The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 226. Couples Report from understandmyself.com | Jordan and Tammy Peterson

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

As an alternative for those who would rather listen ad-free, sign up for a premium subscription to receive the following:*All JBP Podcast episodes ad-free*Monthly Ask-Me-Anything episodes (and the ability to ask questions)*Presale access to events*Premium, detailed show notes for future episodesSign up here:https://jordanbpeterson.supercast.comThis episode was recorded on March 12, 2021.In this episode, Mikhaila, Jordan, and Tammy Peterson cover the Understand Myself Couples Report—a feature in the Understand Myself Personality Report, which you receive after both members of a compete the https://understandmyself.com process. The idea behind it, as the name suggests, is to help you better understand your own and other people's personalities. After going over Jordan and Tammy’s report, we dive into the different personality types, the benefits of the report, negotiating with your partner, disciplining children, and much more.Go to https://understandmyself.com/ to access the Understand Myself assessment.If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe!_______________Chapters (Approximate Timestamps)_______________[00:00] The Understand Myself Couples Report[01:17] Agreeableness[07:54] Motivations in a Relationship[09:56] The Understand Myself Test[11:13] Compassion[12:16] Negotiation[12:18] Conflict Avoidance[15:54] Reluctant Agreement[19:07] Stupidity[20:35] Politeness[23:18] How to Bark[23:38] Extraversion[23:58] Enthusiasm[27:42] Assertiveness[30:54] Conscientiousness[31:50] Industriousness[34:14] Orderliness[36:36] Jordan's Reader's Digest Joke[37:05] Enthusiasm[37:44] From Virtue to Pathology[38:52] Extroverted vs. Introverted Partners[42:20] Neuroticism[45:57] Oxytocin, Vasopressin, & Bonding[50:24] Openness to Experience[51:21] Intellect[53:19] Openness[58:00] Disruption & Meds[01:00:35] Behind the Self Authoring and Personality Tests[01:02:14] Personality Tests for Children[01:04:07] Julian’s Tippy Cup Story[01:12:15] Disciplining Children

Welcome to season 4 episode 83 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. When mom and dad came to Nashville, we had a group discussion on relationships. I went over my parents understand myself reports. The personality reports dad has made that are available at understandmyself.com. If you do them yourself, you can link yours to another person's and the website gives you a comparison of your personalities and where you're going to have difficulties. We spoke about their personality, conflict avoidance, compassion, intellect, disciplining children, and more. Dad wanted me just to be the person they were to ask the questions. So that's how it set up. We talked about negotiating with your partner, maybe the

most important skill in relationship, and course, how all of this is affected by the big five personality model. So that personality is openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Again, if you want to add free experience for this podcast, check out show notes or go to JordanB Peterson dot supercast dot com. You can sign up for $10 a month. That'll change what you press on in Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts to the ad free version. Mom and Dad, fancy seeing you guys in Nashville. We're very happy to be here. Hi, Michaela. Hi, this is fun.

Yep. This is going to be fun. We are going to talk about your couples report, which is part of dad, your understand myself, personality report system, where you can join people together and then see all the ways that you either work or don't work. That's right. Right. Each person can do a personality assessment at that site.

And then they can join with their partner or with anyone else they choose to have a couples report generated that outlines their similarities and differences where they'll get along easily and where they might have differences and why those differences can be useful and so forth. So are you guys really comfortable with sharing this with the world? The differences in your personalities, whether or not that works. I mean, apparently it works fairly well. You're both here. You're on the same couch.

That's a good start. Yeah, well, we won't say anything that we don't want to share, but we've talked a lot about our personality differences and similarities and figured out at least to some degree how to appreciate them and how to negotiate in relationship to them. Mom, what do you think? Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, we're gonna start with agribleness.

So dad, you scored 95th percentile in agribleness. Yeah, that's sad. And mom, you scored 29th percentile in agribleness. That's different. So, that's a little bit different. So I guess we should talk about, has that been an issue with having one person significantly higher in agreeableness than the other?

Well, if I could start, I think that you want some difference because you're reacting to what's going on in the world, and you can temper each other or change the way someone is seeing something through the lens of agreeableness and have a broader idea of interpretations of the world. So, so the utility for me in having your mom be more disagreeable than me is that I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt at a fairly broad level. And Tammy is much more skeptical, I would say, of people than I am. And that means that when there's someone around who you should be skeptical of, she's more likely to pick that up. And so I like to bring her

to meetings and just as an observer often, because she'll report to me afterwards about her thoughts and her suspicions. And then I've learned through Sometimes painful experience to at least pay attention to that I think Tam might have paid some price for her higher levels of disagreeableness. Go Think well like what well when you disagreeable you tend to say no Hmm, does that have anything to do with extraversion as well though? Yeah, if you're enthusiastic, you tend to say yes. Well, we won't talk about my enthusiasm yet. We're going to get there. Yeah, we're going to get there.

No. But I think it has something to do with me saying no. And also wanting my own way, stubborn. Yeah, I want my own way here. It also, it does lead to some misunderstanding because people low and agreeable less can be kind of curt and snappy, not snappy. That's not exactly right.

They can be curt and blunt. They're less polite. And so if you want to know what someone thinks, it's really good to have a disagreeable person around. But it's not like they really go out of the way to smooth things out so that there isn't. That's more than just this. I have risk of it like I'm not volatile, and I have really low and withdrawal. That's part of that. Yeah, well that helps that it helps a lot because it means that you're less likely to get upset.

And so, but I'm less likely to walk away when there's a confrontation. Right. And that can be both good and bad. And that's hard on somebody who's more agreeable. How did you experience the differences in our temperament, Mick, when you were growing up? So I'm, it's funny because I'm in a lot of conflict all the time, but I hate conflict. It really bugs me. I don't like it.

I don't like firing people, for example. I don't really even like disciplining people, even. I don't like hurting people's feelings. And I would say Tammy is less sensitive to that than I am. And that's not a criticism. But, but and this is coming from someone who's also, I'm split with agreeableness, right? But low and this is coming from someone who's also, I'm split with agreeableness, right? But low and politeness, mom,

I don't think mom would hurt somebody's feelings unless they kind of deserved it, right? Well, I think, and your, I guess description of what deserve is would be different. Yeah, well, I think your mom's judgment is really good. And I think she often puts people in their place, let's say, when they deserve it. And also, she's also extremely compassionate towards those who need it, but not towards those who don't. So your mom was unbelievably responsive to you guys when you were infants. So how did you

experience the difference in our temperaments? You and your friends and at least when you were young, well, when people came over, they used to be initially afraid of you, like, oh, you know, Jordan. But then when they got to know you, that would switch over to mom. So that that's one example of if I needed to get a yes from a parent, I would probably go to you. That was very sneaky and treacherous of you. So was there a downside to that? The fact that I would be more likely to say yes and an upside to your mother's propensity to say, no. Everything was so muddled together because of how sick I was that it's difficult to say. everything was so muddled together because of how sick I was that it's difficult to say. So is a disagreeable person more likely to tell you something that they see as

um an issue to discuss that might be sensitive than somewhat yeah definitely. And so that's why it's so that's truth right that truth. Yeah. Yeah. Well in the relationship between Disagribleness and truth is an interesting one thing about disagreeable people is because they're in some sense a little bit more out for themself and or more likely to bargain on the part of Themselves than on someone else's part is that they might be more tempted towards Deceit that was self-serving, whereas an agreeable person would be more tempted to like smooth over the truth and make everything nice so no one's feelings get hurt. Yeah, both those don't work out well.

No, well, it's nice to have a dialogue. Yes. Right. Both those don't work out well. It's also known as your differences on agreeableness, and this is true for all the personality dimensions, maybe accept neuroticism, as the gap between you, when you're in a couple increases, it's also increasingly difficult for people

to understand each other, because they don't understand their motivation. So the agreeable person will be running around, doing everything for everyone, and making things nice, and the disagreeable person will be more around doing everything for everyone and making things nice and the disagreeable people person will be more competitive and blunt and well, unless likely to do such things. And so they can misunderstand and misinterpret each other quite easily. So I'm going to just read a couple of sentences so people can get an idea of what you get

out of this report because this is the amount. Okay, so you basically do the understand myself personality test. You get two people to do that and then you can hook it up online. And I told dad that he should be charging for this because I'm running his business and this shouldn't be a free product.

