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Episode 166: Where does guilt come from, where do body issues come from
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all right good evening everybody it's Nate G here along with dr. Doug Lyall with the beat your genes podcast dr. Lyle how you doing this evening go ahead about yourself I'm doing really good actually yesterday made me think of something evolutionary psychology related I was watching Game seven of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and in this game Las Vegas the Golden Knights they had won so it's a best-of-seven series for the first round and at the Vegas Golden Knights were up three games to one on the San Jose Sharks and the ionisation sharks had clawed their way back to have it tied three to three four games so this is Game seven it's like one of the most yeah important games for four teams in a playoffs and this is now ten minutes left in the game the Vegas Golden Knights are up three zero two goals and then what happens now happen of the San Jose Sharks team takes a hit get the cross-check and loses consciousness and everybody's scared for his life he's ocean was on the ice and he eventually gets up the trainer's help him and he goes back to the locker room then what happened actually is going to make NHL history is the San Jose Sharks they had a five-minute major penalty which means soon hockey if the team gets a penalty in the score then the penalty is erased and that they start over but in in this and a major penalty if you score them they keep going well the San Jose Sharks in the span of a five-minute penalty scored four goals and the Vegas con tonight's scored another to tie it up they go to overtime and San Jose ends up winning the game incredible moment history and I'm thinking of evolutionary psychology and thinking gosh I bet dr. loud doesn't care about the story at all because it's hockey not basketball that is correct ha ha ha I like really they're called the golden Knight oh well I guess that comes from the little food the gold nugget casino that's there in Vegas golden Knight and I hgg yeah whatever all right well it's a nice little story there Nate not that I care [Laughter] a very very very interesting night for sports fans of the Stanley Cup Playoffs but not for dr. Lara anyway dr. got it we've got some questions today about our different personality characteristics and how they manifest with different emotions and different thoughts and feelings so we're going to get right to it we've also have a caller on hold as Brian I believe so Brian hang on hold for a little bit we're going to take a couple of questions from the listeners through email and will again get to you so dr. Lyle let's start alright dear dr. Lyle I'm interested to know from an evolutionary psychology point of view why some people have a really hard time doing things for themselves and feel like they must always put others first why does it feel morally wrong and guilt inducing to these people to do things for themselves such as have fun exercise rest and generally take care of their own needs is this all about signaling agreeableness or conscientiousness perhaps yes that's exactly what's going on so you're describing somebody that is high in conscientiousness and probably also in agreeableness in this case and so those two characteristics when they go together these are it all it takes is one other thing like if you if you happen to be like really not smart at all and you have these two characteristics then you'll be a very helpful person but people won't be won't be seeking you out trying to grab you by by the by the sweatshirt and drag you into their life but if we add just even a reasonable amount of intelligence it doesn't have to be fancy just a reasonable amount you have the the characteristics that I call the sucker triad so the the foundation of the sucker triad is agreeableness and conscientiousness it means that if you like I said if you have any ability at all to go with it then this makes you a very valuable target for other people because all they have to do is to get in front of you and pitch you on something that they want you to do and because you're agreeable you'll probably agree to it and if you're conscientious you will follow through and if you've got any ability at all you know they've come to you because they know that you're probably capable of doing whatever X is and so now you're stuck with it and and what what's happening is is that as this person describes the sort of guilt and tension that goes along with with being a sucker triad Award winner the what happens with this is that you are a really valuable resource you're it's basically like you're looking they're looking on a bush with a bunch of people there but those are just green leaves and then you're the little you're the little blackberry that's under the leaf it's like ah now we got something of value this person is worth trying to pressure and get get to to do what is that I want them to do because they're probably going to do it they're going to follow through they're probably going to do a good job etc and they could probably can do it so this is the the very high value of agreeable conscientious people their fate now what happens is a really a really cool thing happens in life when you are a sucker triad person is that that people will pat you on the back and say they really like you and value you and sometimes they're irritated because that you're already so overburdened with things that you're doing for other people that you just have this harried look to your life and you just you know you can't you have to try to say no and then they get angry and then you go ahead and say yes and so what goes out the window is though you disappoint the one person that you can disappoint with getting anybody mad which is you so any plans you had to take an art class or to take a yoga class or to just sit down and read a book or watch some cool show on television