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Episode 235: Underdogs, lazy husband, genetic politics, disagreeable vs confrontational
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um dear doctors why do we root for underdogs how do we get status from a group that contains perennial losers yeah uh this is a this is a great question and it's actually a question that that um sort of a half halfway has puzzled me for a lot of my life and it's certainly the case and and to the point whereas if i if i'm watching a game that i kind of don't know anything about i want to know who the underdog is so that i can root for them i mean it's it's really quite amazing that this is true and so clearly this is tickling some kind of a circuit and the question is what's happening uh obviously there has to be a cost benefit advantage in here somewhere and i can think of a few things that are that are useful but the the most obvious is what we might call sort of coalition venture capital you know so a venture capitalist invests in in a young company that doesn't have enough money but has great promise and could take over so at one point in life you know google was you know some venture capitalists put up money for google uh and so this is this is what this is in other words if you're in early and you're investing early then you get a disproportionate share of the win and so i think that that works in in sort of human political process and probably has forever and so and whether that political process uh could be could actually be you know even a tribal warfare could be the same kind of a thing that if you if you walked into the middle of a tribal warfare situation and you could you could sense that one group was the underdog but you could see that they had promise where they had a possibility of that they could actually achieve a very surprising victory and if you could possibly do something to aid and abet that and get credit for it um then you could win big and you would win bigger then obviously if you join coalitions with this with the winning people with the people that are heavily favored or favored then obviously your contribution to the victory in any such way wouldn't be very important and you wouldn't get very much back so i think it's very much a cb risk reward coalition joining process the fact that we can join these coalitions from a distance i think it has to do with just the nature of the human brain's ability to have you know the sophisticated mirror neuron network and empathy structures the same uh it goes for the same uh processes watching a movie and becoming engrossed in those characters and feeling like you know them that's just sort of part of human nature so it's not a big extrapolation to to take that into the sporting arena and have the same kind of thing happen so i think that's what it is i think it's a uh root for the underdog if they win and you're you are publicly availably you know observed to be rooting for the underdog that i suppose could also reflect on your excellent judgment but i don't think that that's exactly what it is i think it's i think it's more a matter of you are invested early and therefore you get a bigger share of the spoils when they win i think that's what it is and uh yeah go ahead yeah i was going to say what and what do you say about the people who are rooting for the underdogs constantly that they never win like one thing i can think of a friend who was a chicago cubs fan and you know they they were always lo you know never never getting to the world series they'd always choke and you know they were just constantly it was they got status from you know being being those kind of fans those dedicated things yeah well that's exactly what it is is it's it's like the i think there's an inflection point where it's there's everything that doug is talking about is the team all of the potential gains because there's a chance of winning you know there's some some sort of you know there's there's some probability that you're going to have this payoff but if it's a real loser team and i'm you know i don't want to besmirch the cubs too much but you know if it's sort of guaranteed that they're not going to win that becomes its own badge of honor and pride um that uh is is a virtue signal in its own right so you know i can think of my most beloved professor that i ever had uh made a big signal big display about how he's a mets fan and it was it was less about him being a super fan of the mets and more about him displaying and signaling he's not a yankees fan so he's not part of the establishment he's he's sort of a free thinker he's you know it goes along with his uh the holes in his sweater vest and the the you know uh 15 year old toyota corolla that he drove it's all part of the display of the personality that he is trying to convey to to his village and i think associating yourself with a real loser of a team kind of bonds you with other people in that club in the same kind of way like that you know we're we have a little more righteousness we're we're the good guys against the evil empire um there are a lot of different things that could be going on with those those kinds of dynamics but i think that's very often the case is it's just a it's a display to your community yeah that's good great fabulous thank you dr dr hawk uh and in all fairness this was before 2016 where they actually won the world series yeah right right very true yeah exactly all right all right our next question dear doctors my husband and i are both 30 and have been married for two years we both work monday through friday with weekends off while i