However, it is a free product. You just hook up your results. So if you've already taken it, you can hook up your results with other people. But there's probably how many words here? 4,000 to 8,000, like 4,000 words. It's a real detailed report. Well, part of what we did, we have, we spent years building the couples reports. There's probably a hundred thousand words behind it because there's 10 aspects that people are compared on. And then there's five different groups

you can fall into, way above average, above average, average, et cetera. And so the program generates the report based on your placement on a normal distribution, percentile, essentially. And so there's a tremendous amount of writing and work that went into this. It's the equivalent of at least two books, I would say. We were going to launch it with a relative fanfare, let's say, but I got extremely ill and we couldn't do that. And so we decided to release it anyway because we thought it was in people's best interest.

And we're actually pretty happy with the sales. And so, but yes, it's a major feature. It's the only personality test I know of. And certainly the only scientifically validated test that actually offers people a direct comparison with a report based on that comparison between them and their partner. And we're hoping it'll be extremely useful for people because you need to understand that there are temperamental differences

and you need to understand what they are. And then you need to understand and appreciate your differences and similarities and figure out how to negotiate them. Very complicated for people. So I think what we should do, because we're going to be seriously delving into this. I think I should kind of give a brief overview of what it's going to look like,

and then we get into each trait. So we just looked at agreeableness, agreeableness breaks down into compassion and politeness. So it will do a comparison between agreeableness overall, and then dad's compassion level, mom's compassion level, dad's politeness level, mom's politeness. So it will do a comparison between agreeableness overall and then dad's compassion level, mom's compassion level, dad's politeness level, mom's politeness level. So when he said 10 aspects, it does the five openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, breaks all those into two aspects and then gives you a comparison. It's a lot of information here.

And that's based on an instrument called the Big Five aspect scale, which I developed with my students, particularly Colin D. Young, who is lead author on that paper. And it's become one of the standard means of assessing personality psychometrically in the research literature and also has been used by now tens of thousands of people online. So I think it's reasonable to say that

it's the best personality instrument currently available in terms of the breadth and the detail of its coverage and it's certainly the only one that offers this couple's comparison. So do you guys think I should just like kind of burn through some of this and you can stop me? Yeah well just that you can just ask questions and yeah, that'd be fine. So let's go to show we covered agreeableness, agreement on this breaks into compassion, politeness, compassion, debt, use cord 96 percentile, and mom use cord 48 percentile. So some of the some of the information you get here,

this is you, you are likely to be highly conflict diverse because you'll be concerned about causing your partner negative emotion. Your partner, mom, is likely to be highly conflict-versed because you'll be concerned about causing your partner negative emotion. Your partner, mom, is likely to be capable of engaging in conflict, and here she will be a bit less concerned about causing you negative emotion. So that's one sentence out of, you know, a large paragraph just describing the implications of compassion as a couple. So I'm going to just keep going you maybe mom too. Comment if you want to comment about what this kind of thing means. Dad, you know, I had to learn to I would say engage in conflict, especially when it conflicts with compassion. conflict. And I don't find it pleasant. And I don't like upsetting people at all. It really bothers me. And, but I did learn that conflict avoided is conflict delayed and magnified. And so it was a cross temperamental learning process for me.

I had to learn to work against my temperament in order to engage in conflict that was necessary when it was necessary. And so that conflict probably, perhaps, came more naturally to your mother or with less internal opposition. Yeah, I don't think it bothered me as much, but we always worked through our problems until we had resolution and you were very You were very persistent in making sure that we found our resolution and I don't know exactly what that was about if it had anything to do with our your personality Well, I think partly weirdly enough. It was a consequence of my dislike of Conflict I thought oh my god. We have a problem here. It's an actual It's going to happen every day or every week or every month for the rest of our bloody lives. Let's hash it out right now, despite the fact that that will make me sweat and raise my blood

pressure and exhaust me, because if we can actually negotiate our way through it and come to a solution, we wouldn't have to have a fight anymore. Yeah. And that worked. We went through our problems and we still continue to go through our problems. We don't rehash stuff all the time. No, while we made rules too, like when we were talking about an issue, it might have been something as trivial as who was going to clean up the bathroom sink and how quickly after they used it. Part of the rule was we focus on the specific issue, so you don't get to say, well, you never cleaned up the sink

and you're always leaving things around and you've done this your whole life and you'll never change, which is a really bad negotiating strategy. It was like, okay, apparently we have a problem with the sink, that might have been because of our differences in orderliness, which we'll get together. It's like, what is it that you want specifically done about this specific thing?

And then we would negotiate back and forth until both of us were satisfied. And we used to have meetings with you kids once a week. I don't know if you remember. I've vividly remembered. Yeah. Why do you? Like in a PTSD type of thing. Oh, because you wanted to go out and play.

I'm just kidding. Yeah. Well, well, while we sort well, we sort out the week's responsibilities at this meeting. And the meeting had rules, which was, well, there's some jobs that need to be done. And everybody has to play a role in doing them so that nobody gets resentful and bitter. And you have to attend the meeting,

although you can leave if you get upset, but you have to come back. And you have to abide by what you say, what you agree to attend the meeting, although you can leave if you get upset, but you have to come back, and you have to abide by what you say, what you agree to. And so don't eat to. For the week. For the week. So it wasn't a big ask, right? Seven days. But that's a long time for a kid. It is a long time. Yeah. Well, and people generally don't have meetings of that sort. And one of the rules was, and this has been a rule that Tammy and I have used in our whole relationship, it's like, do not agree to something you don't agree to because the worst thing is, is you negotiate out a settlement and the person decides they're going to implement it, but

really they're resentful about it because they didn't want to have any conflict. And then they're crabby about it every time they do it and they do a terrible job and they're irritated about it and that lasts forever. So none of that. So that's a good rules. Do not agree to things you do not agree with. And if you're agreeable, you'll say yes, and then you'll get resentful.

And that's the bitter and horrible underside of empathy. I could add to that too. If you're in a situation where you feel like you have to say yes as an agreeable person, Say you need some time. Yes, because I use that trick. I mean, I'm way better now. I don't have issues with saying no at all anymore, but when I was younger and more concerned about other people's feelings, I guess, I started saying, I can't make that decision right now. I'm not comfortable. You say, I'm not comfortable making that decision right now, or can I have till tomorrow?

Yes. Yeah, well, that's not a trick. I would say that's a good. That's a wise strategy and we also learned in our relationship often to discuss things and then let both parties sleep on it and if you go to sleep with the intent of further clarifying the negotiation, then you often wake up in the morning with something to say, you know, that might also cause further conflict, but is part of the means by which you reach a peaceful negotiated settlement. I mean, Tammy, you remember when we were first together, we'd have a conflict about some deep thing usually. For about three days. Yeah, and then once a week. Well, and then yeah, for a year. Yeah, more than that even. No, I was for the first year. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

often I'd be trying to work through this and it would be at night and Tammy would say, I have to go to sleep now, which drove me crazy. I'd be up like per-sisting on the internal discussion. She'd be sound asleep beside me, which is extremely annoying. But she would very frequently wake up in the morning with something to say that was helpful, or with a dream that related to that. Well, those kind of pauses that you take when you sleep

allow, it allowed me to reflect and find out what I may have brought to the situation. And that always helped. Yeah, well, that was another thing we did constantly, too, which was to try to figure out how, you know, I would sit on the end of my bed and Tammy did this as well when we were having a fight and think, okay, what stupid thing did I do at some point in the lead up to this discussion that increased the probability that this would be unpleasantly conflictual and that's interfering with the solution? And man, if you ask yourself that question, you'll get an answer.

And then you can offer that answer to the person. You can say, look, despite the fact that you're utterly wrong and that this is horrible and you should just listen to me, because that's what you like to think. You could say, well, here I figured out something I did that was not optimal or maybe outright wrong. And it's complicating it. And so like, sorry about that.

And you have to mean that. And if you have any sense, you do. And then we could progress. Yeah, that was a great strategy, because I think it not only deals with the situation at hand, but it deals with behavioral patterns that you've had since childhood that sometimes don't work anymore. And in the conflict, you can see the discord and you wonder what you may have brought to it.

