The One You Feed - Christian Jarrett on The Science of Personality

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Christian Jarrett is the author, editor or contributor to ten books, spanning psychology, neuroscience, self-help and productivity.  He is recognized as a chartered psychologist and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. and is the Deputy Editor of Psyche, a global digital magazine that illuminates the human condition through psychology, philosophical understanding and the arts. Eric and Christian discuss his latest is Be Who You Want: Unlocking The Science of Personality Change. But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Christian Jarrett and I Discuss The Science of Personality and … His book,  Be Who You Want: Unlocking The Science of Personality Change How some traits are genetic but don’t entirely influence our personality Deliberate actions can short circuit our innate tendencies How cognitive and physical exercise builds confidence and encourages open mindedness The link between mood and personality Defining mood as the temporary state of how you feel How extroversion and introversion personalities are affected by habit The 5 main traits of personality:  openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism The maturity principle and how personality traits change as we age How those who are more open and resilient are less prone to dementia Social investment theory refers to how the roles we take on in life shape our personality Will power and the ego depletion theory The importance of being realistic and honest with ourselves when wanting to change Christian Jarrett links: Christian’s website Psyche Digital Magazine Twitter Facebook By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Christian Jarrett, check out these other episodes: Kevin Mitchell on the Genetics of Personality Neuropsychology and the Thinking Mind with Chris NiebauerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People who score higher in openness are less vulnerable to dementia, for example, later in life. The more varied your routines and the more new ideas you expose yourself to, you know, if you keep yourself mentally on your toes. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,

and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Christian Jarrett, the author, editor, and contributor to 10 books spanning psychology, neuroscience, self-help, and productivity. He's recognized as a chartered psychologist and associate of the British Psychological Society and deputy editor of Psyche, a global digital magazine that illuminates the human condition through psychology, philosophical understanding, and the arts. Christian's latest book is Be Who You Want, Unlocking the Science of Personality

Change. Hi, Christian. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Good to meet you. I'm excited to have you here. We're going to be discussing your book, Be Who You Want, Unlocking the Science of Personality Change. But before we get into that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their

grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, actually, it seemed to chime, you know, really nicely with the whole topic of personality development, really, because, you know, the idea that we do have the potential to express different aspects of ourselves. And depending on the situations we put ourselves in and the experiences we have in life, you know, those different sides to our characters can come out. So just straight away, it made me think of that and i suppose not only are we shaped by our life experiences but that line about is the one you feed because uh the research i looked into is this idea that we don't have to be passive about these things you know we

can take some conscious control and be more deliberate about the situations we put ourselves in and the company we keep and that kind of thing so it made me think of that the idea of which sides to your character you're going to feed just from a like a personal level like one thing that immediately i suppose popped into my head in terms of my own personality if you like is um i remember like earlier on in the age of twitter i might get bogged down for quite a long time in the Twitter spats and arguments online. It was very tempting, you know, to engage in those kind of arguments

and always try and get the last word and so on. I always ended up feeling worse at the end of those episodes and I think it brought out, you know, definitely the poorer side of my character. So, you know, I just poorer side of my character. So, you know, I just don't do that anymore. I just do not engage in any of that kind of online arguments and spats. So again, that parable made me think of that to do with which side of your character you're going to feed and encourage on a deliberate level. Yeah. Yep. You start the book right away with a pretty big question, which I think anybody who is in this space of psychology,

of personal development, of spirituality, you know, there is this core question of, can we really change? You know, can we ever truly change? And to what extent can we change? And you really devote kind of the rest of the book to talking about that. But in a short answer, what's your response now after having asked that question, written that book, you know, all the work that you do in editing a magazine about psychology, what's your short answer to can people truly change? This short answer is an overwhelming yes. It's the short answer. Yeah, it's a long running debate in psychology and obviously everyone

