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Gustavo Tolosa: Getting Along Without Going Along, New Book, QA, Part 1 Dr Doug Lisle, Special Guest
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we are live and i'm gustavo solosta and today we are very excited because we have a super special guest always always welcome to have dr lyle and um and learn from him so today is our sixth session of reading the book the pleasure trap and um so i have asked dr lyle to give us a little overview of that chapter chapter seven and and then you everybody please feel free to write in the chat some questions that you might have some of you emailed me questions ahead of time so i'll be asking a couple of those so i want to welcome dr lio how are you hey there gustavo great day great to see you as always you know that picture in the background uh oops always makes me happy i don't know what it is it might be the color yellow that is such a happy color but uh yeah it's just it's a happy picture i can't remember i if i was more uh if i was a better student of the art you know i i think it there's uh i think it's i think it's a monet i think is sunflowers and so this was a this was at an art class and everybody could see my obvious you know talent it is very obvious and do you remember when you did how how long ago did you create that master was about six or seven years ago oh no it it there was a lot of you know a lot of uh a lot of many and a lot of time and energy went into all the art lessons that it took well and what i what i think is that as years go by that picture is getting more and more valuable [Music] so in about a few years or unfortunately when you're dead that might be a few million dollars that's right there you go yeah yeah make sure you include it in somebody's will or something yes you got it we'll make sure we do that oh my god okay well uh we have i have this is my third time of reading the book but i always you know we always learn from reading something numerous times and especially something like this that it's dense but it's not that difficult to read i i think that you just have to take your time and read and carefully but um it's um it's it's just such a wonderful book i don't have to tell you that here but um would you say a few words about this chapter that we i assigned everybody to read today and then we can go from there and ask questions yes um this chapter uh there i i actually my original thoughts on this were well i'll just maybe i'll just start out uh i was at the at the trimark health center and was visiting there for the day in about 1992 i was just visiting my friend ellen and the um i had been um you know i certainly he and i have many discussions about about diet and and trying to people stay on track and so on and uh but he said hey would you just give a lecture and i thought i i've never never given a lecture on this topic um i was a young psychology professor at the time so i had been certainly comfortable lecturing but i had never and i so i went into the kitchen at the old school north health center and i said you know there's about 10 people there and i have no idea what i'm going to say and so i i i took about 10 minutes and i thought or less actually and i thought okay well what it what are the main problems and the in social psychology uh there's you know a couple of uh interesting characters that were major figures in the field were lee ross and richard nisbet and i happened to be teaching at the university that ross was is an icon at stanford university and ross and i would have discussions and he was adamant about uh what he called tension systems and channel factors and and so i thought okay let me think about this from the standpoint of tension systems and channel factors and this went back to the concept of of essentially pressure on a nervous system to do a certain thing and particularly in psychology we're interested in social tension so when somebody make put somehow some pressure is put on you it's it's remarkable the changes that can take place in human behavior in a room if somebody does some one little thing it's like everybody shifts and adjusts so this is a very social and sensitive creature um and so social tension systems and also what he called channel factors which is little tiny issues in the ease of operation that make a big difference in behavior so uh for example a classic study by eleven paul uh was with with uh seeing that people i think it would take a flu shot or something like this or a tetanus shot and if you talk to them for an hour to convince them to do it about three percent of people would do it but if you talk to them for an hour and convince a group of people to do it and then gave them a map to the health center and tell them to think about a time the next week that they could stop by about 27 percent of people went 28 i think so it was an amazing difference in percentages and so that's what that's what lee ross would term channel factor in other words did the channel open was it a lot easier for this to happen so i went into the kitchen and i thought well tension systems uh were clearly evident in social pressure channel factors were obviously important ease of operation how easy or difficult is it to get healthy food if you wanted it and how easy it is to get rich food and then the third part of it was what i called at the moment biological tension which is the desire of the organism to to uh conserve energy by getting the richest food possible well so just to just to brag here today and it's a story i've never told is that it took me like five minutes to come up with what would become ten years later the outline of the pleasure trap the basic structure of it which is pleasure seeking pain avoidance energy conservation so that would come much later as a concept but those line up to what i originally termed biological tension in other words the drive for the pleasure of the richer food social tension became in in the back of my mind what was running along with the concept of pain avoidance so it wasn't actual pain we don't actually avoid pain by eating rich food but we avoid social