spend my weekends constantly moving batch cooking running personal errands exercising hanging with the friends my husband spends the entire weekend on the couch watching sports and reading twitter news on his laptop he only gets off the couch to eat and use the bathroom he has no other hobbies interests or friends at times i've asked him to go places with me but because we're polar opposites in every conceivable way i don't enjoy his company it feels like i'm dragging him along with me my husband really wants kids but i'm nervous about his lazy habits when that day comes my question is will having kids force my husband to be more active i'm worried he will still be a couch potato 10 years from now and won't be an active and engaged parent well that's a very good question holy smokes dr jen hawk give it give it a rip i mean i i yeah i don't know how much there is to say here there there are warning signs all over this question so the you know implicit in the way that this is being asked is essentially if we distill this down to the essence of what you're asking is will this change in the environment change my husband's personality and if there's one thing that we're very consistent about you're really trying to drive home on this show it's it's like the your personality is incredibly stable and uh you can certainly um different different things that happen in your life may cause different facets of your personality to um be illuminated or not and so you may find it's possible that having kids with him will awaken this dormant piece of him that you have not had any evidence of so far in your relationship that he suddenly becomes this weekend warrior and wants to spend all the time with you and the kids and doing stuff and he no longer is interested in everything that he is interested now that you are very consistently getting feedback is where his equilibrium of his cost benefit analysis of how he wants to spend his time and energy rests really consistently that is who this guy is um and it is possible that kids will change that but you don't know that and it that's a pretty big risk to take not knowing that um so you definitely don't you do not want to be in the position where you're taking a chance on that having kids and hoping that that will drive him into becoming a different kind of man than the one that you're married to because it's unlikely um and it's uh it's a big big risk and then you have children in your life and a marriage that is already sounds to me like fairly troubled um and unlikely to make it uh for the long haul with little kids in the mix which adds a huge amount of stress as well so i would i would proceed with great great caution here at bringing kids into this marriage i think there's you know if you have some um experimental opportunities available to you in terms of borrowing some kids for a while from you if either of you have siblings and nieces and nephews or friends with small children and not just for a day not just for a weekend because he can you know he that may brighten him up enough and you might get some false feedback about how excited he would be but you know have those kids stay with you for a week or two uh and watch him watch his behavior watch how much that changes his enthusiasm and how much of a lead he is taking on directing the activities for the kids and all of those things that would give you some useful information about making inferences about what kind of parent he's going to be he's not going to be able to sustain a big show for you for a couple of weeks if you give you know your sister a break while the kids are on school vacation or whatever however that would work out so that's one thing that you could do um it that is still no guarantee you're it's a different different situation when you're having your own kids and the the whole calculus is different but i would definitely if if you're committed to this guy and if there are things about the relationship that are really wonderful that you're not uh you're not telling us in this question because all i'm hearing in this question is you know that you're not that happy that you um you know you feel like you're dragging him along and you you don't have anything in common and you don't enjoy his company i mean these are big things to say about a two-year-old marriage uh that are indicating that you know this is there are some bigger problems here so um i i would just really not want to see you make a life-changing decision like bringing children into that until you at the very least get yourself as much really good information as you can um and you know put on your behavioral genetics hat because people really do not change most of the time no i uh i i have a few little sayings and that is that uh a few little things that i keep in mind about the nature of relationships and when we're uncertain about them they they uh in the in the relatively early going this is early enough that this the following process is likely to still hold relationships either get better they get worse they generally you know they may stay the same after you know each other for a long time but this is obviously this wasn't what you signed up for you didn't see this coming and so now that you have it your your own mind is churning through what you think of it all and it's it's coming back with some red numbers in the accounting and so i.e it's getting worse so he's not getting worse but your perception of the situation is getting worse and a couple of things and that is that remember we are trapped by evolution into making a 50-year decision with a five-year chip nobody has proof