Ugh, I just can't do this today. I don't feel good. Uh, I drank too much last night. I think I hooked up with two different guys last night." So [chuckles] she, uh, delivers this very juicy tidbit, and then, then they go on. And then that woman leaves, and then in comes another woman who is another real subject, and the question is, does the woman repeat this, uh, this gossip about her? Well, it turned out [chuckles] what they also varied is, is the woman who made this disclosure. Sometimes she was dressed really sexy and hot and looked very nice.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:33

      Mm.

   6. RBRoy Baumeister9:33

      And sometimes she just looked like a mess and was not very attractive. Well, when, when she was attractive, so she was, uh, got-- energized the woman's competitive gears, then they gossiped, and they said, um, uh, "So and so hooked up with two men last night." Um, but, but Tanya also noticed, and, and, and other research, uh, by her has, has borne this out, they don't do it in a seemingly malicious way. They say, "Oh, I was really concerned about so and so. I, I wonder. There's a problem. She said she hooked up with two different men last night. I, I-- That must be bad for her. I'm kind of worried about her." So the negative information gets spread. And remember, why would you only worry about the well-dressed, attractive woman?

   7. CWChris Williamson10:18

      Mm.

   8. RBRoy Baumeister10:18

      Why wouldn't you worry about, uh, the other woman? Uh, but, you know, that shows the, the competitive, uh, edge to it. So, um, anyway, there is, there is competition, uh, among women in, in the, in the romantic sphere. Um, most studies look in, in terms of, uh, career stuff. Now, I have to say, when we talk about differences between men and women, they're-- we're talking overlapping distributions. So the difference between the average man and the average woman is real, but it might be fairly small compared to the variety within women. And I've known some extremely competitive women and some extremely not competitive women. And, uh, on average, women are, are, are less and are less ambitious too. Um, probably a good, uh, the, the evolutionary people talk about it that, uh, we're descended from men that really the top male got to do most of the reproducing. So in, in, say, the, the other great apes and even in polygamy, which is, uh, existed in the majority of cultures in the history of the world, one man with multiple wives, um, well, that's the rich, successful man and, uh, um, he gets to have multiple wives and multiple children, which means a lot of men don't get any wife. Um, so the drive to get to the top, uh, you know, we're descended from the man who did it. A man may have been pretty smart, but he didn't care about outdoing all the others or might have been very physically strong and didn't care about that. Well, then he didn't, didn't rise to the top, didn't pass on his genes. We're descended from the ones who really did, uh, try to, uh, to compete. It's, it's part people bringing this up. I've been thinking about the grade inflation issues, uh, and problems recently, and, uh, it disengages the young men because, uh, my wife explained this to me once. She said, "Well, the woman wants to get an A, and she doesn't really mind if everybody else gets an A too. Uh, as for the manIf you can't be better than the other people, what's the point? If everybody gets an A-

   9. CWChris Williamson12:22

      So interesting

   10. RBRoy Baumeister12:23

       ... yeah, yeah, it doesn't engage them in the same way. And, and so our schools, which are now run mainly by women, are, are, are failing, are failing all students, but they're especially failing the boys, uh, that seems to be. And, and this is one of the-

   11. CWChris Williamson12:37

       Because they're dr- they're driven more hierarchically.

   12. RBRoy Baumeister12:40

       Yes, definitely more hierarchy. I remember reading too, back in the '80s when women started, um, really moving up in, in the businesses and the, in the organizations that men created, there was a lot of simplification. [coughs] One estimate that stuck in my mind was the average male business hierarchy had seven different levels of authority, and once women became influential in it, they cut it to about four. Uh, so they, they don't like as much hierar-hierarchy. They, they, they favor more equality. Uh, and, um, and there are reasons for that too that, that you can argue about. But, uh, but competition is about hierarchy, and so it's, it's hard. The, the male want to do it. You want to be the number one.

3. 13:25 – 15:55

   How Female Choice Shapes Male Ambition

   1. CWChris Williamson13:25

      Historically, how much of male achievement do you think was driven by the desire to attract women?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister13:32

      Um, well, a lot. The, the evolutionary people would say, I mean, that might not be the thing that's in their mind, but the evolutionists say, "Well, that is what drives everything." I mean, maybe some men want to succeed because they want money, but the people say, "Well, why does the man want money so much? It's because that's what attracts the women." Um, so, uh, it's, it's, uh... I, I'm not one of these people that evolution explains everything, uh, but it certainly is the starting point and explains a lot.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:08

      Mm.

   4. RBRoy Baumeister14:08

      Uh, so, um-

   5. CWChris Williamson14:09

      I think I'm, I, I'm interested in whether or not or to what extent female mate choice sort of shapes male ambition. You know, we're talking about this hierarchical-

   6. RBRoy Baumeister14:20

      Oh

   7. CWChris Williamson14:21

      ... uh, sense.

   8. RBRoy Baumeister14:21

      Okay.

   9. CWChris Williamson14:21

      You've already mentioned that there's a, a, a relatively limited pool of men typically that reproduce and a bigger pool of women. I think it's about-

   10. RBRoy Baumeister14:29

       Yeah

   11. CWChris Williamson14:29

       ... 40% of men ancestrally reproduce and about 80% of women, so you got twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. And, um, if you've got that plus competition, the, plus big group coordination plus-

   12. RBRoy Baumeister14:44

       Mm-hmm

   13. CWChris Williamson14:44

       ... a preference for hierarchy, you can begin to see how the pyramid becomes pr-pretty pyramid-y.

   14. RBRoy Baumeister14:50

       Yes. Yeah. I mean, there was an interesting interlude during the hunter-gatherers in which there was equality, and they really resisted the hierarchy. This was part of the transition away from the, the apes kind of society, uh, uh, that, uh, that they did it. But I've talked to a couple people who, who studied hunter-gatherers, and, "Well, is it true they're all equal?" "Well, yes, but," she said, "but the women all know who's the best hunter, [laughs] and they all want him-

   15. CWChris Williamson15:20

       Mm

   16. RBRoy Baumeister15:21

       ... uh, for their, their partner. Uh, even though the food is shared, uh, it does look like the best hunter, um, everybody makes sure to be nice to him and his family. So, uh, they do get more food. And of course, if push came to shove, uh, having the best hunter as your, uh, your partner would make sure you're, you're less likely to starve or go, go hungry. You and your children are less likely, uh, than if you have a, a third-rate, uh, hunter as your partner.

   17. CWChris Williamson15:53

       Mm. Yeah. I guess

4. 15:55 – 22:12

   Why Are Men More Variable Than Women?

   1. CWChris Williamson15:55

      why is it the case that men are over-represented at both the top and the bottom of society?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister16:03

      All right. Well, that was another thing I, I emphasized in, in the book. Uh, you know, the complaints where the feminists look at the top and say, "Oh, well, the, the presidents and the governors and the executives are mostly men. Must be great to be a man." Uh, but I said, "Well, but look at the bottom of society. Who's in prison? Who's homeless? Who's, uh, cannon fodder, uh, being killed in, in battle?" That you see mostly men, men there. Um, now, why that is? Uh, that's a, that's a more difficult question to answer. Um, for one thing though, there's more variability among men. Men are more different from other men than, than women are from other women. So it's even true with basic things like height. Uh, obviously, on average, men are taller than women. Uh, but, uh, there are a lot of pretty short men and, and, and the, the distribution is flatter, as we say. There, there are more really tall and really short men than really tall and really short women, even though the average is different. Uh, the average is, uh, is, uh, the average, the difference in average is much smaller with intelligence, but the same thing. You see more males at both extremes. We have, uh, more data at the bottom end 'cause people have, have done decades of studying research on mental retardation. Uh, and as you move from the mild to the moderate to the severely retarded, the sex ratio becomes more skewed, more and more boys-

   3. CWChris Williamson17:36

      Mm

   4. RBRoy Baumeister17:37

      ... uh, at each level. And there's less at the other end, but it's the same thing as you move from mildly genius to moderate genius to, to super genius. Again-

   5. CWChris Williamson17:46

      [laughs] Love the idea of a super genius. Okay.