pain by eating rich food in other words it's going to put us across purposes with other people and therefore this is going to get problematic there's going to be tension there and we're going to want to release that tension by going along with them and then finally channel factors would ultimately become a chapter i think you'll see later uh which is about the ease and importance of energy conservation and how what a tremendous force that is drawing us into a lot of problematic food but we could really work at organizing our environment environment to move it as close as we can to competitive to have healthy food be as easy as possible so but so the chapter we're talking about was originally in my mind social tension and the the thinking of it came uh really from discussions with lee ross uh and the importance of of what he would call tension systems and this um and this takes us back to the heart of experimental social psychology which is going to be at the heart of that chapter which is the the most dramatic study in the history of psychology which is the stan logan study and so um i went back and and read the original study in its entirety and milgram's work uh in order to write that chapter and uh lee ross and richard nisbet had had actually come up with uh an important concept in in this which was the notion that the people wanted to do one thing but they didn't have an effective channel to do it they couldn't they couldn't figure out how to disobey and uh so lee ross was very centered on this feeling like he had actually isolated and come to the core of the theoretical problem with the with the milgram study i.e doing something that you know is wrong but but you're feeling social pressure to do it and so you wind up doing it the um and i i would re-analyze that and and basically say okay uh wasa and nisbet have made an extremely important point but i don't think they actually understand what they're quite saying and this is where i come up with the notion uh really out of deep biology that this is a human instinct to essentially preserve your status uh with respect to following alpha in a tribe and so this uh this winds up then being a survival instinct so you have competitive instincts that one of them says i shouldn't be hurting another individual but if he's not in my tribe and my tribe is telling me that i have to do this then that is a survival instinct and it is not simply a matter of not having a channel to figure out how to disobey it's literally it's being the the animal is actually attempting to establish integrity which means to integrate its actions with the most important biological outcomes now so from there i you know i'll wind up discussing the concept of integrity uh which is the the problem of integrating your behavior with your most important values when those values are very confused and so from there i argue that the pleasure trap uh in all of its the little faces of the pleasure trap winds up being an extremely confusing values problem uh for human beings in in various ways uh but one of the most important will come under the situation where we're battling against our own biology in terms of the pleasure trap itself though it's pleasure seeking uh there's also an ease of operation or the energy conservation mechanism is encouraging us to put our hand in uh in the bowl you know in the in the chocolate pudding bowl that everybody's encouraging us to to have and at the same time now we're in a tribal situation or social situation where it's being encouraged and we're actually wanting to go against part of us values trying to stay out of the pleasure trap and protect our health but we're not actually sure that's the best survival uh solution because the best survival solution may be to go along with other people uh because the the the ancient calculus says hey we should make sure we're in good standing with the village so you can now appreciate i think in the chapter and also in my discussion now how deep and powerful this is in terms of survival instincts so the the the tempting thing is tempting because it's super normal now we know why because it's very rich and high calorie density it's also super easy it's uh we're not having to cross a river for it you know not have to swim across a river or crocodiles to get to a snickers bar no it's being offered not only that it's a social process where we would be insulting other people in the process and therefore that is threatening our most important value which is to get along with other people it's like wow so in that in that first lecture um 25 years ago i i realized that the the best uh the best example of social tension was the milgram study and so i i taught told the story of that study that's always a great study for anybody to hear and so uh so at the at the end of that lecture i don't think i have the shark yet uh the famous shark for the for the pleasure problem so i don't i don't know what i use but i know uh i'm confident i'm remembering that i used the milgram seti and so 10 years later when i'm writing the pleasure trap uh that would be uh center of the centerpiece and the concept of the difficulty of integrity and the fact that the pleasure trap in all of its little faces is a disruptive force in our ability to actually integrate the information and arrive at the most important value for us because our mind is actually under a lot of novel conflict conflicts it's not designed to manage well and so um so at the heart of it folks is the notion that our best hope for maintaining integrity which is what we would want to do because that in other words that's our long-term ultimate best interest is preparation and so when when we are in uh conflict that's when preparation can make all the difference and so the story that comes out of this chapter is we need a few simple little rules this can't be complicated we need a few simple little social rules about what we're going to say and we got to have them ready because these conflicts are coming and they're not conflicts that we're well designed to manage and so uh the story of the of getting along without going along is essentially