The Art of Manliness - #332： What Does It Mean to Be Authentic？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast where we live in

00:00:18.760 a world that puts a premium on being authentic or showing your true self but what exactly is

00:00:23.840 your authentic and true self for example let's say you're naturally a curmudgeon that's your

00:00:28.760 natural tendency to be but you've made a concerted effort to be more kind of generous which one is

00:00:33.440 your true self your natural curmudgeony side or your kind of generous side which one is the real

00:00:38.220 you well my guest has grappled with those questions for most of his career as a psychologist with a

00:00:42.100 focus on personality research his name is brian little and he's the author of me myself and us

00:00:46.800 the science of personality and the art of well-being as well as his recently published book who are you

00:00:50.960 really today on the show brian i have a fascinating discussion on the world of personality science

00:00:55.140 that will leave you wondering who you really are we begin our conversation discussing the

00:00:58.580 various factors that influence our personalities including genetics social environments and self

00:01:02.640 direction and then brian digs into the debate on whether our personalities are set into stone

00:01:06.720 or if we can change them even as we get into old age we then discuss whether personality tests like

00:01:11.400 the myers-briggs assessment actually tell you anything about your personality and if there are

00:01:14.720 better personality assessments out there we end our conversation discussing how simply changing

00:01:18.700 environments can change our personalities how we can willfully change them ourselves and what

00:01:22.560 the real you actually is stay tuned for an enlightening existential conversation that

00:01:27.400 also provides actionable insights on how you can live a more flourishing life after the show's over

00:01:31.560 check out the show notes at awim.is personality brian little welcome to the show thank you delighted to

00:01:39.940 be here so you wrote a book that i really enjoyed it because it's a topic that i think fascinates a lot

00:01:44.920 of people it's personality you're a psychologist who specialized in the science of personality i'm curious what got

00:01:50.800 how you started researching personality well as an undergraduate i was toggling back and forth between

00:01:57.240 the the physical sciences and the biological sciences and the humanities and i uh i loved all of them and

00:02:05.600 when i found psychology i found that um i was able to invest in both the the the science fields and the

00:02:14.560 humanities and within psychology the field of personality was was particularly uh convivial to

00:02:21.520 me because in the morning i could read about neurons in the afternoon about uh narratives and the full

00:02:28.820 canvas that that field offered up was uh really quite beguiling to me and so let's let's talk about

00:02:37.140 what personality is because i know like i'm fascinated with i know people other people are fascinated with it

00:02:43.220 because of like personality tests and you know this idea that we can figure out like what you know what

00:02:48.260 is us and you know what that means and we can determine our careers based on our personality

00:02:52.340 but from a cycle from a scientific perspective what exactly is personality it's best described as the

00:03:01.020 distinctive ways in which our behavior and preferences and motives distinguish ourselves from

00:03:08.740 other individuals it's nicely captured in a phrase of one of the founders of the field henry murray

00:03:15.700 and a colleague of his coined which was said each of us is in certain respects like all other people

00:03:22.780 like some other people and like no other person and the personality psychologist is interested in

00:03:29.900 the way we're like all other people and that they trace some of the roots of personality back to our

00:03:35.600 evolutionary background and so on we're interested in how we're like some other people in terms of the

00:03:41.620 various tests that look at what we call individual differences and the the traits of personality and

00:03:47.800 so on and like no other person which happens to be the area that i'm most interested in which

00:03:53.040 which looks at the singular way in which we approach our world and in which we construct a life for

00:04:00.080 ourselves and so all of those touch on issues that you can hear discussed in the bar you can hear

00:04:07.020 discussed at home around the table and uh it's enduringly fascinating as a field yeah and it's been

00:04:14.740 the the area of personality has been i mean the research goes back like all the way to the ancient greeks

00:04:20.320 you know they thought personality came from your humors yes so mixture of your bile so during that time of

00:04:26.820 just the study of personality what have been some of the theories as to why people have the personality

00:04:33.620 they do what are the different theories out there yeah the um the modern study the modern academic

00:04:40.020 study of personality really dates back to uh the early decades of the 20th century and um though as you

00:04:50.440 say the the ancient greeks weighed in with speculations about human personality but within the academic

00:04:57.800 field and the more scientific analysis of personality there were two major perspectives or slants on the

00:05:07.880 field one was what i call the biogenic which stressed that we are the products of biological

00:05:15.340 neurochemical and other influences that shape our behavior and make us who we are and the other was the

00:05:23.440 more um cultural or social constructivist views which said that we are and become what we have been taught

00:05:31.560 by the cultural codes we um we are socialized into and and so on and now the old nurture nature debate

