The Art of Manliness - #339： The Power of Likability

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast when you hear the

00:00:19.020 word popular you're probably transported back to high school where even if the social scene wasn't

00:00:23.440 quite broken up into jocks and nerds as depicted in movies from the 90s and 80s various groups and

00:00:28.900 clicks form some semblance of a social hierarchy and even as an adult you probably remember where

00:00:33.580 you stood in that pecking order and have some powerful emotions associated with that my guest

00:00:37.660 today has researched why popularity plays a key role in our social and psychological development

00:00:42.200 and how our place in the social pecking order even as children and teenagers can affect our

00:00:46.440 happiness and well-being even when we're in our 30s and 40s his name is mitch prinstein he's the

00:00:50.980 professor of adolescent psychology at the university of north carolina and the author of the book popular

00:00:55.440 the power of likability in a status obsessed world today on the show mitch breaks down the

00:01:00.040 two types of social status that he researches popularity and likability he then shares research

00:01:05.160 that suggests that while popularity comes with some short-term benefits it also has a tremendous

00:01:09.160 amount of long-term downsides instead of focusing on popularity mitch argues that learning to be

00:01:13.940 likable can get you all the benefits status without the drawbacks and shares what you can do to become

00:01:18.640 more likable in your own life he then digs into the research that shows how children as young as five

00:01:22.800 are already aware of who's likable and who isn't they're already forming these pecking orders and

00:01:26.740 how and why that status sensitivity goes into overdrive in your teenage years and how being likable

00:01:31.760 at a young age can have benefits well into adulthood fascinating show filled with great insights and

00:01:36.200 practical tips after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is popular

00:01:40.500 mitch prinstein welcome to the show thanks for having me uh so you just you're a psychologist you

00:01:53.740 just published a book called popular the power of likability in a status obsessed world i'm curious

00:02:01.080 popularity it's it's a touchy topic for a lot of people what got you researching that idea popularity

00:02:09.060 and particularly status yeah you know i have been interested in popularity since even i was a kid

00:02:15.600 i'm not sure exactly why but i was always so curious why some folks were so much more popular than others

00:02:22.520 it was when i got to grad school that i started to realize that it turned out to be way more important

00:02:27.900 than even i had thought um i was surprised to learn how much popularity affects our our health and

00:02:34.300 our futures and our kids and it really just took off from there you mentioned in the book at the

00:02:39.780 beginning of the book that you taught a course i guess you're at unc right university north carolina

00:02:44.380 i am yeah you taught a course on popularity and you didn't think it would garner much attention but

00:02:49.840 it was like one of those classes where kids were you know sitting in the the alleyways trying to like

00:02:54.840 hopefully someone would drop the class so they can get in i mean why do you think people are so

00:02:59.260 interested in this topic yeah it was crazy you know that first time that i taught it it was actually

00:03:04.140 when i was at yale and okay they don't have a pre-registration system so anyone who wants to

00:03:09.300 take a course just shows up and when i got there there was this huge crowd outside the building which

00:03:14.900 i had no idea was for the class but it turned out that 500 kids had uh showed up to take this

00:03:21.380 i asked them you know why are you all so interested in this topic are you are you looking to feel better

00:03:27.280 about your own high school experiences and you know that wasn't it at all actually i was really

00:03:32.820 surprised um these kids at yale they had some really cool opportunities and many of them had

00:03:38.640 already been interns that you know for uh congress people and they had worked in hospitals and in sports

00:03:45.540 teams what they said was that popularity is a dynamic that continues to play out in every way

00:03:53.260 uh imaginable as adults it really matters for who gets hired or not it matters for who has their

00:04:00.080 ideas her versus not um it even relates to our happiness and they recognize that these really smart

00:04:07.820 kids really saw that popularity dynamics it's not something we typically learn but it's one of the

00:04:13.820 most important skills that we have and they wanted to know how to succeed as adults i think when most

00:04:19.500 people think about popularity they probably think back to high school where i don't i mean i think

00:04:24.760 this was more so when maybe when we were in high school or growing up where being popular meant you

00:04:30.400 were on you were a football player or a cheerleader you're kind of a jerk etc but in your book the idea

00:04:37.780 of popularity that you're highlighting is much more nuanced than that and that there's actually different

00:04:42.640 types of popularity uh what are those two types and what are their characteristics yeah so one type of

00:04:47.960 popularity is exactly the kind that you say it's those you know cheerleaders football players the

00:04:53.600 ones that were maybe even a little bit aggressive or mean to others but somehow they had that kind of

00:05:00.500 status you know everyone knew them people wanted to be like them that is one kind of popularity but