positive of that but that basically is a pretty good guesstimate as to what it is that's actually transpiring so it's going to be a relatively unusual relationship that's really great for three or four years and and then remains great indefinitely in other words the uh there's a good chance that the time and hassle and conflicts of interest will emerge and it won't be so great however uh one of the most important things that i ask people is well how good was it for how long actually three or four years is pretty good if you had three or four really good years in a young marriage and you were at a position where you needed to make a decision on children that's pretty firm ground that may be about as firm aground as you can get i like what nathaniel brandon said once about children about people having children what he said was what you would like to see is mutual unreserved enthusiasm because you are bringing in a lot of effort and stress and diversion of resources as jen was saying so this uh has the hallmarks of something where as she's saying proceed cautiously you're 30 years old hey take a couple more years take a good long look at this thing and don't be afraid to stare an unpleasant reality in the eye two years from now if it turns out that this is if it doesn't turn out that this is uh the right relationship to gamble on that sort of a big future then don't do it if you're not happy get out okay if you are happy good then things sort of got better or some things were resolved or whatever the issues were or you were just willing to to uh to to take a chance but but you had more evidence don't jump now that's what we're both telling you take your sweet time you got a couple a couple of good solid years look this thing over and let's uh let's see what happens yeah the other thing that just you know jumps out a little bit and i might be um you know this might be a semantics thing that i'm i'm overthinking but the the phrasing that he really wants kids you know she's not saying she really wants kids saying he really wants kids he's telling her he really wants kids you know if she's sort of lukewarm on kids and would be having them just to save the marriage that's you know really not the situation you want to get into that's sort of a that's actually an upside down version of sort of how these things often go so um at 30 you know you're uh you're thinking about if you're not super enthusiastic about wanting kids in your future this is a really important moment to get a lot of clarity on that question um because that is it's going to change the course of your life profoundly whichever way you go um and you know women who are not you know just absolutely super super certain that they want to have kids and i i was one of them when i was 30 and i remember going through this and if if you know you don't want to be in a situation where you're like well you know i like kids okay and if it'll if it'll save the relationship then i guess it's worthwhile because you know kids are cool but you don't actually want to be a parent so that is something that you you owe it to yourself that year or two of real deep investigation of yourself and your desires and the kind of life that you want to have um whether that includes this guy or not that's a that's a really important question to answer for yourself wonderful beautiful dr lau thank you now if i can have a follow-up question um and you know hopefully i'm not outlined but i'm just curious sure um what would you what would your comment be about whether can can you tell if this if this particular marriage has over-rewarded or rewardedness on on either side or is that kind of hard to tell with this question sounds like it may have shifted yeah it's it's i mean we can't read those kind of tea leaves uh the yeah as jen would say we it could have been that this guy pursued hard for a while then they got married and she was good with it and now um i mean who knows there's no point in even speculating and hoping that i'm right it's like it's like throwing a dart at the dart board and shutting your eyes okay so there's no there is there's a there's a feeling of disenchantment in the way yes that she was more more over rewarded at some point than she is now um so yeah but we don't know what that what that initial dynamic was or what it is now or how he's feeling about her any of that all we know is this specific question but yeah clearly she's he's lost some of his luster okay yeah where that question came from was a concept that i that i learned from you dr lyle a long time ago in one of the podcasts where you said you kind of uh i don't remember the exact phrasing but but the the sentiment i got was that that if the man is over rewarded he will be more lazy because he's not as you know he's bringing the looks to the table and he's not as emotional if he's under-rewarded obviously i'm sorry yeah if he's under water right that's correct no there's no question and so whether or not that's objective or subjective that that absolutely is a is a factor now that can be over overridden by personality issues etc but that certainly is a vector uh in the cb and when that vector is there it's also can can be tough on the woman because she's effectively feeling the signal that she's not that valued and so that's that you know part of this is keep in mind this is uh relationships are the ultimate um problem that we're attempting to solve when they're conflicted and the the problem is is that you have these two different very different dynamics inside your mind one of them is analytic and the other is holistic the analysis part of the human