00:05:41.360 is is is over i mean we now realize that that they transact that the biological or again i like to use the term

00:05:50.380 biogenic meaning rooted in biological factors is influenced um very much by our environments even our

00:05:59.560 intributeran environment and and vice versa that that our um our nurture is shaped in part by the kind of

00:06:10.760 biological creature we are so they interact or even transact in ways that raise a whole new set of

00:06:18.360 issues for studying personality so it's hard to say which one has the most because i i've heard the

00:06:23.440 thrown out the number out like oh 60 of your personality is genetic and 40 is environmental is is that a

00:06:31.040 hard fast thing or is it is it more mushy i wouldn't call it mushy and that the kind of statistical analysis

00:06:39.900 and and genetic analysis is done is is um pretty rigorous i think it's a bit more complex than that

00:06:48.500 and i would probably put it more at 50 50 it depends on what kind of traits you're you're looking at but

00:06:56.040 somewhere between 40 and 60 percent but why they are more complex than that why the relations are more

00:07:05.360 complex is precisely because there are shifts that can occur when the genetic propensity interacts with

00:07:16.080 certain situations or contextual features as i say even in the in intrauterine existence if you have a

00:07:24.880 a mother who's who's starving uh the expression of genes that might come in that might potentially

00:07:32.000 influence the the child are going to um not be expressed depending upon the uh environmental factors

00:07:40.200 in the uh in the in the family in the mother and and so on and so i think that there is i think it's

00:07:48.900 helpful to realize that there are biogenic influences and that they're substantial but they're not

00:07:56.640 immutable height is very highly um genetic and yet you see massive population changes in height as a

00:08:08.900 function of greater uh nutritional needs being satisfied and and so on so i think as long as we

00:08:15.760 don't assume that that that genetic influence is is forever fixed it's informative okay so you can play

00:08:24.420 around with it there's like the you're just describing epigenetics so there's things we can do

00:08:28.420 proactively but also just in our environment can affect our personality yes well correct you start

00:08:33.720 off the book talking about talking about personality this idea of a personal construct and i guess the

00:08:39.460 takeaway i got from that was a personal construct is like how you see yourself is that what that is

00:08:45.460 it's it's it's a little broader than that it's it's how you see um your world including yourself

00:08:53.440 and most of the research that has been done within the personal construct tradition has looked at

00:08:59.160 how we construe others and how we construe what's happening to ourselves in our life

00:09:04.560 and i give an example within the um within that chapter of a person who

00:09:11.820 used many different labels for describing other individuals but when we look at

00:09:19.420 the deep structure underlying it that guy had one big personal construct with respect to seeing

00:09:28.140 himself and others and that was whether they're in the army or they're not in the army and

00:09:35.280 in a way the person who developed this uh way of looking at personality george kelly used to say

00:09:41.500 you are your constructs and in many ways that fellow was that construct he was for a time

00:09:48.580 in the army and he judged individuals and he judged his life in terms of whether

00:09:53.520 it related to the army or not to the army and um it um it dominated his personality and it helped

00:10:03.460 explain some of the things that happened in his life and as i relate in that chapter he got dismissed

00:10:10.340 from uh the rotc program and uh ended up not being in the army and he collapsed his whole psychological

00:10:20.900 structure had collapsed because it had been invalidated george kelly used to argue that um

00:10:28.980 personal constructs are like goggles but they're also predictions and we're like scientists we erect

00:10:36.340 erect these hypotheses and if they work fine and if they make sense of what we're doing we keep them

00:10:42.980 but if they don't predict like a good scientist you change the construct but sometimes there's enormous

00:10:50.640 resistance to changing a construct and in his case when he realized he was not in the army any longer

00:10:59.340 and his core identity had been challenged he was flooded with anxiety and and life did not go go well

00:11:06.300 for him so the lesson there is you don't just want to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to

00:11:11.260 your personal construct you want multiple i think that's that's a good way of putting it i think that

00:11:16.580 even though you may have many constructs which is adaptive they need to be related to each other in

00:11:23.540 ways that provide some structure otherwise you get chaos and so i think that looking at it as

00:11:31.780 as as as a an intricate pattern of independent constructs that have a particular range of convenience as we

00:11:41.620 say to anticipate certain events and for some individuals the events that they have complex

00:11:48.540 complex constructs about are quite different than for others and when i did my own work many many years

00:11:55.920 ago on uh what i called specialization theory i distinguish those who have uh elaborated constructs

00:12:03.620 with respect to other people but when it comes to physical objects things in their environment