that that's out the window there's no personal enjoyment or personal development for you because you are actually handling all of the the tasks being assigned to you by the pushy people now the good news is is that as your life goes on what will happen towards the end of your life is that they'll sometimes do this for you right before you pass away is that there'll be a special ceremony where they'll you know some people will come together and hold the ceremony for you and they'll give you a medallion a medal on this metal it will have the big big script S on the front and it'll have your hypothesize you know dates of you have your name and your dates of how long they think you're going to live when you were born and when you're going to die you know really cool thing and the ass everybody tells you that the S means super like you are this super person but actually it means sucker so this is what I call the sacrum Italian and on the back of the sucker medallion it lists of the people the individuals and the the institutions that you sacrificed your life for so this is what this person is referring to is sucker medallion winners now or people that are well on their way to winning a sucker medallion now what causes this well it causes this this is caused by being an outlier on a couple of dimensions with respect to the Big Five whenever we start to see people that are outliers on the Big Five we start to see unusual personalities with unusual challenges so for example if you're very disagreeable and you're very low in conscientiousness you're you're as I said a psychopath so that's you know you're you're going to run into trouble with law you know this is this is just how your life is going to be full of contentious problems and if you're a male they're very likely to be violent problems and legal problems you can't help yourself you're that's just how you're built if you're this person is describing a sucker medallion future recipient and what there's some things that we try to do about this so on my website I have a I think I have a series of little audios and one of them is probably how to get out of it and it's also I discussed this in a in a video that's on my website called success forces so what we're trying to do is get out of things if we're one of these people and there's some skills that you can learn you'll never change your personality but you can in fact learn some specific skills you're kind of like a really introverted person that hates public speaking but goes to a public speaking coach and then learns how to actually manage to get through the ordeal if you've got to give a speech and so there's things that you can do to make you more effective well there's things that you can do to make you more effective if you are you know if you've got the sucker triad working against you so on my website are things like strategy is we always tell people oh I wish I could but I can't and and then there's a way that we explain why it is that we can't do whatever it is that they want us to do we we blame big Louie all the time so we always blame somebody else never take responsibility for this always blame somebody else it's always some of the reason that there's some some of the force but what we most specifically try to do is to not be specific about why it is that we can't do what other people want us to do we have other things that are just that that we have to take care of and we don't have any choice because we've made promises to other people so we wish they could it we could help we just can't do it and when they say well who how am I supposed to handle this where am I supposed to go what we then do is we recognize this as a very very slick trap and what this is is that the individual who might have been six foot four and 280 pounds and and 55 years old and dominant personality who is trying to push you into doing something and you say you know ie some big snarling boss and you're the secretary that's been pushed around by this guy for the last 16 years and what you're going to say is oh I wish I could stay late work on this project for you you know mr. Johnson I really wish I could but I can't why because there's just something that I have to take care of at home what is it did you have to take care of oh I just something that I have to take care of and we send them in a circle it's just something that I made a promise and I have to take care well who do you make a promise to oh it's just something I got to deal with so we don't tell them specifically and the reason we don't tell them specifically is if we tell them specifically they're going to contradict us they're going to say that that that is not a legitimate reason so we are not going to give them the satisfaction of being able to directly contradict us because we're not going to tell them what it is and then uh if their continued pushiness it basically says well what am I going to do about this what they're doing then is they're shifting the nature of the conversation from adult to adult to child the parent so they are essentially saying you're you're in charge of this outcome for me I'm like a child I need help okay and what it does is that Stokes parental altruism which is a very easy thing to stoke and somebody that's a sucker triad victim so that the that's why what we're going to do is we're going to shift that that moment back to adult to adult and what we're going to say are things like you know I don't know but you'll figure it out you'll work it out and in doing that we we suggest to them that we have not taken the bait these things are not being done consciously by the people on the other side of these equations they are they are disagreeable manipulative instincts that live on the other side and we have to be consciously acquiring techniques to maneuver around these instincts if you're going to defend your existence so that's the story of our question and the reason why you've got the problem is because you happen to be have you know the genetics