capacity is to take things down to their smallest little parts look at them from every possible angle and see how they fit the uh holistic part is where you back up and you see what on earth tinker toy you built all you did was you were you know working the little it's more like a jigsaw puzzle you're working the jigsaw puzzles you don't even know what you're working on you're just looking for pieces that fit that's analysis and then the holistic part of the brain looks looks back and says oh my goodness it's van gogh okay so now you know what it is that you're looking at well relationships are the ultimate there so your people when when things are a problem when they're not that happy they analyze it they're trying to figure out what are the factors what are the issues what's the deal right now she's trying to figure this guy's personality out that's what she's desperately trying to do she uh she's trying to understand and how she and he fit together and so she's trying to project this into the future with a massive time and energy change in the dynamics so this is she's attempting to analyze it and what we can do basically with things like this is we are going to analyze for a while but the analysis is going to be intense typically when we don't quite have enough data to make up our mind when we're really trying to make decisions in this case she's got a looming possible issue of having children as the decision the uh but it's also the relationship itself is part of this decision um and so ultimately what has to happen is there needs to be enough data that keeps flowing in and eventually all the analysis in the world will not be the deciding factor it will be a holistic decision so the mind will literally one day start you know it will start dawning on you it's like hey this isn't gonna fly and now i gotta consider all the the downstream consequences of that or you will feel like you know no i'm i'm in and so this is a uh you know sometimes it's not that it can't go back and forth with no more information but right now we see a person in a lot of cognitive dissonance and she's seeking a analytical tools to try to figure it out and we're going to give you the best analytic tool tools that we have and those are personalities extremely consistent etc that's very important therefore relationship dynamics after a while get get do get very stable because the people themselves are who it is that they are the uh and so this relationship like it would be hard for us to see how it is that we would see a big improvement in the relationship when right now you're young early married newlyweds the uh and we we have we don't have the tremendous conflicts of of the enormous financial and emotional stresses and sleep deprivation that's associated with child rearing and even now we hear all kinds of rumblings of discontent so the the holistic part of the mind is feeling you know essentially that there's a cloud that has come over the landscape and it's blocking the sun so we're we're not sure what to feel about that but we can feel appall over this and my attitude is okay as what jen and i are both saying okay this is not a time to make a decision and the most disastrous decision as jen is saying is oh we're just going to go for it and hope for the best now what we're going to do is we're going to do nothing we're going to continue to live this life the next couple of years we're going to let additional evidence come in you will you won't be able to stop yourself from focusing and analyzing but in the end that won't be how the decision is ultimately made the decision will be made with your intuitive side holistic right brain whatever you want to call it it's a far more diffused fractionated cb master analysis that the brain will do in problems like this some of the most amazing things is people will get that information and they they will be intimidated enough by social pressure to not honor it that is the great tragedy of life um it's one thing that if you cannot honor it over financial reasons or religious persecution or whatever the heck it is but if you get the signal from your intuitive side that tells you that you are in the wrong place and you have every freedom and capability to leave then for god's sakes leave you can always go back okay so the uh so that's that's the the end point of how it is that i look at this process wow all right thank you so much dr hawk thank you so much appreciate it this is why we have a client once so you guys are really just the grim reapers of relationships [Laughter] so romantic yeah there you go all right fair enough all right let's go on dave well the next question is about uh this dear doctors i've got a comment about episode 232 in which dr doug lyle says there's no unconditional love while i agree with his response it made me wonder why i would have feelings of unconditional love towards my dog who does not share my genes now before you guys get to the answer i want to read a email that i got from one of our listeners and it says dear dear doctors fabulous episode this is regarding 232 i love the prior episode where doug lit up the microphone on dispelling the myth of unconditional love during a kitchen kitchen table discussion once my dad told me you see that door over there pointing at the front door unconditional love ends at that door in the real world you have to earn someone's love with valuable behavior but guess what you have to earn it here too i guess there's no such thing as unconditional love that talk hit me at the core when i was 15 and to hear dr lyle explain it so perfectly was like a trip down memory lane