being prepared for those moments when really all of our biology and the entire situation is against us we're in trouble and uh our way out is to learn our way out by being prepared in advance for something that is going to be uh which seems so innocuous but it's actually quite quite a difficult challenge uh they can become much easier with preparation so that's the that's how that that that's my sort of synopsis oops i think i lost gustavo oh there you are okay no no i'm here um dr lyle yes as i was reading the book again i realized how difficult it is really today for uh you know our human uh kind because we are living in this um environment that really is not uh what where we're supposed to we have to deal with this social tension and other things that i don't think i'm tell me if i'm mistaken i don't think uh in in in uh you know many generations thousands of years ago ago that was so crucial yeah we we are not we're not designed to be at odds with the group right right so the there are more disagreeable people among us that are fine with it right i i would say one of the more remarkable things that i've noticed is that even moderately disagreeable people in other words 75th percentile in other words they're they're tougher than most people and more more of a pain in the neck than most people but even they get pushed around by this like you've got to be you've got to be a really tough customer and uh and you know john mcdougall and alan goldhamer and chef aj these people are all in the top five percentile for being difficult okay i mean they smile and they may be pleasant they may be smart and they they are uh and they are extremely successful in managing these conflicts for themselves but that's because they're they're they're tough as nails they're they are not normal people and uh and so even when we creep it down to like i said 75th percentile well above average even those people are sweating it you know at their over at their in-laws or whatever it is it's like this is tough and they they they feel the pressure and they and they will get along and go along and so we're trying to here uh get along without going along and if we're going to do that it's a it's a hat trick you know what i mean we've got it's a little bit of quick magic and distract over here while we're operating over here and this is this is how uh we can get away with it but you know it doesn't come naturally no so it's um it's definitely you would say that you would have to get like you were saying earlier be prepared yes and um and almost like uh you know act it out in your head and in front of the mirror because uh when the time comes if you're not prepared you're going to go along yes mostly the good news is is that if you if you read some of some of the ideas that i have in there i.e um you know i'm running an experiment trying this out seems like it's working for me and i'm not sure about anything my doctor says it seems to make sense seems it seems to be going fine not sure it's right for everybody probably not patient like all of the the same strategy this is all uh uh the if you mess it up relax you're gonna get another opportunity there's no end to this this is like a baseball game where they the pitcher never ends they just keep throwing you so you're so that you can you can get there the first time you ever get a hit you're like hey that was pretty easy you know yeah so it i can remember my dad who used to go to seminars to learn tricks you know it was going to make him rich somehow and and one of them was a negotiating seminar they outnegotiated him he paid a lot of money for it yeah kind of an open character who was always open to learning new things but i remember once he came back all delighted with a trick and that is that uh he was also strangely enough he was always a bargain chopper so he you know half of our house and my clothes or whatever would come from a garage sale my dad just thought that was really just a grand you know bargain in the world and so he learned at one of these seminars which when you're looking at something and you say well and well how much is that and they say you know twenty dollars and what my dad learned from a negotiating seminar was to say well what's the least you take for it it's so friendly i know it's this friendly little phrase and the first time he did it you know he i i don't know it was the first time but it probably was first time it worked like a charm and then then he my dad remained to the end of his life for the next 30 years absolutely delighted by that trick and so uh and he felt like that trick you know was worth you know a small fortune to him probably and so i learned the like i wouldn't know what to say in that situation so i i knew quite well that i would be uncomfortable in that situation and so like literally that little line that i learned i i think i've used it once or twice almost like biting my lip on well i'm going to use it now we're going to see that i'm going to do that experiment there you go but that but the the lesson is what what value in being prepared and uh and since since that time as a psychologist i of course talked to thousands of people in thousands of difficult situations i just had one recently this last week where uh a person that works for a works for a company and there was a small company and there was a misunderstanding about the compensation in the first year and it was sort of a sales position and what the person thought they were getting and what it is that they actually got were quite a bit different and they they were i i understood they were all bent out of shape but i actually understood where the company was coming from and i could see that there was legitimate confusion and so i said okay this is how we're going to do it you're going to go to your uh to the owner and you're going to say um you know i've just got a problem and it's my own fault okay and it's you know i've got a mess here the person had performed very very highly and well and so it was absolutely worth it for the company to make up to at least split the difference or actually make up the whole thing and so i felt