   6. RBRoy Baumeister17:49

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:49

      Yeah.

   8. RBRoy Baumeister17:49

      Um, um, the, the, the super high IQ or, or this is, uh, Lawrence Summers, uh, at that, that Harvard meeting. He, he, you know, they ask how come there aren't a lot of math and physics professors at Harvard who are women, and, uh, he said, and he was, he was right. If, if you have to be just super intelligent, uh, to be able to work at that kind of level, there are more men there. And, uh, people got all upset, and it led to his, his downfall. Um, they thought he was saying men are smarter than women, which is not what he was saying. He was just saying there's more variability. Uh, so-Again, if you look at the, the bottom end of the intelligence distribution, uh, men predominate more. So-

   9. CWChris Williamson18:33

      It wouldn't have, it wouldn't have got the, uh, rankled groups in the same way if he'd said, "There's more stupid men than there are stupid women."

   10. RBRoy Baumeister18:41

       Yeah. Nobody bo- nobody minds, minds that. But it's this, this, uh, this feminist control. Now, why that is, why men are more variable, I have a pet theory. I've talked to some biologists, they said it's plausible. We don't know that it's, uh, that it's true.

   11. CWChris Williamson18:57

       Oh, speculative, speculative bro science is very welcome. I'm, I'm very excited to hear this.

   12. RBRoy Baumeister19:03

       Okay. Um, well, you know, the, the man has the XY chromosome, the woman has XX. Um, so producing something new, there's a mutation on, on the chromosome, right? So something goes wrong and produces a different, uh, variation. Um, and there's a question, though, does that then show up in behavior? You know, do the genes, uh, show up in the, in the physical properties? Well, for the woman, with the X chromosome, there's always a backup. So even if something goes wrong on one of the little, uh, weirdnesses or one of the branches of the X-

   13. CWChris Williamson19:42

       Mm

   14. RBRoy Baumeister19:42

       ... there is a... there's only a 50/50 chance that will get through, and maybe even less than that. Maybe the, the healthy one takes over or something. So there, there are le- less few, but nature can roll the dice more easily with men, 'cause if it happens on the, the bottom part of the Y where there's no backup, then that will more likely come true. It's certainly adaptive in a way that evolutionarily successful for nature to gamble with men more than women, uh, because-

   15. CWChris Williamson20:13

       Hmm

   16. RBRoy Baumeister20:14

       ... a lot of men don't reproduce at all, and most mutations are bad. Most mutations are not an improvement, and so you want that flushed out of the gene pool right away. Uh, if there's a bad mutation, well, that's easy with the men since most men don't reproduce anyway. Uh, throughout-

   17. CWChris Williamson20:30

       Such a good... Yeah, I totally... What's that line about, uh, men are nature's playthings?

   18. RBRoy Baumeister20:34

       Yeah. That's, that's mine.

   19. CWChris Williamson20:35

       I, I hadn't realized... That's yours?

   20. RBRoy Baumeister20:37

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson20:38

       Ah, I love quoting someone to them when I didn't realize it was them. Um, I, I-

   22. RBRoy Baumeister20:44

       And, and it works the other way, too, at the other end, because a woman, you know, can't really have more than about a dozen children, but there are men who have hundreds. Um, and so if you have a good mutation, then you want it to spread through the gene pool, right? That's how the, uh, uh, that's how evolution makes progress. And so, so the bad mutations are gone in one generation, and the good ones-

   23. CWChris Williamson21:06

       Mm

   24. RBRoy Baumeister21:06

       ... uh, spread more. Um-

   25. CWChris Williamson21:09

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5. 22:12 – 29:21

   The Real Driver of Differences Between the Sexes

   1. CWChris Williamson22:12

      Are the biggest differences between men and women, do you think, in terms of motivations or ability?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister22:21

      Um, motivations I, I, I tend to favor, uh, ability. Um, throwing things is the biggest thing, [laughs] I guess.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:30

      [laughs]

   4. RBRoy Baumeister22:30

      Men ability is, is superior.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:33

      Yeah.

   6. RBRoy Baumeister22:33

      Uh, which-

   7. CWChris Williamson22:33

      It also includes on that, uh, I'm sure that you've seen this, but it also includes dodging things. It's not just throwing things, it's also dodging things.

   8. RBRoy Baumeister22:41

      Hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:41

      So there was a s- there was a study done... Um, one of the problems you have when you're looking at, um, throwing accuracy, you have different articulations of the shoulder capsule, you have different lengths of the forearm, you have-

   10. RBRoy Baumeister22:53

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson22:53

       I- i- it's very difficult to not have young boys spend the entire first decade of their life picking up stones and throwing them. Girls don't do it in quite the same way. So how are you gonna control for physiological differences, structural differences, biomechanics, just conditioning of, "I threw lots of stones when I was five"? Um, so one of the ways that they tried to control for this was instead of it being about throwing, it was about dodging, and this was... I don't know how this got past an ethics board. Um, they took one of those tennis ball serving cannons that gets used so that they can-

   12. RBRoy Baumeister23:28

       Right. Yes

   13. CWChris Williamson23:28

       ... fire tennis balls across a court, and they had, uh, males and females try to get out of the way. And in the male cohorts, they didn't get hit once, and in the female cohorts, they got hit... They, they were peppered, uh, quite a few times. And I think that is the same thing with, uh, uh, spatial rotation, like the ability to-

   14. RBRoy Baumeister23:48

       Yes

   15. CWChris Williamson23:48

       ... understand things in space.

   16. RBRoy Baumeister23:50

       That, that, that, that could be. Uh, my friend Von Hippel has made a big emphasis that, uh, coordinated stone throwing was one of the key early human, uh, group traits.

   17. CWChris Williamson24:02

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RBRoy Baumeister24:03

       Because, you know, if you're in the wild and, and there's a lion, [laughs] y- you and your stone are, are not likely to get very far. But if there are 10 of you, y'all throw stones, and some of them will hit, and, uh, it's, enough of them will get home that the lion goes away. What they, uh, they suggest is that instead of hunting, we could, we could scavenge. If the lions killed something, then a bunch of humans could come on, throw stones, scare-

   19. CWChris Williamson24:30

       Scare away the lion

   20. RBRoy Baumeister24:31

       ... scare away the lion.Which would, uh-

   21. CWChris Williamson24:33

       I mean, Bill-

   22. RBRoy Baumeister24:34

       ... must have driven them crazy, but, uh, the-

   23. CWChris Williamson24:35

       But yeah, it's super annoying not only to have chased this thing down, finally got some food, and then a bunch of stones hit you. Uh-

   24. RBRoy Baumeister24:41

       Yeah

   25. CWChris Williamson24:42

       ... Bill taught me about that. I think it was him that said to me as well that thing about kids, if you just put boys in a, a field, a, a playground and there's stones, there's something so primal about just picking it up and throwing it. It's almost like when you see dogs, uh, kicking their back feet to s- uh, after they've been to the toilet and they're sort of pushing up the, the dirt in order to-

   26. RBRoy Baumeister25:05

       Oh, yeah

   27. CWChris Williamson25:05

       ... like, who, who taught you to do that? No one taught me that I should-

   28. RBRoy Baumeister25:09

       Right

   29. CWChris Williamson25:09

       ... pick up a stone. I just see it on the ground. Even now, even now.