and it rocked me all over again [Laughter] [Music] well i'll let jen defend me i mean you know why uh i i remember i think i think i think uh warren buffett said that uh when he was gonna throw in a bunch of his money for charity to bill gates he says you know what i could do it but why do it yourself when bill gates can do it so i will i'll turn over my defense to dr hawk and let's hear what hear what she says because it's got dogs in it and everything yeah well i mean i i would say uh you know assuming that people listen listen to the episode and are sort of up to speed on this without going through the whole thing again that even a dog um you're you love your dog because you have a really beautiful reciprocal benign loving relationship with your dog you you do not have a dog who snarls at you every time you walk in the door and you know that it bites your arm and sends you to urgent care on a regular basis and that you can't take on a walk anywhere and that you know just hates your existence if you had that dog you would not feel unconditional love for that dog just like i don't feel un you know we just moved to hawaii and there are cockroaches around like i don't i don't feel unconditioned i do feel something that i would identify as unconditional love for my dogs because i do have that sort of beautiful benign loving relationship with them because they're really sweet you know even-tempered lovely animals but you know the cockroach that scuttles across my floor in the middle of the night i don't i don't i can't summon that same sort of feeling for it even though it is just as innocent of a being that i that i in principle might have the same kind of relationship with so i love my dogs because of the um you know the emotional state that their behavior creates in me and my perception of my improved genetic survival that comes along with that uh that that happens to look like a very sweet and unconditional relationship their love for me feels like it's equally unconditional and their threshold for um you know how shitty i could be to them probably is a lot uh you know it's a lot higher than what i would have for them they're going to tolerate me you know being having having meaner moods and being just a bigger jerk that's part of why people perceive that their their dog loves them no matter what but they have their limits too you just haven't met them because you were also not an [ __ ] so um these things remain transactional uh they just feel a little different in the dog realm um but the everything that doug said in that answer still applies i would i would say that's my that's the best defense that i offer it's great yeah it's a it's actually an illusion it's a sus it is it appears to be a suspended cost-benefit analysis but the truth is is that it's so far in the black that it never even reaches and it gets close to the line that's actually what it is so yeah yeah that's a it's actually an illusion the cost benefit is being run it's just a it's just fabulously positive so that's that's what your and basically the inference is boy you could go a lot of negative on me and i would still find you so valuable that there's no way i'd get rid of you yeah which is true for my dogs sure good they you know they and and i've had friends who have gone through hell with their pets who you know whether they've had dementia or whether they've had um you know behavioral issues that have come out of nowhere or whatever it is and it's been really really hard but because of that pre-existing relationship it's like okay it's a you know you're still it's still good there's still a good cb here um so it is it's wildly disproportional to anything that you find in the human kingdom for sure but it's not unlimited yes great meanwhile i i knew a guy not a friend of mine but just a guy who said he had a he had a spending limit on his dog after which point the dog got injured it was just so heartless i couldn't believe it yeah that just sounds like alan but i know it's not the uh oh well that's a terrible that's a heartbreaking question every time i've left the dogs like at you know at some sort of doggy daycare or something they ask you that you have to fill out a form and sign your name like if we can't reach you what how much can we charge your card for to save your dog it's like jesus that's not an not a question i can answer on a form like are you kidding me so um yeah it's but you know hashtag dog lover here are totally different oh sure somebody sent me a some uh one of our listeners sent me a thing that said uh it's beautiful it's uh i think dogs have owners cats have staff that's very true i've had well dogs dogs don't even have owners dogs dogs have friends yes custodians you know buddies right that's it oh my goodness all right our next question dear doctors my parents have been happily married for 35 years in spite of being totally opposite on their political and even world views my dad is a super conservative and my mom leans left on just about every issue that comes up it seems like just about every issue they both line up with either political leaning i wouldn't say this is just because they are stuck in their echo chambers i found my own views aligning with a far right libertarian stance while my brother is even farther to the left as my mom we don't agree on anything but are still best friends i'm curious if these leanings politically are inherent at the genetic level and what's the mechanism behind it is it just where we all fall along the bell curves of our personality characteristic that make us all come to such different conclusions in spite of all being