really has their intuition about this don't they whether they think people can truly change deep down yeah but yeah it raises the question about like what who are we really you know like how do you measure yeah who someone is in the first place and yeah and how much that can ever change and but whether it was through some of the life stories I looked into or the more formal research studies, the overwhelming answer that I came across is that significant change is possible. In fact, it is probably the norm for quite a lot of change to occur. You know, how deliberate that change is or not is obviously another question and whether or not it's changed for the better or not is another issue as well. characteristics. And we'll go into those in a minute. But that's one way of slicing who we are in a loose way. Are there other psychological approaches for slicing who we

are beyond personality that have much prominence? I really like the approach of the psychologist Dan McAdams. I don't know if you came across him, but my book is mostly focused on the so-called kind of big five personality traits which you you know you're alluding to there uh dan mcadams has this idea that that's kind of like the foundation of who we are but then layered on top of that he has the stories that we tell about ourselves about our lives the stories we tell of who we are and what's happened to us and then another level he has is our values and goals, you know, like what matters to us, what we think is important in life. I suppose our morality

would come into that as well. So that's kind of three levels. Yeah. I think also, you know, some people think our relationships are a key part of who we are as well, you know, who matters to us, our identity, you know, the different roles that we take on in life. So there are all these things bubbling around and they all do kind of interact with different levels that will interact as well. As I was reading your book and thinking about all this, a thought came to mind. There's a song by a band I love. The band is called Dawes. I don't know if you know them. They're American sort of, I guess, rock band. But the songwriter is incredible. And he wrote a song called A Little Bit of Everything. And it's just a beautiful song. But as I was

reading your book, I was thinking so much like of what we are and how we act and how we behave and what happens to us and how we respond. It really, it's a little bit of everything. You know, it's the situation. It's our personality. It's our values. It's our mood. It's our underlying biochemical state. It's how well did we sleep last night? It's like, it's a little bit of everything. And we want to reduce it. We want to go, it's this, so we can pin it down and make it simple. But it certainly does not seem in any way, shape or form to be simple. That's right. I think different people have a different view on what is kind of like the ultimate aspect of who you are, you know, once you drill right down, you know, so if your personality does change, for example, you know, are you therefore a totally different person? Well, no, you're not. Are you completely? There are aspects of you that will remain the same. You're still married to the same person and you're still the parent to the same person, you still might believe in the same values even though your traits have changed and so on. So yeah, it is a little bit of everything, I agree. The Big Five Theory of Personality provides a very useful kind of framework

for thinking about a lot of these things. Those five key traits capture a lot of the differences in our behaviour and the way we think and the way we relate to other people so it's a kind of a useful heuristic i think that captures quite a lot of the variation in who we are and it does like i said it interacts with those other levels like our values and our life story you know the stories we tell about ourselves in both directions you know there's research suggesting you know when our values change and we change our priorities in life that can feed back and actually change our trait our personality

traits for example yeah we interviewed not too long ago uh kevin mitchell who you may be familiar with he wrote a book called innate it's about you know some of the underlying biological wiring that says our personalities are somewhat innate. We come with them. But he also doesn't argue for that's all of it. You say in the book that the current estimation is somewhere between 30 and 50% of the variation in personality between people stems from the genes they inherited from their parents. So we're then saying the opposite of that is 50 to 70% of it is beyond genetic. Is that a safe way of interpreting that? Yeah, it is.

So there's definitely an innate aspect to it. One thing I tried to do in the book is be realistic. So I'm not arguing that you can totally 100% change your personality because I think, yeah, there are certain sort of hardwired dispositions that you have I think one kind of maybe metaphor I've found useful before is something like your body shape and physical exercise so it wouldn't matter you know how many uh how many hours I spent lifting weights at the gym I'm never going to be a huge giant guy depending on how much exercise I do and the type of exercise and what I eat there's obviously going to be quite a wide range in how my physical state's going to end up and I think it's similar with personalities if your genetic inheritance from your parents means you know you have leanings

towards being an introvert you're probably never going to you know transform 100% to the other end of the scale but depending on the choices you make in life and the routines you build in and the company you keep and the decisions you make, your relationships that you have and so on, you're definitely going to be able to shift yourself along the spectrum for sure, you know, quite considerably. Yeah. In that book, Kevin Mitchell had an analogy that I like and he says, you know, we're not blank slates, but a slate doesn't have to be blank for you to write on it, you know? And I thought that was a nice way of thinking about it.