that have led you to be both agreeable and conscientiousness at the same time and that means that you are pretty defenseless unless you unless you put up some barriers and you could learn how to put those barriers up and defend some of your time in your life absolutely fascinating so to the people who say oh well I can't just be direct and say no that's just disagreeable people who have no problem doing that exactly it's always hilarious if you yeah if you read if you read these books like when I say no I feel guilty or etc all these you're perfect right by Alberti and Emmons which classic in the field of assertiveness training it's obvious that the people that wrote them are disagreeable so it's like they have no of course they would have had no idea about the big five they would have had no idea that these are intractable personality conditions of the organism so they all they see is they see people getting run over and they're like hey just speak up actually one book was called like stand up speak up and talk back like that was the name of the book some bestseller 30 years ago this is a joke okay this is never going to work and it's not going to work because personalities aren't subject to change all that you can do is you can get skilled that's specifically preparing for these types of moments and then get better at you know up your batting average which your batting average is probably zero now but you can get your batting average up to you know thirty or forty or fifty and every time you get away with one of these deals and get out of something that you almost always would have done in the past and you actually didn't just you didn't get out of it because your mother's in the hospital dying of heart disease you actually got out of it with a slick maneuver you will feel cloud9 you'll feel like you you just you know like you robbed from Fort Knox it's like oh my god how did I get away with that and the the the way we can get away with it is it stands on these principles that I outline like I said on my website and success forces and some of those audios but this is the notion here of you know this is how we must go about defending our time it's kind of like getting a tax refund the money was always yours to begin with you're just getting it back this time about time yeah that's that's exactly right very good yeah all right well so after allow what is the personality type of someone who has body issues for example someone who is very particular about their weight to a point that if they gain a few pounds they start to hate themselves yeah I mean we're seeing hyper conscientiousness there and we're going to see hyper conscientiousness you know sort of can float into what we might call the sessom compulsive characteristics and and so we're going to find out that obsessive compulsive characteristics are are not only is that that characteristic itself inherited but it's also true that the types of things that are people are are obsessive about are also inherited so you know there are people that are it's it's not uncommon for for example someone who is anorexic to have a grandmother who's also anorexic the or a mother etc or a sister so we're going to find that that this kind of physical presentation hyper conscientiousness is going to be you know a obviously people if you think about this that people are naturally concerned with their self presentation so you can then imagine a bell curve where there are some people who are not concerned about their self presentation at all and there's people that are extremely concerned about their self presentation on the other side with most people in the middle so we could recognize that people with no concern for their self presentation these are not enlightened people okay these are highly dysfunctional people they're either dysfunctional mentally physically or both so this is a there's something badly wrong with an individual that is not concerned about their appearance and self presentation to the world on the other hand you can imagine that someone who is obsessively worried about how it is that they look and is terribly critical about this you can imagine that that also is crippling and and very dysfunctional so the world most of us land somewhere in the middle and I would say that most of us are pretty damn self-critical and pretty damn worried and concerned and and somewhat anxious etc about our appearance that that is situation normal for the species is to be always kind of hmm you know have some baggage you know have it have some essentially competitive voices in there worried about our self presentation that that would make sense in other words don't don't slack off on that on your grooming processes and your self presentational processes because your competitors won't so whatever percentile you're at if you're an eighth or if you're a three the truth is is that your competitors have embedded within them an anxiety for self presentation that's going to cause them to be doing a pretty good job of putting their best foot forward most of the time so if you don't have that very same characteristic you're going to be out competed by individuals who are more sufficiently anxious so the average human is relatively anxious fairly concerned about their self presentation and I and is thoroughly worried about it which is why fashion is such a big deal that it is and for females why makeup is such a big deal the way it is and etc so so it's not so you can start to see that if the midline of the of the human nervous system is pretty self-absorbed there on this dimension then 75th percentile is getting pretty uncomfortable okay and 85th percentile is more uncomfortable still and 95th percentile is getting damp you know downright fanatical and 97th percentile is now doing a lot of suffering and so so you can see how this would work so a person could be otherwise their mind could be very functional and not really that odd and maybe there's somewhat fastidious and somewhat anxious and