in the same environment yeah this is really yeah i mean it's it's a political science and a personality question so it kind of builds off of the last one um so there's a whole literature on this in in political science about uh political beliefs and party affiliation being predicted from your genes so you're very likely to be um the same party affiliation as your parents we even you know once once you control for the environment so it's not the environment that is uh leading to sharing those same preferences it's the personality characteristics that you share with your parents and if you think about this like there are certain um differences in key personality attributes that are going to naturally lead you to a different kind of political affiliation and the two biggest um are uh there's there's actually quite a few but the the ones that i always think of are how agreeable you are which i.e how much do you want to share the pie with people who didn't necessarily earn the same amount as you like just how charitable how how um how generous are you how and that's very much an agreeable dimension so all things equal more in our current political system the way we identify political parties and the names that we call them which has changed throughout history but there's always kind of a liberal party and a conservative party by any name but more liberal people tend to be more agreeable people because they want to share the wealth more they they have more of that what we were talking about earlier that sort of desire to to display um the rooting for the underdog the the encouragement to to help lift other people up even if they are not um pulling the same same weight um and so and then on the other end of the spectrum you have less agreeable people more disagreeable people are like hey i earned mine you you you know it's it's a dog eat dog world out there and um going to hold on to what i have and i'm not going to share it with you so that's a very broad stroke view of what leads to those political affiliations but if that were the only personality attribute that we were looking at we could pretty predictably tell what party you were in just based on your agreeableness but other things go into it too more open people are more likely to be liberal um more conscientious people are more likely to be conservative um and uh you know so i don't think introversion has or or neuroticism really play into it too much at least according to the literature that i've seen but you can you can think about how with any particular issue personality is going to be huge and and i've talked about this with kovid and um one of the interesting things to me is a political scientist with kovid is if you had asked me beforehand to sort of predict how the battle would go down in terms of how the how the lines have been drawn and whose you know what how the symbolism of mask wearing and and how that would take hold of the imagination and who would be the the more authoritarian law and order where the mask and public party i would have i would have anticipated that to be the republican party but because of the because of the personality of this particular president and his party affiliation and the way that this happened and the way that the conversation contingently evolved in a lot of uncertainty and you know policy changes and recommendations from the cdc and everything else all these little historically contingent components of the way that this particular situation happened it wound up flipping um and so what i would have predicted based on the you know there are all these studies that show that more more law and order type people people who are more interested in rules more interested in corporal punishment with their children more interested and sort of just you know their their their consequences for actions those are the people who have much higher tolerance for the government kind of telling you what to do and in the interest of public safety and that's not not what has happened here so there are limitations to how we can predict political behavior from personality but not if you are including all of the different little components of any particular political moment and kovut is a really interesting example and it's going to have a really there's going to be great great papers coming out about it i'm sure so yeah you're definitely you you have little bits this questioner has um some of mom's genes and some of dad's and um there's certainly a um you know there's the issues that you're exposed to and the learning processes that you go through you might have some change in those beliefs over time but fundamentally it's largely a genetic question but yeah with any question like this there's always the the definition of these terms has changed so much even in you know since i've been studying political science like the sort of what you know republican values today um are moving in a different direction than where they were you know certainly 20 or 30 years ago so um it's we got to be kind of careful where we you don't want to make broad statements about you know personality attributes linked to certain parties or to certain values but it's overall share not share um punish not punish obey not obey like those are perennial political questions that are totally dr hawkins would you say um like moving forward say in the future maybe even one or two generations from now do you suspect that uh there would still be a reasonably 50 50 divide between share not share or do you think it may come towards uh some sort of diver you know when they get closer or do you think they'll get closer and