So then that can shed some light on past behaviors and then you can update them. Yeah, I'll date it through the negotiation. Well, yeah, that's a huge part of what you're doing in negotiation is that update. It's also the case that if you concentrate on your stupidity, you now have a problem that you could solve. Whereas you really can't solve the problem of your partner's stupidity. You know, you can negotiate and you can discuss it. But really, that's, well, that's in their domain. So you should really pray to be enlightened about your own ignorance and limitations and error because you can

get rid of that with good faith and through negotiation. People are not good at negotiating. No, go negotiating. One thing, too, you can offer your partner. We did this a lot too. It's like, okay, looks like I'm in the wrong here. What do I have to say? What words do I have to say to you right now that will satisfy you? And you might think, well, if you love me, you know, or you should figure out the words on your own, it's like, no, I'm stupid. You tell me all wander through these words awkwardly and artificially because I'm not very good at it. And maybe I'll get better at it in the future. You can give your partner that gift,

right? You offer them conditions for your satisfaction. What do you want? That also forces you to specify what you want. You have to ask yourself, like, you're upset. Okay, what do you want? Well, I don't know. Fair enough. We can talk about it. And then maybe you identify if it's, well, I want you to suffer. And then that can pop into your head. And you're like, oh, maybe I'm contributing to the problem too. Yeah, maybe. Right. Yeah. Okay, next.

We're still in agreeableness. We're still in agreeableness. You are high in politeness. This is my favorite aspect. And you are low in politeness. So you scored 85%ile dad. And mom's scored 16th percentile. Right. That's a big difference.

Yeah, big differences. That's a big difference in between us. Yes. Yeah. And I noticed this often when we had when we were fighting arguing because Tammy would say something so outrageous and impolite and then she would top it with like another thing that was even more outrageous in Impolite and then with another and they were usually an Impolite people can be very funny. They were usually so over the top that it would make me laugh you know but it was that impoliteness that does cause friction in our relationship because she's more likely to be Kurt and mom is pretty Kurt yeah yeah and pretty blunt and blunt. And so, you know, I'll try to do something nice for her and she'll say something Kurt or blunt and then, you know, that hurts my

feelings. But yeah, well, say, Lovie, you know, but you're pretty damn funny. And I think I like that provociveness. I'm trying to be more kind and loving. Yeah, well, I have a better relationship now with my conscience or with my intuition or my higher power. I have a better relationship and I'm trying to because you know, all of us have these personalities were given and then, you know, do I want to be that blunt? Well, in some situations, yes, you know, but in a personal situation with someone I love, well, no, yeah, I know. I feel I don't want that. Yeah. And with

regards to this distribution, like we all have temptations towards certain sins and what we've been gifted certain virtues that make it easy for us. And it's really useful to understand that temperamentally, Like an extroverted person, person is gonna find it easy to be social. But an introverted person is gonna have to learn. Oh, I've had to learn a lot. Right. And especially now that he's a public figure

for me to be involved in that, I've had to learn a lot about being in a situation with people I don't know and striking up a conversation. Yeah, you're getting good at that. Interverts can get unbelievably socially skilled, but they have to learn it consciously. And that bluntness and impoliteness, I do believe that that was part of what attracted me to you to begin with, because you were TZ, and there's a playful element to that, or they can be even though it's like harsh play. It's like playing with a dog who might bite you, but, but, but a playful dog.

And I really admired the fact that you weren't a pushover like ever since, yeah, right? Yeah, someone taught us how to do that. We're pretty good at barking, actually. Yeah, yeah, you inhale when you bark. Roar, roar, roar. Mom. We can even tool dogs. Are you barked? You started this fiasco. Okay, I think moving on.

I think that we should, I'm going to skip a couple. Let's do extra version because we were talking about that. Oh, yeah, let's. Yeah. So dad scored 98th percentile and extra version, which is extremely high. And a mom scored 88th percentile and extra version, which is also very high.

So let's do that. Okay, so let's do that. Okay, so let's do that. and extroversion, which is extremely high. And a mom scored 88th percentile and extroversion, which is also very high. So let's start with enthusiasm, I guess. Enthusiasm is fun. You guys were actually fairly close, 92%ile for dad, and 86%ile for mom. Yeah, well, that's one of the things

that's actually made our relationship easy. Dangerous. Yeah, both of those. But the thing about your mom is that if I offer her an adventure, she'll say yes. That's fun. Yeah, because she's enthusiastic. So, for example, earlier this year, when I was still extremely ill, we started talking about this upcoming tour in 2022, and it's a major undertaking. I think we've got 150 cities slaughtered or something. And I, what? Well, I don't know, it's lots, 100 anyways.

Wow. And I asked her if she wanted to do this because she seemed enthusiastic during the discussion with creative artists agency who is helping the reasons. Can you use enthusiasm? Yeah. She just about died two years ago. and then like I wished I was dead for like most of the last two years.

And so, and we had no idea really if I was going to be able to manage this at that time, but we thought we better get on with our lives anyways. But your mom is always up for an adventure. And I had faith too that you would be better as well. I really did. Yeah, so that's been really helpful for us because my life has been pretty wild in many ways and but with a tremendous amount of opportunity and your mom, despite her lower agreeableness, if there's an adventure to be had, she's on board with it. And you know, you might think 88th percentile

and 98th percentile aren't that different, but if there were 100 people in the room, I'd be more extroverted than two of them, than all but two of them, whereas your mom would only be more extroverted than one in 10. So it's the difference between one in 50 and one in 10. It's still a big difference. Percentiles are sort of misleading that way. But because say if you have 98th and 99th percentile in extroversion, the 98th percentile person is more extroverted than 49 out of 50 or

49 out of 50. But the 99 percentile person is more extroverted than 99 out of 100. Twice, so that's in some sense, twice is extroverted. S-cord 99. 99. Yeah, S-cord 99, but I'm way less polite than you. And I think that has a lot to do with the differences here. Yeah, that's a temptation towards narcissism, that high level of extroversion and relatively low level of agreeable to so you want that moderated by conscientious Yeah, well that makes a difference to yeah, that makes a difference too. Yeah, yeah

So well, and we saw this difference in you and Julian because You could not not tell us anything you told us everything and you always wanted to be around people. Whereas Julian was more reserved and he was certainly his pro-glevity and his pro-glevity was to not tell us things, to maintain privacy. And now we can see that when he was three, two, yeah, we can see those differences extremely, those differences are there extremely early I was also a bit confused because you said tell the truth like no matter what Yeah, it wasn't a bad thing

We thought what you could keep some of that to yourself and that would be okay Well, it's a tricky thing to figure out when you're not saying something because you're lying and when you're not saying something because You have a right to privacy It's a tricky thing to sort out. Yeah. Okay, so extraversion breaks down into enthusiasm and assertiveness. We did enthusiasm. Certiveness. 99th percentile. Dad, an 81st percentile mom. I didn't realize you were so extroverted. I guess there there's quite a difference between 80th, 88th and 99th. Yeah. Yeah, and also you're extremely extroverted. And so by comparison, your mom looks less so. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's just how extroverted you are. Okay. Yeah, well, there's a huge difference at the upper ends of the distribution. Like you think, what's the

difference between 99 and 99.9? It's like, it's nothing. It's 0.9. Like you think, what's the difference between 99 and 99.9? It's like, it's nothing, it's 0.9. It's no, it's the difference between one and 101 and 1 and 1 and 1,000. So if you got, if you're at 99.9 and you got 10, 99th percent how extroverted people in the room, you would be the noisiest person. So, and that, yeah, and there's no,

that doesn't diminish at the upper ends. Yeah, yeah. And so assert doesn't that doesn't diminish at the upper ends. Yeah. Yeah, and so assertiveness. I think part of the other part of the reason why I can engage in conflict resolution is because I will talk about things as people may have noticed. Maybe, maybe. Yeah. And maybe you also understand that having the conflict now, like you said, is going to prevent conflict in the future. And so it's actually more of an agreeable thing to have less conflict, which would be addressing it now. Yes, if the in the long run, yeah, long run. But I find, you know, when I do my podcast, people

sometimes criticize me for interrupting. And that's this extroverted assertiveness. When I'm listening to a conversation, questions are popping up in my mind like mad. It's part of verbal fluency and like I need to ask them. I need to ask them. It's a real impulse and that's deeply rooted temperamental impulse and I've always been unbelievably talkative right from the time I was two. I think they called me motor mouth when I was kid my cousin called me motor mouth and that kind of caught on so now that that'll be a meme I presume. I wouldn't underestimate zoom too. I mean, we're having a conversation. You're not interrupting.

I'd say there's enough of a delay on zoom that you end up interrupting when you're not. Well, that's especially true if you're assertive and enthusiastic because this is, Tam's pretty extroverted, but you and I are talking more. And the reason for that is that her leg to first utterance is maybe a half a second longer than ours. I just negative, negative one. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So I learned when we were disciplining the kids, I often disciplined you guys first. Assertiveness likely. Neuroticism. Well, I don't think so, but very far. But I learned that if I could just shot up for like five seconds, that whatever annoying thing was going on would annoy your mother. And then she would intervene. But if we just left it to the

natural course of things, the relatively, or the difference in extraversion between us, at least in relationship to that, was enough so that I would end up doing most of the discipline. That wasn't well. So, would you remember? Yes. Verified. Verified, yes. Verified.