   30. RBRoy Baumeister25:15

       Yes, yes. Okay. Yeah. It's clearly something we don't use anymore as a, a strategy [chuckles] to get food. Um-
6. 29:21 – 33:14

   Why Men Take More Risks Than Women

   1. CWChris Williamson29:21

      What about risk-taking then? What's the differences in risk-taking?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister29:24

      Okay. Uh, well, risk-taking, um, first of all, g-going back to the, uh, twice as many of our ancestors were women than men, and w-women are much more likely to reproduce, uh, than men, which means odds are in your favor inter-- if, if your biological goal is to produce a child, uh, or several and, and, and produce grandchildren. Um, for a woman, playing it safe was gonna get there. Most women reproduced. Um, but most men didn't. So if you just go along with everybody else and, uh, uh, play along, you'll end up left out. Uh, so we're descended from the ones, uh, who were ambitious and rose to the top, and some of that means taking chances. Um, I said in the book, you know, sailing off into the unknown, uh, to explore, all kinds of bad things can happen to you.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:22

      Mm.

   4. RBRoy Baumeister30:22

      It is not surprising women didn't want to risk that. Uh, but, uh, uh, but you might come back rich [chuckles] . We're descended from the men who took the chances and did succeed. Lots of men took chances and, uh, drowned or were killed or got nowhere. Um-But, uh, that's, that's life, uh, as a, as a man. In fact, it's true, I think, in many other species. Um, so, uh, if the male is, is, is a riskier, a riskier one because, um, because you had to succeed in order to, to be attractive and-

   5. CWChris Williamson31:06

      Mm-hmm

   6. RBRoy Baumeister31:06

      ... to have children. Now, there are other aspects of this. Uh, Joyce Benenson and her, her colleagues at Harvard had this terrific paper a, a year or two ago about, uh, safety concerns, which are much higher in women, uh, than men. And, uh, this is-

   7. CWChris Williamson31:20

      Physical safety? Cultural safety?

   8. RBRoy Baumeister31:23

      Physical safety. I think, I think social too. I mean, the, uh, the article dwelt on physical and medical things. Uh, but, uh, I think it applies in the social realm too. Women don't like to, uh, to take chances. Um, I, I have a colleague who is, uh, arranging getting researchers together to do what she called adversarial collaborations, where, say, you and I are both working in some area, and we have a d- a theoretical disagreement, and you think your theory's right, and I think my theory's right. Um, so one thing we could do is get together and do an experiment together that we'll, we'll agree this will be the critical test, okay? Um, and, and people don't usually do this 'cause they don't reach out to their rivals who they often don't like or whatever. But, uh, uh, this, this woman, Kari Clark, uh, was at, at Penn, and she had a big grant and could encourage people to do it, and she said, "Yeah, people often want..." She said, "Why don't you do a collaboration with them?" I think, yeah, that's a great idea. But that was the men's reaction. She said, "I just couldn't get the w- women to do it." She had something like thirty or forty of these things going, and I talked to her at one point and she said, "I finally got a woman to agree [chuckles] to be part of one of these things, but it was only on the condition that she would be the neutral third party, so she could not be proven wrong." Um, and so, uh, taking that chance, you know, as, as she elaborates, that's why women wanna exclude someone they disagree with rather than confront them and, uh, uh, "You bring your data, I'll bring mine, and we'll, we'll duke it out." Uh, that's more a, a male strategy. So, um, uh, in a way, science has become much more about excluding and silencing and, and-

   9. CWChris Williamson33:10

      Yeah

   10. RBRoy Baumeister33:10

       ... uh, which to the detriment of the scientific enterprise.

7. 33:14 – 35:56

   What is the Imaginary Feminist?

   1. CWChris Williamson33:14

      What's your concept of the imaginary feminist?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister33:19

      Oh, all right. That was, uh, in that book I did, uh, you know, fifteen years ago. Um, there's this conventional wisdom that we all have and, uh, you know, when I start to say something about gender, you can immediately imagine, oh, but a feminist will object, uh, to this. You know, so they have taught people very well to have a, a kind of automatic internalized, uh, representation of a feminist that says, "Oh, you can't say this or you can't say that." [coughs] It's mostly, uh, um, silencing and, and disallowing things. So, uh, the, the problem if you try to deal with feminists on a scholarly basis, well, there are multiple problems, um, but they disagree to some extent amongst themselves about various things, so they can easily say, "Well, that's not what, what feminists believe," or at least not what all feminists believe. Um, but I wanted to address this sort of internalized, um, feminist watchdog that, uh, pretty much everybody is, is brought up right now and, you know, you can't say this and you can't say that. That's misogynistic or that's, that's unfair or sexist or whatever. Um, like you, you were saying earlier, to say that there are more stupid men than women, well, that's fine.

   3. CWChris Williamson34:42

      Mm.

   4. RBRoy Baumeister34:42

      But to say there are more brilliant men than women, oh, oh, oh, you can't say that.

   5. CWChris Williamson34:46

      Mm.

   6. RBRoy Baumeister34:46

      Um, so that's what I was trying to get at with the, uh, the imaginary feminist.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:52

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8. 35:56 – 45:36

   What’s Broken in Modern Gender Discourse

   1. CWChris Williamson35:57

      Do you think modern, modern gender discourse is missing the concept of trade-offs? What, what is it that's going wrong when it comes to talking about men and women?

   2. RBRoy Baumeister36:07

      Uh, absolutely. I, I was convinced of trade-offs fairly early in my career, and I think social science in general, they wanna say this is good and that's bad, and not, not all of them. There are lots of people who believe in trade-offs, but sort of the dominant view is, uh, well, this is a problem and we have to do this to fix it. And I started seeing where you fix one problem, you create another, and, uh, it isn't so easy just to solve problems. Um, so I have this view, some social scientists see it as our work is a way of making society better, and so they have a clear idea of what's gonna be betterUm, and, uh, don't want to acknowledge that if we make a change to bring about this better state, well, maybe it'll make some other things worse. So students are happier with grade inflation where everybody gets an A-

   3. CWChris Williamson37:00

      Mm.

   4. RBRoy Baumeister37:01

      ... but then they learn less. There's less incentive to study and, uh, less, less punishment or, um, schools get rated on how many of your students graduate and graduate on time and things like that. Well, but that puts pressure on the institution to put out, you know, to, to make sure everybody passes whether they deserve, deserve it or not, and then they're more uneducated or poorly educated people. Uh, uh, I was just reading something in this morning's paper, I think about the Chicago schools, which a number of them, they, they don't have a single pupil who is reading or doing math at grade level. Um, so, um, it's, it's nicer for the teachers to give everybody a positive grade. The students like it too. Uh, but there's a clear trade-off that you don't have to, to, uh, to work as hard.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:57

      It's such a strange kind of sort of toxic compassion. There's a... Uh, I had this idea in my head. You remember the study that was done, uh, where some feminist scholars had tried to reanalyze the big game hunting data of, uh, hunter-gatherer tribes, and they basically said, uh, women not only did just as much big game hunting as men, but sometimes they did even more. And this was their reanalysis of existing data. It was about five years ago, and it sort of broke through. I remember looking at it at the time and I thought, "This, this doesn't seem to make sense to me. I, I, I don't really understand why, but I, I... You know, I'm not a scholar. I can't read the data." Someone analyzed their reanalysis and there was so much fuckery with the data. It was-

   6. RBRoy Baumeister38:45

      Yeah

   7. CWChris Williamson38:45

      ... uh, one con-contribution to a single hunt was counted the same as an entire lifetime as hunting from the men. There was no difference-