actually very confident that it would probably be half okay so the missing money and um so i said so you're going to say that it's your fault and then they're going to want to pull it out of you like what's going on you're going to say well here's the situation and and then you're going to say well you know before i get started can you tell me what your understanding is of the of the um what we said a year ago right and this is part of what i call crystal clear so this is like we need to understand what the other side where they're coming from first and so then once that once the person said well this is what my understanding was and uh and then i had the person say right that is exactly what's in the contract that's exactly i understand makes complete sense that's not what i heard a year ago okay here's what i heard a year ago okay and so then what actually happened was interesting so here's what i heard a year ago and this is what um that's what i heard and that's what i was thinking this whole year and the owner said well no problem we'll just make it up okay and but we weren't quite ready for that but we're pretty ready for it we're ready i was ready for a 50 negotiation and what i said was when the person when your boss offers you 50 you say you know what i want you to just you know go home and think it over anything is whatever is what's right for you is completely fine with me i just needed to get it off my chest i just wanted you to know because i have been frustrated and i've been just sitting on that and it is my own fault but you know that's super generous of you but hey whatever it is that you feel don't make a quick decision whatever you feel is right now i felt actually that was an extremely clever way of moving it 50 to 100 i actually because i know humans and this comes out of a a characteristic of humans that is was discovered by a guy named paul zack in the clermont colleges uh on the on the value of oxytocin and vulnerability so you know what it feels like if you see see a little a dog go belly up on you that causes you to have to flood your brain with oxytocin as you're take care of them okay this is a human characteristic and so some people like alan goldhamer doesn't have a lot of oxygen in that head you better you might as well not try that trick the uh allen's response to your problem is well you'll work it out but but most of us have this feeling when someone's vulnerable uh we want to help okay right and so uh and so i was counting on that i thought that that would probably work and i said you know going all the way right off the bat would seem a little seem a little too much i think that your boss is going to go 50 you're gonna back away like uh by the way if anybody wants to see a masterful demonstration of this it's the movie called dirty rotten scoundrels with michael kane and steve martin that is the that is the best demonstration i have ever seen of vulnerability and oxytocin so they're con men okay and michael caine is a master at when they're trying people trying to give him money oh no oh no i can't take it yeah yeah it's a it's actually a thing of beauty and uh i've actually never seen it uh demonstrated in cinema before but this is the concept and so so i uh my person was ready to say oh no oh no and did okay and uh and and the person on the other side of course had those feelings like oh no no no no no we're gonna take care of you blah blah blah but again a script so in other words uh my salesperson was actually pretty irritated and feeling like they had been and was gonna going to be assertive and confronting and i said no completely the wrong solution okay we're going to go in there your fault your and get it all clear and then now we understand and oh yes and then we're vulnerable and it's all fine no problem got the whole enchilada okay this is the value of scripts okay and so uh script writing the scripts don't have to be long uh we we had broken it down to what i call a three-act play okay very quick you have the first act you're going to do this the second act you're going to do that well that person practiced and had that in their head you know practice for 10 or 15 minutes in front of the mirror and then went in there and got you know the whole year's paycheck differential which was you know yeah that was that was good that was a good score yeah yeah i i think that most people like you said most people when they see uh somebody vulnerable yes they turn to so that's been my position um sometimes when i'm being pressured in in a dinner or whatever it's like well you know i am i'm going through some health challenges and and i really i'm trying something to see if it works and so i this time i'm not i can't you know i won't i'm not gonna eat that but uh and so usually oh no that's okay you know yeah people need to sympathize other than oh no that is going to kill you you know i don't need that uh right it's it's oddly that vulnerability and uh you become a little bit of a psychologist i think all of us and just know that the world it's not at this point made for us to eat whole food plant-based and we have to be um smarter and but not smarter but clever clever yeah yeah and the biggest thing that uh of course that you the theme in there is um i actually forgot how i wrote that i'm sure i might have used the word status i was not yet using the word esteem and to to cue uh any of our listeners that was a conscious change about 10 years later so by about 2010 i was realizing that i i would i would feel that little edgy pushback whenever i would discuss status i'd have to be so careful to uh to couch things and i would still see the back of people's hair on the back of their neck stand up i.e i'm not pursuing status i'm not a creature that pursues doubts and like i i would see all this cognitive dissonance when i was explaining that this was status and i realized you're going to have to get out of that business you're going to have to modify it and i changed it to the word esteem everybody's willing to say that they seek esteem everybody wants to steam that's okay it's just not okay to want status [Laughter] that's right