00:05:06.340 it's not the first one that we experience the first kind of popularity we start experiencing

00:05:12.060 believe it or not as young as when we're three years old and when you ask a three-year-old who's

00:05:18.080 the most popular they pick the kid who's the most likable someone that makes them feel good someone

00:05:23.220 that they enjoy spending time with and that likability factor continues to be a form of popularity that

00:05:30.860 is important for the rest of our lives but our adolescent brains kind of turn us on to this brand new

00:05:37.420 form of popularity that starts at around the age of 11 or 12 and it's that status type the reason why

00:05:44.380 it's really important for people to pick up on these two very different types is because they lead to

00:05:49.620 completely opposite outcomes okay so yeah when i read that so there's status popularity i've read

00:05:55.500 other psychological research on the the area of status and whatever there's like some other some other

00:06:00.920 people have differentiated between the two like there's status popularity be like dominance right where you

00:06:05.520 kind of achieve that status by you know you can be aggressive etc and then likability sounds a lot

00:06:11.660 like prestige where it's more of an earned where you you you're useful to people and because of that

00:06:18.420 usefulness because you're helpful people give you status yeah that's about right i mean you know

00:06:23.100 about 30 percent of those who have high status are also really really likable the rest of them are

00:06:29.660 actually quite hated by others and similarly um there are many many people who are likable but

00:06:34.900 never have any status at all but they still benefit from having likability um we really do

00:06:41.840 want to be likable and want our our kids and co-workers to be likable it helps in pretty mysterious

00:06:47.920 and fascinating ways but but status is uh is all about kind of the dominance and aggression and really

00:06:55.060 making yourself seem somehow better than or more important than others so you often hear people say

00:07:01.180 you know oh status doesn't matter who cares what other people think i don't care what other people

00:07:05.720 think about me but you highlight research in the book that shows that low status can have some serious

00:07:11.280 detrimental effects on people what are some of the downsides of of low status yeah so if you're low

00:07:16.460 in likability or low in status that actually does lead to a lot of negative outcomes most of the

00:07:22.020 researchers looked at those that are disliked and those folks indeed um are at much greater risk for

00:07:28.740 problems down the road uh they tend to be the low likable kids tend to also be aggressive um and

00:07:35.740 they miss out on so many opportunities where either they could have gotten ahead or they could have learned

00:07:40.760 better skills um they're the last invited to every party they're the last to learn how to date and make

00:07:47.560 friends um and they're the last pick to be part of groups uh even as adults and that kind of gives

00:07:54.200 them a disadvantage that continues to perpetuate you know year after year context after context

00:08:00.400 and it's not only you know the social stuff i mean this actually affects us can affect us

00:08:04.700 physiologically as well right yeah so you know i had no idea that this was such a powerful force but

00:08:12.380 it turns out that our bodies are really very programmed to make sure that we are part of the

00:08:19.140 because i guess it used to be the case that you know maybe 60 000 years ago that being surrounded

00:08:25.540 by others and accepted by others really guaranteed our survival if we were alone there was a better

00:08:31.300 chance that we would die so we now see that the brain responds really dramatically at the very moment

00:08:38.980 that uh you start to perceive that you might be getting excluded or rejected and that trickles down

00:08:45.320 believe it or not even to our dna there's dormant dna that we're all walking around with

00:08:50.940 but it's shut off and at the minute that you start perceiving that you might be excluded

00:08:56.800 that dna turns on and it turns on in a way that activates what's called a pro-inflammatory response

00:09:03.740 in other words it prepares your body to be injured because that's what would happen to you if you were

00:09:08.400 alone you know years ago and because uh we are now in a society where you're not likely to get

00:09:14.740 injured at the moment you're excluded that inflammatory response is unnecessary and actually

00:09:19.280 becomes harmful it's interesting that the vast majority of diseases that we're affected by as

00:09:24.940 humans today are because of this hyper inflammatory response yeah going back to that idea where people

00:09:30.900 say i don't care about status what i think they often when they say that what they mean is like

00:09:35.140 i don't care about a particular type of status or i don't care about having status or belonging to

00:09:41.140 that particular group but they need some sort of status whether it's part of a different group so

00:09:46.440 you might not be if you're in high school you might not be a football player but you know you could do

00:09:50.600 something else you need to be part of some sort of group exactly i mean we don't necessarily all

00:09:54.840 want to be the cool kids anymore or we don't want to be celebrities necessarily but it is in fact

00:10:00.980 human nature to care about the way that you interact with others you know we are a human species

00:10:06.620 and we may not be the kind of species that cares about it in the high school way anymore