00:12:08.740 wow they're pretty simplistic and vice versa and so i talked about person specialists and thing specialists

00:12:18.120 and that um that ends up raising some really interesting questions about career choice and sex

00:12:26.260 differences and so on yeah i'd like to get that dig in that a little bit deeper here but i love this

00:12:31.300 idea of of being i mean i guess when i read that chapter the example of thought that came to my mind was a man

00:12:38.300 who made his whole identity his job and he loses his job which is like this army guy um and then his whole

00:12:46.520 world collapses and i guess there's this idea instead of thinking about that you're your job you should

00:12:51.320 have some sort of higher purpose like you have a calling to be a teacher so you might lose your

00:12:57.700 you know teaching job in a company maybe you're an instructor or facilitator that's okay because you're still

00:13:03.640 a teacher you can go find another teaching job yeah that's a that's a lovely example or you can

00:13:09.720 think of the think of the individual who is working uh on a building and all he's doing is putting one

00:13:16.920 brick in at a time and he could identify his construct could see him as simply putting one brick after

00:13:25.800 another or you could see him and he could see himself as building a cathedral or as a recent article in

00:13:34.680 the organizational behavior field puts it by andrew carton that the individual who is sweeping the

00:13:42.460 floors at nasa could construe himself as landing a man on the moon right and then also having you

00:13:50.080 know not only have like a broad personal construct but also having multiple personal contracts so don't

00:13:54.340 just see yourself as a worker see yourself well i didn't i failed in my job like that didn't work out

00:13:59.960 but i have a great family and don't discount that and so going back to this idea of person special

00:14:06.020 personal specialists and thing specialists so personal specialists are people who i guess do well with

00:14:12.400 interpersonal relations right yeah they also have some really interesting interaction characteristics

00:14:19.360 for example we found that those who score high on a measure of personal orientation uh when they're

00:14:27.460 interacting with others they're more expressive their faces show greater expressivity they uh they're

00:14:34.080 more empathetic they have a greater capacity to and interest in attending to the nuance of your

00:14:42.420 behavior rather than just what you say so they look at tone and so on whereas the more thing-oriented

00:14:49.100 individuals when they're dealing with people are more likely to simply deal with the with the

00:14:55.000 the more outward observable features of what you're saying rather than digging deeper and so this

00:15:02.620 leads to a capacity among person specialists in fields that require some degree of empathetic

00:15:10.800 insight uh teaching uh social worker psychologists or at least clinical psychologists and uh the thing

00:15:19.980 specialists have a very different way of looking at things and the interesting

00:15:23.560 thing is uh you you may find in some of the helping professions that the primary orientation

00:15:30.580 is actually thing orientation dentists for example are scored particularly high on my thing orientation

00:15:39.260 scale far higher than they did on on person orientation which may resonate for those of you who have

00:15:44.720 ever had a root canal dunk with the decided lack of empathy yeah i mean yeah there's that debate in

00:15:50.640 medicine right now it's like well we should teach doctors how to be more empathetic and you know give

00:15:56.380 the the patient doctor relationship needs to be better and more nuanced whatever it's like

00:16:00.160 no like if i'm dying like i want house like i want dr house i don't want him to make me feel good

00:16:06.960 it's like make me better yeah exactly i think the the uh one of the takeaways from this early work we did

00:16:16.620 was that unlike our common conception that person orientation and thing orientation are the opposite

00:16:23.700 ends of the single dimension we found that they're actually independent of each other or in our statistical

00:16:29.640 terms they're orthogonal they're independent of each other so it's possible to be low on both to be high

00:16:35.560 on one and low on the other or to be what i call generalists who are high in both and uh i find them

00:16:43.980 particularly interesting and in the medical field i think it's terrific uh to have generalists uh who

00:16:50.960 are able to establish that relationship with the patient to listen instead of simply um process

00:16:59.380 information but to listen deeply to the concerns of the patient but then to be able to switch into seeing

00:17:05.400 the the presenting problem as a thing specialist so that you are able to look at it um as as a physical

00:17:13.960 problem that needs to be solved uh a house call if you wish rather than the bedside manner

00:17:20.780 that ability to switch is really critical right and i imagine generally women are personal specialist

00:17:28.080 and men are thing specialist or is that yeah it's it's true person specialist scores are higher for women

00:17:35.280 thing more for men but in terms of generalists there's no distinction so it's possible

00:17:43.620 that you would find quite possible that you would find an equal number of generalists among men and

00:17:49.960 women it's it also plays into this whole notion of whether your orientation is exactly the same as

00:17:58.580 your ability you may be interested in things but not necessarily have a great deal of ability in it