   8. RBRoy Baumeister38:54

      Yeah

   9. CWChris Williamson38:54

      ... made for the size, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

   10. RBRoy Baumeister38:56

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson38:56

       And what I realized was there's a kind of soft bigotry of male expectations around this stuff that whatever men do is implicitly preferred. That's seen as the desirable thing. That, uh, women did just as much big game hunting as men implies that big game hunting and the male default is somehow more desirable. In the same way as, uh, there are just as many... Uh, w- female CEOs are on the rise, and this is something that should be celebrated. Well, because that's a position that's been typically held by men. Now it's the prestigious ones. It's... You wouldn't see this for there are just as many female addicts and homeless people as men. There are just as many women in jail for violent crimes as men. You wouldn't get that in the same way. But I realized for a society that's increasingly obsessed with talking about equality, which is not equality, it's trying to make men and women the same, not to make them equal, um, it really is. It slips so much low-key misogyny in by just tacitly derogating whatever it is that women tend to do naturally. That, oh, alloparenting, gathering. Gathering's not as important as hunting. Raising children is not as important as war. Uh, staying at, uh... Building the HR department is not as important as being the CEO. There is always this sort of implicit prioritization, this soft bigotry of male expectations, and I, I saw it happen with that hunter-gatherer, uh, big game hunting thing, and I just... I, I... Once I've seen it, I can't unsee it really.

   12. RBRoy Baumeister40:38

       Okay. A, a couple things. Uh, first, uh, in terms of hunting and gathering, um, they're both important, and gathering sometimes, uh, yields more calories. It certainly does much more reliably. But from what I'm told, protein has this particular higher value. And so, and men gather too for, for sure, especially the modern ones, because I don't think there's as much big game to hunt anymore [coughs] for the remaining hunter-gatherers anyhow. But, um, um, but protein is a particular need. Uh, so if you want to make women look good, you just count the calories and then the difference is smaller. Uh, but protein, which you need to grow the brain and the muscles and everything else, uh, that is a higher, uh, prestige, uh, food. It's a more valuable kind of food. Um, and so there is a genuine superiority in getting food, uh, or getting protein food, which would come from, uh, mainly from hunting. Uh, now women do, I understand, sometimes hunt small game. Um, so there, there's some degree of overlap as, as you would expect. Uh, but, uh, um, it's not that the men made up that, uh, hunting is better, uh, than gathering. Um, being the good hunter again is what made the man attractive to women so that he could get his choice of mates and have a tassel of children, and we'd be descended from him. Um, and the women knew this too. Sorry. As Joyce said, uh, they all know who's the best hunter [chuckles] and they all, they all want him. Um, so there is some benefit, uh, to, to protein. And in terms of what makes a corporation succeed, uh, the HR department, it j- just, you know, manages things internally, but it, it doesn't improve the bottom line. You gottaWork on the manufacturing technology and the, uh, uh, the sales opportunities and, and those are the things where the corporations make money so that they can afford a human relations thing which will, uh, you know, make sure there are no office, uh, romances and things like that. Which incidentally is something of a recent, uh, issue I've been, been thinking about. I wonder if the, you know, young people aren't marrying and mating nearly as much as they used to, and I wonder if the prohibition on, on workplace romance-

   13. CWChris Williamson43:28

       Mm-hmm

   14. RBRoy Baumeister43:29

       ... threw out a lot of real babies with the, with the bathwater. I mean, it was done to protect women from the few abusive, uh, uh, guys who would take advantage of, uh, their position to... You know, and I sympathize with that, but I think I, like most men, I guess like you too, we hate those guys who abuse their positions 'cause they discredit the rest of us.

   15. CWChris Williamson43:51

       Absolutely.

   16. RBRoy Baumeister43:52

       And, uh, when again, I was visiting at Harvard and a woman there said, uh, "You know, our, our friends are all these long happily married couples, but none of those marriages would be allowed today."

   17. CWChris Williamson44:03

       Hmm.

   18. RBRoy Baumeister44:04

       A lot of them started off with professors and students and things like that.

   19. CWChris Williamson44:07

       Hmm.

   20. RBRoy Baumeister44:07

       And so they, they pushed more and more, uh, to prohibit that, but often the woman initiated that, uh, herself and, and women like to, um, marry somebody like that. And a-a-again, there's a, a lot of long happy marriages are being prevented. Uh, and the, the dating apps aren't doing an adequate job. [chuckles]

   21. CWChris Williamson44:29

       Yeah. I think another interesting element here is modern feminism has encouraged women to turn into the sort of man that they want to marry. The v-very much-

   22. RBRoy Baumeister44:40

       That's sort of-

   23. CWChris Williamson44:40

       ... encouraging dominance-

   24. RBRoy Baumeister44:42

       Yeah

   25. CWChris Williamson44:42

       ... assertiveness, independence, uh, derogating, nurturing, soft sensitive skills, uh, unless they're in a man obviously. And, um, I, I... The, the lack of polarity, you just can't sort of re-engineer this out. And it's interesting to see how many of the, um, cultural commentators online that will endorse a view that they don't embody. Uh, how many-

   26. RBRoy Baumeister45:06

       Hmm

   27. CWChris Williamson45:06

       ... of the, the people that are writing about this stuff, if you were to look at the inner dynamic of their relationship, it probably looks quite traditional. But from the outside saying, "You don't need to be a... You don't need to have a family. You don't need to be a mother. You don't need to be in any way submissive or follow or be led by the partner-"

   28. RBRoy Baumeister45:25

       Yeah

   29. CWChris Williamson45:25

       ... all the rest. And you look internally at what a lot of these commentators online do, especially as they grow up a little bit more and you realize that those positions-

9. 45:36 – 51:55

   Has Feminism Changed How We Protect Women?

   1. RBRoy Baumeister45:36

      Yeah

   2. CWChris Williamson45:36

      ... those positions aren't held. There was a really interesting, uh, situation. I don't know if you saw it. It went viral about six months ago. There was a man and a woman, young pair traveling in Thailand, some sort of East Asian country, and it was CCTV footage. And the woman was attacked by a man with a knife, and he was trying to steal her bag, off her some of her possessions, and the man that she was with hid around the side of a pillar. So there was a sort of a bollard or something, and this guy hid over there as the woman was fighting, trying to sort of hold onto her bag, and this guy's got a knife and the... I don't really remember how, how it finished. All of the comments were basically saying, "Girl, just leave him. He's trash. This guy, absolutely no respect at all." And I don't-- I, I, I wish that he had protected her. I wish that it hadn't happened. I don't think that she should have had to go through it. But it is difficult to diminish the protector, provider elements that men typically take value from-

   3. RBRoy Baumeister46:43

      Yeah

   4. CWChris Williamson46:43

      ... and in the same breath say, "Yeah, but if it happens, you should stand up for the woman." Because if you've been trained for your entire life, well, women don't need the doors holding open for them. Women don't need you to make sure that they-

   5. RBRoy Baumeister46:56

      Right

   6. CWChris Williamson46:56

      ... get home safe at night. They can do everything that a man does, sometimes even better, just as much big game hunting. W-what is the trai- where are the training wheels for men to learn to step up in those sorts of situations?

   7. RBRoy Baumeister47:10

      Right. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes, very much. Um, yeah. My generation, we were told we've g-gotta take care of the girls and the women and hold the doors for them and protect them, and if there's danger, you put yourself into it. There's a funny story by, uh, Warren Farrell, who I guess initially was one of the main male feminists.

   8. CWChris Williamson47:33

      He was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   9. RBRoy Baumeister47:34

      But he kind of woke up to that. But he talked about being at a conference on feminism, and he was out for a walk with one of the top women feminists, and they're walking down y-in a, in a park or something. And a man jumped out from behind a tree. It turned out it wasn't dangerous, but it suddenly was. And immediately the woman ducked behind him and he stepped forward.