Like, you know, yeah, we come with some things written. You know, when I think about how much people can change, I can't help but think about my own life. And I was, you know, at 24, I was a heroin addict. I was homeless. You know, I weighed 100 pounds. I would have robbed you at gunpoint to get drugs. would have robbed you at gunpoint to get drugs. Fast forward, you know, last summer, and my mom fell again. And I was going to the grocery store twice a week and picking up her opioid prescriptions

and bringing them to her and not even thinking about it. I mean, there's a lot of change in there. And there are some underlying, as we said, some personality traits of mine that, you know, I think have held a little steady during that time also. So I think this is such an interesting question. One of the points that you make is that even modest genetic influences on personality can snowball by affecting the kind of experiences you have. So we know that we come with some amount of innateness, our experiences tend to shape a lot of the rest of it. But that innateness can often cause us to keep selecting the same type of experiences over and over, which then

re-amplify those personality traits, I think is what you're saying there, right? Yeah, for example, so someone who scores highly in neuroticism, which means they have emotional, you know, instability, prone to worry and stress and what have you high scorers in neuroticism are more likely you know to get into arguments more likely to have difficult relationships that kind of thing and you can see how that is then going to escalate isn't it's going to amplify it just as you said and so similar with another one of the traits agreeability so if you're low agreeability uh you know you find it hard to trust other people you see the worst in them you're not very empathic again you're probably going to end up with more conflict in your life and so on and that's just going to feed those tendencies so I

think a lot about making deliberate positive personality changes is about short-circuiting some of these feedback loops, if you can, deliberately. Sometimes as well, finding more constructive outlets for some of your innate dispositions as well. It makes me think of some research you quoted in the book. The book is chock full of lots of great research, but one of the findings, and we've talked about this on the show in the past, but I think it's so interesting, is you talk about loneliness. And you say that people who are lonely have a tendency to show reduced extroversion and agreeableness, you know, at the end of a study. So they start a study, they identify as lonely, and their traits for extroversion and agreeableness are lower at the end. And the other is that loneliness tends to make us highly

sensitive to social slights and rejection, which we can see how that amplifies itself. So I'm lonely, I'm prone to interpret anything anyone does as a slight, even if it's not, which then drives me further into my shell, which makes me more sensitive to social slights. And I see this in all aspects of life, There's sort of the upward and the downward spiral. So I'm describing some of the downward spirals that can happen with loneliness. Can you think of, you know, based on some of the things you have in the book, an example of an upward spiral that we might engage in across any of the personality traits? Mood interacts with the expression of our personality traits very

strongly. So whatever your baseline personality tends to be, there's research suggesting that when we're feeling happier and when we're with people who we trust and who make us feel authentic and that kind of thing, when we're in that kind of situation, then like I say, whatever our baseline personality traits, we tend to act more extroverted our agreeableness goes up a lot of these kind of more positive personality traits so there's this technique or exercise a team of British researchers came up with that they called the situation selection strategy which is really just about being more mindful like they had one group of volunteers who before the weekend they had them rehearse

saying to themselves this weekend when I'm choosing what activities to do I'm going to think about what activities make me feel good you know what company makes me feel good and that kind of thing and then they assessed them after the weekend compared to the control group and it worked by just being more conscious you know of the decisions they made over what to do that weekend, rather than just following their usual routines or just being passive about it. You know, it lifted their mood. They spent more time feeling good. And this manifested in the expression of their personality traits,

feeling more extroverted, more agreeable, and so on. Quite a lot of the exercises in my book as well are about encouraging positive trait change or about boosting confidence as well. So there's another one of the traits we haven't mentioned, which is openness to experience, a willingness to try out new things, see things in a new way, you know, be more open to other arguments and perspectives, whether in politics or whatever it might be. And there's a whole load of research suggesting that, for example doing more crossword puzzles and things like that and sudoku and brain training exercises