00:18:06.580 the interesting thing about thing orientation and women is that some colleagues at purdue university

00:18:14.160 have been looking at how it predicts women in in the stem fields and thing oriented women who go into

00:18:24.660 the stem fields are first they're more attracted into stem fields and secondly they last longer in the field

00:18:31.920 and i think having that that enjoyment of tinkering around with things is really crucial so it's it's not

00:18:39.940 necessarily a purely male phenomenon and when women have high levels of thing orientation it augurs

00:18:48.460 well for their performance in the stem fields engineering and so on right and the same go for men like

00:18:54.420 there's some men who are more personal oriented yes and they would do better in a more like you know

00:18:59.680 like a therapist or a teacher or counselor or something like that yeah all right let's talk

00:19:05.900 about the thing i think has really given people a lot of like incorrect ideas of what personality is

00:19:12.920 and these it's personality test you've probably taken one online you've probably been to some corporate

00:19:17.720 retreat where you take a myers-briggs personality test do these personalities test actually tell us

00:19:23.620 anything useful about our personality it depends which ones we're talking about i've weighed in

00:19:30.240 occasionally and i do in the book about myers-briggs and i've been and joined by a number of myers-briggs

00:19:36.860 practitioners in the last few months to realize that perhaps there are some more sophisticated

00:19:43.040 practitioners of that approach and i'm very willing to agree that many of them have a far more

00:19:51.940 sophisticated and nuanced view about what personality is than those who actually use it in a more

00:20:01.340 informal and casual way i think myers-briggs and other trait measures are useful to begin conversations

00:20:11.440 about personality as i mentioned in the book people enjoy taking them they're intriguing people like to

00:20:19.020 find out about where they stand relative to other people but if people start to simply slot themselves

00:20:25.780 into a hole a pigeonhole i i really begin to worry and so once you you stamp your myers-briggs code onto

00:20:36.460 your forehead or onto your cup or onto your edible underwear whatever it might be we find that you start

00:20:44.200 curtailing the the possibilities you have in your life and so i think that while let me begin a

00:20:51.440 conversation we need to have a broader conversation about things that really matter to you uh rather than

00:20:58.480 just the kind of type that um that you were designated as having well you know why i don't find them that

00:21:05.580 useful every time i take it it's different it is right like one week i'll take it and i'll be an

00:21:11.060 extrovert and the other week i'm an introvert yep and i don't know what's going on there well the

00:21:15.900 the test um what we call the test-free test reliability that is uh how you score on subsequent

00:21:22.780 measurement with the scale is is not high and indeed if you um if you look at that reliability

00:21:31.380 it's not as high as some of the other personality test measures that that that i do recommend and i think

00:21:39.220 that um people become because they experience what you did that they become skeptical of of whether

00:21:45.280 it points to anything uh other than a kind of momentary tendency uh when you're taking the the

00:21:51.280 test i'm a bit more optimistic than thinking it's just chimerical i think that if you look at it in

00:21:58.080 terms of continuous scores which some myers-briggs proponents do utilize i should say but if instead of

00:22:06.980 looking at yourself as an introvert or an extrovert and you shift around from from may to june if you

00:22:13.580 look at the range of scores and if you look at the continuous scores uh you may find greater stability

00:22:20.020 in fact most of these personality traits are are normally distributed so that most people end up in the

00:22:27.720 in the middle and then it stems out symmetrically into and into the extremes and if you look at people's

00:22:35.260 scores on some of the more frequently used personality tests that psychologists use in

00:22:42.220 their research right now you find that very very clearly and i think those continuous measures of

00:22:48.080 personality particularly what are called the big five traits are very useful yeah we'll get into the

00:22:53.640 big five here in a bit one one more critique of myers-briggs i just i don't want to dog on myers

00:22:58.160 but the other issue i've when i've done those tests is that i found myself answering the questions in

00:23:02.900 the way i think or like i wanted to be yeah right like i wanted to be this type so i answered the

00:23:08.960 questions in a way i knew would get me that so i'm like yeah i don't know if that's right so if the

00:23:13.440 myers-briggs has those issues like you right you said mentioned there's some tests that are actually

00:23:17.540 more reliable that psychological psychologists use which ones do you think are more useful uh there

00:23:23.280 there are a bunch of them that go under the general rubric of big five trait measures and you can

00:23:31.460 these are accessible online if you just put in big five personality traits um you're able to access some

00:23:40.520 of them the the grandparent of them all is um is called the neo pi and it's uh developed by uh paul costa

00:23:51.820 and uh robert mccray and they have um uh a long and and uh very well researched measure that that is