00:10:11.080 but we are a species that is attuned to our standing among others and we individually care

00:10:19.380 about connections with others you know absolutely in very profound ways and what's important is that

00:10:26.000 i think that those folks that pretend to think that popularity is completely irrelevant might be missing

00:10:32.660 out on a few really important ways they could be helping themselves and being a lot more happy

00:10:37.180 there's a there's a important medium place between being too concerned about popularity and pretending

00:10:43.800 that you don't care about it at all because uh it's it's more important that we recognize it's a real

00:10:49.560 force in our lives and let's use it for for good so let's talk about this status type popularity

00:10:54.780 the one i think we often think of when we think of popularity you mentioned earlier that there's

00:10:59.520 people you can be popular and have this sort of status popular but at the same time be despised

00:11:05.760 or how is that possible yeah so the people who have the highest status whether they be ceos or you

00:11:12.960 know those cheerleaders and football players they tend there are a couple of problems the first is that

00:11:19.140 especially if they experience that as kids they tend to be research says a bit too focused on their

00:11:26.800 understanding and their status every interaction is measuring up whether others have as much status

00:11:33.240 as them and when they have failings they tend to attribute it to being too concerned about status

00:11:38.940 and that's a problem because no one likes a status seeker you know we we kind of look at that as being

00:11:44.820 uh too egregious as an attempt to garner attention and and acclaim and you know that's a turnoff

00:11:51.220 but the second uh important issue is that one of the most effective ways of getting status is to be aggressive

00:11:58.680 to put others down as a way of making yourself a little bit higher on that status hierarchy

00:12:04.240 and aggression is the single biggest predictor of being disliked so what happens is you have these high

00:12:11.560 status folks who can never stop caring about their status they put other people down in really aggressive

00:12:17.140 ways and they seem so focused on their status that they're no longer actually connecting with people

00:12:23.580 as people they're just instruments to make them feel more important and more noticeable and that is how

00:12:31.260 people who are too focused on status become really really disliked and then eventually that dislike will

00:12:37.420 eventually kind of knock them off the the totem pole right oh yeah i mean everyone that i interviewed for

00:12:43.600 the book and and everyone who's ever been in a workplace probably can tell you the story of the

00:12:48.760 the corporate climber who was able to you know get really high but ultimately they they reached a limit

00:12:54.740 because they were so dislikable and they were uh used others so much that it finally all collapsed for

00:13:02.120 them and uh you know that that happens in so many different ways uh we all know those stories and

00:13:07.980 they're true that's exactly the way that the research says that it works this also happens with

00:13:12.120 chimpanzees i know that there's some males that can be you know become the alpha male through

00:13:17.340 dominance where they just basically beat the crap out of the other ones but eventually like the other

00:13:21.640 chimps team together and they just they beat the crap out of the alpha chimp and make him go away

00:13:27.600 and they put in something someone else that was more there's actually i think chimps have the same

00:13:32.420 idea of of status there's like dominant status and there's prestige status you can climb up the higher

00:13:37.360 chimp hierarchy by being like you know grooming the other chimps providing food etc and those are

00:13:42.940 the ones that tend to stay on the top the longest yeah that's exactly right and you know there's it's

00:13:47.940 not an accident that we have that similarity because the part of our brain that cares so much about

00:13:52.920 status and is responsive to social rewards it's not the part of the brain that's unique to humans

00:13:58.260 which is more the cortex it's the part of the brain that's really primitive it exists in a lot of

00:14:03.840 species and it's this part that says that we will be rewarded when we think about look at or have any

00:14:11.400 interaction with high status people and when we're whether we're on instagram or whether we are uh

00:14:18.060 feeling that kind of influence and that power in you know offline worlds it activates that part of the

00:14:25.360 brain um so if we seem pretty similar to other you know less developed species in that way that's for

00:14:32.520 really good reason and there is something very kind of primitive and animalistic about the ways that

00:14:38.460 some people seek status and attack others in order to get it it in fact is exactly the way that we see

00:14:45.080 among chimpanzees so this status type popularity it comes with cost eventually and i mean eventually

00:14:51.060 you'll be you know kind of you know hoisted on your own petard but you also highlight there's

00:14:55.460 psychological cost for pursuing this type of popularity like it actually makes you feel terrible even

00:15:00.860 though you're feeling good too a bit that's right there's a remarkably high rate of depression among

00:15:06.720 ceos celebrities were the first to tell you that they're awfully lonely and you know a number of the

00:15:12.520 celebrity interviews in the book really talk about exactly the process of how status starts to create a