Just as an impolite person would insist. Okay, conscientiousness. Dad scored at 97th and mom scored 83rd. And then let's break it down, I think. It breaks down into industriousness and orderliness. And then, Dad, do you want to give like a two-second explanation of industriousness and orderliness? Sure. Well, orderliness is associated with disgust sensitivity at the emotional level. And orderly people don't like things that shouldn't be touching, touching. They like things where they should be, they like everything organized, they're more likely to have a schedule.

Mess bothers them viscerally, just like Disgust does. Tammy, what's our score is there? Yeah, yeah, you can't talk about me yet. We don't have our scores there. In Duster. Watch it. So you, Dad's Gord 99th and Mom's G scored 96th. Wow. Cool. But there that's an interesting difference there too, because that makes me one and a hundred on that dimension and her one and 25.

And so, Oh, it doesn't make me sense really. Doesn't what if I had it would make sure we showed it would be a huge difference. That's already it. Yeah, well then there'd be a huge difference. That'd be one in three. Yeah. Right. And so like I left my own devices, I would just work all the time. Yeah. And there are lots of people like that.

I could get a key and just lock you in there. Yeah. Well, we kind of did that in my office because we learned. No, I learned. Do you go ahead tell that story? You went when you went to work, you didn't want to be interrupted. So I didn't interrupt you. So you could you went to work, you didn't want to be interrupted. So I didn't interrupt you. So you could be there for hours, hours, hours. Yeah. And then I'm kind of

fascinated by how you can do as much as possible in the shortest possible period of time. And that's always kind of a game for me. And that's associated with industrialism. I like to work. I would work all the time pretty much. I'm getting better at Leavening that with recreation, especially artistic recreation, and I like to spend time with your mom and you guys so that those were Those were good breaks and I have a much more balanced life. Yeah, I have a much more balanced Day-to-day experience. Yeah, that was especially true. And that was good for you. Yeah, definitely.

Because you learned how to do some things besides work. Yeah, well, I also trained myself when I was in especially in graduate school to really work. I wanted to see, I spent like five years pushing the limits of my ability to work. And then I figured out how to pull back a little bit from that because I was exhausted. I think when you're young, it's really useful for about two

years or three years to work yourself to the point of exhaustion, to find out where that limit is and then dial back. And when you're young, you can kind of stand it because you're healthy as long as you don't drink too much, et cetera. But it's really useful to test that out. And so, these career-obsessed people, they tend to be extremely high in industriousness. And it's a precondition for extreme success in most endeavors. Yeah, it's like a game, right? It's like a contest. It's contest, yeah, especially if you're a little disagreeable too. So, in orderliness University that way. Now what's the difference in orderliness between us?

Dad used to be this doesn't seem right you scored 80th and mom scored 41st but mom was I think I was more aesthetics than orderliness. That's what I think. So openness, I liked beauty. Oh, that's interesting. I still really like beauty. It might also be something. In your disagreeableness, probably made you less attached to objects. Yes, yes, definitely. I'm not attached to anything.

Well, that's another thing. Baby pictures, baby books. I want to outside one day. I want those if you want. I want, yeah, I should just give them to me, like out of my house. I went outside one day. I went outside one day. I thought those if you wanted that. I went, yeah, I should just give them to me and like out in my house. I went outside one day and I had this one book where I'd drawn little figures in it.

I was like, I am, you know, however many centimeters tall and this is my name and I'm five and it was just sitting on the sidewalk. It was a mumbles cleaning house. Yeah, yeah, good mom. I think it is. She doesn't love me. I think it is lower, that lower agreeableness.

I mean, Tammy's very good at getting rid of unnecessary things. And I know that was, you know, perhaps not unnecessary. So, it's worse Julian's, it's not out of you. What does that supposed to mean? But it does clear away the clutter. And we've accumulated a lot of things, especially over the last few years, and your mums ability to not get sentimentally attached to things unduly has been instrumental in us keeping our environment functional and hopefully beautiful to the degree we've been able to manage that.

Yeah, I don't know how old you were when I got rid of all the large suitcases. We could only have small suitcases and you could only take that much stuff no matter where you were going or how long you were going for. And that was part of it was cluddery to have, we didn't have room for big suitcases. Okay, no more suitcases. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They tour just so people know with a carry-on. It's very impressive. These outfits, with a carry on. It's very impressive. These outfits carry on. Okay, let us continue. Do you know what the this stewardess said to the Fulcher when he tried to bring three bags onto the play? Only two carry on's, a lot, sir. Yeah. I said that to readers, I just and I got a hundred dollar check.

to read your story just and I got a hundred dollar check. That makes the story so much better. Yeah well I really liked reading just when I was a kid you know it was a good magazine. I remember seeing that it was written in there for you yeah. I've had those of these people are going to scramble and get their hands on those now. We should have some of those. Okay anyway just try to make money just in any way possible. Okay, we covered, we covered extraversion. Enthusiasm is fun. Certiveness.

Enthusiasm, that means to be possessed by God, by the way. Enthusiasm, that should just say fun instead. be possessed by God by the way. Enthusiasm, that should just say fun instead. This is a lot of positive emotion. And there, yeah, the extroversions, the positive emotion dimension and extroversions are fun to be around. I used to think that enthusiasm meant,

somebody knew what they were doing, but now I know it's just enthusiasm. Like you discount it. Then being like, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. Here's the plan. Let's do it. Fantastic.

Yeah. Like, oh, wow, okay, you're really into this. That's why you need to do this the plan. Let's do it. Fantastic. Yeah. Like, oh, wow, okay, you're really into this. That's why you need to say everything. Yeah, you're not. Every idea is good. Yeah. Well, too much enthusiasm makes you manic. I've had that, that issue a bit. Yeah. Yeah. It makes you manic. That's that. So every trait pushed to its extreme can degenerate into a pathology. And that's true of all of them. You might think you can't be too creative. It's like, oh, oh yes, you can. You see patterns everywhere, even when they're not there.

So, and it's very difficult for highly creative people to catalyze an identity because they're interested in everything. That's different than being enthusiastic about everything. You can be interested in everything without thinking. Everything's a great idea and let's get on it. Or you can be both. Extroverts are impulsive.

So. And fun. Yeah, well, and it's certainly the case that you can have too much fun. One of the things that was painful about having children was the realization of how much time you spend disciplining them because they're having too much fun

because they run around and, you know, they get too excited and then they wear themselves out or they trip over things or bump into each other. It's like, settle down, settle down. You think, I'm educating my children not to be happy. It's like, well, everything has its limits. I'm happy. That's good. Okay, neuroticism.

Actually, first, quick question. What happens in couples if you have one person who's super extroverted and one person who's not? Because that to me seems like... Well, my mom and dad was probably as extroverted as you guys. Yeah, that's true. Because he was super extroverted. My mother was not...

Yes, super extroverted. Yes, I still know. He's's 90 and still funny. Yeah. And he's the life of the party man. And he was the life of the party in Fairview. Yeah. I think your dad was so lifeline. I think your dad was the most extroverted person in our town. It seemed that way. Yeah. I mean, he was, he was, and there was about three, more extroverted than I was. Yeah, way more way more. I was always quite surprised by his enthusiasm and his goal of just doing anything.

And he was low and agreeable to like low in politeness. Yes. And he's hilarious. Yeah, he is. Yeah, but you don't. Yeah. And he'll tell you what he thinks to man, even kids. Yeah. Yeah, but you don't yeah and he'll tell you what he thinks to man even kids. Yeah, I told my kids is don't

Do anything to annoy your grandfather? He will not forgive you And you were good you were good, but my mother was very quiet. Yeah, unbelievable And I don't think she would have known anyone if it were it went from my father because he brought to her. And I don't think she had the... Temperament. Temperament to bring people to her. She didn't. She didn't. So thank God that she found him and that he found her.

Yeah, and introverts get worn out by social interaction and they need to go have a break, fairly frequently, whereas extroverts get energized. And so yeah, it was tricky for your mom and dad because it was hard for them to bridge that gap have a break fairly frequently, whereas extroverts get energized. And so, yeah, it was tricky for your mom and dad because it was hard for them to bridge that gap because your dad was always out socializing and your mom enjoyed that and she thought he was funny, but she was very introverted. But you didn't go out with him.