somewhat perfectionistic but it just so happens that they get a self presentational circuit along with their generally high anxiety that happens to be particularly focused on that particular set of neural circuits by genetics and now what we've got now we've got somebody that is hyper conscientious with a lot of anxiety about their physical self or an addition and they're going to they're going to do a fair amount of suffering behind us so now all of these life experiences that people have are to some degree context dependent so they're going to change over time and you might say well well it's probably all going to mellow out as you age not necessarily so my mother for example has gotten much worse in this dimension so my mother was always quite laid-back about her self presentation always neat reasonably orderly but by no means self-absorbed at all in fact I would rate my mother's self absorption with her appearance probably at the 20th percentile for the average female now because of Alzheimer's she is now her natural high high conscientiousness which is characteristic of her personality that now she is aware that she is old and somewhat infirmed and not that smart and as a result she feels less than and therefore like like she has to worry about her worth in the social world so she is now much more worried about making errors specifically about her appearance and so she will she will ask me repeatedly in any time that that I that I see her and then if we go anywhere you know do I look okay do I look okay she hasn't you know she would never never said do I look good she just doesn't have that kind of circuitry in there to even think about looking good she wants to look okay and she's very worried about looking okay in a way that she was never worried before so you were the person at is that in life what their what their age and ecological context is is going to be a major component of of this kind of suffering however the the basic principles of why a specific individual is particularly hyper conscientious about specifically physical issues is going to be largely a gene driven phenomenon and is there a different cipher for women who ten women tend to be from what I understand more aware less issue and have this issue more than men to vastly more for for a number of reasons first of all considerably more of the variants and a woman's mate value is dependent upon her her appearance so the that that's just obvious for the for the basic biological reasons that that women do not provision men so if you if you started out looking at the animal world by basically saying hey the an are just going to glance and so fitness indicators or smells or sounds and they're just going to pick the one that causes the most lust in me okay that's what goes down in the animal kingdom but for humans there is a there's a very important additional assessment that goes on which is to look inside the minds of the individuals that's undoubtedly why we can talk as much as we do in kin and in such a sophisticated fashion that this is a method for actually examining the the genetic solidness of the individuals genetic code because a huge amount of that code is is part parcel of building the brain so the you can tell that humans humans mate value is dominated by vision just as it is throughout the animal kingdom but you're going to find out that because in this species where we have strong pair bond proclivities in the species it's going to then be the case that that women are a major job of a female is going to be to try to get resources out of males and so males do not need to try to get resources out of females because they're not pregnant and therefore therefore not vulnerable so they're not paying nearly the price for pregnancy - the female is that being the case male provisioning of offspring is a way for the female for the female organism to essentially get even with respect to investment in offspring that being the case therefore the male psychology with respect to their their mental abilities at getting resources and their personalities with respective willingness to share those resources and their their conscientiousness with respect to following through on those impulses that they express all of these things are very important parts of a male's mate value that being the case that the male doesn't have to worry about the mirror image of that problem therefore the females mind is not as an important feature of her sexual attractiveness as the males is as his now trust me there's like I said it's dominated by vision but the but there is a difference and so that being the case you're going to find women should naturally be more concerned about their appearance than men should be concerned about their appearance which is true and so as a result this this characteristic of hyper conscientiousness about one's physical self presentation should be found more often in females than it is in males and that is absolutely the case it's also exacerbated by the pleasure trap now that arrives in the 20th century that leads to hyper palatable foods that lead to systematic overconsumption and therefore the gaining of excess fat stores and those excess fat stores are now going to mimic pregnancy on the female but not in the male as a result the excess fat is going to be more unappealing sexually sitting on a female than it does on a male and as a result of that that that is also going to add a lot of anxiety about that problem and and concern particularly for a hyper conscientious individual so hyper conscientious female particularly in anything close to mating yours should be more worried about that than the average male is for good reason it isn't quote societal its genetic competition and so as a result women are suffering more in terms of their their feelings of self-confidence and esteem behind physical self presentational issues around weight then are men and it there's the reasons for that or straight biological competitive algorithms so that's a very