00:15:19.140 persona that's not really who they are but they have to maintain that persona and feed that persona

00:15:25.100 and people end up really being interested more in the persona than the person that they really are

00:15:31.160 and it makes them very lonely um research that has followed those most popular kids in high school

00:15:36.620 or has looked at the folks who have high status as adults have found that they're at much greater risk

00:15:41.940 for substance use loneliness anxiety and problems with their relationships their closest friends and

00:15:48.300 partners actually don't think that they have good relationships with those high status folks so i mean if

00:15:52.860 if this type of popularity this status dominance type type popularity comes with you know social and

00:15:57.960 psychological loss why do people even seek it like what's going on there yeah that's a great question

00:16:02.980 you know it's it's part of who we are as humans you know we are those kinds of animals that care about it

00:16:09.740 we used to be a species that would grow out of that desire to be high in status and you know be cool in that

00:16:17.560 way but things really change they changed somewhere in the 80s when our society started to focus more

00:16:24.560 and more on ways that anyone could try and get that instant fame and status and really if you look at it

00:16:31.960 the entire dialogue and and the virtues that we care about as a society started to change um you know

00:16:38.940 instead of relying on one another and caring about community and connection everyone wanted what

00:16:44.880 sometimes it's called the american dream but really has morphed into having your own reality show and

00:16:50.360 having the most twitter followers and somehow making yourself seem more important than everyone else and

00:16:56.160 we are now a society where you can exist pretty independently you can even just sit at home and

00:17:03.100 have everything delivered to you and you know feed your your facebook profile um it's no accident that

00:17:10.080 the more that we have distanced ourselves from others the more we've started to favor status over

00:17:16.080 likability and that's become a really big concern um in some ways we've kind of developed a society to

00:17:23.160 make us all want the very thing that will hurt us the most yeah and you also highlight research too in

00:17:28.740 the book that this the status seeking popularity that people go for like it actually can make like it shuts

00:17:35.120 down parts of the brain where you know the executive control like sometimes people do terrible things

00:17:40.340 they know it's terrible but they do it anyway so they know that it will get them some sort of status

00:17:44.480 yeah so that part of the brain that real primitive part of the brain it it's of course connected to all

00:17:50.280 the other parts of the brain and people are starting to figure out now once you activate that kind of

00:17:55.200 part that's really responsive to that status or what neuroscientists call social rewards

00:18:01.620 we're starting to learn a little bit about like how that affects the other areas and one of the areas

00:18:06.580 that it has direct lines to apparently is what's called the prefrontal cortex that's kind of like

00:18:11.760 the brain's brakes it's you know what stops us from doing impulsive things and yeah the more that we kind

00:18:17.660 of get that status uh experience and and we get the activation of the the social rewards part of our

00:18:24.980 brain it seems to shut down the brakes um so we're more prone to do impulsive acts especially

00:18:31.560 because people with high status get rewarded every time they do something aggressive and impulsive so

00:18:37.560 it kind of teaches them if you want higher status keep on doing aggressive impulsive stuff

00:18:43.320 you know these days we all wake up in the morning and see exactly what's happening on twitter and who's

00:18:49.340 saying what in the political world or elsewhere and we see this process playing out every day

00:18:54.580 it's exactly the way the research discusses it right it made me think of there's like kid on youtube he's

00:18:58.920 not a kid he's a grown man now he's he does like pranks and he basically just just is annoying he just

00:19:04.180 makes people feel terrible but he gets a lot of youtube followers because of it and gets a lot of

00:19:08.740 views because of it that's probably that's probably what's going on yeah exactly all right so let's

00:19:13.000 talk about likability right so status dominance popularity is the not good kind what can people do

00:19:20.660 to be more like well i think we've referenced you refer to a little thing some things you can do

00:19:23.740 just be useful be helpful to others but what are some other things people do to become

00:19:27.420 likable you know there's so many things that we can do because there's not one single recipe but

00:19:31.620 there are a couple of things that seem a little bit less obvious that i think are really important

00:19:36.440 to highlight because a lot of people think that in order to be likable you have to kind of kowtow

00:19:41.840 to everyone else's wishes and you have to somehow be passive turns out that's exactly wrong

00:19:46.960 the most likable people are actually the best leaders and the way that they lead

00:19:51.920 is that they make everyone feel included and that's key is you make people feel like they're

00:19:58.640 part of the herd and you suddenly become the leader of the herd for doing so the ways that you might do

00:20:04.860 that is rather than tell other people that their ideas are bad and wrong and your ideas are better

00:20:10.120 it's to make sure that everyone feels like their input was important appreciated it was met with a