And she didn't really go out and make friends on her own either. You know, through sports, and that's something that she did with sports, even though she was introverted, she could act out something open. But yeah, maybe more open. Yeah, because that can sometimes override it, right? If you're an introvert, but you're high in openness. Well, she was actually a good athlete, too, so that helped a lot. It was a domain of competence for her.

And that's a kind of social activity, right? It's not sitting around talking, which actually works. We wants to do. It was going on doing things with people. And so that's something for introverts to consider too. It's a good avenue to social interaction, shared activity rather than mirror socialized conversation. Dancing, they went dancing. Yeah. You bet. You bet. They curled together, they golfed together together and Mom went and watched all the sports that dad did hockey and baseball and so she was out with people When he was doing things and then when she was little older she was doing them too and Did very well with them. Yeah, my dad my mom is extremely high in enthusiasm and my dad is very low in enthusiasm Although he's quite assertive. Makes him a complicated character

because he's half extroverted and half introverted. And so he was difficult to understand in that way. But it's difficult to rouse dad to enthusiasm for any activity. And that's hard on my mom because she's really enthusiastic and really, and less assertive, although not unassertive. And so that was, has been a point of conflict between them and their relationship. Okay. Naroticism. So you scored 74th.

Yeah, I was probably still pretty sick when I took this test. And I, so I've done this a number of times throughout my life. I know it says clearly on the website, you can only take this once, which is terrible marketing. Yes. I don't think that's truly the, I don't think it's true. Well, can't is you can do it again. Right, but you should, there should be a gap

between the times you take it. Oh, yeah, you can't just repeatedly take it till you end up with a personality you don't have, but you won't. Yeah, for sure. Well, that's, that's really why we built that question in there. Okay. Let's just say just don't cheat.

If you just repeatedly answer the questions, honestly, because I did this when I was young and it was pretty much the same. But when my depression went away, my neuroticism plummeted. So the withdrawal aspect too, but also the volatility when it went away. Well, depression is a modulation of your neuroticism in some sense. And so it's always been difficult for me to answer the neuroticism questions because when I'm healthy, I'm low in withdrawal and I'm low in volatility.

But when I'm unhealthy, well, both of that mounts up. And so then the question is, because I've had some repeated boats of depression, the question is, well, who are of depression, the question is, well, who are you? And the answer is, well, it depends on whether or not I'm depressed. Yeah. So it's hard to answer. But I think, oh, and this is, you can tell me if this comment is wrong, but I think people can get along with a variety of different personality traits, right? But if you have two neurotic people, I just try and find, so I remember seeing my score and my score in neuroticism

was like 90 something. I was like, okay, the only, there's certain personality traits I want in a mate, but I definitely can't be with another neurotic person. Well, women initiate about 75% of divorces, and there are multiple reasons for that. What one reason is is that women are higher in trait neuroticism. They're more sensitive to negative emotion. So they

feel more units of negative emotion, subjectively per unit of stress. That's a way of thinking about it. And so they get unhappy faster. Now, why is that? Well, the jury's out on that, but some possible reasons. It seems to kick in at puberty because it's not true for boys and girls. They're smaller. Their upper bodies aren't as strong. They're not likely to win physical contests, especially with men, especially with tough men, despite the Marvel movies. And so the world is more dangerous for them, in some sense, physically. but I think more importantly, is the fact that they are going to bear primary responsibility for dependent infants.

And if you have an infant depending on you, you should react to the world as if it's more dangerous than you might if it was just you navigating through it. So now the downside of that for the people who have to live with women and for women themselves is that they're more likely to get upset. They're more likely to make a big deal out of something statistically speaking. There's plenty of men who are more neurotic than plenty of women, but on average, that's the case. That's just the worst. I'm just going to put it out there. That is the most. Yeah, well, it's just. It's useful for men to understand this, you know, because women. They got mom.

Oh, look at that. That's extrovers and talking away and then realizing what you say. Yeah. Did you Yeah. That's for sure. Did you know, sign note, shying away from this. Have you heard of the vasopressin oxytocin for bonding, which is really interesting. So vasopressin is released when there's stress. And men tend to bond when that chemical is released. So, which isn't that interesting? So, you can stress out a man in a situation

and that'll increase bonding. Reconciliation? Yeah, it seems so. But for women, it's oxytocin that's really involved with bonding. So, what you wanna do for a woman is make her feel safe. Yes.

So, it's interesting. Isn't that interesting? They did a bunch of studies on voles too, Shauna Fulve, oxytocin and vasopressin to see what happens. That's very interesting. But that's so cool. So you can be more neurotic. You can get away with being more neurotic as a woman. If you're with a man who's more stable and potentially, according to voles,

that might even increase bonding. If the man can take away some of the woman's kind of problems and make her feel calmer. Yeah, well, I think that's highly likely, highly probable that. Yeah, and so I think when I'm healthy, I'm low in withdrawal and a little higher in volatility, but low in withdrawal, because I don't, you know, just go either. Fear, fear doesn't stop me from doing things. Yeah, so this, I would say when you did this, because you scored 80th, and that's just not true, because you wouldn't do a world to or meet all these people.

If that were the case, you just stayed home, right? You scored a third. Yes, I have no withdrawal. So we're kind of, we're a little bit, the sex differences here are turned around. Yeah, I know. Well, that's, that's, yeah, well, and so that means that's, yeah, well, too.

And so that means that when we have a disagreement for whatever it is caused by my need for safety being a woman, and your need for being having some sort of reconciliation is kind of backwards. Yeah, well, your mom has a relatively masculine temperament because she's low in agreealness and low in eroticism. And I have a relatively feminine temperament, especially when I'm depressed. And so that's an interesting, it's interesting to consider that in light of this cultural argument about sex and gender. While there's two sexes, let's be clear about that. And there has been for several hundred million years. So there's actually no dispute about that. But there's a lot of variability,

even biological variability at the temperamental level. And so there's plenty of masculine women and feminine men. But that doesn't mean they should switch bodies. That's actually the wrong solution to that problem. So, and that can be true, even though on average women are higher, negative emotion and higher in agreeableness. Oh, yeah. So neuroticism. I mean, one of the problems there is that people are higher in negative emotion in neuroticism. We'll tend, at least from the perspective of those lower to make mountains out of mole hills. And so it's a problem that you deal with in clinical practice a lot, especially with people are depressed because any failure makes them think they're a horrible, unworthy person in that their life isn't worth living.

And that's too much of a reaction to every problem. So part of the way you bind that is you try to make the discussion about the smallest thing it can possibly be about. And I think that's a good guide to political discussion as well. Everything's not climate. Local. Local, local, specific, practical, actionable,

negotiable, articulable. Yeah. It's not accurate. articulatable. Yeah. I think it's articulable. But maybe it's neither. That's not a good word to screw up. It isn't no, it's not. It's a stupid word to screw up. I don't know. That's right. Articulable. Clearly spoken. Okay. That's really. See, the impolite person corrected me. Okay, that's really how. See, the impolite person corrected me.

Dad's dad's right. But you can also see. Oh, he is. Articulable. I don't know that word. Yeah, so there are girly. We learned something. Yeah, successful podcast.

Well, that's me enthusiasm. Asking. That doesn't make sense. Tell me about that. Well, that's that provocative part too that's linked to a sense of humor. Mm-hmm. Most comedians are low in politeness. High in compassion, though they may still be.

They're low in politeness, because they'll say things that no one else would say. And that's funny. It's often funny. Openness to experience. Yep. That's basically the creativity dimension. Essentially, that's what people think openness is like how willing you are to discuss things, how open it's not a great name. The psychometricians didn't nail that one well, but it's a hard one to get right, but you can think of it as creativity and interest and ideas. Yeah, if what we want to break down. Openness to experience, I think. Yeah, if you just, yeah, yeah. Openness to experience a whole thing.

Otherwise, it's misunderstood. Yeah. So dad, you scored 98th overall and mom scored 68th. And that breaks into, so when I scroll down here, actually I'll show it on the screen, but you can see behavioral roles, your virtues and faults as a couple. And that's under all these different personality aspects.

So intellect, that's the first one, it breaks into intellect and then openness. Intellect, dad, you scored 97% on intellect, mom scored 34% on intellect. And that's really interesting, semantic ideas, I would say. So people high and intellect, they're philosophically minded. They like nonfiction, particularly. Men are likely to be higher in this intellect than women, although women are higher in the other aspect of openness, which is more interest in aesthetics and formal creativity and more likely to read fiction.