long-winded explanation and answer that question well it's interesting because I was trying to figure out the male counterpart of the the the you know women are have the quote body issues from hyper conscientiousness although as a result of the male's desire to feel resourceful would be signal of conscientiousness from male be to for example where a lot of cargo shorts or cargo pants so they can hold a lot of things no it would be it would be worrying about rising and dominance hierarchies and making money mmm it would be achievement okay so so males are going to be more concerned about about that they're also going to be concerned about their physical size and strength but there because that those are going to be somewhat selected for as a Stone Age part of the Stone Age algorithm for females try to figure out who's who's going to get to be able to keep her sources and therefore be able to share them but that male resource acquisition is is complex it involves trading it involves social skills it also involves coordination will involves cunning so it involves a lot of things that are associated with intelligence it's more today more so today than it ever was before but it's there and so males are going to worry about whether they've got enough resources so they're going to be worrying about that that more when they're going to be worrying about that more than the female is going to be worried about that female isn't going to be as worried about the fact that she's broke where a male is going to be a lot more worried about that fascinating all right it's time to take our caller so let's well right hmm Brian from Florida welcome to the show hello hey there yeah how you doing good yeah we can hear you yep all right really Brian all right well my question will it dovetails quite nicely I think into the last discussion you were having I was going to ask dr. Lyle about female promiscuity and I know it's not common for females to be promiscuous because it's more costly for them and there is promiscuity when when there is a differential and inmate values but there are probably a small number of females that are promiscuous even when there isn't that large difference there and I was like wondering why that would show up because evolutionarily would be much more likely for those females to be get pregnant and be physically disabled and then to starve if the man runs off so that was my question right yeah a very good question what you're looking at is is openness and low conscientiousness okay so the you put high openness and low conscientiousness together and you're going to get a highly promiscuous female that's that's going to be a big part of the story openness alone it'd be an interesting it's an interesting doctoral dissertation for somebody who would be you know some grad student that's listening now in developmental psychology or personality psychology that you know what is the what are the driving elements of female promiscuity and those would be the one those would be where I would look I would also look at instability when they think we're else I oh it's certainly extraversion so you can imagine picture in your mind a highly open low conscientious highly extroverted and emotionally unstable female that female is going to be promiscuous and so so that that's what you're looking at so evolution has selected against that and that's that's to put those combinations together those are going to wind up being low probability combinations that you're going to find as just as a sociopath is a low combination and just as our sucker medallion is a low sucker triad ISM it's a low you know it's there our sucker triad person is probably about as uncommon as is a promiscuous female so it's the same kind of idea so just openness will get us part of the way there a lot of women you know women that are more open will certainly have had many more sex partners by by the time they are done on earth then someone who is who is closed so that would be one factor and then if we lower conscientiousness that's going to be another factor if we increase extraversion that's going to be another factor and if we increase emotional instability that's going to be another factor so bit by bit we build along a probability continuum this is holding environmental factors constant of course and including their own attractiveness would effectively be an environmental factor because the more attractive they are the more attractive appealing opportunities would come their way okay so effectively their own attractiveness is part of their environmental circumstances it's literally part of the environmental circumstances that the brain sits in okay and it influences in the environmental opportunities that come their way so you can now now picture in your mind's eye an unstable extroverted low conscientiousness high open highly attractive female that's a highly promiscuous female and so it has been selected against by evolution we can see that in the fact that that it's a relatively low probability characteristic that we're going to see in females and the reason why it's low is those individual elements of those personality characteristics each one at a time are relatively low so very very good question excellent all right thank you for all right oh we're really appreciated all right no problem all right dr. Lauer we've got another caller on hold so we're going to caller what's your name thanks for calling and what were you calling from hi I'm this is Nick from San Diego very good Nick all right hey what's going on what can we look let me do I had a question for dr. Lila I want to know why do humans hide when they have sex why do they always you know go inside or it's and it's you can never talked about it I don't know if there's any other animals that behave that way and is this a right product of evolution or our modern society you know that that's a really good question and I am not aware of the anthropological I'm not a student of cultural anthropology so I don't