00:24:03.300 that's a commercial measure but some of the shorter measures are really um quite accurate in in pinning

00:24:10.200 where you stand on these big five dimensions of personality and they're very consequential for

00:24:16.660 predicting aspects of how we do in our lives and what are the big five personality traits

00:24:22.360 so they spell out an acronym which is ocean so o stands for openness to experience in contrast to

00:24:30.660 to uh more closed uh c for conscientiousness in contrast to more lackadaisical and informal way of

00:24:38.920 managing yourself e is for extroversion in contrast to interversion a is agreeableness in contrast to

00:24:48.140 disagreeableness and n is neuroticism in contrast to stability okay and there's a big biogenic

00:24:56.860 factor in our makeup of these different personality traits correct yes there is okay let's and so in

00:25:04.120 this chapter about the big five you go into detail because as you said these traits can have a big

00:25:08.040 outcome on our life for example you mentioned conscience you talk about conscientiousness in

00:25:11.820 detail that people who are let's talk about what is conscientiousness in the first place how do you

00:25:15.720 define that uh the conscientious individuals are are those who make plans and keep to them they're able

00:25:23.240 to focus very much on the task at hand and so they're not diverted away by uh by other extraneous

00:25:30.760 matters and we find that they do better in their academic pursuits they're more likely to be

00:25:37.580 promoted in their organizations and that is to be expected what may not be anticipated as much but

00:25:45.020 which is clearly the case is that they uh they are healthier and they um they live longer and i think the

00:25:54.260 reason for this is is that they take care of themselves and when a health care regimen is suggested to them

00:26:01.540 by their physician they adopt it and they stick to it and uh i think that is uh one of the reasons why

00:26:08.400 they tend to uh endure longer than those who are who are less conscientious it's what do you do if

00:26:14.360 you're not conscientious like you're not as conscientious as someone you know who can stick to those sorts of

00:26:19.600 things because i mean i can see this having big like you know policy ramifications like we you know if

00:26:24.400 you're a doctor you want your doctor you want your patient to stick to a prescription medication regimen

00:26:29.740 but if they're they're not conscientious like that's going to be hard to do so like what do you do

00:26:34.680 about that well that goes to the whole issue of how tractable are our traits how much can we um

00:26:42.580 can we shift them and that's where we get into what i call a notion of free traits where um

00:26:52.080 while you may not be biogenically disposed to being conscientious uh you learn to act

00:27:00.080 conscientiously in pursuit of a project that really matters to you in your life perhaps we're getting

00:27:06.320 ahead of ourselves on this but to me we are able to do that and it has uh important implications for

00:27:12.580 for how we live our lives okay we'll talk a little more about these free traits and how we can

00:27:16.360 not manipulate them but you know use them to leverage them is the word so like neuroticism

00:27:21.860 is another one that can just lead to a lot of like a detrimental life so like what are the

00:27:26.400 downsides of being neurotic they are disposed to feeling anxious feelings of depression of

00:27:33.620 vulnerability in general overly self-conscious and consequently they have problems in the everyday

00:27:43.680 carrying out of their projects and tasks but i do believe that there are some benefits as well

00:27:50.120 the term neuroticism is is is a bit unfortunate in a way we're not talking about individuals who are

00:27:57.320 clinically neurotic now who have neuroses that require some mental health treatment regimen we're

00:28:04.620 talking about individuals who have a disposition to feeling uh vulnerable and and so on short of a

00:28:11.860 clinical condition and one of the benefits of of of neuroticism arises if we think of them as being

00:28:19.200 very sensitive individuals and so they are often able to sense things going on let's say you know

00:28:26.900 organizations that others may be um less sensitive to things that are going wrong things that are

00:28:35.000 potentially anxiety producing to all but they see it first and they react first and so they're like

00:28:41.920 canaries in the line and i think that if we ignore the insights that neurotic individuals are are able

00:28:48.980 to bring to to the table we miss something really potentially very important and you see that in the

00:28:54.840 arts as well on the the the prototypical neurotic artists often we'll see we'll sense the things that

00:29:01.520 are arising in the world that we need to attend to and so i think it brings benefits that are often

00:29:07.140 squelched when we focus only on the on the negative aspect of neuroticism right and the other one is

00:29:14.280 introversion extroversion that gets a lot of play people are really obsessed with whether they're

00:29:18.080 an introvert or extrovert and i know susan kane's book quiet has really added to that conversation

00:29:23.340 but are there i mean a lot of people think that extroverts are the best thing to be because like

00:29:27.100 you're sociable and everyone in your life at the party but other downsides of being an extrovert