leads to increases in openness probably because it's confidence building so you say about that kind of upward spiral if you feel more confident in yourself you're more willing to try out new things and be more open-minded similarly physical exercise getting physically fitter seems to increase people's trait openness to experience again psychologists think that's because of the confidence issue again if you're more confident in yourself mentally and your mental abilities and more confident physically it encourages you to be more open-minded more adventurous and i guess almost like the opposite of what you're saying with the loneliness in a less defensive kind of mindset I suppose I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What you were saying there makes intuitive sense to me about our mood having impact on our personality. Because every time I've taken a personality test, I end up feeling annoyed by it. And the reason I feel annoyed by it is some of them are like, would you rather go to a party or read a book? And I'm like, well, that really depends.

Sometimes I'm in the mood to go to a party. And sometimes I'm in the mood to read a book. mood to go to a party. And sometimes I'm in the mood to read a book. Like so much of it to me seemed to be like, well, that really depends on mood, that mood is a big indicator and a big mover there. How much research is there that we know about the impacts that personality have on mood and mood has on personality? And psychologically speaking, how is mood defined what is it so mood is meant to be kind of your temporary state in terms of how you feel in the moment so personality is meant to play out over the longer term you know yeah if I was to play the role of a perspective of a personality researcher

now they would say to you well that question about would you rather read a book or go to a party if they asked you that question once a week for a year you know like tallied up your answers yeah yeah if you're an introvert you would say read a book more often whereas a an out-and-out extrovert yeah maybe a couple of weeks they would say they want to read a book but measured over that kind of time span they would more often say they want to go to a party so it's partly an issue of time frames and yeah mood is just your kind of state in the moment whether it's more positive or more negative valenced so it would be the technical term is it positively valenced or negatively there have been these cool studies where they've had volunteers carry around these kind of smartphones, you know, where they take these little questionnaires as they go about their daily lives.

And they kind of beep several times a day as they go about their lives. And they ask them, you know, what are you doing? Who are you with? What's your mood like right now? And then they get them to fill out a little mini personality test. And then they get them to fill out a little mini personality test. And exactly as you're saying, the same individual scores their own personality differently depending on the mood they're in. So the kind of thing that you find is actually regardless of whether someone's an introvert or an extrovert, the kind of thing you find is that when people are in a social situation and enjoying it,

then they tend to rate their personality more positively. You know, they will rate their agreeableness higher, emotional stability higher, their extroversion higher. That's why there's quite a few times in the book where I really encourage people, I suppose, whatever their leanings, whether they're an introvert or an extrovert, I think there's a lot to be said for having, you know, at least some healthy social connection in your life. The research does seem to suggest whatever your kind of leanings on the introversion, extroversion scale,

pretty much everybody does get a healthy kick out of happy social times, you know, with friends. Yeah. You say in the book that perhaps more than any of the other personality traits, extroversion and introversion are shaped by habit. So we can become more or less introverted based on, I know, you don't gel with, you don't click with, is going to leave you grumpy. You know, you're going to be feeling grumpy and you're going to want to withdraw. Yeah. It's not like any old socializing will do, but if you can try and find your kind of people and doing the kind of activity that you like, then you'll probably find, yeah, you start to come out of your shell and you start to act more extroverted. Real quick, let's just run through what the five main personality traits are so that as we continue to talk about them, listeners have that reference.

You want to run through them real quick? Yeah, so there's openness to experience, which we touched on before. Conscientiousness, which is how self-disciplined you are and orderly and ambitious there's extroversion which we've been mentioning agreeableness which is how warm and friendly you are and how trusting of other people and then there's neuroticism which is basically if you're high in neuroticism then you're low in emotional stability some people call it resilience as well you know so the opposite of high neuroticism would be emotional resilience so those are the big five some people say there's the dark triad as well which i'm sure you've heard of the narcissism

psychopathy and machiavellianism as well so there's those three i do work with uh chris who's our editor and producer so i am familiar with the dark triad. Just kidding, everybody. Chris is lovely. So okay, so we've nailed down the five main traits. One of the things that I found really interesting in the book was talking about how, broadly speaking, it's not going to be for everybody, but broadly speaking, the way aging changes some of these personality traits in fairly predictable ways. Can you share a little bit about that? So they call this the maturity principle. And it's quite a positive story on the whole.