know what goes on somebody somebody knows I think that what you're seeing about what's mostly been observed is that it's relatively secret okay and I'm not sure exactly why that could would be one reason comes to mind is that that human sexuality can be a rather involved situation as opposed to for example what happens in chimpanzees so our closest relative the sex act is is I believe it's eight thrusts typically on the male so the entire act is like eight seconds long and it's done so it's a it's a very safe act to take place right out in the middle of a clearing if we can't see a predator because this it's it's over before it starts the whereas a humans are you know way more elaborate way longer cycle it's a you know fifteen minutes is very standard typical in my case of course it's considerably less than that but took but the point is is that that this is so I have a feeling that there's a possibility that it could actually have been dangerous to not essentially be sort of bunkered in and safe in some ways and then therefore not be under potential predator observation so the that's that's just an idea that I'm having and I don't I don't I can't back it up and somebody may write to me and say hey I've got a PhD in cultural anthropology from Cornell and you're crazy and wide open completely public sex you know sexual activities takes place in villages all over the world etc I have not heard that though so I think that what you're observing in humans is is natural for humans to be sort of bunkered in and secure in private and I my guess would be that it would be derivative of making sure that one is that one is safe and secure from predators that's what I'm guessing what do you think this is it related to why we wear clothes and hide our our bodies is that no I don't know I I have somebody as written on the evolutionary psychology of clothing and that that's something that obviously there would be more than one reason for clothes the in so clothes could be it could have been the evolution of the use of clothing could come about from multiple multiple reasons but I I think you're on to some good questions here and you know these are these are things that I haven't considered and I don't I don't want to act definitive or sure but anything because I don't know okay well thanks doctor huh very good all right thank you sir all right fantastic there are some great questions yes all right so yeah you had mentioned actually the two of our next questions actually have to do with the with Brian from Florida or the the next question has to do with sociopaths but then we've got a question that kind of similar to what Brian was asking so dr. Lyle yeah this listener wants to know the difference between compassion and empathy and how it relates to sociopaths and so they're trying to figure out where you draw the line between a sociopath and somebody who just is trying to improve their social skills to the limits as you said communication is a way to manipulate other organisms with this definition the lines seem blurry I'm not sure what they mean by improving their social skills I think what they really by that is maximizing their manipulative leverage so that's a little different different thing now the I think that what we're going to see here is that what you call psychopath or sociopath this is a this is a person a very disagreeable person with low conscientiousness and therefore very very low empathy and the so the the question that's being framed there is you know is this where do you draw the line between that and somebody that's you know manipulative but has some empathy and you know where do you where is it associate happen where it isn't a sociopath and the answer is is that that we do a slight disservice to ourselves we have a little cost and the way that we make inferences when we when we label things so when we call somebody a borderline personality disorder or a sociopath we are acting as if this is an infection that the person has that that is that you're there that type okay but that's a mistake what people are is they are genetic variations that sit on bell curves and so it's it's exactly the same problem that we say well you know Bill is tall well tall relative to him okay how do you how tall do you mean five nine six one six eight if he's an NBA player named Bill and we're saying that he's tall he's probably at least 610 and so if he's just Bill and you're in your grade school class in the fourth grade he's five four okay so this is these are relative issues there there is no type of a human being you call tall you're just the word tall is so is describing a place on a bell curve that you subjectively start to use that term as opposed to some other term then you watch yourself using hybrids like he's pretty tall okay okay well now I know he's not seven feet tall the so a person isn't quote a sociopath or not a sociopath any more than somebody that is a guy that six-foot is quote all the now you could say all right I met a guy that's seven - alright let's face it we can all agree that that's striking well there's same thing with sociopaths you can meet sociopaths that are just absolutely cold-blooded and vicious at which point you're like yeah that thing is way out there on the bell curve of low conscientiousness and disagreeable that's a super dangerous uncivilized frickin animal is what that thing is so that's that's where the confusion comes in so the so a as I've said you know a good used car salesman may or may not be associated hath but he probably isn't he's got enough conscientiousness that he's not lying so often that you don't just catch him you know within minutes as he is he's just telling you one story after the next reading you in trying to figure out what it is that you want to hear to try to get your name on the bottom line okay so do people like that exists on car lots and and in and in you know in and everywhere in the world yes they do but there's going to be a lot of people that are less conscientious