00:20:17.520 positive response and then maybe synthesizing that and moving people in the direction that

00:20:22.020 that you think is is necessary you know that's okay that can work and in fact that's a really good

00:20:27.860 idea to do but but not by overpowering others opinions or making them feel less than that's really

00:20:34.640 important other ways that we make people feel part of the herd is just by generally being very positive

00:20:40.340 and enthusiastic around them when they feel like their presence is met with um enjoyment and and

00:20:46.860 kind of you know being really pumped by the fact that they're around and the things they have to say

00:20:50.800 they automatically like you because it makes you it makes them feel like wow i'm an important

00:20:56.000 part of this interaction um i'm needed i'm wanted and we're kind of programmed to want to feel needed and

00:21:03.260 wanted so you make people feel that way and they're going to like you forever yeah this room it sounds uh

00:21:07.940 like the archetype for this i've just we a long time a few years ago we did a whole series about

00:21:12.140 dwight eisenhower and his leadership style and like ike was like that like that's what made him such an

00:21:17.900 effective leader he was optimistic he listened to people he tried to make people feel involved in the

00:21:22.860 process and as a consequence of that like people saw him as a leader that's right you know a lot of

00:21:29.080 people will talk about the boss that they would be willing to do anything for and when you ask them to

00:21:33.880 tell you about that boss they'll say things like they would shake my hand and look me right in the

00:21:38.720 eye and i really felt like they knew who i was or cared who i was or or they'll tell you about somebody

00:21:45.580 who you know met them years ago but still remembered their name and something important about them

00:21:51.100 it's those people that make you feel truly cared about and connected that make you feel part of the

00:21:57.920 herd and like your presence is important to them those are the people that we tend to like the most

00:22:03.020 they also become those with the highest status because they're used their likability

00:22:07.600 very wisely it's very different than the person that gets high status because they've stepped on

00:22:12.900 everyone else so how do you know if you're likable or not right that's the you know you might think

00:22:18.640 you are but you're actually not yeah that's a really good question because we're actually not the

00:22:23.320 best judges of this ourselves i sometimes joke that you should gather all of your friends in a room and

00:22:28.500 ask them and if the room you're in is empty then that gives you the answer that you need but if

00:22:34.620 if uh if you do speak with others and you feel like you're getting a positive response from them in

00:22:40.600 other words they're happy when they're around you they're smiling they're laughing that's kind of a good

00:22:45.540 yet obvious kind of clue um a lot of us can look at our relationship histories you know is there a

00:22:52.120 pattern of people getting close to us and then more distant is there a sense of people getting more

00:22:56.800 agitated with us you know do people seem to get more energized when we're around them or do they

00:23:02.760 seem to kind of start to downward spiral into a negative loop you know these are the best ways we

00:23:08.700 can tell but in the research we don't ask people how likable they are because we don't expect them

00:23:13.800 to give us a valid answer we have to ask the people around them and they give us the information

00:23:18.740 that we need so let's go back to this idea of how our status as children and how that has that can

00:23:25.980 follow us into adulthood first off like why is that right i mean when you're an adult you're

00:23:31.660 sometimes you feel like i sometimes i feel like i'm a completely different person than the kid i was

00:23:35.380 when i was 14 yet the research shows that that experience i had as a 14 year old is influencing

00:23:41.640 me now so what's going on there yeah there's a couple things going on but one of the things

00:23:46.420 that happens is that it turns out that in our mind's eye you know we we sometimes do think of us

00:23:53.440 ourselves still as being young it's kind of an interesting duality a lot of us will say

00:23:58.760 i'm a completely different person you know i'm not at all uh the adolescent that i used to be

00:24:04.440 but other times we might feel like the way we looked back then or the way that people treated

00:24:09.500 us back then still haunts us a little bit there's even a study that shows that um it's not how tall you

00:24:15.880 are as an adult that predicts your salary tall people make more money than shorter people but it's how

00:24:21.100 tall you were when you were 16 that makes a bigger difference as if we carry around that mental image

00:24:27.460 of who we were as an adolescent for the rest of our lives and there's now research to support that

00:24:32.820 those old autobiographical memories when we were young they actually serve as a filter they are

00:24:40.380 biasing us what we see and how we interpret what we see every single day there's a really cool study

00:24:47.400 where they asked folks with prior histories of being popular and prior histories of not being

00:24:51.880 popular to all watch the same exact video with social interactions and what they found was that

00:24:57.320 the people who grew up popular they tended to focus on the parts of the video where people were having

00:25:03.280 positive interactions they even had them wear eye tracking devices to see what their eyes looked at