closer or or am i completely off base oh yeah i mean i think you're still going to see you know as long as you've as long as you've got a market of free expression um but you're not going to see the personality bell curve change for the share not share attribute or agreeableness that's that's not going to go anywhere there's still going to be a bell curve of agreeableness so how that shakes out into political particular political parties could definitely change um but yeah if you if you were to genuinely if there was some mechanism by which you could authentically get at the preferences of the population and they felt safe enough to express those regardless of their their political party at any moment i think you're not going to see that change uh absolutely fabulous i have absolutely nothing to add of course all fab perfect on we go all right our next question uh dear doctors on personality tests i come out as highly disagreeable however i absolutely cannot stand confrontation and have my whole life been a bit of a people pleaser i grew up with narcissistic parents in an emotionally volatile household where i took it upon myself to be the child that diffused tension and provided some comic relief did my upbringing disturb my genetic disagreeable streak i am a conundrum unto myself please unravel me take take it away doug well we're we'll be gentle with this the uh the way to think about this uh uh this is jen's description is that that personalities are skittles so the way to think about the way uh the genes so we're going to back this up to make it very unmysterious the your body is you know is built by instructions in the genetic code piece by little tiny piece and the uh you get you know one set of instructions for mom one set of instructions from dad you look like you are a blend and it depends on how we want to use the word um but you're not actually in many ways a blend you're i mean let me let me try to explain it's you're going to get one instruction from one another instruction from the other and then back to the first one for two instructions and then back to the other one for three instructions in other words we don't take the two instructions and blend them one of the instructions is is the instruction that's building your your nose or your nostril or your nose hair or your your eyebrows or whatever it is in other words let's suppose there's 50 genes for building eyebrow shape you're going to get some discrete number of them from your dad are going to be those those are going to be from him say it's 31 and the other 19 are from mom so it looks like a blend but actually it's a mosaic okay it's these are discrete parts have been put together and when we back it up it looks like a blend but it's not actually a blend it's a mosaic now the um and so that that's helps us understand the mystery of this person's question so know your upbringing didn't make you into anything you can forget about that the um you know we don't we don't mean to to act so arrogant or casually dismissive of that notion that so people it flies in the face of human intuition we're merely reporting uh what has taken place over the last essentially 40 years of intense analysis in behavior genetics and massive amounts of data analysis that have shown us that this is in fact the case so your your upbringing and your family dynamics and what it is that you were doing to be the people pleaser to have the comic relief between two irritable angry conflicted people no that is not why it is that you are uh you know essentially edgy with conflict and try to avoid it you were trying to avoid it then so part and parcel of your personality and so the so yes you are your skittles your little pieces of each uh both of those people did not come in at as purebred narcissistic you know sobs they didn't they came in as skills themselves so if you think about where you got and for those of you don't know what skittles are they're little candies and each you know one of them's red one is blue one of them's green etc in other words they're not blended all into one color of gray or brown they're all individual little colors that's what skittles are just in case you didn't know so the point is that's what you are that's what your personality is little bitty pit pieces that haven't been changed by the environment uh but the you are you're a unique mosaic of of the two uh geno genetic inputs from each parent so no there's no mystery here you your upbringing did not dis disturb your genetic disagreeable streak uh the conundrum is over you're unraveled all you are is a unique mosaic between those two individuals and if you have any siblings they are going to be somewhat different than you but they're going to be more like you than they are a random person on the street and that's all there is to this thing is that what that's what we're made up of is little tiny pieces that put us together all right dr hawk can we get your comment on this uh yeah the the only thing that i would add is that often people think that they are uh you know have have more of a split personality on this kind of dimension than they actually do so one of the ways that you can um you know the i will often hear some version of this like oh who am i really because i'm this way in this situation but then i'm totally this other way so i'm super disagreeable at work but then i'm super uh agreeable when i'm at home or vice versa um and so one of the ways that you can triangulate on that a little bit and you know get closer to your real personality there is everything that doug is saying is is of course true and you you you have the