that is well status brings along with it um esteem brings actually comes from a french word from 500 years ago that means value and that also meant money okay so in other words esteem is like value status is like i'm beating up on you or i'm trying to show off so those have words have a constellation of meanings they don't have one meaning to to a biologist they just say yeah this is a status process but if you use that word the way i was using it uh and i believe i was using it there in that chapter in the pleasure trap that is going to activate some natural defenses in people so that nowadays i called the steam and we can talk about it now and and actually probably more accurate because status comes with some connotations that we don't actually need in our theoretical uh examination of this it's a desire to be valued and so the problem is when we're doing things differently and even if we excuse ourselves behind health vulnerability the implication is your food is dangerous and so this is why it is we're walking on such eggshells and so this is also why we have you know response number three in the same strategy which is it's probably not right for everybody right you know what i mean we just we just absolutely put a blanket over anything anybody does by saying hey you know different things work for different people and i'm not even sure this is so great for me but it seems to be working for me right now right so this is the we're just selling a tentative experimental you know open not utterly non-judgmental we're doing that now interestingly enough it was a while before i grasped something gestavo uh in giving this discussion incidentally of the lectures that i've given the uh people's the people's favorite lecture is getting along without going along yeah that's always i mean the pleasure trap is a solid lecture people find it valuable and useful but getting along without going along depends on the audience if it's a veggie audience they love it and yeah telling you how status deficient they feel they are so frustrated okay and so i have to point out that we are designed by nature as i say nowadays to seek esteem and if i said before seek status oh no that's a disaster but if we say oh you're seeking esteem in fact you you are inherently designed for your for the esteem that you seek to be the most important environmental variable in your life the the weather from day to day is important and the food around is very important so there are environmental inputs that are important but i have to tell you that for human beings in their natural history the single most important uh value is how what the tribe thinks of you okay so uh hold on once okay is my sound okay so okay okay the um so the uh so this is so this is why we are so inherently sensitive and we also want to earn that esteem from people in the village by sharing what we know it's extremely reasonable that we would do so okay and and so we have to temper our own psychology here and realize we're going to have to leave that esteem on the table okay so we're going to have to be willing to walk away from that and let it go because we want to get along without going along and if we're going to do that we're not going to at the same time also earn a bunch of esteem from being the beacon of example and information where we're going to now tell you that what you're doing right in front of me is self-destructive and self-indulgent that's not going to fly so we have to this is again this is a la my milgram analysis we have to get the right value at the top of the values stack okay and the most important valuable valuable thing to me is to get along without going along now to somebody who's more argumentative it's like no i'm going to damn well earn the esteem that i deserve at this dinner table as i let everybody know i'll self-indulge self-indulgent self-destructed they are and i show them what you know what uh self-discipline i have and whether i'm on the right track it's like if that you know that would be all of us would have that as part of our agenda in me it's probably 25 of my brain and the other 75 percent is i want to get along if you're john mcdougall it's a hundred percent of your brain and no percent of your brain cares if you get along at all you don't care got everybody else that's fine and alan's the same way alan the only reason alan wouldn't just flat out in in a calm and dismissive uh and utterly unpc way of just uh of uh blasting anybody would be because if his wife would be there and he'd be like well then jennifer be upsets of course i didn't say anything [Laughter] okay yeah but i mean that's that's how it that's exactly how he is in other words if you were to ask him would you like some of that he'd say no no thank you and they say well why not you know and it's like well because i don't want to get sick and die like the rest of you people i mean that's just it's we're just we're just one tiny little you know uh twitch of a neuron away from a comment like that that is what most people that i've seen in my webinars and book clubs is the frustration of knowing knowing well basically knowing too much in a way yes knowing how to help it's like you have this patient that is leading on an operating table and you know how to operate them and save them and they tie your heads and you so it's very frustrating but um i've learned i have i have learned to to to deal with it and i don't unless unless i can and i can sense you so and i think we as humans being can sense if the other person truly cares and wants to know or if they're trying to pick a fight or to disagree or make fun of you whatever right so my answers are like yours you know short nice and short and totally uh non-computational and that usually works i would say um yeah you bring up something that's important which is that when you feel a sense of urgency and so there are times when you're going to feel a sense of urgency and so there are times when you won't you won't be comfortable going to your grave knowing that you didn't speak up when when when a big thing was on the line you
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