And so I'm really, really interested in ideas, although I'm also interested in aesthetic experience. And your mom is definitely less interested in ideas than I am, because I'm obsessed by them, which you are. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you are obsessed by ideas. Oh, yeah. You notice that? Some people have noticed that. Yeah, I mean, when I was when I was in graduate school, I was thinking about ideas at an extremely rapid rate 16 hours a

day. Like it was non-stop. The only thing I could do to stop it was go lift heavy weights. It was the only thing that knuckle hole. When you were a little kid, when I knew you, when you were eight, nine, ten, you seemed very thoughtful. You seemed very interested in the books that you were reading. So the whole ideas had already begun. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was reading, like, I always went to bed and read. I could read a book a day when I was a kid. Science fiction book usually, but I read a lot of nonfiction. world book and cyclopedias. And I was obsessed with words. I couldn't time my shoes

up. The shoes were on a newspaper, an old newspaper, you know, sitting in the porch. I'd stop and while it was time my shoes, I'd read all the newspaper articles. My brother was the same. I used to do that. He couldn't get in the house because he'd kneel down, take his boots off and there he'd be We're in the news, yeah, we're words in combination I've seen before yeah, yeah, so Okay, so then there's open then there's the other aspect of openness and what's the differences there? 96th for dad and 87th from mom. Yeah, and that was a pretty good point of contact for us too. Contact, yeah. For a long time, I was obsessively investigating and buying art

and I bought like 400 paintings, but I whittled them down from a sub sample of a larger sample of, say, 4,000. So I'd go on eBay and look at like 2,000 paintings in an evening, which you could do on eBay, which was really cool. And I got to the good ones, what I thought were good would sort of pop out at me. And then I'd print them out and lay them on the floor. And your mom would come in and with her unsentimental and judgmental eye and slightly less interest in aesthetics.

We would go through them and I would ask her, okay, there's 10 here. Get rid of the worst one. And she was very good at that. Yeah, we're really well. Yeah, she liked that. Well, she also liked to find the best one. Not get rid of the worst one. Yeah, because if you like them all, you have to get rid of that. Yeah, I'd already pre-screen them, you know, but I wasn't going to buy 10 a night.

I only wanted to buy four a night. Yeah, so, but that worked out really well. And it was interesting too, because your mum was kind of worried about my art buying obsession, which lasted about three years. It could have been more worried about it. Yeah, but generally when I came, brought her upstairs to look at the paintings, she'd say, well, I don't like that one. And I don't like that one. And I don't like that one. I don't like that one and I don't like that one But you can get those other three and that was enthusiasm plus her interest in aesthetics and so That's funny. Yeah Okay, wow and that's a good one

I think it's really hard for couples where one person is really high in openness and the other one isn't that's a hard gap to bridge man because The one person is going to be really interested in ideas and in art and literature and music and all of that, all of the whole artistic realm and the other person isn't struck by that or consumed by it. I don't know how to mediate that. Well, that was good for us, for sure. Yeah, it really made it good for us. I mean, my mom is lower in openness than my dad. And art scares her, especially if it has to be nice. Like, she'd have

her house covered with kittens if that was a possibility. In fact, she does do something. I bought some rough Russian impressionist paintings from an artist that I really liked in the Soviet Union, and they were selling for like nothing. They were next to free. I bought my dad ten of them, which I really liked, and sent them to him, and he liked them a lot. But mom wouldn't let him hang them upstairs. I think they were too unsettling for her. But he eventually got them framed and then brought them up sort of one at a time and she got accustomed to them and then liked them. And then years later, probably 10 years later, when I reminded her of the first part of the story, she didn't remember it at all. She really liked the paintings by then. But it took her a long time. Art is quite terrifying. And if you're naturally attracted to it, that's one thing. But beauty is no small force, man. And so for people low in openness, they're not attracted by the aesthetic

experience to such a degree. And so it's kind of unsettling for them. So that's a tough, that's a tough. I remember I went to visit my dad and we would go into Vancouver and I said, let's go to the Emily Cloud Museum. How about... Why would we want to do that? He said he wasn't very high in openness. But what makes you think that'd be a good idea? But I think, what about this though?

If you have someone who's extremely extroverted though, then wouldn't that just override it? Because even going around. No, no, they just want to go there because to be part of the crowd and have fun. Yeah. Yeah. But they don't care about the art. Yeah. They just want to talk to the museum. It have to be full of people. What if they don't have a party at a museum. But they wouldn't go. Imagine the museum was empty and they had to go there alone. Like, I'm extroverted, but I would go to a museum alone. Although I'd rather go with someone,

but I would go alone. Yeah, and I go to movies alone. See, I don't. I like movies alone as well. Yeah, I think I've had that issue a bit when I've been traveling. And I like to go to parties when I'm the only one there that I don't know anybody else there.

I used to do that a little time when I was in my 20s. You know, around the university, and I'd find a party and I'd walk in the house and be in a party with people didn't know anybody Low and withdrawal. Yeah, yeah, that's part of your part of your basic Yeah, I was like, oh, this is interesting. Yeah, that was disrupted for you to some degree by the pill Well, the pill yeah, the pill was terrible. It made me depressed and volatile and volatile But it makes everybody less. No one says it makes everybody depressed and volatile. I still had no withdrawal, though it up to my volatility, but it didn't change the. No, no, it didn't. So that's interesting. It doesn't make everybody depressed. I had clients who were depressed, especially with

PMS, like they had cyclical monthly depression. And for some of them, the pill smoothed that out substantially. So, yeah, you have to pay attention to individual differences. The pill, yeah, my whole throat. I knew it wasn't good for you to have it. Yeah, terrible. It was a lot of people thought I'd take care of myself. I didn't take, I didn't cut my hair. I didn't take proper care of what I was wearing and stuff.

It really depressed. Yeah, it was really bad. It was really bad. And you're not prone. Like, that's one of my struggles. It was chemical. Yeah, you're not prone. Like that's one of my... It was chemical. Yeah, you're not prone to depression like that.

No, no. Rebecca, it was like unbelievably bubbly, not prone. I would say at all. Same thing as soon as she went on the pill. She was crying every day. That's a massive difference. And people are put... I'm not happy with that.

People are put on that when they're like 14. For a safety, when your emotional topsy-turvy anyway. And they're like, and then it takes a couple weeks to make you depressed, so you don't really notice right away. And then you're on it for 10 years before it's like, oh, you know, or longer 15 years because apparently it's safe to take forever anyway. I started taking the pill when I was 16 years old.

I finished, I definitely had way more trouble with my parents for the last two years of high school. So I think I changed dramatically. And then I went off to university. Yes, so did about you change during that time. And I went off the pill, went to university, went back on the pill, dropped out of university. And I was meeting boyfriends. Well, the most important. dropped out of university and I was you know meeting boyfriends and so I would take part in goal direct to that activity when I was not on the pill and then as soon as I was on the pill I'd

drop everything. Well it was terrible. After Michaela was born. No Julian. Yeah that's right after Julian was born. We were getting along pretty well. Oh, yeah. I went back on the pill and the pill when Julian was a year old. Yeah. And I just, my, I was completely different person. I was completely different person. And luckily someone came to visit who said the same thing happened to her. And so I stopped taking them and then I was fine. Yeah, it was quite dramatic.

Wow. It was quite dramatic. Anyways, we shouldn't talk about that too much. Yeah. Yeah. No, but birth control pills and we don't get pills and yeah, they're complicated. They're complicated. Yeah. Right. Can we, well, we want over the personality report. Yeah. So people can go to if they want to do that, they can go to understand myself.com. Yeah. It's dirt cheap. It's we tried to make it. We tried to make it. We had rules or some

rules for the company. We wanted to only sell, we wanted to sell because we wanted to make sure we developed the personality tests and also the self-authoring suite, which helps people write about their past, present, and future. We wanted to only offer high quality, scientifically validated interventions that were self-directed for people. So they had to be based on a solid research background. We didn't want any administrative overhead. We wanted people to be able to do it on their own. We wanted to make it scalable ultimately and we wanted to keep the prices low as possible.

And so those were the, and the salability issue is think about it this way. You develop a personality test, but no one uses it. Well, that's not a good solution to the problem. You want to have people use it. And then you want to have them use it and be happy enough about it to pay for it, because that's actually a mark of its utility. So we instituted my partners and I, Dr. Robert Peel, who was my graduate supervisor and Dr. Daniel Higgins, who was an MIT trained engineer and was my student at Harvard, who I've been working with now for 20 years, we used those principles to guide the development of all these tests.