   10. CWChris Williamson47:56

       [laughing]

   11. RBRoy Baumeister47:57

       [chuckles] And he said, "Oh, we had such a long, awkward conversation after that."

   12. CWChris Williamson48:04

       [laughing]

   13. RBRoy Baumeister48:06

       And he said, "How could you?" Talking-

   14. CWChris Williamson48:08

       Oh, my, my em-

   15. RBRoy Baumeister48:08

       ... and so on

   16. CWChris Williamson48:09

       ... embodied misogyny just pouring out of me. The patriarchy came and pulled her back behind me.

   17. RBRoy Baumeister48:16

       Okay. I'm not sure I believe in either misogyny or patriarchy. Um, but those are, are common terms which, uh, um, yeah, maybe that's what she blamed or, or something like that. But, uh, I certainly-

   18. CWChris Williamson48:30

       I don't know

   19. RBRoy Baumeister48:30

       ... I don't know any men who hate women.

   20. CWChris Williamson48:33

       No.

   21. RBRoy Baumeister48:33

       Uh, I know men who hate specific women. [chuckles]

   22. CWChris Williamson48:36

       Hmm.

   23. RBRoy Baumeister48:37

       Ex-wives and whatnot, and often for understandable reasons. But a man who hated women in general, I, I, I don't do it. I mean, if there's any gender hatred, uh, it's feminist hating men in general. Uh, and in terms of-

   24. CWChris Williamson48:50

       I think there's, I think there's sub- I think there's subcultures now. Unfortunately, there are subcultures of men who hate women. You know, you look at sort of some of the darker corners of the internet now, guys that are, um-They're upset at, uh, uh, a entire sex that they think has rejected them or their friends or has meant-- made a society where they're no longer wanted. Um, I do think that the more militant edges of feminism have been mirrored now, uh, on the, on the men's side.

   25. RBRoy Baumeister49:18

       Yeah, that could be. I wouldn't be surprised. And, and, you know, if a woman who'd been raped a couple times hated men in general, we wouldn't be that surprised. And-

   26. CWChris Williamson49:26

       Yeah

   27. RBRoy Baumeister49:26

       ... I, I kinda see those involuntarily celibate incels somewhat in the, the same category. I'm less sympathetic. Uh, but, uh, uh, but, uh, I mean, the experiment would be if a woman would take one of these incels and strike up a relationship with him, uh, and start having sex with him, uh, he might come around very [laughs] rapidly.

   28. CWChris Williamson49:52

       [laughs] Yeah.

   29. RBRoy Baumeister49:52

       And all this "women are bad" would, would, uh, just evaporate, so I don't think about it.

   30. CWChris Williamson49:56

       That's a spi- a, a spicy theory that we can fix inceldom by just getting women to have sex with men more. But, uh, I do, I do agree that, um... I mean, it's even discouraged in, in the, the world of incels. I'm not sure how familiar you are with it, but one of my best friends is the, the number one researcher on the planet, William. And, um, they, they have this term called ascending, and ascending is, um, f- no longer becoming an incel by being attractive to a woman and, uh, getting her attention, getting her into bed, being found to be attractive in this way, and it's actively discouraged. And I think the reason it's actively discouraged is if somebody else that you saw as an equal is able to ascend, is no longer involuntarily celibate, that means that maybe you're not doomed. And if that's the case, your sort of fatalistic view of why things are happening this way might not actually be so fatalistic. It might be more self-imposed, and maybe there's something you could do, and as soon as you have hope, you also have the opportunity for disappointment. And without the hope, there can't be disappointment.
10. 51:55 – 54:07

    What Happens When Male Sacrifice Isn’t Rewarded?

    1. RBRoy Baumeister51:55

       [coughs]

    2. CWChris Williamson51:55

       If, if y- if your theory's correct, what do you think happens when societies stop rewarding male sacrifice?

    3. RBRoy Baumeister52:04

       Well, uh, that would be a weakness. Um, I remember my, uh, my professors remembering World War II when it was declared, and all American men rushed to, uh, sign up and volunteer, uh, to go, uh, fight the war, and I don't think that would happen today. [laughs]

    4. CWChris Williamson52:23

       Yeah.

    5. RBRoy Baumeister52:24

       Uh, the men have been brought up to think, uh, I don't know, they're bad, and the women are just as good, and, uh, and that society... You know, we teach our kids that, uh, America and the UK and so on are bad places. We've, we've done bad things and, uh, don't, uh, stress the positive accomplishments. Um, so I, uh... That would be a vulnerability. A-as long as there's no war. Ironic to say this-

    6. CWChris Williamson52:51

       It is

    7. RBRoy Baumeister52:51

       ... now there's a, a war going on. Uh-

    8. CWChris Williamson52:53

       Yeah. I mean, it, it's, it's so true that the reason that we're able to sort of play around in this kiddie pool with roles and the s- switching of sacrifice and who's supposed to do what is literally because there aren't any intense selection pressures going on.

    9. RBRoy Baumeister53:08

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson53:08

        If there was something more extreme happening and imposing itself on us from the outside, shit would get real really quick. I mean, look at the Ukraine war, right? The Ukraine war kicks off, and men were being turned away at the border, including trans men were being turned away at the border because, "Hey, no. Sorry, buddy. Uh, women and children get to go, but you, you gotta stay."

    11. RBRoy Baumeister53:28

        Right.

    12. CWChris Williamson53:28

        All for... I don't know how, uh, progressive thinking Ukraine was prior to the war kicking off. I'm, I'm, I'm unsure about the, [laughs] uh, the cultural landscape there. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it seems to me like we might be entering a period where male motivation collapses, and obviously, you wrote this book in t- 2010, and 16 years later, the male motivation collapse, which you could have seen, it just would've been a natural byproduct of you rolling the clock forward from what you'd already seen-

    13. RBRoy Baumeister53:58

        Yeah

    14. CWChris Williamson53:59

        ... uh, has completely come to fruition. So I guess I can congratulate you on being Cassandra in that way.

    15. RBRoy Baumeister54:04

        [laughs] All right.

11. 54:07 – 59:15

    Why Ego Depletion is So Heavily Attacked

    1. CWChris Williamson54:07

       If it's true that ego depletion is one of the most successful findings in social psychology, that, uh, willpower is a, uh, limited resource, which when used can be sapped and takes time to come back online, if it's true that it's one of the most successful findings in social psychology, how come it keeps on being attacked? This is replication crisis. It doesn't repeat. Uh, why is that the case? What are people getting wrong?

    2. RBRoy Baumeister54:35

       I don't know. People do like to tear down other things, and there's a lot of petty jealousy and, and, and so forth. Um, but, uh, um, but the evidence in favor is overwhelming. I mean, there, there must be a thousand, uh, successful, um, findings in the research literature, which hardly any, any, any, uh, point has that m- that much supportUm, I heard somebody recently saying, "Well, that must have just been all been by chance, that, uh, um, maybe by accident, uh, the statistics turned out this way."

    3. CWChris Williamson55:12

       Mm-hmm.

    4. RBRoy Baumeister55:12

       Well, chance works equally both ways. Half the findings should be in the opposite direction, and there are essentially none in the opposite direction. I mean, saying that it's a, a chance where there's that much-- Um, there was the, uh, uh, the one initially big multi-lab replication which, uh, was reported as a failure, [coughs] and so that got a lot of publicity because people like negative publicity, and they never correct it when the positive comes around. Even those data were reanalyzed a couple years later and somebody said, "Oh no, actually it, it did-- they didn't get people depleted enough, uh, to really show any effects." But to the slight extent that they did deplete people, they did what, what the theory predicted. So that was, that was confirmed.