So the older we get, this is what I meant about you asked me earlier about do people change. We can expect to change as we get older. And generally speaking, we become less change yeah as we get older and generally speaking we become less neurotic as we get older we get more chilled out as we get older which is on average which is quite comforting i think you know less prone to worry and and less prone to negative emotions and so on the order we get on average conscientiousness is a bit different. So that one tends to increase up to kind of around midlife and then it decreases into an older age. One kind of theory for that is they call it the La Dolce Vita effect late in life. Later in life, people have fewer responsibilities if they're

retired and their kids are growing up and so on so they become less conscientious because they have fewer things to worry about is the idea openness to experience is another one that it mostly goes up through life but then again it tends to decline later in life as people get more set in their ways and that kind of thing you know so you see older people will tend to have a more conservative outlook preferring things to be done the traditional way. And on average, of course, this isn't true for everyone, but, you know, they'll prefer their usual routines and so on. Agreeableness is another nice one that tends to increase through life. I think we see that, again, as a bit of a stereotype. Older people tend to be warmer and more chatty and accepting.

Extroversion is one that, again, some of the studies are contradictory. Some say extroversion kind of goes up through life. Again, it's another one of these sort of positive maturity principle things in terms of becoming more sociable, I suppose, and chatty. Some studies find dips, like in midlife, when people become parents and things like that for practical reasons. If you're stuck at home, you know, with childcare and that kind of thing and you have juggling lots of responsibilities in life, there's less scope for socializing and adventure and that kind of thing. These are some of the kind of average tendencies you see across the lifespan. Yeah, that openness to experience decreasing as people age is something

I really see in people as they get older. And it's one of my key anti aging strategies for myself, because I notice it, I feel it in myself, like wanting to do less. And I just keep kind of pushing against it. Because I'm like, that sort of ossification strikes me as something I see in older people a lot. And it's one that I want to try and at least counter in a sane way. Yeah, well, I think that's a great idea. I mean, there are some studies showing interesting links between openness to experience as a personality trait and health outcomes later in life. People who score higher in openness are less vulnerable to dementia, for example, later in life, the more varied your routines and the more new ideas you expose yourself to you know if you keep yourself mentally on your

toes i guess it all helps build up uh cognitive reserve you know they call it cognitive reserve this kind of spare capacity that helps build your resilience to dementia later in life so yes it's a great policy to have my partner's mom has late stage al Alzheimer's. My dad has late-stage Alzheimer's. And I can look at him. I didn't know Ginny's mom much before she was diagnosed, but I certainly know my dad. And I can sort of see what you're saying. And I'm not saying this is what caused his Alzheimer's. I'm not making that leap.

But he certainly, his life was very, let's just say, small. You know, he did sort of the same exact things over and over and over again, the same activities, you know, it was just said the longest ever personality study published in 2016 involved a comparison of participants' personalities at age 14 and then again at age 77. And it failed to find much correlation between the two times. That's kind of stunning. Yeah. Yeah. One way of thinking about it, I think, is to imagine having a class reunion, you know, with your classmates when you were at school, when you were a teenager. Imagine having a reunion in your 70s when they followed up with these participants. Yeah. And yeah, how much... So your 60 year reunion. Yeah. How much do you think

your friends from your class when you were a teenager, would you think you would still see aspects of their personality that you remember from when you were at school, or would they have changed completely? On the basis of this study anyway, they had access to the personality ratings of these kids, which I think were done by their teachers when they were at school. And then they had these same individuals complete personality tests in their 70s, and they couldn't find a correlation between the two.