00:29:30.980 yeah have you got 16 hours

00:29:34.040 i it is such a it is such an intriguing topic and you're right susan kane's book

00:29:42.500 really raised the the level of public discourse on the benefits and and downsides of both introversion

00:29:51.200 and extroversion her claim was that um north american culture particularly american culture

00:29:58.800 valorizes extroversion such that more introverted tendencies are are squelched and and marginalized

00:30:07.560 particularly in the world of business and law which she practiced for years and um and i think

00:30:16.000 those are acute observations there are benefits and and costs to being both of those and let me deal

00:30:25.160 first with with extroverts you're you're right that they're more engaging they the the biogenics of

00:30:32.080 extroversion relates to what we call dopaminergic processes and in the brain they they seek out

00:30:39.500 reward and they're excited to buy the possibility of reward uh sometimes in doing that they're a little

00:30:47.980 oblivious to some of the downsides the more punishment cues that could be lurking in the environment that

00:30:54.960 introverts or particularly neurotic introverts would be very sensitive to extroverts have great memory

00:31:02.300 but it's just short-term not long-term memory they have a capacity to get things done quickly

00:31:09.800 they interact in such a way that they're very very direct and sometimes that gets things done

00:31:17.300 but they run into difficulties when it comes into situations that require more nuance or holding back

00:31:25.920 a more introverted response uh and um and they can drive each other to distraction the the introvert

00:31:33.700 tends to do things more slowly but is higher in quality they get things done more slowly but but more

00:31:42.120 more correctly uh than their uh than their extroverted peers so there are just a whole diversity of ways in

00:31:49.500 which they contrast but if we're looking at our businesses or if we're looking at even our families

00:31:55.780 um i think it's it's possible to see strengths in both and that we um we need to um respect those

00:32:05.460 those differences and not slot one group as as inherently better uh than the other and if you go

00:32:13.560 cross-culturally in many uh asian communities uh overseas and here i'm going to be vague because you really

00:32:21.360 need to pin down whether you're talking about hong kong or japan and so on but broadly speaking you find

00:32:26.740 in some uh asian communities that um that they're worried if their child is too extroverted they want

00:32:35.980 them to learn to be more introverted which is a big contrast as susan kane would argue with what is

00:32:41.360 typically the case uh in north america right um so before we get to free traits i think we need to

00:32:46.660 discuss this idea of so that's one of the most fascinating parts of the book this idea that situations

00:32:51.700 and environments can shape our personality and i when i think when i thought about it i was like

00:32:56.500 okay that makes sense because the example one of the examples you gave was the milligram study that

00:33:00.180 happened in the 50s yeah where people yeah they were they were told to shock somebody by this guy in a

00:33:05.980 coat and to the point where like everyone pretty much killed the person um and so that's kind of an

00:33:12.940 explanation of like why people were able to do the the nazi death camps and the holocaust but in other

00:33:18.400 ways like how how how do how can our personality change depending on the situation um any other

00:33:23.320 examples yeah i should point out for the record that they didn't actually kill them in the moment

00:33:29.640 just in case that got misconstrued by anybody uh the um uh i do have another example and i get into

00:33:38.260 that in another uh chapter of the uh me uh uh myself and us book um that um some individuals are

00:33:47.340 particularly shaped by the environment or the context whereas others allow their more biogenic

00:33:55.320 personality to override the situation and the dimension of personality that that captures this

00:34:03.040 really nicely is called self-monitoring and high self-monitors are those who shape their behavior

00:34:10.220 to accord with the situation and so when they go to a funeral they act funereal and when they go to a

00:34:18.040 beach party they act beach party and they do not if they're feeling particularly funereal that day

00:34:24.720 act so at a beach party whereas low self-monitors are those who know what they like what what they are

00:34:34.300 like and what their preferences are and they are much more resistant to shifting their behavior uh to

00:34:41.720 accord to the situation that they happen to be in and the demands uh they're in and this can lead to

00:34:49.140 some really interesting and consequential conflicts between for example spouses so a fellow may be a low

00:34:59.800 self-monitor he's he's dug and he's dug no matter where he is he just acts dug and he's never duggy in a

00:35:08.980 playful way and he's never dougless in an overly formal way he's just plain dug his partner may well be a high

00:35:16.960 self-monitor and for her let us say she is um appalled at what she sees as the rigidity of dug

00:35:29.060 she says look it's a party can't you just loosen up and act as if you're at a party instead of

00:35:37.400 expatiating on the value of a flat tax all evening and doug also has his concerns he says you know

00:35:46.040 yeah i don't know who you are you're this in situation a you're something different in situation b