    5. CWChris Williamson56:01

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    6. RBRoy Baumeister57:24

       Well, that's a really interesting idea that, uh, some people at, at, at Stanford, uh, published some work on that, and, uh, we were intrigued by that. And so, uh, we s- we tried to copy their experiment, uh, and, and we did [coughs] find that where if you give people a really strong sales pitch that, uh, your, your willpower is unlimited, um, then at least when they first get depleted, they don't show the effect. We did show when you get seriously depleted, then you show an even worse effect. So that belief that you have unlimited willpower is helpful. Ma-make the-- think of the analogy of, of physical, uh, energy. Uh, if you somehow could be convinced that you have unlimited physical energy today, well, and then you go out for running a race. At first, when you start to get fired, uh, tired, um, it'll probably help you, uh, continue to do it. But at some point, it may backfire. You know, my thought in the, in the big picture is, uh, if it were true that believing in unlimited willpower would give you unlimited willpower, you'd think most societies in the world would have that belief-

    7. CWChris Williamson58:37

       Mm-hmm

    8. RBRoy Baumeister58:37

       ... uh, because self-control-

    9. CWChris Williamson58:39

       They would have created some sort of cultural meme around it-

    10. RBRoy Baumeister58:42

        Yeah

    11. CWChris Williamson58:42

        ... because it would have conferred such an im-im-improvement for everyone.

    12. RBRoy Baumeister58:45

        So much benefit to society-

    13. CWChris Williamson58:47

        Yeah

    14. RBRoy Baumeister58:47

        ... to having people with better self-control. Um, and yet, uh, most societies don't. Now, there was some argument that, uh, some people in India have the opposite belief, and I, I, I wish to see more there. Uh, but, uh, but it's very rare. Most people seem to know, and I think, you know, they just have the experience that, uh, trying to exert control over a long period of time, you just can't, can't, can't keep it

12. 59:15 – 1:05:47

    The Strongest Critiques of Willpower

    1. RBRoy Baumeister59:15

       up.

    2. CWChris Williamson59:15

       What, if anything, has been accurate in some of the critiques around the original research? Or what's been most accurate or has given you most, uh, most reason to reconsider?

    3. RBRoy Baumeister59:28

       Okay. Well, at first we thought, uh, at first we were thinking that willpower is kind of a metaphorical thing. Um, but, uh, well, okay, the brain has a limited amount of fuel, and it used it up, so it has to recover. But then people started showing you get people depleted, and then you offer them a, a big financial reward if they can still perform well. Well, they can. They're extra depleted afterwards, but it's not that the brain is out of fuel. It just goes into a conservation mode. It turns out physical muscles are the same way. Uh, there are lab studies where you come into the lab and do physical exertions, or you have to press, and after a while, your muscles get tired, and, uh, and then the, the researchers will say, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'll give you ten dollars if you can do it once pressing as hard as you did when you first walk in." Well, they can. Uh, it's, it's still that there is a point at which your muscles can't work anymore. There's probably a point like that at which your willpower is so badly depleted that you can't do it, but in the laboratory, we never get people to that, uh, that, that extreme a, a, a situation. So the, the ma-- so one big switch early was to shift from, um, being out of fuel to conserving remaining fuel, and it makes sense. We evolved under conditions of uncertain food supply and, um, um... Then people started linking it to the, uh, the glucose, the physio-- the, the, the chemical in your body that carries the muscle-- the energy, uh, from your stomach to your brain and muscles and so on. Um-And found, uh, uh, this was kind of a surprise to me when this worked, but if, if people would eat something, you know, after they were depleted, that would get them back to perform well again.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:01:20

       Mm.

    5. RBRoy Baumeister1:01:21

       Um, so, um, that, that was intriguing.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:01:25

       Wasn't there-

    7. RBRoy Baumeister1:01:25

       Uh, but-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:01:25

       There was a, a great study done around the, uh, the, the length of time of somebody being sent to jail by jurors or judges and how long it had been since they had their breakfast. Basically-

    9. RBRoy Baumeister1:01:42

       Right. Yes

    10. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

        ... if you, if you end up in court, you probably want to go in at about one forty-five PM just after-

    11. RBRoy Baumeister1:01:48

        Right

    12. CWChris Williamson1:01:48

        ... the lunch break or at nine AM-

    13. RBRoy Baumeister1:01:49

        Right after lunch

    14. CWChris Williamson1:01:49

        ... just after they've come in for breakfast.

    15. RBRoy Baumeister1:01:51

        Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And some people argue about that. It's, it's hard to get a perfect study done with, with, uh, um, real-life data. Uh, but the, the, the curve was quite striking and, and just about every experiment we've used where we give people some glucose in the middle, uh, it does restore their, their performance. A-and then they often don't know. You know, we said-- we started doing it with giving people lemonade. It was at Florida State, and it was hot, and so people were glad to have a glass of lemonade, and you can mix it with Splenda or sugar.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:02:25

        Oh, so good.

    17. RBRoy Baumeister1:02:27

        And it tastes the same, and it can be double blind, so the experimenter just pulls one out of the refrigerator and says, "This is for you." The experimenter doesn't know if it's, uh, got glucose in it, is in sugar or just the sweetener. They taste the same. Uh, people can't tell the difference. They're glad either way. Uh, but the Splenda had no effect on the data, whereas the sugar wiped out the, uh, the depletion.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:02:46

        That's so good. That's so good.

    19. RBRoy Baumeister1:02:50

        The, the glucose is the energy that's also used for your immune system and, uh, um, and... But it uses very uneven amounts. So when you're fighting off a cold, that's often why you want to go to bed, uh, and just sleep it off and let your, your immune system have all the energy, uh, in there. Well, in our evolutionary history, we didn't have antibiotics or anything like that. If you got a cut on your foot and it got infected, your body needed to fight that off. Um, if you didn't get a cut, then you don't need, uh, extra immune system activity, but you'd need extra fuel for it to fight an infection or to survive a fever or anything like that. So it made sense to err on the side of conserving, um, as much as possible. There is an interesting alternative theory here, um, which, uh, um, most people don't talk about, but I, I, I read it and I thought it's, it's really quite good. It-- nothing quite fits everything, but this is the best alternative theory, which is that, [clears throat] um, the, the sections in the brain that do self-control are really important because that's, you know, self-control is really, uh, valuable for success in life in many different ways. And if you have high glucose around some nerve cells for a long period of time, it starts to kill them. It, uh, is m- best known, uh, diabetics, uh, in the past, they would lose all feeling in their feet 'cause, you know, their, their blood sugar would, would run high. Uh, and so it would start to kill the nerve cells and, uh, uh, and you wouldn't feel it, so you'd hurt your foot and, you know, infections would happen, and you wouldn't notice them. Um, so, uh, it could be that after you exert self-control, the depletion effect is s- the brain letting itself cool off, as it were, and say, "Okay, we've been exerting self-control using willpower. That means those nerve cells in the front of the brain have been exposed to a high level of glucose. Well, we don't want to burn them out. So not-- let's not use self-control for a while. Let them cool off, and then, then I can use them again." Um, that really fits a lot of, uh, a, a, a lot of, a lot of the evidence. It's the most plausible alternative, uh, theory and, and it would still mean most of the, the glucose or most of the depletion phenomena are real. It would just have a different, uh, interior, uh, mechanism than that the brain automatically conserves its energy, uh, but, uh, rather it, uh, it needs to, um, use different parts of the brain so that the, the nerve cells don't get wear and tear from a lo- extended period of high, high glucose.

13. 1:05:47 – 1:10:53

    How to Actually Improve Willpower and Self-Control

    1. CWChris Williamson1:05:47

       Beyond having more glucose across all of the work that you've done, what are the best, most evidence-based ways for people to improve their willpower?