somewhat disagreeable and and trick tricky willing to be to trick you and yet we wouldn't call them a sociopath or psychopath we would just call them you know a little dangerous like you better watch out put your hand over your wallet you know don't get your car fixed by that guy because he's not trustworthy okay so that's the that's the end of the mystery of this question is that somebody that you would call sociopath is low and empathy low in conscientiousness they're disagreeable and the but there's no it is a I guess here's the bottom line of course it's a blurry line these are nothing other than variations on the theme they're not types and dr. lives their difference or what is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath that's just work just word usage okay they just did that word usage from 40 years ago we call them Psychopaths now we call them sociopaths okay is there an emotional stability component to these diet to these labels not necessarily I don't think I think that you could be a very stable psychopath the the I think that when you get unstable you are in you know you can be you're more likely to be explosively dangerous so that that's how that's going to work just like you can be pretty damn narcissistic and if you're intelligent and conscientious enough people aren't going to they're just going to know that you're disagreeable and difficult but you you aren't going to scare people whereas if you happen to also be unstable then we're going to see you know these acute reactions out of you that are going to really disturb people and the same thing would be true of a psychopath fascinating all right one last question dr. Lyle is there a link between high openness and a reduction in genetic preference this listener goes on says it seems that the people who are highest and openness are the least likely to get along well with their family and the least likely to have kids the latter is now a choice given the availability of birth control so given birth control I'm curious if this means a new societal trend is emerging whereby highly open individuals are being selected out and this being a new trend primarily to the availability of birth control because in the past the apparent reduction in genetic preference for high openness individuals would have been evened out by their sexual adventurousness yeah this person is confused they've just got a they've got a they've got some exemplar in their head of somebody that they're thinking of that they're recognized the openness and that individual but they're not recognizing they're not recognizing other personality characteristics that are that are a factor here openness is definitely not being selected out in the modern environment conscientiousness is being selected out so highly conscientious people are are going to wind up using birth control more fastidiously and so that they will be out bred by people of low conscientiousness the and also for example people with lower intelligence are going to out breed people people of moderately low intelligence are going to out BRE the people of high intelligence that that that's going to be how that's going to work to the highly intelligent people are going to add that IQ to their high conscientiousness and that's a prescription for very low birth rates low conscientiousness lower conscientiousness with if you get sufficiently low conscientiousness and sufficiently low intelligence people may may not be able to get their act together to be very successful in mating but if it's certain levels it's going to wind up optimizing the the bell curve with respect to certain environments and you're going to wind up with a sort of optimizing breeding rates so you can you can imagine you know let's we don't have to get personal about this just imagine a math program that we're actually trying to figure out for example within the United States might not even hold the profile might hold not hold perfectly across all states probably does so probably we're going to find that you know a half a standard deviation or standard deviation below the mean say call it twenty-fifth percentile for conscientiousness and twenty-fifth percentile for for intelligence probably those two things probably out breed almost all competitive profiles we're to two factors are sitting you know in any any other pair of factors that you would put anywhere on a pair of bell curves those two characteristics probably at about that level optimizes human breeding rates in the United States now that wouldn't be true for example in a harsher and environment where were the less intelligence and less conscientiousness would lead to less effectiveness in survival problems and therefore we would find that those that the that the breeding rates would creep their way up those bell curves you can imagine in principal environments where where there would you know where you would see you know above-average conscientiousness outbreeding below average you know you can see where that could be true so but in general system-wide nationwide certainly this is likely to be the case then it is certainly not the case that the the high openness people remember the high openness people are going to have more sex partners so it is it is their conscientiousness that is going to be only when paired with that with high conscientiousness would this lead to low breeding rates so they're sort of persons got a vision in their head of people that are telling their parents to go to hell and I'm not going to do what you want I'm not going to settle down here in Mayville and I'm not going to have six children like my brothers and sisters but what you're really seeing there is specific individual who's conscientious enough not to get pregnant open enough to leave and disagreeable enough to not follow the party line so that's a specific individual they're describing rather than a general societal trend the trend would be as I've described
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