00:25:08.880 and they found that those people spent most of the time staring at the parts of the video where people

00:25:14.380 were happy and having good interactions the exact opposite happened for people who grew up unpopular

00:25:20.200 they spent their time staring mostly at the negative interactions in that same video and when asked later

00:25:26.420 to talk about what the video was like they told a very sad story about the exact same video the reason

00:25:33.140 why that's important is because that's what's happening to us every day you know two people walk away

00:25:38.140 from the same experience with a somewhat different interpretation of what just happened

00:25:42.140 and that all stems back to what happened to us in adolescence believe it or not that's what's

00:25:47.500 guiding these filters and biases what is it about adolescence that sort of sets this stuff in stone

00:25:53.420 that really makes it makes status on top of mind like we're more attuned to it yeah so there are two

00:25:59.180 times in our life when our brains change really dramatically one is when we're infants but the second is

00:26:05.260 the transition to adolescence and that's when we really develop a kind of the brain that we will have

00:26:11.320 for the rest of adulthood and we start to learn how to store you know these memories for a long time

00:26:17.060 our brain does that well you know adolescence is the time that we start to establish our first sense

00:26:22.820 of a firm identity if you ask little kids about who they are as a person they don't really have a good

00:26:28.100 answer you know but if you ask an adolescent they use a lot of words that reflects how much they're

00:26:33.700 starting to understand themselves as a as a person that's different from others and has stable traits

00:26:39.740 there's something about the primacy of our identity being established in adolescence for the first

00:26:44.640 time that ends up being really powerful you know it's probably why when you ask someone about

00:26:50.540 popularity or about their adolescence they still talk about it kind of emotionally sometimes you know

00:26:55.860 it's as if that experience just happened even though it could have been decades ago that stuff

00:27:01.320 in adolescence sticks with us it's really an important part of who we are even decades later

00:27:07.380 so basically we're establishing patterns in adolescence and how we interact based on our

00:27:13.560 status carries over to adulthood like what can we do as adults let's say you know we we have this

00:27:21.240 tendency to not be likable we do things that because that's just what we're used to like how can you get

00:27:26.920 over that high school self of yours and and start acting in a way that will allow you to be likable

00:27:34.700 and gain more status in a positive way yeah that's a great question a really important one this is what

00:27:39.760 i really hope people can get from the the book and why i wrote it is to finally get over kind of all of

00:27:46.360 those experiences and be able to live a happier life now so here's what needs to happen um we most of us

00:27:55.680 tend to think that we are so beyond our adolescence that we're completely a different person now and none of

00:28:01.800 what happened to us before is relevant we try and sweep it all under the rug that's the problem

00:28:07.380 is that we are likely to repeat the patterns that are happening if we don't acknowledge that those are

00:28:14.040 the patterns that we have the first thing we need to do is just come to terms with who were we as

00:28:19.060 adolescents and let's not sweep it under the rug let's talk about it and let's think about how that

00:28:25.620 might be making us a little more sensitive to rejection now or a little too prone to expect

00:28:31.180 the worst from people now let's own that stuff and then once we recognize that it's actually

00:28:37.540 remarkably easy to start noticing when we're falling into that trap so when we're in an interaction

00:28:43.420 we walk out assuming that something bad just happened checking in with others and getting a

00:28:48.640 sense of whether everyone saw it the same way and when you realize that you were maybe in the minority

00:28:53.280 in that interpretation starting to realize wait a minute i think that that's a little bit of the

00:28:58.280 legacy that came from my adolescence let me check myself on that let me open up the possibility that

00:29:04.160 my automatic reactions to things might be a little bit biased and once you start getting in the habit of

00:29:11.580 just questioning those automatic what feels like your instincts and realizing that they've maybe not

00:29:16.340 helped you so much it starts to become really easy to change them and to change your biases and your

00:29:22.660 filters in ways that are really really powerful but the first step is realizing that you have a bias

00:29:29.960 at all which means taking those memories out from under the rug and really looking at them and then

00:29:34.580 you'll people start noticing as they start acting and you know acting in a way that makes them more

00:29:39.600 likable there's like a feed positive feedback loop that begins a virtuous cycle that starts yeah that's

00:29:45.280 right i mean you know if you walk into a room and you have your arms folded and you're you're not making eye

00:29:51.260 contact research says that people around you it will actually change their mood they will feel badly

00:29:58.240 they will feel more depressed and they will attribute that to every time you walk in the room you're kind

00:30:03.660 of the downer you know um this is kind of another way that we repeat patterns we kind of assume i'll be

00:30:10.500 rejected when i enter this new experience and then we behave in ways that reify and guarantee that we'll be