    2. RBRoy Baumeister1:05:58

       Okay. Well, improving, uh, self-control, which is the real goal, um, you can do that without improving willpower. Uh-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:05

       Can you distinguish for me the difference between, uh, self-control and willpower?

    4. RBRoy Baumeister1:06:08

       Okay. So willpower would be the energy, uh, that you exert. Um, but self-control also depends on keeping track, uh, of the behavior. So the, the easiest way to improve your self-control, uh, is to keep a record of what you're doing. Even, even my grandmother told me, uh, a long time ago, "Well, when you're poor student, you don't have money, you just write down everything you expend and then, then you know how much you're spending and what you're spending it on." Uh, or, uh, if you're trying to lose weight and keep it off, well, you gotta weigh yourself more carefully. Or if you're trying to have-- take up an exercise program, tell your friends you're gonna do it and tell them you're gonna tell them each day, "Did I exercise today?" Uh, so improving the, the monitoring will improve self-control without needing any more, uh, willpower 'cause, you know, it gives you more feedback and, you know, I was gonna try to jog three times a week, and I haven't jogged all week, uh, so I better do it. It's easier to fool yourself if you don't keep track [chuckles] and, and certainly if you don't know, it's very hard to regulate something that you d- that you don't know. Uh, in terms of improving the willpowerIt, uh, it seems to work like a muscle, and a lot of people have produced findings like this, that if you exercise self-control on a regular basis, then you do-- you get better at it. Um, I didn't know if that would work. Uh, we had an early study where it, it did, it did work and then done a fair number of others, and other people have too. There are a couple of meta-analyses combining results of a great many and saying, a great many studies and saying, "Yes, it, it does, uh, practice self-control." And to design the study properly, you have to exercise self-control on one sphere and then measure self-control in something else to show that it's a general improvement. Um, but it does seem to work. Some of the biggest effects I've seen were the-- this Australian group, um, they did several studies. One was they took students who had money trouble, and they trained them to manage their money better. And they met, met with them, you know, once a month for several months or something and, uh, taught them how to manage their money. And so they did get better at that. But, uh, their measure, one key was they came to the laboratory and had to do self-control tasks that had nothing to do with money. It was just like maintaining focus on this while you're being distracted by that. They were better at that. Um, they also reported on the questionnaire that, uh, they started studying better just, just 'cause they're working on managing their money better. But, uh, they also study-- their study habits improved. After they finished dinner, they would clean up rather than just stack the dishes in the sink. Uh, they even said they ate healthier, um, which again, is a sign of self-control. But as, as they point out, healthy food is more expensive [chuckles] than junk food. So it kind of went against what they were training self-control for, uh, which was to manage their money better. Uh, but, uh, that also improved their, their diet. So they saw a whole variety of positive, uh, uh, changes in there, uh, that, that came from it, fitting the idea that self-control is sort of one central, um, resource that's used for many different things.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:39

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14. 1:10:53 – 1:21:11

    Porn is Damaging Sexual Novelty

    1. CWChris Williamson1:10:54

       I've been completely obsessed with this series that you've been doing on Substack about sexual novelty. What did you learn there?

    2. RBRoy Baumeister1:11:01

       I, I was intrigued with the idea that it's partly with, with thinking about pornography. It's so widely available and, um, I've seen over the course of my life that, that, that become, uh, more and more available and, you know, for better and for worse. Um, but, but the, the novelty of it, it might have been Naomi Wolf or one of those who remarked that her generation, which I think was about the same as mine, [coughs] was the last time a woman could have this huge effect on a man just by taking off her clothes and letting him see her naked body.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:11:41

       Mm.

    4. RBRoy Baumeister1:11:41

       But it was such a thrill just to, to see it. You know, when I was a kid, we didn't see pictures of naked women. Uh, if, you know, some-- one of my buddies would, uh, find a Playboy that somebody had thrown away or something, but they didn't even show the full nudity. Um, so you really didn't quite know what a woman entirely looked like and, and, and even if you could find an occasional picture or something, it, it's not like endless amounts of pornography and lots of women and ads where they're showing, uh, showing everything. So some of the mystery is gone and it, it made me think, uh, well, maybe there's some loss there, um, that novelty is arousing, but, uh, as-- but it's a limited amount of novelty. You can only do something the first time once.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:35

       Mm.

    6. RBRoy Baumeister1:12:36

       There's only one first time. So, uh, in a way, it's a bit sad for young men to have all this available to them and if it had been available when I was young, I doubt I would have resisted. I probably would have been curious enough to, uh, uh, to look at it all and, uh, and so on. But in a way, I think I'm, I'm lucky that it, it wasn't available. Um, but, you know, that way there was still novelty as I got into my thirties and forties, which I hadn't, uh, explored yet. But if you've, you've seen everything by the time you're twenty-five or even by the time you're twenty, um, there isn't, there isn't as much novelty available. Um-On the different sex partners, and that seems to be what people are shifting. That's kind of what I came to after writing those columns, that, uh, people are blazing through all the novelty and pornography. They're not doing as much of capitalizing on novelty within the relationship as of the, the second base plan, you know, that you just sort of gradually go from one step to the other. One of my young friends said, uh, "Oh, yep, uh, today I just did it again, uh, from first contact on the dating app to having lots of sex under a week. Just a few days." Um, whereas, you know, back in the day, well, you know, the earlier day, you had to practically be engaged before you could go all the way. And, uh, um, and certainly when I grew up in the '70s, uh, you had to have a series of interactions and, uh, you know, you had the relationship. And then so the step-by-step, the novelty, uh, you know, you could appreciate. So the, the first time you undo her brassiere or whatever, wow, that's, that's really exciting. But if you've had sex, you know, and done it all, uh, right away, that doesn't, I think, strengthen the relationship in the way that shared novel experiences, uh, a series of them will do. I can't prove it on that, but that's, uh, that's a speculation. But going for novelty in terms of lots of different partners rather than novelty within one relationship of gradually exploring many different activities, that seems much less well designed to produce healthy families, which is what society needs. Um, and I also have to think, uh, for those fortunate young men who have had sex with lots and lots of different women, is this really good preparation for marriage? [chuckles] Um, I, I think it would, uh, you would cycle through women rapidly and get, get tired of them.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:15:34

       Do you think that s-

    8. RBRoy Baumeister1:15:35

       And then settle down with one woman for 40 years.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:15:37

       Yeah. Do you think that that, uh, predisposes men who've had a high body count before getting into marriage that, uh, even trying to titrate... Let's say that they've taken the red pill of your Substack post series, and they're going to slow... You, you can only get to second base once, and if you hit a home run first time, then you've rounded all of them basically.

    10. RBRoy Baumeister1:15:59

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:15:59

        And we're gonna slowly titrate the sexual novelty over time. We're gonna get more experimental, but it's gonna be over a much more protracted timeline. Uh, do you think that you can be sort of predisposed to not finding that as exciting? Is there a... Basically, is there a lifetime Coolidge effect as well?

    12. RBRoy Baumeister1:16:17

        Yeah. Somebody commented that on one of my Substacks, that after you've had sex with a dozen different women, then to go slow and get to second base with the next one is probably not that, that exciting. That is plausible. I'm not sure it's true.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:16:31

        Hmm.

    14. RBRoy Baumeister1:16:32

        Um, it does, it does seem likely. And, uh-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:16:36

        What was that, what was that story about the couple where the woman had never used her hand?