capacity for all of these different expressions of your personality but they're also subject to the circumstances of the moment and um the kind of relationship you're in with the people in question and what we call your position of power in particular so the person that you are when you're in a relative position of power and you know that the the person on the other side of that exchange um can't fire you can't uh kick you out of their life can't um you know that that really the relationship is solid to any kind of anxiety that you might have around it that's likely to increase the loudness of how disagreeable you allow yourself to be so if you're a people pleaser and you're afraid of confrontation i would i would just ask you to investigate that and that probably is more often going to be the case when you've been in a position of weakness and when you're in a position of power you're likely to be a more disagreeable person so it's just another way of kind of understanding how these things can look really different and how you can come out with one result on a test and it doesn't look that way in certain areas of your life wow beautiful you know i hadn't quite thought that through because yeah if there's one um if there's one time when you know that someone is is a super nice person it's when they're in a position of power and you watch them not abuse it you know they just don't and uh they're even very careful even when they're frustrated and so this is uh that's it's a beautiful thing to see and so and obviously is what jen's revealing is that it gets very revealing when it turns around yeah there you go wonderful that's great it makes me feel like this is why both of your work but both of yours work is is to get people in a position of power so their true personality can come out oh yeah yeah that's that's a big part of it it's so you can actually know who you really are so that you can then build your environment for yourself accordingly oh you know what it's interesting the one of the things that i did in in interviewing criminals for many years is that in the interview i was very careful to try to put them in positions of power so that they would be more revealing i i set traps that way i forgot that that's of course a big thing that i did and um and you know i it was very short term so this is all taking place in a matter of half an hour but in half an hour you you can maneuver it around and make it look like they're in a position of power and then you get to see what they do with it and that's uh that's a good narcissist yes you can deploy the narcissist test very quickly on a date or in a job interview which is essentially just that you you super you give the person a lot of empty fake flattery um and if they're like oh well yes that is that is true yeah i did do that and they just kind of like they just take it on it's like they don't even blink at it you've got yourself probably a pretty fundamentally disagreeable narcissistic person if they if they push back on you and they're like oh well no it's that's i wouldn't go that far then you know you've got a more measured personality very crude test but if you if you're on a you know a date and you're trying to get a sense of somebody you know watch how they treat the weight staff and give them the narcissist test put put them in a position of power yeah any any particular stories you want to share with us about when when they deployed that strategy no uh the person one i can't i can't remember but i can remember a a friend of mine that was in a very dicey negotiation within a company he was the ceo and then there was other two other major players and and he kept describing one of these players and of course i'm just saying the guy's just narcissistic as hell and so i told them about the narcissist test and so i explained here's how you're gonna check it out and the um and so i said basically flood is circuit you know don't be outrageous but be unrelenting in other words just at one point just say you know i just really need to give you some feedback and i just have to tell you that what we're doing together is just the most exciting thing and you're this and you're that and you do this i saw you do that blah blah blah and he said this guy just lit up like a sunflower [Laughter] there there was no there was no limit to what it what the sunflower wanted to there's how much sun the sun very thirsty sunflower and so i've used i've had that image in my head now for 20 years that that's what i call this test is it you know it's the narcissus test or the sunflower test yeah keep that in mind true that flooding the circuits does have that effect you know you and we and we use flood the circuits to for for good not just for evil like we're talking about here to like improve our relationship and to create our safety in the relationship and but i think the the narcissist test really gets its power when you put you just push it past the bounds of what is true and reasonable so it's like you're you're just laying it on so thick that it's your it's a little disgusting and any reasonable person would be disgusted yeah yeah so and you'll you'll watch you go 100 no question you go 110 percent on a normal person and they'll they'll back up on you yeah they just do they're uncomfortable but you go 100 credit they're like whoa whoa you're running that crap yes the tabs way too high i can't pay that back yeah yeah and they can feel the ego trap coming right so the uh but the narcissists you you give them 125 and it's sunflower time all the way all the way down you
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