There is the caveat that the measures had changed i think back when they had these ratings from when these people were teenagers you know the personality quiz that was used then was different from the one later on and that kind of thing so there are some caveats but it gives you pause for thought doesn't it as well for anyone who's in a long-term marriage that kind of thing like you know is the person that you marry going to be the same person in several decades time are you going to be married to the same person or someone who's very very different and yeah i mean a lot of the research i uncovered suggests considerable changes take place and maybe we should expect that I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus,

does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason

bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talk to me about what social investment theory is. So this is the idea, another factor in life that shapes personality traits is the roles that we take on. So find that, for example, when people win a promotion at work, for example, you look at their personality over the coming months or years, you'll see an uptick in conscientiousness, for example, after someone has won a job promotion. Or in young people, when they take on their first job, again, you see a kind of uptick in conscientiousness. Conversely, when people lose their job, as it happens, you see, you know, you see the opposite. You see conscientiousness go down. But social investment theory is really all about this idea that the roles we take on in life and the demands that are placed on us, depending on what our roles are, to some extent shape personalities.

a lot of the time that that's most concrete is in terms of our paid employment and that kind of thing but obviously it applies to other roles that we take on in life as well a lot of the research has been done on when people take a certain career path there have been studies like for example looking at when people join the military or something like that more extreme examples and again you get some of the personality trait changes that you might expect. So resilience will go up when people, you know, join the military and conscientiousness will grow up and that kind of thing. And I would expect to see it more prominently in work simply because of how much time we spend there, right? It's such a significant portion of our lives. You know, besides sleep, it might be the single biggest activity that we spend time with. So I would expect to see it more prominently there. I'm jumping around a little bit here, but there was so many fascinating things in the book. And I wanted to talk about the idea of ego depletion, because ego depletion, the idea

is that the more decisions that I have to make, or the more I have to think or the more I have to exercise my willpower, the harder that gets over time that I basically wear that muscle out. Is that a safe way of describing what ego depletion theory was? Yeah, this is I think Roy Baumeister. Yeah, he likens willpower to a muscle. Yeah, the more we use it, he suggests we actually use up kind of glucose, like energy in our body, exerting willpower. And yeah, he says the more we use it he suggests we actually use up kind of glucose like energy in our body exerting willpower and yeah he says the more you use it in one situation the less you have left over for another in sometimes in very different contexts if your willpower is drained because you've been concentrating on a boring spreadsheet at work all day he would argue

that's going to leave you with lower reserves of willpower to resist getting a beer out of the fridge when you get home or something like that is what he would say. And so that theory has been a pretty popular theory. It makes sense on its surface. It even seems to correlate a little bit to some of my experience, which basically says, when you're more tired, it's harder to resist temptation. But then all of a sudden there's some really contrary findings. Share those with us. Yeah, you're right. It's contested at the moment.

I don't know who's coming out on top. But for example, there are some findings. I know there was one out of India where people in India have a different attitude to willpower. Apparently, you know, large sections of the population do where they have this belief kind of like the harder you work and the more effort you put in it almost like charges you up like a dynamo on a bike kind of an old-fashioned bike analogy so they've done some cross-cultural studies and they just didn't find the ego depletion in the volunteers from india who have these beliefs if anything their willpower kind of became enhanced

the more effortful work that they did or the more they resisted temptation in one situation and so on. So yeah, it threw a bit of a spanner in the ego-polition theory findings like that one that some of what it boils down to is our own beliefs about willpower. If you believe it's a limited resource that you have like fuel then actually that is the way it will work for you on the other hand if you have a more positive attitude to these things and you think you've got a kind of more limitless supply or even

you see it more like i suppose um something you can build up through practice enhance it i suppose through use if that's use. If that's what you believe, that's more likely to be how it will manifest in you. So those are some of the findings that have come out recently that have somewhat complicated the picture. Yeah. A few thoughts on that. I mean, first, anytime I can get somebody to use the word spanner in my podcast, I am happy because you say wrench here, but I love that word. It's a great word. Secondly, it makes me think a little bit about some of the studies on stress that say, if you believe stress is harmful for you, it becomes more harmful for you if you don't. And then the last thing is,