00:35:53.880 and i don't know who you are in situation c i'm not even sure who it is i fell in love with

00:36:00.600 and they have this conflict that i think is is is not rare between those who believe that their

00:36:08.120 biogenic self who i am rests in their fixed nature and those who feel that we need to flex ourselves to

00:36:17.480 the situations and the context we're in it's um it's a protracted concern and i think it can be

00:36:24.980 solved or remedied by us realizing that there are these differences in personality regarding when we

00:36:33.080 express our first nature as i call it or uh or we um accommodate to uh situations without being

00:36:41.260 stand-up chameleons where we're just wishy-washy right so this brings in another idea of so like

00:36:48.360 our environment can shape us and i'm trying to lead up to this idea we're going to get metaphysical

00:36:52.500 here in a bit because i think it goes to what your your latest book who are you really is about

00:36:57.020 so our environment can shape us we have our genetics that shape us but then you have this

00:37:02.540 idea of free traits which is basically our free will like we can decide that something's

00:37:06.920 important important and we can behave in a different way so can you you started talking

00:37:11.280 about a little bit but can you expand on that yeah yeah yeah i'm glad to come back to that because

00:37:15.840 i think it's it's it's crucial um what i feel is is really central to understanding what our

00:37:24.740 personalities are is um are the core projects in our lives the personal projects to which we commit

00:37:32.880 to which give meaning and and structure and shape to our lives we're not just a bunch of

00:37:39.520 traits bouncing into situations and being propelled by the traits and and shaped by the situation

00:37:46.620 i think each of us creates a series of projects in our lives some of which come at us rapidly out of social

00:37:55.280 demands some of which arise out of our deepest strivings for how we want to be in the world

00:38:00.900 and those projects may sometimes cause us to impel us to act out of character and acting out of

00:38:10.260 character is a really critical phrase for me because it means two things it means on the one hand

00:38:15.680 acting in ways that go against our natural dispositions so good gosh chuck was really acting

00:38:23.460 out of character yesterday when he danced uh uh on the table but it also means acting on the basis of

00:38:30.320 values that matter to us on on character and a good example would be individuals who are biogenically

00:38:39.980 rather introverted but who have core projects in their lives that enjoin them to act in a more

00:38:48.760 outgoing dominant and extroverted fashion and often in sort of in the larger context of what your

00:38:56.240 podcasts and your and your whole program is about these are things which which as as guys we often

00:39:03.580 need to do and women as well we need to rise to the occasion we can't just retreat into our first nature

00:39:11.300 and in doing that by acting out of character we're engaging what i call a free trait so uh an introvert who

00:39:19.240 has to for whatever reason in a project act in an assertive and an extroverted fashion is engaged in the free

00:39:28.080 trade of of if you will pseudo extroversion and this brings us a bunch of very positive things such as progress

00:39:37.340 on the projects that matter to us in our lives it also helps us grow into being something different than we than we

00:39:46.240 normally are but there can be a cost and the cost is potential burnout so the example i give in the book

00:39:55.360 is is my own behavior i'm a i'm a biogenic introvert from way back i think in the womb and uh and yet as a

00:40:04.960 professor it seems to me that my main job is to profess and i adore my students i love my field and i can't

00:40:11.740 wait to tell them what the field is about and i can't wait to tell your audience what we're doing

00:40:17.580 in our field of research but my natural disposition is to be much more introverted and so when i at eight

00:40:25.040 o'clock in the morning to keep my students excited i stand on my head or whatever i need to do to get

00:40:30.120 them up and engaged i'm acting out of character and i can do this and i've done it for so many years now

00:40:36.760 that it it it it's not that costly but sometimes those of us who do that need to find restorative

00:40:45.520 niches after we've finished and particularly let's say at the break in a lecture where i've got 15

00:40:51.200 minutes unlike an extra a true extrovert who would stick around with the students i need to get away

00:40:57.860 and uh hide somewhere and susan kane in her book quiet had a whole chapter that used as its leitmotif

00:41:06.400 this funny little canadian prophet harvard who used to do this and i resonated very much to that story

00:41:13.000 as it turns out and um we do this um we find our restorative niches in which we um are able to

00:41:21.780 return to our biogenic nature but by having those free traits i think we uh advance things that really

00:41:30.640 matter to us in our lives okay so i think this sets it up for the big question like who are we then

00:41:36.860 right there's all there's this big you know today there's like authenticity right is the big buzzword

00:41:42.440 you got to be authentic be true to yourself but like you've just told me we've had i got uh genes that