And that's worked very well so far. Websites a bit wordy, but we're working on that now. So anyways, yeah, understand myself. It's been, I think, you know, even though, well well when we were first working on the test we gave it to kids. That was really useful. They were young. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that like super young. Yeah. To self-score it. Yeah. And I realized because. Oh yeah, I didn't work for them. It only would get into tussles now and then, and I realized after reviewing her personality scores that it wasn't because she was low in agreeableness

because I thought she was pushing back, but it was partly because she was ill. She was volatile and she'd get upset when we were discussing things, not because she was rebelling or pushing back, but because she got upset. And so I tried to learn when she was upset, not to get upset about that in return, but to give her a hug or a pat and to understand that it was emotional upset, rather than, you know, rather than a motivated rebellion.

That was really helpful. And I learned too that Julian was extremely easy to get along with. Um, yeah, and it was because he was agreeable. Yeah. And it wasn't because he was agreeable. Yeah, and it was because he was agreeable because he's not agreeable, but he's really emotionally stable, really low in neuroticism. And so when in retrospect, I thought, well, that makes sense because if he said no, you couldn't get him to do it. Like really, really when he was a little kid,

when he was a little kid, he used to say, yes, in school sometimes, but not do it. Yeah, that's something. Yeah, sure. Yeah, people who are working. So I had explained to him, I said, you know, there might be other kids who want to do this. You've said, yes, you've got, you've got the right to do it. But now you didn't do it. Someone else didn't get to do it.

So just say no and get on with it. Well, now he just says no very easily. Yeah, when he was, that used to confuse it. So just say no and get on with it. Well, now he just says no very easily. Yeah. When he was, that used to confuse me. Yeah, confuse me. Hey, can you help with this? No. Yeah. What do you mean? You can't, like, I don't really want to help with this either, but I'm helping with it because the other person needs help. You're just saying, no, what are you doing? Sitting at home, like, I want to be sitting at home. When he was about 11 months old, he had this tippy cup and he used to, we'd fill it with water or milk and give it to him and he used to do it make do it so everywhere with it and when that was milk, that wasn't such a good thing.

So we tried to get him to stop doing that and we finally had to take the cup away because there was no way he was going to stop doing that and he was only like 12 months old, 11 months old. And I had a battle with him one time when he was learning to feed himself because he had taken the spoon from his mom. He wasn't going to give that goddamn spoon back. And then he wasn't eating because he just eat a bit and then he'd play. He's playing hockey. Yeah, he has playing hockey. That's right. And and then he was getting too hungry And then he'd get crabbing. He didn't nap and then he was upsetting his mom and I thought all right kid

I'm taking out spoon back because I'm gonna feed you and it literally took me three hours Fighting with this like 10 month old kid. It wasn't really a fight though It was really ingenious So he'd poke him in the shoulder a little bit and Julian be sitting there with his mouth shut Just try to feed me and then he'd poke him a little bit and Julian be sitting there with his mouth shut. Yep. Like just try to feed me. And then he'd poke him a few times and he'd go, and then he'd stick the food in his mouth. Then he'd try to push it out with his tongue.

So I'd quote. Oh, airplane mode. Yeah, I thought it was on the airplane mode, but apparently it isn't. And he fixed that real quick. So yeah, yeah, it, while he well, it got so intense this fight that your mom had to leave the room because she couldn't tolerate the conflict. And I was making me sweat too, but I thought there's no damn way this nine month old kid is going to win. I was patient like I'd learned at that point when I was disciplining you kids to not usually not get upset was just like, no, on the steps with you, you stop doing that

when you're willing to behave like a civilized human being, you can come back, that was the rule, right? Do something disruptive. Yeah, you remember those words. Well, you were pretty easy to discipline because... Very easy. We couldn't know when you were agreeable. Yeah, all we had to do really was say no, and we didn't even have to say it very harsh. We couldn't know when you were agreeable. Yeah. All we had to do really was say no. And we didn't even have to say it very harshly. You just stopped. I think I scored

50th percentile because the compassion was at 88. Okay. Lightness is it like low. But Julian, when we used to put him on the steps, man, he would just sit there and rage like his fists clenched his jaw. You ready yet? You're trying to get himself under control. Yeah, we go over there. And this was he was very young. I remember just being sad. Are you ready to get off the steps?

No, I'm not ready yet. And then he'd get himself under control. It was really interesting to watch him build that internal apparatus to control, you know, to control that. And he got extremely diplomatic because he was so disagreeable, but because we were disciplining him, he would just worry that edge, like, how much can I get away with exactly precisely right now. And your mom and I would watch this because, especially if he went to daycare and interacted with some kids who were full of tricks, he'd come home full of tricks, you know. He'd try him out. Let's try this out and save it works. And so... Charlotte does that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it's a sign of that... It's a sign of that... Yeah, like who are you? Yeah, so that no one likes that kid. That's right, stop being that kid. Yeah, and so Tammy and I would talk because we tried to present an integrated disciplinary front We weren't gonna let you kids play one of us against the other although imagine you'd managed that some of the times and we'd say okay Julian he's getting out of here. We're gonna crack down on him for two weeks

He doesn't he doesn't get away with a whisper out of line And so we'd really like attend tab right watching it if he ever did anything out of line It was stop and what was really interesting, this was so interesting. Every time we did that, he liked us way more. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was so interesting.

Yeah, it was so nice. Chaos, right? There are some boundaries. They're not just like, well, how far can I go? Oh, I have a story. I have a story. So when we were in Boston, I was taking care of these little kids one afternoon.

Someone's care worker had a car accident and they didn't have someone to take care of them. And I had your friends that used to come over and play all the time. So I had this troop of kids in the house. And so this little guy came in and he was about three years old. And his mom said, don't worry, he won't eat anything, but you know, just keep him for the day. And I thought, wow, that doesn't make any sense. So at lunch time, we sat down, we had chicken pot pie. And you guys knew that you had to eat and so did the two kids. They always came. They knew that one kid. He'd only eat hot dogs at home. Mitchell? Yeah. Yeah, but he ate everything in our house.

He was hot dog guy. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Anyway, this little kid sat down and he wasn't going to eat anything, but we did the same thing we did with Julian. Yeah, except I used more reward. And then he would eat something and we'd go, good boy, pap, pap, pap, pap. So we tried to feed him something, and he was about four. He might have been four. He might need four. We tried to feed him something, and he was about four. He might have been four. He might need four. We tried to feed him something, and he'd go like this. Yes, that's right. Well, that's what a nine-month-old does.

It just moved his head. I thought, oh, this kid hasn't been interacted with since he was nine months old. And so I just keep the spoon in front of him, and with a little bit of one, finally he'd eat it. And then I go, pat, pat, pat, good. And then he got hung up. And then he was hungry once he was eating. Well, you did the feeding, not me. And then he got hung up. You know what he was eating.

Well, you did the feeding, not me. That was you that did that. Yeah, yeah. But you were there. I was watching, that's right. And you kept rewarding him. And then it was so interesting. So when I had come home that day,

that kid was standing in the porch by himself, looking miserable while the other kids were playing. And I came and I looked at him and I thought, what the hell, That's not good. And so then I poked him a bunch, you know, to try to play with him. And he just went like this. He was sullen and he had no idea how to play.

And so that was really sad. And then lunch was after that. Anyways, Tammy fed him and he got right to the bottom of the bowl and finished it. And she said, look, you finished it. Look what you did. And he said, look, you finished it. Look what you did. And he just lit up into a huge smile. Oh, that's gonna make me cry. Yeah, it's worse.

It's worse, it's worse. Well, that- He wasn't trained yet. Yeah. He followed Tammy around for the rest of the day, like a puppy. Like he was right on her path. And then- Yeah, when we sat down, we used to go downstairs and watch Disney

and he sat on my knee. He climbed right up on her and grabbed her like that like that little monkey clinging to the wire mother in the famous experiments and then Jesus Christ his mother came home and came downstairs and she saw him hit this kid clinging to Tammy and she said, oh Supermum and grabbed him by the hand and left. It's like, that's a horrifying story. Yeah, well, she was a psychologist too. Just to put another twist on that story.

I think her husband was a psychologist. Okay, whatever. Yeah, they were like, no, he wasn't. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I hope that that day was enough to really help them some. Yeah, right, or just make them hate you. Yeah, and take it out on the kid.