00:30:16.260 rejected so it turns out it's just as easy to change things the other way if you walk into a room

00:30:21.500 expecting something positive to happen and without even trying it's actually more likely that you will

00:30:28.220 get a positive outcome just by having that expectation and when that happens it tends to feed on itself in

00:30:35.000 this incredibly cyclical and powerful way um while researching the book and kind of thinking about

00:30:41.860 some of those things myself i was able to even try it out you know in a few different ways and talk

00:30:47.520 with people who have done that and look at research and the effects are incredible just um the most

00:30:55.020 subtle things that you do in a social interaction or ways that you think about uh expecting acceptance and

00:31:02.960 uh and being more popular and having favorable outcomes it can trigger a cycle that lasts for days

00:31:10.260 and weeks and months so we you've talked about a little bit but how has social media influenced

00:31:17.120 our status drive i mean this is a relatively new thing right like the past 10 or 12 years where

00:31:22.420 everyone can have a platform basically that didn't exist in the 80s or 90s so how has that changed the

00:31:29.400 status game so social media you know can be used in a lot of different ways and it can be used as a way

00:31:35.200 of connecting with others and becoming more likable sharing things and uh you know developing

00:31:40.820 relationships all that can be great and there's some evidence to say that social media can be really

00:31:45.780 helpful but the problem is it also opens up a potential track because social media really

00:31:52.180 emphasizes status you know it it tells you on the front page the number of responses that you've gotten

00:31:58.440 or likes or followers or retweets whatever platform it is there's a lot of emphasis on

00:32:03.320 quantifying measures of basically status how much should people notice you how much reach and

00:32:09.860 influence do you have and the truth is for the same reasons that uh you know we talked about before

00:32:16.320 in the brain that actually is addictive you know seeing that and getting that temporary rush of seeing

00:32:21.880 that you had you know 300 retweets that feels really good and it makes you more likely to want to do it

00:32:28.160 again and some people really get trapped in only tweeting things or only posting things as a way

00:32:35.600 to get others to like them and follow them and and retweet what they're having to say and it starts to

00:32:41.660 take the humanity out of it and we start to become those chimpanzees that are just bar pressing in order

00:32:46.980 to get more signs of status that's the problem it's a problem when we start to you know lose the

00:32:53.740 opportunity to make real connections and focus only on getting these temporary hits these biological

00:33:00.340 rushes much like we would get from drugs um it's also a problem when we see research studies that show

00:33:07.460 that you can actually influence someone's attitudes and beliefs just by pairing things they used to hate

00:33:13.980 with markers that those things got lots of likes there's now evidence to say that just seeing

00:33:20.780 something you hate associated with a lot of likes makes you hate it a lot less that's a pretty scary

00:33:26.520 way of thinking about uh attitude and influence and persuasion that also is potentially dangerous yeah

00:33:33.240 that is scary yeah it reminds me there was that study done about music it was like the stanford music lab

00:33:38.520 where in one group they had people listen to different music it was like just like dance music whatever

00:33:45.640 and people could see how many likes or downloads a song was getting and like the more downloads or

00:33:52.480 likes a song got the more it got right it's sort of like this snowball effect but in the other factory

00:33:57.640 people couldn't see what other people were ranking these songs and like people ended up ranking things

00:34:03.120 differently so yeah just like seeing something like it reminds me like gangham style that youtube video

00:34:07.460 that was like the most played youtube songs ever it wasn't a good song like i don't i think it was

00:34:12.680 terrible i think if most people like if they listen to it by themselves not knowing what other people

00:34:17.600 were you know liking or you know sharing this thing i think most people are like this is not that great

00:34:22.100 of a song but because everyone saw that it was the most downloaded song on youtube like everyone started

00:34:29.240 listening to it more that is actually a great catchy song yeah isn't that amazing how much we are

00:34:33.600 influenced by popularity you know try to resist clicking on a website that everyone tells you is the best

00:34:41.620 website try to you know not talk about something that everyone else is talking about it again goes to

00:34:48.540 our basic human programming as soon as we learn that there's something that everyone else seems to like

00:34:54.320 or has visited or prefers it it tempts us it pulls us in interesting ways to suddenly want to see it we have

00:35:01.900 to know about it we have to hear about it and in many cases it does influence our preferences yeah people

00:35:07.380 will love gangham style because they heard that everyone else does even though objectively there's

00:35:12.600 no reason that anyone should ever love that song um and yeah that's what the research found as well they

00:35:18.700 manipulated that list of who had downloaded what songs and when they took the worst song and they made