00:41:48.520 sort of help determine sort of my base nature these big five personality traits or play a big role

00:41:52.820 um my environment can shape my personality so i could be like introverted in one situation but if

00:41:59.780 you put me in another situation i can be the life of the party yep and i can decide you know what this

00:42:05.860 thing is really important to me i can override that so which one's the real you like yeah that's that's

00:42:12.560 a great question the the book that comes out in in a couple of weeks um who are you really has a

00:42:20.280 chapter on authenticity and i i really agree with you that authenticity is often bandied about without

00:42:29.280 i think an awareness of some of the complexities that uh attended and you've hit it right on the head

00:42:35.560 there are there are three claims to authenticity that i that i like to distinguish first there is

00:42:43.360 biogenic authenticity which is where you're true to your first nature you're you you go to a party

00:42:50.460 because as soon as somebody says party you say i'm in and so you do it in an unreflective way unreflective

00:42:57.940 fashion there is what i call and you alluded to it by calling it uh environmental i call it

00:43:04.660 sociogenic that is it arises out of our social cultural milieu that in that constrains us or

00:43:13.080 encourages us to act in a particular way and we may show fidelity to that we may um act in a particular

00:43:22.000 way constantly throughout our life because that is what our family values are or what our religious

00:43:29.840 tradition enjoins me to be or what a good physician acts like or a true lover and those sociogenic

00:43:40.680 influences may conflict with our biogenic so we have uh two warring claims to our authenticity

00:43:48.220 and finally which you also alluded to there is what i call ideogenic it comes from the same root as

00:43:54.660 idiosyncrasy and ideogenic means arising from the personal projects the singular claims that we have

00:44:02.800 on ourselves in our lives which also poses a challenge to our integrity we may act out of integrity we may act

00:44:12.120 uh in an authentic way irrespective of its conflicting with our biogenic and our sociogenic claims

00:44:20.220 uh because we can do no other it is something that we deeply value in our lives we are an adoring father

00:44:29.480 we love our kids we may have a biogenic tendency to have a short temper and be crude and so on

00:44:38.520 we may have uh a culture of people around us that encourage us to um to act in a way that

00:44:46.580 is less than tender but we have a core project that is um sensitive to the needs for kids to be um

00:44:56.720 related to in a more gentle way and so we do so and it is i think that that ideogenic authenticity

00:45:04.900 is in a way the real you but if you don't have core projects in your lives that cause you to act in that

00:45:13.960 fashion you may end up as a default simply doing what you think is natural for you or doing what

00:45:21.660 you think you have to do because of your culture it's awesome and brian this has been a great great

00:45:27.760 conversation and uh there's so much more we could touch on in me myself and us we could we haven't

00:45:32.900 talked about narcissism we didn't even talk about the research that you found that ties your personality

00:45:37.460 on based on you know your preference of where you want to live whether the city or the country

00:45:41.800 a lot of fun stuff and you got a new book coming out um where can people go to learn all about this

00:45:48.080 stuff oh thank you it's um the uh the the main book is me myself and us and it's accessible through

00:45:56.940 all the major bookstores and websites the new one is a ted book simon and schuster and it comes out

00:46:03.820 august 15th it can be pre-ordered now and it's a shorter book it's much shorter than the one that you've

00:46:09.720 been drawing on about 100 some odd pages and it deals with just what we've been finishing on with

00:46:15.160 the three ways of being yourself and i guess for a 15 minute 15 second overview of what i do

00:46:22.380 my ted talk in ted 2016 called who are you really is uh probably the the shortest and simplest way of

00:46:31.940 getting on top of this i love it well brian this has been a great conversation what i love about

00:46:35.480 the work is that it i feel empowered you know it's like okay there's parts of me that i i can't change

00:46:40.860 but there are things i can't control and that feels good and i'm going to work on that that's terrific

00:46:45.940 i'm delighted to hear that thank you so much brian little thank you so much your time it's been a

00:46:49.920 pleasure cheers my guest it was brian little he's the author of the books me myself and us and also the

00:46:55.600 recently published book who are you really both available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:46:59.880 you can also find out more information about his work at brianlittle.com also check out our show notes

00:47:04.180 for links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic at aom.is slash personality

00:47:08.700 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:47:21.760 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this

00:47:25.360 show i've gotten something out of it you know the episodes you've listened to appreciate you take one

00:47:28.360 minute to give this review on itunes or stitcher that it helps us out a lot and thank you to everyone

00:47:32.020 who has given us review we really appreciate that as always thank you for your support and until next

00:47:36.080 time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - August 22, 2017

#332： What Does It Mean to Be Authentic？

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