Yeah. Yeah, which they definitely would have. It's like how dare you show attention when you won't show it. It was something, man. Well, one of the kids we babysat there too, this kid, the one that wouldn't eat anything at home, he was actually a pushover this kid.

He wasn't tough. He was lovely. He was a nice kid. But one day he had a temper tantrum in our house. And he could have a temper tant tough. He was lovely. He was a nice kid, but one day he had a temper tantrum in our house and he could have a temper tantrum till he turned blue. He almost breathed. Till he turned

blue. And try that at home folks and see how much will power that takes. Well, he was having a temper tantrum in the kitchen and he held his breath and turned blue. We just left. No, we put him on the stairs and he won't

run the stairs. And there's no one around. It was like, oh, that was a lot of work for nothing. Anyways, he didn't have any type of people. People could do that. Oh, yes. Well, I didn't know that. It's amazing. shows you how much will there is there, you know, and you want that will directed and disciplined and all of that. Don't spend on passing out. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, not spent on counterproductive activities. Okay. Well, we went through everything. Okay. Do you... What do we want to do now? We can we can talk a bit about the United disciplinary front. I mean, Tammy and I agreed that we were going to discuss our disciplinary strategies and implement them and watch each other, you know,

because you need two people to do that because sometimes you're in a bad mood, you know. We didn't really disagree on that. So this is my kid, oh, just so I know, just like we could clip this or something. This is just how to work with your partner to discipline properly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and one of the advantages to that, and so we didn't let you kids, and this I turn this into one of the rules of my book, well, first book we didn't let you kids, and this I turned this into one of the rules of my book, well first book, don't let your kids do anything that makes you dislike them. And that was a rule in our household. It's like we're not going to dislike our kids. Period. We're going to not only love them, which kind of comes along for the ride at least to begin with, but also like them. And so we never let you guys do anything that made us displeased with you for any length of

time. And one of the great advantages of that was that we could take you to restaurants even when you were very little. And so you were much less of an impediment, so to speak, to our social lives than you would have been otherwise. We can only keep you in the restaurant for about 45 minutes to an hour. When you were little, you know, Charlotte, have you seen her in restaurants? Yeah, she's great. She's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Scarlett's very socially appropriate. Well, she doesn't have any sugar in her diet. That helps.

I think, yeah, not hyperactive at all. Yeah, no, she doesn't have a neediness to run around. Yeah, but she's, you've done a good job. But she's playful. Yeah, she's very playful. She's very alert and she's very socially appropriate. And that's such a gift to give your kids because then people used to come over to our table

all the time because they'd look at scams at us when we came in with little kids. It's like, oh my God, this is gonna be a terrible show. And then you'd sit there like civilized human beings for up to an hour and people would come over and they were smiling at you and looking at you in a pleasant way, really positive reinforcement for you guys. And you in a pleasant way, really positive reinforcement

for you guys. And you got to come with us to other people's houses often because you were well behaved. We got invited back. Yes, that's right. We got invited back. Yeah. Yeah. If you go over to someone who's placed with your kids and you don't get invited back, well,

it's probably either you or the kids. Well, it's definitely you. And it's definitely you. But we have time. It's the kids. It's also you. We have times in restaurants in Boston. Oh, you's definitely you. But we have the kids. It's also we have times in restaurants in Boston. Oh, you'll remember this one in Boston, where you would misbehave in a restaurant. I just take you outside. Often it was winter. And we just stand there. It was like, okay, kid, here's your options. We can stand

here in the cold, which I can probably tolerate more than you for as long as necessary, or we can go back into the restaurant and act like civilized human beings. What do you want? Restaurant, please. So do you remember the time in Toronto? I don't know if it was you or Julian, but I think it was Julian. We went into a donut shop to get a donut and he was misbehaving in some manner. So I just went outside with him.

No, no, I put him outside. There was twice. There was twice. Oh, there's twice. I put him outside. I was sitting right in the booth. I put him outside. It's like you can stand out there until you're civilized human being. And this woman just got she got so upset about that that she literally once he came back in, she literally went outside and put her butt against the wind. Oh, yeah, right. Oh, that's right. And then left. It was like, how dare you try to make your child, you know, act like a civilized human being so people like him.

Yeah, made a very upset, made a very upset and nice show. Uncomfortable. I remember when a horrible thank you. Thanks Dave. Thanks Dave. You remember that? Yeah, you can tell that story. I remember one horrible story. So I was on methachuxate in a proxane, which completely obliterated my appetite in the morning. I was nauseous in the morning. So dad used to kind of force feed me, which was very just as unpleasant as it sounds. Yeah, it was awful. We were at a stop going to the big apple. The big apple on the way to Toronto to Montreal. And it was lunch or breakfast.

Yeah, lunch. And we were sitting at a table and I was like, I'm not hungry. I'm not eating. You know, I wasn't very. I was probably nine or something. And dad was like, oh no, you're eating this. Right? And it was just, that's just it.

Mom and Julian left. Yeah, we went outside because it wasn't pleasant, you know, because you weren't hungry at all. We didn't fight about it exactly, but you were not motivated. I was upset. Yeah, of course you were. Yeah, but you had to eat because you were already losing weight

and they told us your kid has to eat or she's gonna. When it would have happened if we would have just given you some meat. Jerky, I used to ask for jerky for Christmas. Yeah. But anyway, the one we didn't know, yeah, obviously, how would we have known? I was feeding you.

I was like, obvious meat diet, okay, no, not obvious. And encouraging you to eat. Yeah. I wasn't force feeding you. I wasn't prying over your door. I feel like I was to talk, okay, yes. Well, yeah, encourage you. Jordan, force fed his chair.

Yeah, well, the rule was you had to eat your lunch because well, I was losing weight. Yeah, you were losing weight. And this woman came over and she sat behind. I remember this vividly. I don't remember. I remember. Yeah, you were there.

She was sitting behind me. You were feeding me from here. And she turned around and just like berated you. And I can remember that made me so angry because I was like, you have no idea what's going on here. Even I knew that. I was only nine. I was like, how dare you interrupt this?

Yeah, well you knew that you needed to eat, but it's not easy to eat when everything tastes like cardboard and you're not hungry. And it's not easy to eat at all. And you were too young to take that on to yourself. By that time you were giving yourself your own injection. So do you remember how that happened? I do. I remember I missed this whole Simpson episode. Here's Simpson's. Yeah, I can remember like having the needle and being like,

oh, I can't do it. The Simpson's playing down. So Mikaela had, you had to have a needle how often? Twice a week. Twice a week. And so we were administering it, but that was scary for her, because needles are scary for little kids. But it was also the alcohol made me nauseous. And because the method of treksate had made me nauseous

in the morning and it was yellow when I was swallowing it. And the injection was yellow. I had nausea associated with that color yellow. So when I gave myself the injection, it made me nauseous because I had already associated nausea with yellow. It was just. Yeah. So I used behavioral techniques with Michaela to help her learn to inject herself because

we thought it would be better if she had control over that. And so she was motivated by money, like, and she still is. And so I, and she knew what money was by that point, quite salaries. Yeah. Yeah. She knew what it could be exchanged for. And so I told her that if she could do the injection, I would give her $50. And that was quite a lot of money at that point. And so she sat for 40 minutes, I would say,

on the stairs with that needle poised to inject and fighting with herself and then kitchen table. And then did it. And then I, I think the next day it was, I'll give you like $40, but you have to do it in 15 minutes. And then we whittled it all the way down to five minutes or five dollars.

Five, it was five dollars. I got five dollars every time I gave myself an injection. Yeah, for a long time. Like 17 or something. You know, we wanted to sort of balance the scales a little bit. And but you got so you were extremely good at it. It was way better. It became, you know, part of the daily routine. It wasn't a big deal. You weren't afraid of it anymore. And it was under your control It became, you know, part of the daily routine. It wasn't a big deal.

You weren't afraid of it anymore. And it was under your control, which really needed to be well. Yeah, you should be. It was a lot better though. It was a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. As good as that can be.

Yeah, it was as good as it can be. And sometimes that's enough to make all the difference. Well, is there any, like I have more questions, but we've been going for an hour and a half, I think, is time to wrap up. Yeah, that's pretty good. We can always do another one later. Okay. Well, that was fun.

Yeah, we can see how people react. And if they have questions, then at some point we can ask answer specific questions about relationship difficulties along the given traits. Yeah, that's a good idea. That sounds good. Well, thank you guys. That was fun. Yeah, thanks. Make it work fun. you