it makes me think about one of the criticisms with a lot of the psychology movement is that it's done on what we would call, you know, weird people, Western educated. I don't remember all the acronyms, but you know, there's so much of it's done on say, like white college students as an example. And it's so interesting to see you go to a different cultural context and you find something very different, which does really speak to the extent to which our beliefs, what we actually believe and what our culture tells us to believe drives a fair amount of what we experience. I'm often shocked by how profound that sometimes can be.

Yeah, I think psychology has got a lot of catching up to do in this respect. You know, I've been writing up, reporting new psychology findings for I think over 20 years now, and it's amazing how many involve white undergrads especially psychology undergrads yeah in US or British universities or European universities so the only thing I would say about on this topic of willpower and what have you is there are some pretty cool studies i found it useful myself anyway you know that suggests people who are more successful at resisting temptation these are high scorers and conscientiousness and they do a better job at resisting temptation and achieve more of their

goals actually the willpower question is almost like a red herring because it's not that they are better at exerting willpower they seem to be really canny at kind of avoiding temptation in the first place. Yeah. Their daily routines and that kind of thing, they seem to steer themselves away from the harmful obstacles to what they want to achieve. It's not so much that they've got this kind of ironclad willpower. That's something I try and think of for myself, yeah, in terms of being a bit more strategic about dodging temptations in the first place as a recovering alcoholic I am very familiar with that idea right the less of it you're around the better chance you have that's not to say you can't get sober

being around it the second time I got sober I was around a lot of drinking but as they say an old colloquialism from a a was if you hang around a barbershop long enough, sooner or later, you're probably going to get a haircut. You know, same basic idea. I'd like to hit a couple of things from recent psyche articles. Although I want to say just a couple quick things about your book for people. You've got 10 rules for personal reinvention that I think are really great. I wish we had more time to get to them. But a lot of them really come down to, like you said, believing that you can make a change and also being realistic about how much you can change. I mean, I've summarized 10 rules into two, but those were sort of the two big things that stood out to me. Would you concur? Yeah, I think so. There are some findings that wishing to change your personality without being prepared to do anything about it is almost harmful. It almost kind of backfires. Yeah. Just desiring to change, but then not having a plan for how you're going to achieve that change kind of backfires probably because of the frustration that you're going to then experience because you don't have a plan. So when it comes to being realistic, I think, yeah, people do need to be honest with themselves about how much are

they willing to disrupt the way they currently do things. That's such a great point, right? Which is that we oftentimes will keep thinking, well, I'd really wish I could be or do X, you know, but without really thinking about what it would take to be or do X, you know, but without really thinking about what it would take to be or do X. And so we feel bad about ourselves because we're not doing it. But if we were to actually really look at what it would take and then go, am I willing to do that? And we might go, no, I'm not. In which case, then we can sort of set it aside. The example I always use is when I started this podcast, I at the same time was like, I really want to be in a band again. I really want to be in a band again. And I was feeling bad because I wasn't making that happen. When I finally looked at my life and the structure and the time I went,

there's no way that both these things are going to occur. And so I'm going to pick this one. And then I was just able to let that one go. And boy, did it reduce a certain amount of psychic stress on me of, you know, like like you said thinking i should make a change but not being in a position to do it or having a plan to do it yeah being realistic about how much change is going to be possible bearing in mind how far you're willing to go you know yeah to make changes in your life uh with you know changing your routine that could be changed getting a new job it could be changing your relationships moving house house, you know, living in a different place. The more things you keep the same around you, the more likely you also are going to stay the same after all. Yeah. Yeah. In your rules for change,