00:35:25.760 it look like it was everyone's favorite suddenly everyone started thinking it was their favorite too

00:35:30.400 it's amazing how much we're all conformists at heart whether we think that that's happening or not

00:35:35.820 so how do you use social media without experiencing these downsides because you said it was it can be

00:35:41.040 like a drug right and most times if you have a drug addiction you stop using the drug completely

00:35:47.100 social media you know you're suggesting you can use social media this potential drug but not have

00:35:52.240 the effect of that that drug of you know that status drive do you have any suggestions and you're based

00:35:56.620 on your own experience or maybe the experience of your students and how you can navigate that

00:36:00.440 yeah i would say two things you know one is just like we might say for other things that are

00:36:04.540 potentially addictive use it in moderation you know catch yourself if you start finding that you're

00:36:09.840 getting a little bit too stuck on it you know use it in moderation so that's the first thing

00:36:14.560 but the second thing is you know i think we all get pulled to try and post things or say things

00:36:20.500 because we're wondering how will that play on social media you know even as publicizing the book i was

00:36:26.740 encouraged to try and develop a social media profile you know in order to sell the book so it became

00:36:32.040 very meta so for me to do the exact things that i had written about doing or not doing and i i could

00:36:38.520 see the traps i could really see it you know i would get followed by somebody who had millions of followers

00:36:43.940 and i would start thinking oh well what could i say that they'll retweet and then once they retweet it

00:36:49.940 then maybe i'll get their followers and there was this pull to start to say things just to gain the

00:36:55.360 system whether i you know firmly believed in those things or not and that was to me a really good sign

00:37:01.740 if i'm doing these things only as a way of gain status but i don't sincerely care or believe in

00:37:08.700 them as much as it might seem that's a bad sign that's when you need to log off you know for a

00:37:13.900 little while and i kind of realized that you are being you know lured into the world of status and

00:37:20.200 it's no longer a genuine expression of who you are anymore so that that to me was a good warning sign

00:37:26.220 of when i needed to take a pause so i know a lot of our listeners are parents and you in the book

00:37:30.920 talking about how what parents can do to help their children navigate the world of status as you said

00:37:36.900 this is something that affects us significantly throughout our lives but like no one really sits

00:37:41.600 down to tell you like here's what you can do to be more likable and here's you shouldn't you know

00:37:47.680 seek status popularity um so knowing that likable children tend to do better later in life than

00:37:54.460 unlikable or even unpopular kids should parents go out of their way to make their kids likable i mean

00:38:00.720 for example my kids starting you know school and i've already seen this happen like the parents all

00:38:05.740 every parent in this class is like having a back to school party and like just like there's like three

00:38:11.440 of them or something this week and i'm just like that never happened when i was a kid i'm like

00:38:15.940 parents take it easy um so should parents go out of their way to like groom their kids social life

00:38:22.540 so they're more likable you know maybe they should because all the things that we teach kids whether

00:38:28.880 it's reading or writing or you know uh other skills that are formally taught in school those are

00:38:34.800 important we should be teaching those but the research does say that teaching kids uh kids that are

00:38:40.260 likable tend to have greater success in every measure at work their salaries their relationship

00:38:46.960 happiness even their children's happiness um it's all predicted and it predicts above and beyond all

00:38:53.060 those things we formally teach so i would say yes we absolutely should be teaching kids how to be likable

00:38:58.680 the key is to make sure that we understand the difference between the two kinds of popularity and we don't

00:39:04.620 accidentally start teaching them to become popular in the way that refers to status because that will

00:39:10.640 lead to bad outcomes so um i really hope that people are able to use the information uh that's

00:39:18.100 provided in the book really well to you know it's basically kind of an instruction manual of exactly how

00:39:22.640 to you know help think about the factors that are making your kids more or less likable and how to

00:39:27.880 avoid the traps that will make them um care too much about status which is what we don't want

00:39:33.420 well mitch this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book

00:39:37.000 the book is called popular and it's available at all major retailers of course and my website is

00:39:42.380 mitchprinstein.com and that also has some links to the book and some other resources right mitch

00:39:48.700 prinstein thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you so much i appreciate it

00:39:52.620 my guest today is mitch prinstein he's the author of the book popular the power of likability in a

00:39:56.220 status-obsessed world it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find out

00:40:00.360 more information about his work at mitchprinstein.com also check out our show notes at

00:40:03.900 aom.is popular where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:40:08.700 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:40:19.380 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoyed the

00:40:22.980 podcast you've gotten something out of it since you've been listening for a while appreciate if you

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00:40:31.120 for your community support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:40:34.680 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#339： The Power of Likability

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