    16. RBRoy Baumeister1:16:44

        Oh, right. [chuckles] Yes, I remember reading that. I think it was in the Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask book. It was one of the first bestsellers for the public about sex. And, uh, and she'd written to the physician and, uh, said they'd had a good sex life, uh, with her husband, and then gradually he couldn't, uh, you know, perform as well. It got weaker and weaker, and it stopped altogether, and it was kind of sad, and she felt bad for him. And, and you know, and then she thought, you know, morals, women didn't do sexual things. But she said, "Well, I love my husband, and, you know, we've been married a long time. I'm not gonna worry about morality." And she went and bought a book about sex, uh, which, you know, back in those days there weren't that, that many things available. And, um, and it said, "If you put your hand on the man's, uh, genitals, it, it is exciting to them." And so she said, "So I tried that and oh, [chuckles] he got harder than he had for years." Um, and so [chuckles] it was a very nice, uh, kind of sweet story. So there's the opposite extreme of, of, of novelty. They'd hardly done anything.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:17:54

        Hmm.

    18. RBRoy Baumeister1:17:54

        Um, and, uh, you know, if we go, if we go back a century, the amount of female flesh a man would see in his lifetime is, uh, less probably than you can see in an hour of, uh... [chuckles]

    19. CWChris Williamson1:18:08

        I was... I, I mean, I was fascinated by that. What a weirdly... I guess it, it would be impossible to do that study now because sexual culture is so permissive and so sort of widely-

    20. RBRoy Baumeister1:18:19

        Right

    21. CWChris Williamson1:18:19

        ... promoted that no one would have gone their entire life without what is sort of termed as second base, right?

    22. RBRoy Baumeister1:18:27

        Right.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:18:27

        You... Actually, I lied. I lied. Apparently, you can get to fourth base without going around second base. That is, you just go from home base to first, and then you go straight back again, apparently, and there's other bits that you can miss off. But I loved, um, I loved that, that story that you told about a series of experiments that were done showing pornography, normal pornography, uh, BDSM pornography-

    24. RBRoy Baumeister1:18:53

        Right

    25. CWChris Williamson1:18:53

        ... and then educational sexual videos, and the increase in sexual frequency happened when everybody saw the porn for the first time because, again, this was in the '60s or the, the '70s-

    26. RBRoy Baumeister1:19:05

        Right

    27. CWChris Williamson1:19:05

        ... I think, where porn-

    28. RBRoy Baumeister1:19:06

        Right

    29. CWChris Williamson1:19:06

        ... was basically not available.

    30. RBRoy Baumeister1:19:07

        Right.
15. 1:21:11 – 1:29:00

    How Sexual Novelty Affects Female Desire

    1. CWChris Williamson1:21:12

       have you got any idea what sexual novelty does to female sex drive?

    2. RBRoy Baumeister1:21:20

       Uh, it's much harder to get, uh, uh, convincing data, anything on that. And so, um, I can write what we do know about female sexuality, uh, and so on, but, uh, the role of novelty, I mean, it's not nothing, uh, but it doesn't seem to be, uh, as, as powerful a, a driving force. I recall some years ago, someone reported a survey, or I think it was first year college students at Southern Cal or, you know, one of the California universities, and they asked, "How many people would you like to have sex with for the rest of your life, assuming no constraints of marriage or laws or disease or anything like that, if it were up to you?"

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:06

       Hmm.

    4. RBRoy Baumeister1:22:07

       And the, uh, the women's response average was two and a half. Uh, so they wanted to have a fling or two and then settle down. The average for the men was 64.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:22:16

       [laughs] And that's the average. So you've got some-

    6. RBRoy Baumeister1:22:25

       That's the average

    7. CWChris Williamson1:22:25

       ... you've, you've got some impressive outliers there to bring that back down.

    8. RBRoy Baumeister1:22:28

       Yeah, there definitely were, 'cause they said actually a lot of people just said one. Presumably these were people who were still virgins-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:22:34

       Hmm

    10. RBRoy Baumeister1:22:34

        ... and they were just hoping to have the first one.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:22:36

        Oh, wow. Okay.

    12. RBRoy Baumeister1:22:37

        But, uh-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:22:38

        Yeah, yeah, yeah

    14. RBRoy Baumeister1:22:38

        ... uh, but so both men and women, there were a lot saying, "I would like to have one." Uh, but a lot of the men wanted to have a, a really high number and, uh, and not very many women were, uh, saying, "I wanna go have sex with 100 men." Um, some are doing it now. There was that woman in the UK who did it all in one day, right? And-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:23:02

        A thousand. Yeah, Bonnie Blue, I, I, uh, had a debate with her on this show. I, uh, moderated a debate with her on the show.

    16. RBRoy Baumeister1:23:09

        It wasn't 1,000 in one day, right?

    17. CWChris Williamson1:23:11

        No, it was. There was... You're talking about Lily Phillips, who did 100, and then Bonnie Blue had sex with 1,000 men in one day, which even if you just run the numbers is insane, but the whole thing was recorded. It's, yeah, it's, it's a real f- I mean, more than anything, it's a, it's an endurance feat, um, more than it is a-

    18. RBRoy Baumeister1:23:28

        Yeah

    19. CWChris Williamson1:23:28

        ... a, one of sexual novelty. But I mean, what you're looking at there is basically someone who's kind of the, the Michael Jordan or the LeBron James or the Tiger Woods of sociosexuality. It's just somebody that's so far... She is the tale of the ta- She's the Elon Musk of, of, of having sex.

    20. RBRoy Baumeister1:23:43

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:23:44

        And, um, I had a c- I had a conversation with her. I, I sat down. I sat across from her. She was perfectly cordial. Uh, she had her defenses up at the start, but when she realized it wasn't gonna be a, you know, cantankerous takedown conversation, it was, it was really nice. And I was looking-- I mean, I think I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I was looking for w- is there some deception going on here? Is there some secret trauma that's leaking out? Is there whatever? And by the end of it, my summary is just she is the most extreme sociosexual being that I've ever seen. She just-

    22. RBRoy Baumeister1:24:21

        Okay

    23. CWChris Williamson1:24:21

        ... is able to completely detach emotions from having sex. It's not alchemizing some childhood wound in a way that I think a lot of BDSM and kink actually is. There seems to be a good amount of data coming out that a, a good bit of BDSM and kink is, uh, preferences for that are, um, predisposed by some situations people have been through in childhood. That was Catherine Page Hardin from UT. She was teaching me about that a couple of weeks ago in a, a couple of other conversations I've had. Um, it's... I- I- it's, it's definitely unique, but I mean, yeah, maybe there'll be studies done on her at some point in future. Who knows?

    24. RBRoy Baumeister1:25:00

        The one who did 100 said she wouldn't recommend it.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:25:02

        Yeah, the one who did 1,000 said that she'd do it again. So the, again-

    26. RBRoy Baumeister1:25:06

        Yeah. Yeah

    27. CWChris Williamson1:25:06

        ... the, the-

    28. RBRoy Baumeister1:25:08

        Yeah

    29. CWChris Williamson1:25:08

        ... the g- the people at the extremes, the people who are at the tail of the tail-

    30. RBRoy Baumeister1:25:10

        Yeah
16. 1:29:00 – 1:29:42

    Where to Find Roy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:29:01

       Roy Baumeister, ladies and gentlemen. Roy, you rule. I love your stuff. Everyone needs to go and check out your Substack. Go and subscribe. The Existential Contrarion?

    2. RBRoy Baumeister1:29:09

       Right. Yes.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:29:10

       The, yeah, The Existential Contrarion. It is a crime how... I mean, you're new on Substack, but everyone needs to go and do it. Check out the series on sexual novelty. I'm a massive fan. I read everything that you put out. Uh, I think you're great, and, uh, I, I look forward to whatever you're doing next because, uh, every opportunity to read what you do and, and to talk to you is, is a real treat.

    4. RBRoy Baumeister1:29:27

       Okay. Well, thank you, Chris. It's been a great interview and a total pleasure for me as well.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:29:31

       [outro music] Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Go on

Episode duration: 1:29:43