that's a big one, right? You talk about environment. You also talk about you're more likely to succeed with the help of others, which is obviously a key piece. All right. So I want to pivot because I know you've got a hard stop, but there was a recent article in your magazine, Psyche. You didn't write it, but I wanted to ask you about it because it's something that's been spinning around in my mind and I hadn't seen anybody articulate it until recently, which was really an article that talked about trauma. And are we starting to overuse that word? Are we starting to overdiagnose it? And the woman is her name. I don't know how to pronounce it. Ahona Guha. But she really talks about starting to notice the difference between trauma and distress. And I was just kind of curious. I know you see a lot of articles. You see a lot of research. You know, you kind of have a bird's eye view of all this. You know, you kind of have a bird's eye view of all this. What's your thought on where we are with the trauma discussion? Because the feeling I've been starting to feel in my gut a little is sort of what she's saying, like, it's great that we've recognized the role of trauma, but are apply it all over the place to any kind of bad experience or difficult experience you know you rob it of its true meaning in psychiatric terms you know post-traumatic stress is an extremely serious condition and it comes with a swathe of

very very difficult symptoms like flashbacks and that kind of thing and that kind of reliving the traumatic occasion can be triggered even in context where you're actually safe you know which is a terrible experience to you know keep going through i think yeah and the point i think she's making is it's just getting bandied around so much there has been a realization that uh you don't have to have been in a life-threatening situation to experience trauma or a traumatic reaction because traditionally i think it was thought it has to be you know your life had to be threatened so there has been a kind of a broadening but she's worried about it becoming open-ended where it's just becoming uh used for any old you know you have an argument with your boss and, you know,

the idea, oh, I'm traumatized because I had an argument with my boss or some people called me some names on the train to work and, you know, I'm so traumatized. So she's worried about it losing its specificity if we use it too loosely. And I think that has been going on to some extent. The point that she made that I really liked was she says it's possible to acknowledge, note and soothe the distress without needing to legitimize it by assigning it the trauma. then. The point that she made that I really liked was she says it's possible to acknowledge, note and soothe the distress without needing to legitimize it by assigning it the trauma label. And that if we do too much of this assigning of trauma to things that maybe aren't quote unquote trauma, and I know it's there's no clear line that we actually decrease our psychological flexibility and resiliency. And I thought that was another sort of interesting point with it. You know, it seems like we had, you know, for a long time,

we were all about capital T trauma, right? Like the, you know, rape or war or, and then we started talking about lowercase T trauma, like, you know, childhood emotional neglect, things like that. It almost seems like we're trailing into like, you know, super miniature T, you know, for lack of a better way to say it. And I don't know what the answer is. Again, it's just something I've been feeling as I do reading and talking to people. And her article just sort of helped crystallize some things for me. Yeah, well, because I think language matters, doesn't it? That, you know, the terms we use matter. And for people who have been through a genuine trauma, I don't think it helps them

for the term to be thrown about in a loose fashion. That's not to say there aren't difficult experiences, as you say, at the kind of sub trauma level, of course there are, you know, you want to help those people too. Yeah. By immediately going for the T word for any difficult experience, I think no one benefits from that. Yep. And back to the point we made earlier about what you believe about something, whether you believe willpower is a depletable resource, or whether you believe it ramps up, what we believe about what happens to us and the stories we tell, and that's a whole nother part of your book we didn't really get a chance to get into,

is so important. And so in that way, language matters. And that's one of the reasons I love the work you do. Your book is wonderful. It's out in paperback. I highly recommend it. And your online magazine, is that what you would call it? An online magazine? Yeah, yeah, that's right. Is that a good word for it? Yeah. Psyche is so good too. You're an editor there and a writer, and there's so many great articles that always cause me to think. And so I know we're out of time. I admire your work, Christian. I'm so happy we got a chance to talk with you oh thank you very much Eric I really appreciate it and thank you for your kind words about the book and psyche magazine yeah we publish at psyche magazine every week we

publish a new guide some of them are clinical guides that help people address mental health problems or difficulties and we have kind of life skills guides about you know the endeavor of lifelong learning. And yeah, I hope some of your listeners will check out Psyche magazine. And thanks, Eric. Thanks so much. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support.

Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.